prayer as discovery…

metropolitan anthony bloom

Prayer is the search for God, encounter with God, and going beyond this encounter in communion. Thus it is an activity, a state, and also a situation; a situation both with respect to God and to the created world. It arises from the awareness that the world in which we live is not simply two dimensional, imprisoned in the categories of space and time, a flat world in which we meet only the surface of things, an opaque surface covering emptiness.

Prayer is born of the discovery that the world has depths; that we are also immersed in and penetrated by invisible things. And this invisible world is both the presence of God, the supreme, sublime reality, and our own deepest truth. Visible and invisible are not in opposition neither can they be juxtaposed like in an addition sum. They are present simultaneously, as fire is present in red hot iron. They complete each other in a mysterious way which the English writer charles Williams describes as “co-inherence”: the presence of eternity in time and the future in the present, and also the presence of each temporal moment in eternity, past present and future all-at-once eschatologically, the one in the other as the tree is in the seed. Living only in the visible world is living on the surface; it ignores or sets aside not only the existence of God but the depths of created being. It is condemning ourselves to perceiving only the world’s surface. But if we look deeper we discover at the heart of things a point of balance which is their finality. There is no inwardness to geometric volume. Its finiteness is complete. The world of such forms is capable of being extended but cannot be deepened. But the heart of man is deep. When we have reached the fountainhead of life in Him we discover that this itself springs from beyond.

The heart of man is open to the invisible. Not the invisible of depth psychology but the invisible infinite, God’s creative word, God himself. Returning to ourselves is thus not a synonym for introversion but for emerging beyond the limits of our limited selves. Saint john chrysostom said, “when you discover the door of your heart you discover the gate of heaven.” This discovery of our depths goes together with the recognition of the depths in others. Each has his own immensity. I use the word “immensity” on purpose. It means that the depth cannot be measured, not because it is too great for our measurements to reach it, but because its quality is not subject to measurement at all. The immensity of our vocation is to share the divine nature, and in discovering our own depths we discover God, whom we could call out invisible neighbor, the Spirit, Christ, the Father. We also discover God’s immensity and eternity in the world about us. And this is the beginning of prayer, the recognition of a three-dimensional world of time, space, and a stable but ever changing depth.

on nativity

To the Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of The Orthodox Church in America

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Dearly Beloved in Christ,

Lo, the time of our salvation draweth nigh!
Make ready, O Cave!
The Virgin approacheth to give birth!
O Bethlehem, land of Judah,
Adorn thyself and rejoice,
For from thee hath our Lord shone forth!
Hearken, ye mountains and hills,
And ye parts of Judea, which lie round about,
For Christ cometh,
That He might save man whom He created,
In that He loveth mankind!

From of old God worked with the people of Israel, the children of the Covenant, to bring forth Christ. He made the covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; with Moses; with David.  He sent the Prophets to announce His will, so that the people might be called to obedience and hence, to life.  Finally God sent His Son into the world as the ultimate Mystery of the relationship between Himself and man: the New Covenant, God dwelling in man, and man in God.

Jesus is the revelation of the New Covenant given by God, the revelation of the very goal of creation itself: union, synergy, cooperation, love.

Christ is born! He comes in humility, to show us the way of God.
Christ is born!  He comes to empty Himself, and reveal God in human form.
Christ is born!  He became everything that we are,
that we might become all that He is.
Christ is born! Born in the cave and laid in the manger;
yet His glory shone from the manger as from the Mercy Seat.
Christ is born!  All the angels and the whole creation rejoice!
Christ is born! Empty of self in the poverty of humility.
Christ is born! Radiant in the glory of His divinity,
shining in the obscurity of human darkness.
Christ is born! Enlightening with grace all creation.
Christ is born! The pledge of the Age to Come:
The radiant Coal of the deified New World.

Let us give thanks to God for the gift of salvation, which He has given us so generously by the incarnation of His Son.  Let us also empty ourselves of self, so that by embracing His poverty, we might be filled with His life.  Let us open our minds and hearts to Him in the persons of the poor and lonely, the destitute and afflicted, and thereby liken ourselves to Him.  Let us accept the gift of grace, the deifying gift of the Holy Spirit, and thus being likened to Him by Him, our lives may be fulfilled in that radiant communion of love, which is nothing other than the Kingdom of God.

With joy and gratitude, utterly humbled by the Providence of God, and by your love, I remain faithfully in Christ,

Your servant,

+JONAH
Archbishop of Washington and New York,
Metropolitan of All America and Canada

three questions

from touching heaven

“some of the best advice i’ve received recently about living in time has come from the russian writer leo tolstoy. his story called “three questions” comes to mind as i swing wildly between the life to come and the life behind. tolstoy writes of a king who wrestles with a riddle in the form of three questions-what is the most important time? who is the most important person? and, which is the most important task?

the king is a consummate opportunisit, and is interested not in spirituality, but in strategy. at last he meets a hermit whose simple wisdom-simple, but smart and piercing-exposes the king to a new way of seeing the world:

Now is the most important time; Whoever is directly in front of me is the most important person; Whatever task i am presently engaged in is the most important task.”

true freedom…

[this is taken in full from fr stephen's site.]

by fr stephen freeman.

Vladimir Lossky, who can be notoriously difficult to read, offers this observation on freedom and the person. It is taken from his essay, “The Creation,” in the small collection, Orthodox Theology: an Introduction.

A personal being is capable of loving someone more than his own nature, more than his own life. The person, that is to say, the image of God in man, is then man’s freedom with regard to his nature, “the fact of being freed from necessity and not being subject to the domination of nature, but able to determine oneself freely” (St. Gregory of Nyssa). Man acts most often under natural impulses. He is conditioned by his temperament, his character, his heredity, cosmic or psycho-social ambiance, indeed, his very historicity. But the truth of man is beyond all conditioning; and his dignity consists in being able to liberate himself from his nature, not by consuming it or abandoning it to itself, like the ancient or orental sage, but by transfiguring it in God.

The goal of freedom, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus explains, is that the good belongs in truth to him who chooses it. God does not wish to remain in possession of the good He has created. He awaits from man more than a blind, entirely natural participation. He wants man consciously to assume his nature, to possess it freely as good, to recognize with gratitude in life and in the universe the gifts of divine love.

“A personal being is capable of loving someone more than his own nature, more than his own life.” Such words point to the character of our struggle – to live in freedom and not by necessity. Life by necessity is, to some degree, life that is trapped in death. Living in freedom is the triumph of Christ over death. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). Thus obedience to the commandments of Christ is not obedience to bondage (to law) but obedience to freedom’s call. The commandment to love – even an enemy – is a call to be transfigured – to live in a freedom that is above nature. The same can be said of all of Christ’s commandments. Indeed, to know Him is to know the Truth, and that Truth will make us free.

a call to repentance…

metropolitan jonah’s reflections on the vision of the future and what we need to do…and excerpt:

So what do we need to do? We need to focus on this life-giving message of the Gospel, which is what the Church, its life and services, are about anyway. We need to surrender to Christ, and put aside our self-serving agendas. Only then can we come together to do the work of Christ: to draw all people to Him. We need to learn the Scripture, so that we can live it. We need to serve the poor and those in need without regard to who they are or whether they are “ours.” In short, we need to love our neighbor as our self. In other words, it is time that we accepted the responsibility to incarnate the message of Christ at all costs. It is time we grew up.

where do we go from here

touching heaven…

i’ve been reading a number of books lately. one of them is john oliver’s book entitled “touching heaven”. it’s part spiritual biography, part narrative about his pilgrimage to the valaam monastery in russia. so far i’ve gotten a lot from the stories of monastic life and what we learn from it. last night i read about his experince of participating as a “monk for a day”, basically spending a day in the monstic cycle. getting up at three in the morning for services that lasted till dawn. working five hours in the sun, shoveling sand, and the ways the monks tranformed the physical actions and made them both physical and spiritual efforts. at the end of the day, he had met with an english speaking monk who talked to them of confession and preparing for a life confession to give at the evening service. this is what john spoke of:

the english speaking hieromonk stodd waiting. he was wearing a special stole, the sign of a priest who is ready to hear confessions. i reached into my back pocket for a dusty and sandy piece of folded notebook paper, the one that held my broad inventory of when and where i had been an image-maker, an image-breaker. holding my life in both hands, i approached the hieromonk. standing to his right, before an icon of Christ, i unflided the paper and waited for his cue. he lifted his stole and placed it gently over my hunched shoulders and nodded his head. i began to read softly.

the hieromonk and i went on our own pilgrimage through the once-forgotten land of my past. my inventory of where i had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God seved as narration. in the comforting womb of Valaam’s temple, we visited the home of my youth and the dark spaces of my family; traveled through high school and college and through years of adolescent discovery and frustration; journeyed through the direectionless post-college wasteland where lessons are learned only in hindsight and stained around the edges with regret.

standing motionless, we wandered the secret airless places. and at the end of that dark inventory, the one that included every moment and experience i could remember when i had chosen unwisely, i stood silent again. the hieromonk leaned closely toward my ear and in an english shaded with russian accent he offered this: “it is good that you have come to valaam. leave your burden here, and from now on learn to love God above all. go with the assurance that you are forgiven.”

no sermon was necassary; the sacrament of confession had done its work. the stole was removed from my shoulders as i bent to kiss the icon of Christ, before whom i had confessed. “

the art of the unretirement [or how to go back to blogging after you've been cleansed from everyone's rss feed]

so. i think i’m actually for reals coming back to blogging. i’ve had a lot on my mind recently, and kinda like a forum to “flesh things out”. or incarnate my words if you will. reading things that challenge me is great. but ideas and thoughts can easily get pushed aside and forgotten. so it’s nice to have something written down. it becomes more concrete. not as easy to forget.

and so with that in mind. i’m back to blogging. things will change a little here, but the overall theme will be the same. mainly “missives that enkindle my spirit”.

the first change you’ll notice is the title. this idea first sparked into my mind from fr stephen freeman, specifically his posts on “being“.  how our very idea of existence is tied to God. we can’t exist without Him. without Him all our life is a continuing progression towards “non-existence”.  with that in mind, i leave you the quote from st athanasius that fr stephen leaves:

We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? (2.6)

urp…read the rest of fr stephen’s thoughts on this. they’re great and give you something to chew on. other than that…

psalm 75 (a spiritual psalter)

from “a spiritual psalter” by st ephraim the syrian:

No advantages do you offer those who love you, O world, you dwelling-place of sorrows. All who draw near to you do you seduce with your treasures and with all your delights, but in the day of death both the fair countenance of the beautiful and the might of the strong will be cast down into the grave. Woe to him who loves you and is loved by you, for his joy will be transformed into cries.

In the world — the sea of sin — all my days have passed in vain. My life has gone by without bringing me any profit. I have even forgotten about the day of death. I have whirled about and gathered a burden of sins, whole sheaves of tares destined to be consumed by fire. And behold — lamentation and sighs await me in that land full of horrors.

Because I have loved you, O cunning world, from youth through old age, the time of my life has passed without my notice; and lo, in sin will death steal me away. O, if only I had never set foot in you, O world that deceives all who enter! Those who love you enjoy no pleasures, and those who hate you weep not. Blessed is he who has torn your snares asunder — he shall inherit the habitation of joy.

This world deceives even the wise with its appearance, for at times it appears desirable. It even offers benefits and treasures for loan, but in the day of death it will take them back and give in return torment incomparably greater than our sins. For a short while will it let us sin, but as a reward it will give us eternal darkness.

Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and righteous is Thy judgment that condemns the world and those who love it! Therefore do I pray Thee that Thy right hand which pulled Simon out of the sea might also pull me out of the waves and the tumult of this world that rise up against me. I have become mired in filth; the waters of the world are drowning me, they do not let me break loose to catch my breath. May Thy Cross, O Lord, be my staff and my support on the path along which I walk.