On what support

Written by Fr. Lev Gillet, also known as “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” In Thy Presence is a book of short spiritual reflections on the presence of Christ. As in the case of the quotation below, these reflections are sometimes imagined as words spoken from our Lord to the believer.

“Poor children, you want to manage without Me. What then will you look to for support?

Poor child, thou thinkest to escape Me by plunging into what thou dost believe to be nature, into what thou callest nature. But what thou dost clasp is not nature in its truth, in its depth.

Thou thinkest to live a fuller life by estranging thyself from the Love which goes beyond all limits and loves beyond the visible. Thou desirest to give thyself exclusively to the visible. Thou doest speak of asserting thy personality, of realising thyself. Thou dost speak of earthly foods, and expect from them harmony and joy.

But thou wilt run up against the refusal with which all the elements of creation will oppose thee. The universe gives no peace to him who professes to separate any situation or person from total Love.

Thou seekest the support of reality. Thou dost conceive of nature alone as being what is real. Thou dost want to lean on a reed, and this reed will pierce thy hand.

In a world where everything is bound by a Love that is limitless, all the creatures which thou dost desire to separate and grasp by themselves, without reference to absolute Love, will withdraw from thee, one after another. Thou wilt be left alone, wounded, lying helpless on the road. Everything will abandon thee at the moment when thou dost abandon Me.

Poor child, whom wilt thou find to save thee, if not Me? Whom wilt thou find to love thee, if not Me?”

Excerpt from In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977, p. 25.

Bring Forth Fruit With Patience

Written by Fr. Thomas Hopko, The Lenten Spring is a book of spiritual readings for the season of Great Lent.

Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

The Lenten season is the time for bearing fruits worthy of repentance, the fruits of the Spirit. In a sense, this is what Lent, like life itself, is all about. To produce these holy fruits is not an easy task. It does not just happen. It is neither magical nor mechanical. It is a long, hard labor. It requires much work. And most of all, it takes patience. Jesus made this point in His explanation of His parable of the sower when He said that the good earth that receives the seed of God’s Word and brings forth much fruit does so only with patience: “And as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience” (Lk. 8:15).

Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

In the Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim there is a special petition for patience. It is a necessity for the person who expects to produce spiritual fruits. A garden grows by being tended. God gives the growth, yet His workers must plow and water and fertilize and cultivate. This must be done slowly, painfully, with tireless effort and endless patience. Otherwise, nothing useful will grow. “In your patience,” says the Lord Jesus, “possess ye your souls.” Or, in a more modern translation, “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Lk. 21:19).

The word “patience” means “to endure.” It means to bear and put up with people and things. It means to carry the burdens of others, and of “the heat of the day.” It means to watch and to wait, not to hurry and to rush. It means literally to suffer with and to suffer through, in quiet expectation of the hoped-for result. For only those, says Jesus, who endure to the end will be saved (Mt. 24:13).

Excerpt from The Lenten Spring by Fr. Thomas Hopko, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983, p. 103-104.

A journey, a pilgrimage!

Written by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent is a book of spiritual reflections on the journey through Lent to Pascha. This particular excerpt is from the introduction.

Photo credit: The Temple Gallery

When a man leaves on a journey, he must know where he is going. Thus with Lent. Above all, Lent is a spiritual journey and its destination is Easter, “the Feast of Feasts.” It is the preparation for the “fulfillment of Pascha, the true Revelation…”

Anyone who has, be it only once, taken part in that night which is “brighter than the day,” who has tasted of that unique joy, knows it. But what is that joy about? Why can we sing, as we do during the Paschal liturgy: “today are all things filled with light, heaven and earth and the places under the earth”? In what sense do we celebrate, as we claim we do, “the death of Death, the annihilation of Hell, the beginning of a new and everlasting life…”? To all these questions, the answer is: the new life which almost two thousand years ago shone forth from the grave, has been given to us, to all those who believe in Christ. And it was given to us on the day of our Baptism, in which, as St. Paul says, we “were buried with Christ…unto death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead we also may walk in the newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us... He made us partakers of His Resurrection. This is why at the end of the Paschal Matins we say: “Christ is risen and life reigneth! Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the grave!”

Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

Such is the faith of the Church, affirmed and made evident by her countless Saints. Is it not our daily experience, however, that this faith is very seldom ours, that all the time we lose and betray the “new life” which we received as a gift, and that in fact we live as if Christ did not rise from the dead, as if that unique event had no meaning whatsoever for us?… We simply forget all this – so busy are we, so immersed in our daily preoccupations – and because we forget, we fail. And through this forgetfulness, failure, and sin, our life becomes “old” again – petty, dark and ultimately meaningless – a meaningless journey toward a meaningless end. We manage to forget even death and then, all of a sudden, in the mist of our “enjoying life” it comes to us: horrible, inescapable, senseless. We may from time to time acknowledge and confess our various “sins,” yet we cease to refer our life to that new life which Christ revealed and gave to us. Indeed, we live as if He never came. This is the only real sin, the sin of all sins, the bottomless sadness and tragedy of our nominal Christianity…

Even though we are baptized, what we constantly lose and betray is precisely that which we received at Baptism. Therefore Easter is our return every year to our own Baptism, whereas Lent is our preparation for that return – the slow and sustained effort to perform, at the end, our own “passage” or “pascha” into the new life in Christ…

A journey, a pilgrimage! Yet, as we begin it, as we make the first step into the “bright sadness” of Lent, we see – far, far away – the destination. It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the Kingdom. And it is this vision, the foretaste of Easter, that makes Lent’s sadness bright and our lenten effort a “spiritual spring.” The night may be dark and long, but all along the way a mysterious and radiant dawn seems to shine on the horizon. “Do not deprive us of our expectation, O Lover of man!”

Excerpt from Great Lent: Journey to Pascha by Alexander Schmemann, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969, p. 11-15.

Love, teach us to pray

Written by Fr. Lev Gillet, also known as “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” In Thy Presence is a book of short spiritual reflections on the presence of Christ. As in the case of the quotation below, these reflections are sometimes imagined as words spoken from our Lord to the believer.

“My child, do not debate what form prayer should take. Leave to others the distinguishing of stages and techniques. But for thy part, while being grateful to those who have known how to communicate the richness, the living flame of their prayers, be wary of theories which fetter or entangle the simple impulse of love.

My child, everything is so simple! Prayer is nothing other than that impulse of love which can express infinity in a fraction of a second.

The kernel of all prayer is an act of love. Some words, very few words, one word only will suffice to direct a loving impulse toward Me.

As soon as thou hast said with thy whole soul: ‘I love Thee,’ or ‘Give me Thy Love,’ or simply: ‘I love,’ when thou hast thus united thyself with universal Love, thou hast said all.

According to the place or the circumstances, and to avoid embarrassing others, thou canst use paraphrases and discreet adaptations of this impulse of love: but it is in this impulse that the essential abides.

Infinite Love, place on my lips the word of love which is addressed to Love.”

Excerpt from In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977, p. 66.

Lent and Love

Written by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent is a book of spiritual reflections on the journey through Lent to Pascha. This particular excerpt is from the first chapter, entitled “Preparation for Lent.”

Christ Heals Ten Lepers, Monastery Decani. Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself. For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the “other”–his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity–and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal “root” of a human being, truly the part of God in him? If God loves every man it is because He alone knows the priceless and absolutely unique treasure, the “soul” or “person” He gave every man. Christian love then is the participation in that divine knowledge and the gift of that divine love. There is no “impersonal” love because love is the wonderful discovery of the “person” in “man,” of the personal and unique in the common and general. It is the discovery in each man of that which is “lovable” in him, of that which is from God.

Christ Heals Peter's Mother-In-Law, Monastery Decani. Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

In this respect, Christian love is sometimes the opposite of “social activism” with which one so often identifies Christianity today. To a “social activist” the object of love is not “person” but man, an abstract unit of a not less abstract “humanity.” But for Christianity, man is “lovable” because he is person. There person is reduced to man; here man is seen only as person. The “social activist” has no interest for the personal, and easily sacrifices it to the “common interest.” Christianity may seem to be, and in some ways actual is, rather skeptical about that abstract “humanity,” but it commits a mortal sin against itself each time it gives up its concern and love for the person. Social activism is always “futuristic” in its approach; it always acts in the name of justice, order, happiness to come, to be achieved. Christianity cares little about that problematic future but puts the whole emphasis on the now–the only decisive time for love.

Christ Heals Two Demoniacs in the Land of Gadarenes, Monastery Decani. Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

The two attitudes are not mutually exclusive, but they must not be confused. Christians, to be sure, have responsibilities toward “this world” and they must fulfill them. This is the area of “social activism” which belongs entirely to “this world.” Christian love, however, aims beyond “this world.” It is itself a ray, a manifestation of the Kingdom of God; it transcends and overcomes all limitations, all “conditions” of this world because its motivation as well as its goals and consummation is in God. And we know that even in this world which “lies in evil,” the only lasting and transforming victories are those of love. To remind man of this personal love and vocation, to fill the sinful world with this love–this is the true mission of the Church.

The Last Judgment, Monastery Decani. Photo credit: BLAGO Fund, Inc.

The parable of the Last Judgment is about Christian love. Not all of us are called to work for “humanity,” yet each one of us has received the gift and the grace of Christ’s love. We know that all men ultimately need this personal love–the recognition in them of their unique soul in which the beauty of the whole creation is reflected in a unique way. We also know that men are in prison and are sick and thirsty and hungry because that personal love has been denied them. And, finally, we know that however narrow and limited the framework of our personal existence, each one of us has been made responsible for a tiny part of the Kingdom of God, made responsible by that very gift of Christ’s love. Thus, on whether or not we have accepted this responsibility, on whether we have loved or refused to love, we shall be judged. For “inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me….”

Excerpt from Great Lent: Journey to Pascha by Alexander Schmemann, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969, p. 25-26.

Blind and deaf

Written by Fr. Lev Gillet, also known as “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” In Thy Presence is a book of short spiritual reflections on the presence of Christ. As in the case of the quotation below, these reflections are sometimes imagined as words spoken to our Lord from the believer.

“Lord Love, I have asked Thee to open me to others. However, Thou hast made me understand that Thy servant must be both blind and deaf, seeing but as if not seeing, hearing but as if not hearing.

Love, make me deaf. Close my ears to the accusations, to all the mockeries that I hear uttered against others.

Love, make me blind. Close my eyes to the failings of others. Of course I must reject what makes an act or a word evil, but I do not have the right to judge and to condemn the speaker or the doer. Thou only, Lord, Thou knowest. Thou knowest all things.

Thy Christ did not want to look at the woman taken in adultery while she was being accused. He only looked at her when they were alone. As long as the accusation lasted, He stooped down over the earth. He kept silent and wrote. By this attitude, He silenced the accusers. By this attitude He has forever, unto the ages of ages, silenced all accusations.”

Excerpt from In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977, p. 57.

The Lord’s Epiphany in the Jordan

Theophany of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Russian, c. 1800. Photo credit: The Temple Gallery.

The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “appearance.” It is used for the event of Christ’s baptism because it was in the Jordan, being baptized by John the Forerunner, that Jesus appeared to the world and manifested Himself as the Messiah, the Son of God, one of the Holy Trinity.

The Lord’s first public appearance takes place at His baptism for very good reason. Baptism is the symbol of death and resurrection; Christ came to the earth in order to die and be raised. Baptism is a symbol of repentance of sin, and its forgiveness; Christ came as the Lamb of God who takes upon Himself the sin of the world in order to take it away. Baptism is a symbol of sanctification; Christ has come to sanctify the whole of creation. Baptism is a symbol, finally, of radical renewal. When one is baptized the old is over and the new has come. And Christ has appeared on earth to bring all things to an end, and to make all things new. The act of baptism, therefore, contains in symbol the entire mystery of Christ, the whole purpose of His coming…

Detail from Theophany Icon, Russian, 19th c. Photo credit: The Temple Gallery

The baptism of John was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The people came to John for baptism “confessing their sins” (Mk 1:4-5). The Lord Jesus had no need of repentance. As God’s Son in human flesh He committed no sin. His baptism, therefore, manifests His complete identification with His sinful creatures. He literally becomes one of us, not only in our humanity, but in our sinfulness; not only in our life on earth, but also in our death. For as the apostle Paul has written, ‘For our sake He [God the Father] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

In the Church’s celebration of the Lord’s Epiphany in the Jordan, the faithful are enabled to see Jesus made like them in every respect, entering the waters to identify with their fallen condition in order to bring it to an end and to create them anew for life in the kingdom of God. They become convinced through this liturgical experience that He is indeed the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who has come to save the world.

Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.

Small Things

Written by Fr. Lev Gillet, also known as “A Monk of the Eastern Church,” In Thy Presence is a book of short spiritual reflections on the presence of Christ. As in the case of the quotation below, these reflections are sometimes imagined as words spoken from our Lord to the believer.

“I come to thee, My child, in the very smallest things, in the humblest details. Each one of thy gestures can in itself become an expression of limitless Love.

Thou dost wash a plate. Thou dost dry it. Let these actions carry within them love toward all those who have eaten off this plate, toward all those who will eat off it.

A woman goes out of doors. She goes to hang the washing on the line so it will dry. Does this rapid movement of service not remind thee of something? Those two arms, spread out for an instant, do they not make thee think of two other arms which were stretched out on sacred Wood?

Everything becomes sacred, if thy love transfigures it.

Love Himself is amongst us as He who serves.”

Excerpt from In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977, p. 43.

The Divine Child

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann was a priest, theologian, and one of the leading spokesmen for Orthodox Christianity in the 20^th century. Fr. Alexander served as the Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary from 1962 up until his death in 1983. On this day, the 28^th anniversary of his repose, we honor his memory by sharing the following sermon of his. May his memory be eternal!

“The eternal God was born as a little child.” One of the main hymns of Christmas ends with these words, identifying the child born in a Bethlehem cave as “the eternal God.” This hymn was composed in the sixth century by the famous Byzantine hymnographer Roman the Melodist:

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One,

And the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One!

Angels, with shepherds, glorify him!

The wise men journey with the star!

Since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child!

(Kontakion of Christmas)

 

The Child as God, God as Child…Why does joyful excitement build over the Christmas season as people, even those of lukewarm faith and unbelievers, behold that unique, incomparable sight of the young mother holding the child in her arms, and around them the “wise men from the East,” the shepherds fresh from night-watch in their fields, the animals, the open sky, the star? Why are we so certain, and discover again and again, that on this sorrowful planet of ours there is nothing more beautiful and joyful than this sight, which the passage of centuries has proven incapable of uprooting from our memory? We return to this sight whenever we have nowhere else to go, whenever we have been tormented by life and are in search of something that might deliver us…

Virgin of Vladimir (detail). Photo credit: The Temple Gallery

It is the words “child” and “God” which give us the most striking revelation about the Christmas mystery. In a certain profound way, this is a mystery directed toward the child who continues to secretly live within every adult, to the child who continues to hear what the adult no longer hears, and who responds with a joy which the adult, in his mundane, grown-up, tired and cynical world, is no longer capable of feeling. Yes, Christmas is a feast for children, not just because of the tree that we decorate and light, but in the much deeper sense that children alone are unsurprised that when God comes to us on earth, he comes as a child.

This image of God as child continues to shine on us through icons and through innumerable works of art, revealing that what is most essential and joyful in Christianity is found precisely here, in this eternal childhood of God. Adults, even the most sympathetic to “religious themes,” desire and expect religion to give explanations and analysis; they want it to be intelligent and serious. Its opponents are just as serious, and in the end, just as boring, as they confront religion with a hail of “rational” bullets. In our society, nothing better conveys our contempt than to say “it’s childish.” In other words, it’s not for adults, for the intelligent and serious. So children grow up and become equally serious and boring. Yet Christ said “become like children” (Mt 18:3). What does this mean? What are adults missing, or better, what has been choked, drowned or deafened by a thick layer of adulthood? Above all, is it not that capacity, so characteristic of children, to wonder, to rejoice and, most importantly, to be whole both in joy and sorrow? Adulthood chokes as well the ability to trust, to let go and give one’s self completely to love and to believe with all one’s being. And finally, children take seriously what adults are no longer capable of accepting: dreams, that which breaks through our everyday experience and our cynical mistrust, that deep mystery of the world and everything within it revealed to saints, children, and poets.

Nativity of Christ (detail). Photo credit: The Temple Gallery.

Thus, only when we break through to the child living hidden within us, can we inherit as our own the joyful mystery of God coming to us as a child. The child has neither authority nor power, yet the very absence of authority reveals him to be a king; his defenselessness and vulnerability are precisely the source of his profound power. The child in that distant Bethlehem cave has no desire that we fear him; He enters our hearts not by frightening us, by proving his power and authority, but by love alone. He is given to us as a child, and only as children can we in turn love him and give ourselves to him. The world is ruled by authority and power, by fear and domination. The child God liberates us from that. All He desires from us is our love, freely given and joyful; all He desires is that we give him our heart. And we give it to a defenseless, endlessly trusting child.

Through the feast of Christmas, the Church reveals to us a joyful mystery: the mystery of freely given love imposing itself on no one. A love capable of seeing, recognizing and loving God in the Divine Child, and becoming the gift of a new life.

Excerpt from Celebration of Faith, Vol. 2: The Church Year by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994.

Saint Nicholas

St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, 16th c. Russian icon. Photo credit: The Temple Gallery

The extraordinary thing about the image of Saint Nicholas in the Church is that he is not known for anything extraordinary. He was not a theologian and never wrote a word, yet he is famous in memory of the believers as a zealot for orthodoxy, allegedly accosting the heretic Arius at the first ecumenical council in Nicaea for denying the divinity of God’s Son. He was not an ascetic and did no outstanding feats of fasting and vigils, yet he is praised for his possession of the “fruit of the Holy Spirit…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5: 22-23). He was not a mystic in our present meaning of the term but he lived daily with the Lord and was godly in all of his words and deeds. He was not a prophet in the technical sense, yet he proclaimed the Word of God, exposed the sins of the wicked, defended the rights of the oppressed and afflicted, and battled against every form of injustice with supernatural compassion and mercy. In a word, he was a good pastor, father, and bishop to his flock, known especially for his love and care for the poor. Most simply put, he was a divinely good person.

St. Nicholas saves three innocents from death, 1888, painting by Ilya Repin.

We use that term “goodness” so lightly in our time. How easily we say of someone, “He is a good man” or “She is a good woman.” How lightly we say, “They are good people.” A teen-age girl takes an overdose of drugs and the neighbors tell the reporters, “But she was always such a good girl, and her parents are such nice people!” A young man commits some terrible crime, and the same rhetoric flows: “But he was always such a good boy, and his family is so nice.” A man dies on the golf course after a life distinguished by many years of profit-taking and martini-drinking, and the reaction is the same: “He was a good man, yeah, a real nice guy.” What do “good” and “nice” really mean in such cases? What do they describe? What do they express?

In Saint Luke’s gospel it tells us that one day a “ruler” came up to Jesus and asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do  to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus answered him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone” (Lk 18:18; see also Mk 10:18). In Saint Matthew’s version it says that Jesus answered the man by saying, “Why do you ask Me about what is good? One there is who is good” (Mt 19:17). However we choose to interpret Christ’s words, at least one point is clear. Jesus reacts to the facile, perhaps even sarcastic, use of the term “good” by referring to its proper source. There is only One who is good, and that is God Himself. If you want to speak of goodness, then you must realize what–and Whom–you are talking about!

St. Nicholas with Christ and the Mother of God, 17th c. Russian icon. Photo credit: The Temple Gallery

Like God, and like Jesus, Saint Nicholas was genuinely good. Real goodness is possible. For, to quote the Lord again, “with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). A human being, even a rich human being who believes in God, can be genuinely good with God’s own goodness. “For truly I say to you,” says the Lord, “if you have faith as a grain of mustard see…nothing will be impossible for you” (Mt 17:20-21).

The Messiah has come so that human beings can live lives which are, strictly speaking, humanly impossible. He has come so that people can be really good. One of the greatest and most beloved examples among believers that this is true is the holy bishop of Myra about whom almost nothing else is known, or needs to be known, except that he was good. For this reason alone he remains, even in his secularized form, the very spirit of Christmas.

Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.