Wednesday, March 27, 2024

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day X

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day X

How many people have accepted the idea that Lent is the time when something which may be good in itself is forbidden, as if God were taking pleasure in torturing us. 

For the authors of lenten hymns, however, Lent is exactly the opposite; it is a return to the "normal" life, to that "fasting" which Adam and Eve broke, thus introducing suffering and death into the world. Lent is greeted, therefore, as a spiritual spring, as a time of joy and light:

The lenten spring has come,

The light of repentance ...

The time of Lent is a time of gladness! 

With radiant purity and pure love,

Filled with resplendent prayer and all good deeds,

Let us sing with joy ...

— Fr. Alexander Schmemann
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The above passage is very typical of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, we could actually say "vintage." In his many writings, he recovered so much of a lost Orthodox Christian vision that was actually right in front of us, if we would only open our eyes and look carefully. I know that many of you are currently reading Fr. Schmemann's Great Lent. I hope that the book is proving to be precisely an eye-opening experience that will bring to life the richness and depth of the Church's liturgical life. At the midpoint of Great Lent we will be able to sing "For through the Cross joy has come into the world" - actually something we chant at every celebration of the Divine Liturgy! 

There is a joyousness at the very heart of Great Lent for the simple reason that this season is given to us as a gift during with we draw nearer to Christ, the living Source of joy and gladness.

 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day IX

 


 

Dear Parish Faithful,

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day IX

When the intellect is severed from grace, it hardens and proudly asserts itself. With all one’s effort, the mind must pass through the mystery of Baptism, not the precise moment of child’s or adult’s Baptism, but everything that Baptism presupposes: preliminary and lasting renunciation of an old life and the desire for a new life, the sacrament of the death and the life of Jesus Christ....

Thus, the proud mind that counts itself as the criterion of things and of the world must be baptized. This mind must discover silence by entering into the depths of the heart and gradually must be taught by the Holy Spirit who leads with a maternal sweetness into the intimate place where God and Christ are. When the intellect purifies itself by this descent and attentiveness to God, life springs up from the transfigured heart, and the mind finds new words.

—Protopresbyter Boris Bobrinskoy, The Compassion of the Father

 

Monday, March 25, 2024

LENTEN MEDITATION - Day VIII



The Annunciation

"The incarnation of the Word was not only the work of the Father, Son and Spirit – the first consenting, the second descending, and the third overshadowing – but it was also the work of the will and faith of the Virgin. Without the three divine persons this design could not have been set in motion; but likewise the plan could not have been carried into effect without the consent and faith of the all-pure Virgin. Only after teaching and persuading her does God make her his Mother and receive from her the flesh which she consciously wills to offer him. Just as he was conceived by his own free choice, so in the same way she becomes his Mother voluntarily and with here free consent.”   (St. Nicholas Cabasilas - 14th c.)

The text for meditation above is hardly "lenten." But neither is the Feast of the Annunciation that falls every year on March 25, and invariably during Great Lent. This feast, therefore, is an event that we can call a "festal interlude" during this season of fasting, and because it is a Great Feast, it is the only time during Great Lent that a full Liturgy is celebrated on a weekday.

Be that as it may, the passage above from St. Nicholas Cabasilas has become the classic text for how we, as Orthodox Christians, understand the relationship between divine initiative and human freedom. The Virgin Mary contributed her freedom and awareness of "choice" to the divine oikonomia (economy) of our salvation by her response to the archangel Gabriel. This process we call synergy - the harmony between divine grace and human freedom. The relationship between the two may be asymmetrical, but both are essential to the process of salvation.

For those who may be interested, here is a longer presentation on The Annunciation written a few years ago.


Friday, March 22, 2024

Great Lent - The Fifth Day

  

Combatting the 'Evening Demon'

Dear Parish Faithful,

In continuation from Thursday's Lenten Meditation, taken from Sister Vassa's book Praying in Time, I have included today some of her very practical advice on how to combat what she calls the "'evening demon' that drags us by our fingertips to our phones at night." Of course, if you face no such challenge you do not have to read further except, perhaps, out of sheer curiosity. 

Sister Vassa is by vocation a monastic, but she is not currently attached to a monastery, but lives in an apartment in downtown Vienna, Austria. So she understands the challenges of urban life and of living within a different way of reckoning and experiencing time. All the more important for us to learn how to "redeem the time," and even "sanctify" time through well-structured and consistent prayer. Be that as it may, here are some of her "timely" points of advice - someone edited - for us to think about as we turn Great Lent into a real "springtime of the soul."


1. "Turn off the phone at least half an hour before bedtime, and leave it in another room, not your bedroom, until at least one half-hour after you wake up in the morning. ... 


2. "Don't depend on an app or texts in your phone; use a prayer book instead, if you read the Evening Prayers of the Prayer Book."

3. "If you are plagued by thoughts of possible emergencies that might happen at night, and of which you might be notified via your phone, ask yourself: When was the last time you were notified at night, via your phone, of such an emergency? Would it have changed anything, were you to have found in the morning? And, what did we all do in such cases, before we had mobile phones?

4. "Do not despair or give up on evening prayer entirely, if/when you slip, staying up late into the night with your nose in your phone for no good reason. Tomorrow is another day and another evening, when God willing, we will have the chance to do better.... I'll note here that I think it's very important that we keep talking to God, even when we completely lose focus, because that keeps up breathing, so to say, even when we feel close to (spiritual) death. God wants us continuously to stay in touch with him, even when we are down, just like a first responder bends over a barely conscious person who has been in an accident, saying, "Keep talking to me! Look at me! Keep talking to me"!"



Thursday, March 21, 2024

Great Lent - The Fourth Day

 

'Now is "the acceptable time" to reject mere connectivity in order to embrace communion with God and our neighbors...'

 


 

Dear Parish Faithful,

True rest evades us even in our beds, we might find, if we attach ourselves too heavily to the constant 'connectivity' offered by our mobile phones, and to the detriment of communion with God and one another as offered to us in Christ, in the prayer tradition(s) and times of the church.
Whether we are single or married, using our phones at night, when in bed, leads to a modern kind of loneliness, which seeks to 'connect' with everyone and everything 'elsewhere', rather than with the One and/or the one (i.e. our spouse, if we are married), whom we neglect while engrossed in our phone.
In very practical terms, to be 'redeemers of the time' in the twenty-first century, we are called to learn how and when to turn off our lights and screens, allowing ourselves (and others!) to 'rest' according to God's Sabbath commandment, not abolished but fulfilled and expanded in the era of the church, to every day.


_____

This challenging passage is from the book Praying in Time - The Hours and Days in Step with Orthodox Christian Tradition by Vassa Larin (known usually as Sister Vassa). Many are familiar with Sister Vassa through her YouTube ministry known as "Coffee With Sister Vassa." 

Her words above resonate with me personally, for since acquiring an iPhone for the first time four years ago now, I find myself (distressingly) too dependent upon it and I have steadily increased my time "on the phone." Great Lent is serving as my wake-up call, and I am grateful for that. 

If you are willing to admit of the same dependence on your own phones (and I do not mean "keeping track of your children"), now is "the acceptable time" to reject mere connectivity in order to embrace communion with God and our neighbors - including our own family members! Tomorrow morning, I will share some of Sister Vassa's practical advise on how to deal with this form of "spiritual warfare" - stay tuned!