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Life is a journey with many stages
from birth to death. As the journey progresses new challenges arise.
Significant decision must be made. When we are young, we usually ask:
What kind of friends do I really want to have? What goals should I
pursue? Later, other questions come up. What kind of job or profession
should I seek? Whom will I marry? By what principles and values shall
I live? Finally, the deeper issues confront us. Who am I? What is life
all about? Am I living or merely existing?
For Orthodox Christians, the highest
goal of human existence is life with God. Jesus said: “What does it
profit a person to gain the whole world and to lose one’s soul? What
can a person give in exchange for one’s soul”( Mk 8.36-37)?
Nothing is more precious than a person’s soul. No goal, no pursuit,
no value, no achievement is higher than the fulfillment of one’s
life in Christ and the attainment of one’s eternal salvation.
Christ has been called a “fire-starter.”
He came “to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Mt. 3.11;
Lk.3.16). He once said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and how
I wish it were already kindled” (Lk. 12.29). On the day of
Pentecost, the fullest moment of divine revelation, the Holy Spirit
was poured out on Jesus’ followers. Divine grace came to rest on
them like “tongues of fire” (Acts 2.3). Christianity began as a
spiritual movement through baptism by divine fire.
What is the Orthodox way of life?
How can we live it with full awareness? The essence of the Orthodox
Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Authentic
Orthodoxy, not as an abstraction but as reality, is not merely a
religion of rituals, rules and regulations, but the personal
self-disclosure of the living God, His self-giving to us in love. To
live an Orthodox way of life is to be part of a burning bush glowing
with all the blessings that flow from God: His love, mercy, truth,
righteousness, freedom, light, life and joy. Orthodoxy in its essence
is the gift of “holy fire.” When we speak of renewal in the
Church, this is the primary renewal we have in view: the renewal of
our minds and hearts in Christ, the full recovery of holy fire in our
daily lives, the spiritual renewal of the community shining with the
radiance of God.
We need humbly to acknowledge that
the highest claims of Orthodoxy are often subverted by lack of
tangible evidence and actualization, by our own lack of sufficient
self-awareness, by our failure as Orthodox Christians to nurture the
holy fire of the presence and power of the Spirit. Look around you and
ask yourself: How many of the faithful go to Church with a sense of
eagerness and joy? How many of us are present and ready at the
beginning of the Divine Liturgy to sing the Doxology and to confirm
with a resounding “Amen” the priest’s invocation, “Blessed is
the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?”
How many of us come out of the Liturgy spiritually renewed and
strengthened, in the words of St. John Chrysostom, “like lions
breathing fire?” How many of us have placed the love of Christ and
the cause of His kingdom as the primary priorities in life?
Orthodoxy has developed an
enormously rich tradition — elaborate worship, high doctrines,
impressive offices, appealing customs and innumerable canons.
Orthodoxy is often viewed like a beautiful antique, or a grand
fireplace in which the fire, however, is not burning with intensity in
all places at all times. Not that the fire of the Holy Spirit has ever
diminished in power or availability — far from it. Rather, it is
that the firewood needs stoking.
What to do? We must imitate the
example of the Prodigal Son who “came to himself” and returned to
his father’s home. If we wish to attain to the high calling of holy
fire, we must heighten our sensitivities at several levels. The first
level is honest and courageous appraisal of our actual situation. We
need diagnosis in order to apply measures of therapy. The problems are
not new. They have been called by various names ending in “ism”
— institutionalism, factionalism, minimalism, nominalism and so on.
Nominalism is being a Christian in name only and having little or no
significant interest in God, the Church, or Christianity. The Bible
calls this condition spiritual deadness. Minimalism is picking and
choosing from the Church’s table whatever suits our interest and
convenience without strong commitment and enduring motivation to learn
more about and to grow in the Faith. The Bible calls this condition
lukewarmness. Factionalism is a divisive spirit based on ego and
arbitrary choice. The Bible calls this heresy, whether theological or
ethical. Institutionalism is a way of thought and practice that relies
strictly on, or is satisfied with, merely outward forms, while
neglecting or even denying the inner spirit of the Tradition. This the
Bible calls hypocrisy and self-righteousness. In modern times, add to
all of these “isms” secularism, a total indifference to and even
hostility toward God, while worshiping other gods of the present age.
This the Bible calls idolatry, the worship of false gods.
But let us not despair. The above
phenomena in various mixtures have existed in every era. The fourth
century, the golden age of the Church Fathers — Saint Athanasios,
Saint Basil, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and
Saint John Chrysostom — was engulfed by as much evil, sin
callousness, pretension, injustice, conflict, and division as our own
times. Saint John Chrysostom did not hesitate to critique the Church
of his day. For example in an astonishing homily on 1 Corinthains,
chapter 14, Saint John exalts the spiritual gifts of the early Church
and laments the situation of the contemporary Church. He portrays the
Church of his day as an aged woman who had lost her inspired leaders,
as well as her spiritual jewels, and is satisfied merely by exhibiting
her empty jewelry boxes to the world.
Saint John Chrysostom, whose
prophetic voice thunders across the centuries to reach our own ears,
fought like a lion of God against unacceptable ecclesiastical
conditions. As a result, he was persecuted by emperors, bishops,
priests, as well as monastics in name only — but not by the people
themselves who loved him. Saint John was exiled and died in great
suffering. However, he lost hope neither in the power of the Gospel of
Christ, nor in the mission of the Church. He had the spiritual
maturity to go to his Lord in peace, his last words being: “Glory be
to God for all things!”
Next to recognizing our true
situation realistically, a second and even more important level of
Orthodox awakening is learning, knowing, and ap-plying our own
essential Orthodox principles and values as a faith community. The
Orthodox Church existing in a free, pluralistic society must assume
for itself the responsibility to recover and strength Orthodox
identity both as an intrinsic goal and as empowerment for the
fulfillment of its mission in the world. In a society where ethnicity
is inevitably fading and interfaith marriages have exponentially
increased, drifting away from the Faith will continue unless common
ecclesial and spiritual bonds are built. Formal adherence to tradition
without insightful knowledge will not win the day. Some practical
matters and certain other more difficult issues need attention. We can
use better and standard translation of our liturgical texts. We need
to encourage congregational singing and perhaps some modifications in
liturgical services to make worship a truly meaningful and
participatory experience for all the faithful. We certainly need to
update the canons or at least to develop clear criteria for their
interpretation and use in the spirit of Christ. Also, no theological
impediments exist to the recovery of the ordination of women deacons
nor even to the ordination of married clergy to the episcopate, both
of which were honored traditions in the early centuries of the Church.
And we have only begun to activate the talents of the laity, both men
and women, that massive reservoir of spiritual power which was
decisive in the growth and expansion of early Christianity.
The gifts are in front of our eyes.
We are advocating that Orthodox Christians, as they grow to adulthood,
ought to be moving beyond a childish understanding of Orthodoxy to a
renewal of minds, a renewal of vision, a renewal of confidence on the
basis of the fullness of truth about God, life, creation, heaven and
hell. When it is true to itself, Orthodoxy has explosive potential. We
welcome all into the Orthodox Faith, and our welcome is not an
expression of narrow, selfish satisfaction, nor a triumphalistic
celebration of victory over others, but rather a joyous sharing of the
gifts we ourselves have received from Christ, the Apostles and the
Church Fathers.
The third and deepest level of
Orthodox awareness is the renewal of our hearts. The “heart” in
Holy Scripture and the Orthodox Tradition is the deep self, the center
of consciousness, the deep mystery of the inner person, which
qualifies everything that we are, feel, think, do, see and appear to
others. Saint Paul spoke of the new creation in Christ in terms of “God’s
love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5.5)
The greatest problem of Orthodoxy
today is a spiritual problem. More accurately, it is not the problem
of Orthodoxy but the Problem of Orthodox Christians. It is the former
because it is the latter. It involves all Orthodox Christians, lay
people, priest, and bishops who, by god’s grace, are called to be
energizing bearers of the fire of Orthodoxy. We mouth love and
forgiveness, but really do neither very deeply. We glory in the icons
and legacy of the saints, but do not fully imitate their example. We
point to the magnificent Pantocrator, the All-ruling Christ, in the
domes of our Churches, but we are reluctant to place ourselves fully
under His rule. We extol our spirituality and parade the teaching
about theosis (union with God, divinization), but we have not yet
properly repented and many are afraid of the words “spiritual
renewal.” We point to the grand fireplace, but where is the fire?
The question is once again about authenticity, genuineness, integrity,
connecting ideals and life, letting heaven touch the earth, bridging
the yawning gap between what we preach and what we do, a gap which
sometimes appears as wide as the Grand Canyon.
But again, let us not despair. Let
Saint Symeon the New Theologian give us an illustration of Orthodox
life and renewal. An Orthodox Christian, he says, is like an oil lamp
(kandili) which consists of the oil, the wick, and the flame. The oil
is the whole life of the Christian, one’s prayers, fasting,
sacramental participation and all other goods works of piety. The wick
is the soul, trimmed, straight and reaching upward to receive the
light. The flame is the gift of grace which God alone kindles. All
three elements are integral to and work together in the oil lamp.
Without the oil of a righteous life, the wick would soon smolders and
die out. Without the wick of the soul yearning for Christ, no amount
of good works could receive and sustain the holy flame. The flame of
the Holy Spirit which God alone can give, burns brightly only when the
wick is trimmed and soaked with oil. Where the Spirit finds eagerness
of soul and abundance of goodness, according to Saint Symeon, the
whole lamp of the Christian becomes full of light burning with holy
fire.
Saint Symeon and other saints
provide practical instruction on renewal. They tell us that growth in
spiritual life is not a hit or miss proposition. It is up to us to
open our inner world to God’s sunshine, to allow His sunbeams to
burn away the dark clouds of sin surrounding the soul, and thus let
the inner cosmos of the heart radiate with the brightness of God’s
grace. The abiding center and focus of renewal is Christ Himself in
Whom we know the Father and through Whom we receive the Spirit. Christ
said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jh 14.6) Christ
and His Gospel is the foundation of the Church, the sacraments, our
personal and family lives, all our Christian striving, and our hope of
glory. Spiritual life and renewal result from the active response to
Christ and the Gospel: that Christ died for our sins and that He rose
from the dead granting new life to all.
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