Thursday, December 28, 2017

Sayings St. Vincent of Lerina ~ Scripture and Tradition

If someone wants to be protected from tricks and remain healthy in the faith, he must confine his faith first to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and secondly to the Tradition of the Church. But someone may ask, is not the canon of Scripture sufficient for everything, and why should we add thereto the authority of Tradition? This is because not everyone understands the Scriptures in the same way, but one explains them this way and another that way, so that it is possible to get therefrom as many thoughts as there are heads. Therefore it is necessary to be guided by the understanding of the Church ... What is tradition? It is that which has been understood by everyone, everywhere and at all times ... that which you have received, and not that which you have thought up ... So then, our job is not to lead religion where we wish it to go, but to follow it where it leads, and not to give that which is our own to our heirs, but to guard that which has been given to us.

(St. Vincent of Lerina, Notes of a Pilgrim)

Source:

http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm

The Tao of Christ: A Story from the East

Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a good friend of mine who is not a Christian, but who has been on a quest for spiritual truth and authenticity for many years. In it, I try to express the truth of Christianity without getting too caught up in the normal terminology that we Christians use.
I do feel like the past holds the key answers for the present. The more I read the Buddha, Lao Tzu (Taoism), Confucius, and Eastern Orthodox desert spirituality, the more I see that the spiritual giants of the past were pointing humanity toward many of the same things. I’m not a fan of syncretism because it tends to ignore diversity within each system while trying to suppress the differences. But the teachings of these amazing men and women have survived thousands of years because, over and over, humanity has confirmed that their teachings are the closest thing to truth that we have discovered.

I believe there has always existed an uncreated divine essence, and that it has always been in a community of love. At some point, it created the physical realm in order to make more creatures that it could call into communion with itself. The highest form of communion stems from a creature that has a free will, that is, it can accept or reject the offer for communion. The acceptance of the offer and the movement toward it can be called both life and love. The rejection of it can be called both sin and death.

At some point, humanity collectively turned its back on this divine essence of love. From this event came the “original sin.” Humans attempted to become divine on their own, that is outside of divinity, but that is not possible. Humans were made in the image of the divine so that they could be united to it, but we do not contain that power within ourselves. In our vain efforts to become divine on our own, we missed the point of it: unity with the eternal divine community. Becoming divine is not about grasping power, wisdom, or immortality for their own sake.
The ancients understood these things more intuitively. Their teachings are the various paths that they perceived would lead to some kind of restoration or harmony within humanity and between humanity and divinity (“heaven” is the term used in some texts).
My thoughts may be a bit biased, but I see in Eastern Orthodoxy a culmination of all of the best teachings of the ancient near and far East brought together in one coherent system (though it can take years of studying the texts and ones own soul to see it).
Within this system is a teaching that real, eternal truth is not an abstract idea, but a part of that uncreated divine essence that I mentioned earlier. In that case, it is not an impersonal force, but something personal. Some of the ancients called this the Tao. One monk [1] teaches that the Tao, seeing the dismal condition of humanity, took upon itself a body and walked among us. It brought together all truth from across the ages, because it was the source of that truth and it therefore become embodied truth.

The “seeds of truth” that were scattered across the world came together in this one person whom we call Jesus the Christ. Jesus not only taught us the Way, the Tao, of life and love, but went as far as to enter into death with us, forever uniting divinity with humanity’s own story of anguish, pain, separation, and death. But he did so in order to conquer death and show that it did not have to have eternal power over us.

Once death was conquered, he invited us to participate in divinity through him, for he is the Tao itself. Divinity became human so that humans could become divine.
That is the Christian story that is largely lost here in the West due to an overemphasis on legality and an offended God who demands blood.
In Eastern Orthodoxy, I find not just the best Christian story, but the story for all of humanity, revealing why we have sickness and death in this world, and giving us a concrete reason to never lose hope.

This Christmas season is joyful because it is the celebration of the expectation of the nations, the coming together of all truth in one man, the collection of the scattered seeds, the condescension of divinity into humanity, and the raising of humanity to divinity.

[1] Hieromonk Damascene, Christ the Eternal Tao, Valaam Books 2012.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/the-tao-of-christ-a-story-from-the-east/

Bring Back the Disney Princess!

Sleeping Beauty, Disney princess, type of the Theotokos Mary

In some of the classic Disney movies, the princess is in the forest surrounded by animals that befriend her and even sing with her. They follow her and adore her. These scenes reveal a character with purity of heart, a soul that was so undefiled that even nature was unafraid of her.
These scenes spoke to people at the time the movies were released, and even to myself when I was a child. They reminded us of a memory we all instinctively carry within us: the memory of Eden. In the Garden all of nature was subject to man and was at peace with him. After the fall into sin, the animals became afraid of man because while we are still in the image of God, that image has been soiled and defiled by sin.
Now, division exists between man and nature, and it is our fault. To be pure is the most natural state for humans, it is a naturally divine mode of existence. As the activity of sin progresses within us, we continually regress from being unnatural to being anti-natural.
Today our society is so far from being natural that we laugh and scoff at these scenes where the Disney princess is in complete harmony with all around her. We call this unreal, when it is we ourselves who have lost our grip on reality. I write this with pain in my heart, knowing that I too have greatly contributed to the impure state of the world.

Aurora, Sleeping Beauty, Disney princess, type of the Theotokos Mary, Animal friends in forest

Bring back the Disney princess!
May she move us to tears as we see just how far we have fallen away from what is truest to our nature. May we not settle for the vulgarity and stupidity that is called “entertainment” today. May we weep and repent of our hardheartedness: that we look upon purity and call it “silly” or “ridiculous.”

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.” -Abba Anthony

For this reason, I think it is imperative that both children and adults today read the lives of the saints. These blessed women and men are an extension and expression of the life of the resurrected God-man; they remind us of what it truly means to be both natural and normal. This reminder is crucial in a society that is not only abnormal, but anti-normal and anti-natural.
Even what we consider beauty today confirms this idea. Gray hair and wrinkles are despised while we embellish natural qualities to an unnatural state. Men get “buff” in the gym while women have surgery to modify their God-given bodies to fit the abnormal ideal of beauty, which seems to center exclusively upon sexuality.
Let us look to the saints, many of whom were real life examples of the Disney princesses, in that they were pure of heart and completely at harmony with nature. May we cast aside worldly vanities to cling to the Cross, to Life, and to purity. Our Lord Jesus taught that the pure of heart will see God, and it is only those who attain that purity who are able to see God around us, God within us, God in nature, and God in those people surrounding us.

st seraphim of sarov with a bear from nativityofchristnet

May our Lord Jesus grant us this purity by blessing our ascetic efforts and granting us grace in the struggle to cut off the tentacles in which the world has enmeshed our hearts and minds.

End Notes:
While the classical Disney princesses are certainly not perfect examples of the saintly life, they are a good starting place that children can understand.

from iconreader.wordpress.com, Disney princess is a type of the Theotokos Mary — Tenderness icon (umilenie) from iconreader.wordpress.com

Also, I think the way we treat Disney Princesses today reveals why so many Protestant converts wrestle with honoring the Theotokos and actually believing that she is the “ever-virgin Mary” who lived a life of prayer and purity. We mock this concept because the idea of a chaste, pure, enlightened soul is nothing more than a pious fairy tale to us who have slumped so far into abnormality.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/bring-back-the-disney-princess/

Transcendence & Spiritual Experiences, Part 4

Warmth of Heart and Authentic Spiritual Experience in Prayer

This is true life in God! To desire and seek God for the sake of God, and to possess Him and partake of Him in the way and measure that He wishes.
-St Theophan the Recluse, Unseen Warfare
Prayer is a beautiful thing, and a heart that is earnestly seeking God in purity will find Him. In my spiritual journey, I have found that Orthodoxy offers the deepest, most spiritually balanced, and safest way to experience God through prayer. While there are outward “formalities” and we do not encourage the heightened emotional states found in charismatic circles and among some Roman Catholic “contemplatives,” our prayers are far from lifeless.
In fact, St Theophan the Recluse heavily emphasizes praying with feeling and the need to have “warmth of the heart” in prayer. This is a good feeling that overflows from a heart that is open and loving toward God. On our end, we open ourselves to receiving this divine warmth through making an effort to pray and overcoming various difficulties. On His part, God bestows the gifts of warmth and grace at His discretion.

DIFFICULTIES

Perhaps our largest obstacle to obtaining warmth of heart in prayer is our lack of attention. I know what it is like to read through a few prayers and realize that outwardly I have made the sign of the cross and bowed at the appropriate times, but I haven’t paid any real attention to what I was reading.
We must brush aside distractions as they come. Do not engage the thoughts that scream “This is urgent!” or “Don’t you remember you were going to do such and such!” or even “Isn’t this a really neat theological idea? You should chew on this for a little while.”
A second obstacle is lack of confession and partaking in the sacraments of the Church. One who has an unclean conscience will find it difficult to enter deeply into communion with God. The Church offers us her mysteries, let us partake of them as frequently as is permissible.
A third great obstacle is praying with both our lips and minds, but putting no heart into it. As St Theophan would probably say, we’re reading the prayer but not feeling it. This is not an encouragement to work ourselves up into a frenzied, emotional state; prayer should be approached in humility and soberness. With that said, I should probably explain warmth of heart a little better.

WHAT IS WARMTH OF THE HEART?

The best way I can think to explain it is to imagine you are writing a love letter to the one your heart cherishes. In a moment of cleverness, you may be able to construct an elegant piece of originality and complexity. But the person who is able to simply write “I love you with all my heart” with heart-felt tears in their eyes is the person who is writing from the heart and not just the mind. It is in that manner that we should strive, with the grace of God, to pray.
If our hearts are cold and unable to bring forth warmth or tears, then we should ask God to soften them. Not every prayer will produce such an elevated state, but a consistent complete lack of warmth is something you should discuss with your spiritual father. It is God’s desire to draw close to us and for us to draw close to Him. As Christ taught us, our Heavenly Father will give generously to those who ask of Him for He is a good Father.

THE NEW AGE OF SPIRITUALITY

Within the confines of western Christianity, one of the fastest growing sects of Protestantism is the charismatic or Pentecostal movement. This movement is so influential, that just recently the Southern Baptist Association changed one of their rules and decided they will now support missionaries who speak in tongues. Charisma Magazine explained this as the Baptists attempting to keep up with the competition.
Charismatics and Pentecostals (I use the terms interchangeably) believe that a second anointing of the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon the church of God and that it is a sign of the closing of this age.
I grew up in charismatic circles and am intimately familiar with beliefs and practices. Most of what I’ll share here will be based on teachings and experiences I had growing up.

IS IT TRULY UNIQUE?

My focus in this blog will be to discuss some research that I have completed since leaving the charismatic movement and becoming Orthodox. In particular, I want to shed light on a very uncomfortable fact: the things that happen in the charismatic movement are not necessarily unique to it or even Christianity.
For example, New Age spirituality and Pentecostalism offer spiritual experiences without asceticism. In other words, they offer an experience of “higher power” without the necessity of sacrificing worldly and fleshly desires.
From what I have seen, in both movements a spiritual experience is not normally questioned. I was never taught to ask, “Was this of God or some evil source?” It is simply assumed that if one has a spiritual experience that makes them feel good, then it must be of God. How can the devil make someone feel good?
But as we read in the example in the prior blog, if we are not actively waging war against the passions while relying on spiritual guidance from the fathers, then we cannot readily discern whether or not we are in delusion.
While I think a majority of “experiences” in the Charismatic movement are based on psychological and emotional excitement, there certainly are a number that are legitimately spiritual.

“GIFTS” OF THE SPIRIT

WORDS OF KNOWLEDGE

Words of knowledge vary from “giving a word,” the latter of which honestly does not require any kind of “spirit” to inspire it because it is usually simply encouraging or flattering speech.
The former kind does not necessarily require any kind of spirit either. There is something called “cold reading,” in which a speaker will subconsciously and intuitively be able to discern something about other people. The skill is sharpened with practice.
For more information on cold reading, you can watch Orson Welles brief interview or a more detailed explanation of it by atheists Derren Brown and Richard Dawkins.
In summary, most of what I saw when someone had a “word of knowledge” was nothing more than well-practiced cold reading, though normally innocent in its intention. I’ll write a more detailed post on this later.

TONGUES

A common spiritual “gift” in both Pentecostalism and Mediumism is glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues.” While this is mentioned in the Bible on several occasions, the way it manifests itself in today’s Charismatic movement has much more in common with pagan spiritualism¹ than anything else. In fact, anthropologists and linguists have confirmed that the “gift of tongues” in modern day Christianity is surprisingly similar to what is and has been practiced in pagan religions.²
At the beginning of the charismatic movement, the teaching regarding tongues was closer to the biblical examples: that through the Holy Spirit, people are speaking in other languages. However, that doctrine has been proven false by linguists, so now the teaching has evolved to say that people are speaking a heavenly language. This is what I believed growing up.
But, a book by Dr. Felicitas Goodman, a linguistic expert who spent many months/years recording and analyzing charismatics, casts some doubt on such a lofty belief. She makes many excellent observations including the fact that they do not speak in other human languages, and when speaking in the “heavenly language,” charismatics do not use any sounds foreign to their particular native tongue. So that begs the question: how can it be a heavenly language if it is limited to one’s own native speech patterns?
I remember at times wanting so desperately to draw close to God in prayer, but simply not knowing how. I would “pray in tongues” because I didn’t know what else to do. Now, I have learned the Jesus Prayer and how to pray the Orthodox way, which is far deeper and better than speaking in tongues ever was.

FALSE PROPHETS AND ANGELS OF LIGHT

As a young Charismatic, I remember being perplexed about the account in Acts 16 between the young child who was a medium for demons and Paul:
Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days.
But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.
Had this young girl been a member of any of my previous Charismatic congregations, she probably would have been praised as a prophetess. After all, her prophecies caused no “harm” and seemed to genuinely “help” people. But the Apostle obviously cast a spirit out of her.
In 2^nd Corinthians 11:14 , St. Paul warns us that the devil can appear as an angel of light. However, let us not limit ourselves to a literal interpretation of that only, but what it further implies: the devil will not only visibly transform himself, but can replicate “godly” feelings in us of peace, joy, excitement, and warmth. And that is certainly one of his tactics.

MY JOURNEY

I know when I was in the Charismatic movement I had many great experiences that left me with the warmest, loveliest feelings. But I was arrogant and cocky, thinking most other Christians inferior to myself. I had a boldness about me that I claimed was the Holy Spirit, but in retrospect, I believe it was a different spirit. While I was mostly a “nice guy,” my pride and ego left little room for authentic love. I was also completely enmeshed in my passions and felt as though I was a slave to them.
I supposedly had a great anointing of the Holy Spirit, but my secret, inner life was a mess. Something was wrong with that picture. As Kirk Franklin sang, “church taught me how to shout and speak in tongues, but preacher teach me how to live when the tongue is done.”
For these reasons, we Christians desperately need to dive into the ancient wisdom of the Church and we need experienced spiritual guides. We cannot simply trust our feelings. And no ordinary guide will do. It needs to be someone who is gaining victory over the passions (purification), is filled with the Holy Spirit (illumination), and is on the path of union with God (deification/theosis). The holy fathers of the Orthodox Church fit that description. And from the time I began looking to them for guidance, I began to learn what it means to truly experience God versus a feel-good emotional experience.

A FEW THOUGHTS FROM FATHER SERAPHIM

Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future Fr Seraphim Rose

One of the defining books in Orthodoxy on this topic is Fr. Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and The Religion of the Future. In it, he confirms that God can and does reach people no matter where they are, but that is not an excuse to stay where we are if it is not the best God has for us. I will quote him at length:
You may well feel that your experience in the ‘charismatic’ movement has been largely something good (even though you may have reservations about some things you have seen or experienced in it); you may well be unable to believe that there is anything demonic in it. In suggesting that the ‘charismatic’ movement is mediumistic in inspiration, we do not mean to deny the whole of your experience while involved in it.
If you have been awakened to repentance for your sins, to the realization that the Lord Jesus Christ in the Savior of mankind, to sincere love for God and your neighbor – all this is indeed good and would not be lost by abandoning the ‘charismatic’ movement. But if you think that your experience of ‘speaking in tongues,’ or ‘prophesying,’ or whatever else of the ‘supernatural’ that you may have experienced, is from God – then this book is an invitation for you to find out that the realm of true Christian spiritual experience is much deeper than you have felt up to now, that the wiles of the devil are much more subtle than you may have imagined, that the willingness of our fallen human nature to mistake illusion for truth, emotional comfort for spiritual experience, is much greater than you think.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I didn’t write this with the desire to see people shut down spiritually. Rather, I want to see us dive deeper into the spiritual life, but to do so in truth and with wisdom and guidance. The fathers of the Church advise us to have a spiritual guide who is knowledgeable of common spiritual traps and can help us to discern whether our experiences are of God or deceptions of the devil. If we do not have that, we should at the very least rely heavily upon the writings of the fathers. God will save us and protect us if we are truly seeking Him in humility and not merely looking for experiences.
My fourth and final post will attempt to dive into warmth of heart and authentic spiritual experiences found in Orthodoxy.

END NOTES:

¹ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia Many Christians do not realize that the Mormons and pagans practiced speaking in tongues long before the Charismatic movement. This alone should cause Christians to stop and ask questions. If tongues has primarily come from demonic and pagan groups, shouldn’t we be a bit more hesitant to jump on board?
² See Felicitas Goodman’s Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-cultural Study of Glossolalia and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia
Main picture from: http://knilvrie.deviantart.com/art/Worship-87303818

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/transcendence-spiritual-experiences-part-3/

Transcendence & Spiritual Experiences, Part 2

BEYOND ATHEISM AND RATIONALISM

In my last post, I discussed how many of us experience moments of transcendence that leave us with an inexplicable knowledge that there is more to this life than the material world that immediately surrounds us. The mindset of this world and forms of atheism attempt to belittle or deny us this knowledge because it is supposedly not rational or scientifically provable.
However, according to some recent research, atheism is declining in numbers. While numbers are not everything, it reveals the atheists are fighting a losing battle because humans are naturally predisposed toward spirituality. It takes effort to shut down this aspect of our being, and it is rewarding when we don’t do so. Many people are now considering themselves to be spiritual but not religious. Droves of young people are leaving the institutional church, but wanting to maintain some form of belief in God and the spiritual life. Consequently, divorced from the roots of authentic Christianity, there is a lack of guidance in spiritual exploration in addition to a loss of understanding regarding God. “God is love” can now mean “God is the spiritual force that makes me feel good.”
The spiritual but not religious crowd recognizes a subtle reality that surrounds us. However, because our society lacks roots in divine Truth, we have little knowledge of how to properly understand spiritual feelings and experiences. A common misconception has become the standard rule: “If I have a real spiritual experience, then it follows that it must be good,” which flows from the above concept that God is what makes us feel good.
ANCIENT WISDOM: A PRACTICAL FAITH
Something that I greatly love about Eastern Orthodoxy is that our theology is based on divine revelation and our teachings on experience in that revelation. What that means is you will not find any arm-chair theologians who became saints. None of our saints sat down and wrote books based on clever sounding ideas that occurred to them while reading the Bible. Divine revelation was faithfully passed down from Christ and the Apostles, put into practice, and those who taught otherwise were proved wrong through experience.
It was confirmed that those who are living in divine Truth will manifest the “fruit of the Spirit,” with the most certain indicators being love for enemies and true humility. With 1,700+ years of monastic experience in community, the Eastern Orthodox Christians have found their spirituality and teachings to be true and have ascertained the deepest possible understanding of the human psyche and spiritual experiences. This wisdom is time-tested.
With such wisdom, the saints have proved to be valuable guides in understanding spiritual experiences. We see that real spiritual experiences, including ones that leave us with good peaceful feelings, have multiple sources.
A BENEFICIAL STORY

The remainder of this post is a true story that displays how we cannot trust a spiritual experience as being from God simply because it feels good:
St Ignatius in The Arena tells of a young monk who desired to live in solitude so that he could deepen his spiritual life. His abbot opposed the idea, but the young monk insisted and eventually the abbot allowed him to do as he wished. For several days the young monk wrestled with evil thoughts and temptations when one day,
Having transformed himself into an angel of light, [a devil] appeared to him and said: “Be it known to you that for the sake of your purity and moral life, the Lord sent me to serve you.”
“What good have I done,” the monk replied, “that an angel should serve me?”
“All that you have done is great and eminent,” retorted the devil. “You have left all the beauties of the world and have become a monk. You labor in fasting, prayer, and vigil. And now you have left your monastery and have settled for life here. How can angels not serve your holiness?”
In this way the soul-destroying snake led him to arrogance and pride, and began to appear to him continually. Once, a man who had been robbed by thieves came to the monk. The unclean demon who, to deceive him, kept appearing to him in the form of an angel, said to him:
“This man has been robbed by thieves. What they stole is hidden in such and such a place. Tell him to go there and take it.”
The man who had come to the cave bowed, but the monk said to him from above: “All right, brother, I know why you have come. You are in distress because thieves came to you and stole so and so. Do not be sad! They put what they stole in such and such a place. Go there and you will find it all, and pray for me.”
The narrative continues to explain that this was the first of many similar occurrences in which the young monk was able to tell people where lost or stolen objects were in addition to giving many other “prophetic words.” People flocked to him in great numbers and believed him to be a prophet. One day the demon in disguise came to him and said,
“…for the sake of your irreproachable and angelic life other angels will come and take you, in the body, to heaven…”
So saying, the devil vanished. But the most merciful God Whose love for us is so great and Who does not desire the destruction of men, put into the monk’s heart the idea to tell the abbot what had happened…
When the abbot received the message he came at once and discussed the young monk’s visions and prophetic abilities. The young monk, truly believing himself to be humble, credited his spiritual abilities to the abbot’s prayers. In return, the abbot declared him to be deceived, but refused to leave the young man, wanting to be present in case the “angels” came for him to carry him to away.
Not surprisingly, the demons returned for the young monk and began their attempt to fly away with him. The abbot clung to the monk while crying to the Lord Jesus Christ for help. With much prayer and wrestling, the demons could snatch only the monk’s mantle and they carried that away into the sky. It floated out of sight and disappeared, only to reappear a few minutes later: free-falling from the sky to the earth below. The abbot rebuked the monk,
“Foolish and wretched man! You see what the demons have done with your mantle. That is what they intended to do with you, too. They intended to raise you in the air like Simon Magus and then let you drop, so as to crush you and fatally cast out your wretched soul.”
Afterward, the young monk repented and returned to a simple, humble life in community with his brothers.
The above narrative provides a powerful lesson: the devil can and does come in the guise of an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). That is not limited to angelic visions, but also to feelings that are joyful, peaceful, and seem as if they are from God. More to come on how this relates to today’s spiritual environment and the Charismatic movement in the next post.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/transcendence-spiritual-experiences-part-2/

Transcendence & Spiritual Experiences, Part 1

While reading this, you are probably sitting in a room. Around you are most likely walls and perhaps other people behind some of those walls. If you could see through the walls surrounding you, a vision of more walls would likely be had if you are in a city, and trees and earth if you are in the country.
Were you to somehow float above everything with the vision of an eagle, your position would allow you insight on more things and people. Your knowledge of your surroundings would no longer be contained to the four walls about you.
Many of us have had such “transcendent” moments where it seems we tap into something higher than ourselves. Perhaps this has come during prayer or divine services; frequently this is experienced in nature. I had an atheist friend who confessed to having several of these moments while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
For those of us who allow inner quiet and stillness, these moments can serve as “proof” that there is a spiritual realm and something greater than the material world around us. The experiences often serve as our best defense against the spirit-numbing claim of this world: “All you see around you is all that there is” – sometimes this is whispered, other times shouted.

It is as if the world is telling us, “This room that you are sitting in is all that exists. Establish your happiness here. There are no other rooms; there is nothing outside of these walls. And even if there were more, none of that matters as much as the problems that you are facing in this room or the treasures to which you are attached here.”
THE ELEVATED LIFE
The saints did not listen to the world’s message. They rose above all with keen vision. We see numerous examples of this in the book of Acts, including the incident in which the Apostle Philip, when after baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, was carried away by the Spirit to another place. There are countless examples from the lives of the saints being carried to and from places by the Holy Spirit. It is as if their bodies were not less material, but something beyond material. As Elder Ambrose of Optina stated regarding one such anonymous pilgrim, “Well, you understand, he is a man of elevated life, his flesh is subtle.”
Somewhat recent saints who lived such elevated lives include the above mentioned Elder Ambrose, Elder Pophyrios, and Archbishop John of Shanghai and San Francisco. Not only would they suddenly appear in places geographically distant from where they were moments ago, but they would also know what is in the heart and soul of every person.
SHINING LIKE STARS IN THE FIRMAMENT OF THE CHURCH

St Theophan the Recluse taught that the saints, especially those who have departed, and all of the angelic hosts look upon us from an elevated position of love and discernment. As one Akathist states, they “shine like stars in the firmament of the Church.”
If someone is pure of heart, then their soul has a glow and shimmer to it. The purer one’s heart, the brighter they shine. When the angels and saints look down upon a busy street, they see a multitude of people: some are shining, others are very dark. Accordingly, the saints and angels either grieve or rejoice over us. This concept is not some lofty notion of piety, but a living reality.
The soul that shines is illuminated from within by the Holy Spirit. It is the light of God shining through the person. Most of us are blind to this light because our nous is not clean, but it is evident to heavenly beings. Like the eyes that behold the material world around us, the nous is the spiritual organ within a human being that can perceive the spiritual world.
I think moments of transcendence are often brief flashes of spiritual light that illuminate us. Like a dream that forever slips through the finger tips of our waking consciousness, so these moments pass through the rational mind and into the heart. Words are inadequate to explain, so we are left with irrational arguments like “I just know this to be true.”
May we preserve a child-like simplicity that keeps the nous free and clear to spiritual life. May we be content with experiencing God in simple, inexplicable ways without worrying about how silly it may sound to others. May we continually meditate on God’s love and goodness, with gratitude that fills us with joy and light. And may we continue to partake in the Mysteries of the Church, which God has given us as material means to obtain spiritual grace.

Are all transcendent moments and spiritual experiences a gift from God? Let’s tackle that question in the upcoming Part 2.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/transcendence-spiritual-experiences-part-1/

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Saint Moses the Black

One of the first saints I encountered while researching Orthodoxy was St. Moses the Black (also called the Ethiopian). There was something about his unconquerable spirit, when faced with temptation, that greatly inspired me. Additionally, the man had grasped what it means to be humble and to not judge one’s neighbor. Below I will provide some excerpts from the Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nikolai Velimirovich and some of St. Moses’ teachings from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

The Reading

Moses was an Ethiopian by birth and by profession, at first, a robber and leader of a band of robbers and, after that, a penitent and great ascetic. As the slave of a master, Moses escaped and joined the robbers. Because of his great physical strength and arrogance, the robbers chose him as their leader. Suddenly, Moses was overcome with pangs of conscience and repentance for the misdeeds, which he had committed. He left the group, entered a monastery and gave himself completely in obedience to his spiritual father and to the monastic rule.
He benefited much from the teachings of Saints Macarius, Arsenius and Isidore. Later, he withdrew to solitude in a cell where he dedicated himself completely to physical labor, prayer, vigils and godly-thoughts. Tormented by the demon of fornication, Moses confessed to Isidore, his spiritual father, and from him, received counsel to fast even more and never to eat to full satisfaction. When even this did not help he, at the counsel of the elder, began to keep vigil at night and to pray standing; after that, he began the practice of bringing water to the elderly monks from a distant well all night long. After six years of terrible struggles, St. Isidore finally miraculously healed him of fornicating thoughts, fantasies and dreams brought about on him by demons.
Moses was ordained a priest in old age. He founded his own monastery and had seventy-five disciples and lived in this life for seventy-five years. He foresaw his death and, one day, he told his disciples to flee for the barbarians were going to attack the monastery. When the disciples also urged him to flee with them, Moses said that he must die by violence for, at one time, he himself committed violence and, according to the words: “For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (St. Matthew 26:52). He remained there with six brethren and the barbarians came and slew them. One of the brethren, hidden in the vicinity, beheld and saw seven shining wreaths as they descended upon the seven martyrs.

A Reflection from St. Nikolai

A true Christian avoids the praise of men; not only avoids, but has a true fear of it. St. Sava of Pskov left the office of abbot, the monastery and the good brotherhood of the monastery and fled to a desolate place to escape the praise of men, for praise of men robs our heart.
A devout prince, upon hearing of the mortification of St. Moses Murin [the Black], went with his retinue into the desert to see him. Informing Moses that the prince was coming to his monastery, Moses quickly ran out and began to flee and to hide somewhere, but he unexpectedly encountered the high-ranking visitors. “Where is the cell of Abba Moses?” the servants of the prince asked not suspecting that this was Moses himself. Moses opened his mouth and said: “What do you want him for? He is an ignorant old man, very untruthful and completely impure in life.” Hearing this, the visitors were astonished and continued on.
When they arrived at the cell of Moses, they inquired about the elder and the monks said that he was not there. Then they began to relate what a monk on the road had said about Moses. The monks were saddened and asked them: “How did he look, this old man, who spoke to you mocking words about this holy man?” and when they said that he was very dark in the face, tall and in a miserable garment; the monks cried out loudly: “but that was indeed the Abba Moses!” By this incident, the prince benefited greatly spiritually and, rejoicing, returned to his home.

Teachings & Sayings

*When asked why he [St. Moses] was not grieved by the sinfulness of others, he responded that when one has a corpse in their own house, they do not grieve over the corpse in the home of another.
*A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
*The monk [or Christian] must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all, in any way whatever.
*If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbor…To die to one’s neighbor is this: To bear your own faults and not to pay attention to anyone else wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil…Do not rail against anyone, but rather say, ‘God knows each one.’ Do not agree with him who slanders, do not rejoice at his slander, and do not hate him who slanders his neighbor.
*This is what it means not to judge. Do not have hostile feelings towards anyone and do not let dislike dominate your heart; do not hate him who hates his neighbor.
*If the monk does not think in his heart that he is a sinner, God will not hear him. A brother asked, ‘What does that mean, to think in his heart that he is a sinner?’ Then Abba Moses said, When someone is occupied with his own faults, he does not see those of his neighbor.

Troparion

Troparion, in Tone I —
A desert-dweller, an angel in the flesh/ and a wonderworker wast thou shown to be,/ O our God-bearing father Moses./ For, having acquired heavenly gifts through fasting, vigilance and prayer,/ thou dost heal the infirm/ and the souls of those who have recourse to thee with faith./ Glory to Him Who gaveth thee strength!/ Glory to Him Who crowned thee!// Glory to Him Who worketh healings for all through thee!
Kontakion, in Tone IV —
Having beaten the Moors and spat in the faces of the demons,/ thou didst shine forth noetically like the radiant sun,// directing our lives by the light of thy life and thy teaching.

END NOTES:
The biography, reflection and first saying are taken from the Prologue of Ohrid. The remainder come from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection by Benedicta Ward and Metropolitan Anthony (1984). Troparion come from the Orthodox Calendar iPhone app.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/saint-moses-the-black/#more-2021

St. John Cassian ~ In Harmony with Nature

In Harmony with Nature

There exists within us this internal Way, or as some of the Eastern ancients called it, the Tao. St. John Cassian records one desert father speaking of this internal Way that was still quite strong in the pre-Flood days. People could walk into the woods and know which plants were edible, which were toxic, and which were good for medicines. The knowledge was intuitive, and did not necessarily have to be taught. Humans simply flowed with this internal rhythm.
The animals sensed when man was flowing with the rhythm of this internal Way and were at peace with him. It was not until after the great Flood that we see animals fearing mankind,

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. (Gen. 9:2)

When we fall into sin, which most of us do daily, we are moving contrary to our own nature, we are quieting the inner Tao, this Way that seeks to guide us into the most natural state of being.
Our sinful tendencies have become so ingrained within us for so many generations that we think of this as being natural or human. But sin is an alien intruder within our humanity, and it has one goal: total destruction of the human being. And unfortunately, humanity has been working for thousands of years with this alien intruder to create a world that is stifling to the inner Tao.

THE RENEWED HUMAN

But in the Orthodox Church I find hope. Christianity teaches that the Tao took on flesh and invaded this hostile world. It lived a life in complete accordance with the Tao, because it was the enfleshed Tao.
In Orthodoxy, I see countless examples of people who have overcome their sinful passions and who walk in sync with this inner Tao. Perhaps St. Seraphim of Sarov (who was one of them) would say they “acquired the Holy Spirit,” and in doing so, walked in simple harmony with all of nature. There are stories of lions following saints around like puppy dogs or digging the grave for a beloved saint when no one else was capable of doing so.
Some modern people dismiss these stories as nothing more than pious fables, but I think that is only because we modern people have drifted so far away from the inner Tao that when we hear about it, we immediately disbelieve it. We have created a world that is in opposition to both nature and the Tao.
Fairy tales in which men and animals are friends and talk with one another are popular because they reveal how many of us, deep down inside, think the world ought to look. In some sense, these fairy tales are closer to truth than our current state.

A HARMONIOUS SOUL

But we can have confidence that the stories of the saints are true simply by looking at modern examples. St. Paisios, who passed away in the 1990’s, was one such individual who lived in accordance with the true nature, and even beyond that.
St. Paisios was a friend to a multitude of wild animals. He had one woodpecker whom he named Olet (Arabic for child). Paisios wrote,

When I call for Olet to come, it brings other birds, its friends, that run straight to the food; but Olet comes out of obedience and love. Even when it is hungry, it sits with me for a long time and forgets about food; I have to remind it. And now that the weather is nice and it can find plenty of bugs to eat, when I call it, it still comes out of obedience, even though it is full and not looking for food…
All of the animals who come to my Kalyvi, not only the flying birds but jackals, rabbits, weasels, turtles, lizards, snakes, are filled with the overflowing of my love and I am filled when they are filled, and so all of us together…”we praise, we bless, and we worship the Lord!”

At another time, the holy elder discussed his time at a monastery in Sinai,

The birds followed me everywhere I went. When I would climb up onto some ledges to chant, they would gather there beside me and at the end, I would throw them some rice. If I wanted some quiet, then I could not chant at all, because they would all gather around me! I remember one time when my back was stiff and I had to lie flat for several days, that a little bird entered my cell and stood on my chest. It just stood there and looked me in the face while chirping very sweetly for hours on end. It made such an impression on me!

When asked about animals coming to his Kalyvi, he replied

Of course they come! Jackals come, and wild boars…Now and then a small fox will come, too. Once the cats leave, then the little fox comes. The wild boars do not show up in the summer because they are afraid of the hunters; only snakes come out in the summer, because people fear them.

When explaining how and why this happens, the holy elder stated,

Nowadays, when one approaches God anew by observing His commandments, he is once again vested in divine Grace, whereupon he returns to the condition man had been in before the Fall, and the animals recognize him again as their master. That is when one can move fearlessly among the wild animals, which then cease to be wild, since their master is now tamed.

Sources
Image sources: Fox photo is from http://www.boredpanda.com/finnish-wildlife-feeding-squirrel-whisperer-konsta-punkka/ and the photo of Geronda Paisios is by Pietro Chiaranz (wikimedia commons).
My source for the stories of St. Paisios was Chapter Three, Love for All Creation from Passions and Virtues by Holy Hesychasterion “Evangelist John the Theologian.” A copy can be purchased here or here.
For further reading on the inner Tao and how it has been followed throughout the ages, I highly recommend Christ the Eternal Tao. It is a beautiful and inspiring read.
The teachings on early man following this inner Way/Tao, come from St. John Cassian’s The Conferences, particularly the teachings of Abba Serenus.

source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/in-harmony-with-nature/#more-2468

St. Paisios ~ Calamities and the Wrath of God

Calamities and the Wrath of God (St. Paisios)

St Paisios of the Holy Mountain (the Athonite)

Locusts, wars, droughts, and disease, they are all scourges. This is not God’s way of educating human beings; it is, rather, the result of our moving away from Him. Scourges happen when we stray from God. His wrath then comes to make us remember Him and ask for His help. It’s not that He arranges and orders, so to speak, these calamities. Rather, God allows them to happen because he sees how far human evil can go, and how unwilling we are to change our ways. This is His way of bringing us to our senses. But it is not something that He has arranged; rather, it is the natural result of our own self-will, our own actions.
God told Joshua [1] not to exterminate the tribe of the Philistines, because the Philistines were supposed to be a scourge to the Hebrews every time they would forget God. So every time the Hebrews abandoned God, the devil acquired rights over them, and he would have his “cousins,” the Philistines, attack them. They would take the Hebrew children, smash them on rocks and kill them. Once when the Hebrews were attacked without being at fault, God fought on their side. He sent big hail, the size of stones, and destroyed the Philistines, because in that case the Israelites had a right to divine intervention. [2]
Think about the many promises God made to the Hebrews about the Temple of Solomon and the many times that it was burned and ravaged. When the people of Israel would stray from God, the prophets would weep and cry out for repentance, but the Israelites would shut their ears. They thought complacently: “Since God blessed the Temple when Solomon built it, and said that from now on our people will be blessed and holy, everything, our walls and our Temple, will stay in place as He promised.” [3]
Well, God did make this promise, but only on the condition that the Hebrews live righteously, His Grace was indeed upon the Temple, but when they broke the commandments, He allowed for it to be burned and destroyed. Only after they repented were they able to rebuild it.
For example, during the reign of King Zedekiah, when the people again strayed from God, Nebuchadnezzar came along and set the Temple on fire. He destroyed the city walls, took many of their leaders prisoner, and took them in chains to Babylon. [4] Of course, together with those that were at fault, there were also many that were innocent. These latter reaped a heavenly rewards for their innocent suffering, while the guilty paid for their sins…
The faithful who obey the commandments of God receive His Grace. God is, shall we say, obliged to help them during the difficult years in which we live. I have heard that a new disease [5] has appeared in the United States. Many people who live unnatural, sinful lives are infected by it and die. I’ve been told that now the disease has also appeared here. You see, it’s not God that destroys people. It is people that destroy themselves and their kindred. In other words, it is not that God punishes them, but that they impose their own punishment by the sinful lives they lead. And it is not hard to see that people who perish are those whose lives have lost all meaning.
– Geronda, [6] why haven’t we found a cure for cancer yet? Is it that God does not allow it, or that we don’t ask for his help?
Well, the bad news is that even if a cure were to be found today, another, new illness would appear. There was a time when it was tuberculosis. Then, they found a cure. Now, it is a new disease, cancer. And if God were to help cure cancer, another disease would appear. Human beings will once again be the cause, and it will go on this way, with no end in sight.

My Reflections

The above wisdom is from St. Paisios the Athonite. A couple of points I want to summarize from his teaching:
First, the calamities we see in this world are allowed by God, but they are not arranged by Him. They are a natural result of our sinfulness, which corrupts both mother nature and human nature. Through sin, death and suffering enters the world.
Secondly, I think it is worth noting that St. Paisios emphasizes that the righteous suffer together with the unrighteous. This may seem unfair, but that is because we lack an eternal perspective. If people suffer with humility and love in their hearts, lacking pity for themselves, but filled with compassion for their fellow human beings, then their suffering will bestow upon them a significant spiritual reward in this age and the one to come. If we struggle with this, it is because we truly lack faith in God and eternity. It is because we are so caught up in this world that we can’t even see the one to come. May God help us all to re-calibrate our focus on that which is permanent rather than the temporal.

End Notes:
All text, except my own reflection, is from With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man published by the Holy Monastery of Evangelist John the Theologian, Souroti, Thessaloniki, Greece. 2011. Bold text is my own emphasis.
[1] Cf. Josh 13:1-2; Jdg 3:1-4
[2] Cf. Josh 10, 11
[3] Cf. I Kg 9:1-9 (LXX: III Kg 9:1-9)
[4] Cf. II Kg 24-25 (LXX: IV Kg 24-25)
[5] This was said in November of 1984. The Elder is referring to AIDS.
[6] Geronda (pronounced “Yeronda”) is Greek for Elder.

Source:

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/calamities-and-the-wrath-of-god-st-paisios/#more-2365

Friday, December 22, 2017

Sayings St. Maximus the Confessor,St. Mark the Ascetic & St. Gregory the Dialogist ~ The Intention

   In all of our deeds God looks at the intention, whether we do it for His sake, or for the sake of some other intention.

(St. Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Love, 2:36)

   God values deeds according to their intentions. For it is said, "The Lord grant unto you according to your heart" (Ps. 19:5) ... Therefore, whoever wants to do something but can't is considered as having done it by God, who sees the intentions of our hearts. This applies to both good and evil deeds alike.

(St. Mark the Ascetic, Homilies, 1.184, 2.16)

If the intention is unclean, the deed that follows from it will also be evil, even if it seems good.

(St. Gregory the Dialogist, Conversations, 1.10)

Source:

http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

C.S. Lewis & G.K. Chesterton ~ The Abolition of Man: Stepping outside the moral law into the void, irrational impulses

Stepping outside the [moral law], they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man... Yet the conditioners will act ... All motives that claim any validity other than that of their felt emotional weight at a given moment have failed them ... but what never claimed objectivity cannot be destroyed by subjectivism ... the Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasures [or fears] ... those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.

Therefore, at the moment of man’s conquest of nature, we may find the human race in general subjected to some individuals, and those individuals subjected ‘to that in themselves which is purely “natural”—to their irrational impulses’. Nature rules the conditioners, and through them, humanity:

Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man... Either we are... obliged for ever to obey the absolute value... or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own “natural” impulses. Only the [objective Moral Law] provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective values is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

Taking Stock of The Abolition of Man

G.K. Chesterton, a formative influence upon Lewis, observed that:

when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and alterable thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist him into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes... It is a very well-grounded guess that whatever is done swiftly and systematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost solely in their interests. It has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids and half-human experiments much in the style of Mr. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” ... Whatever wild image one employs it cannot keep pace with the panic of the human fancy, when once it supposes that the fixed type called man could be changed... That is the nightmare with which the mere notion of adaption threatens us. This is the nightmare that is not so very far from the reality. It will be said that not the wildest evolutionist really asks that we should become in any way unhuman... but this is exactly what not merely the wildest evolutionists urge, but some of the tamest evolutionists...[xliv]

http://www.lewissociety.org/abolition.php

David Foster Wallace & Alexander Schmemann ~ 'There is no such thing as atheism'

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”

Wallace’s thoughts echo a point made by an Orthodox Christian priest, Alexander Schmemann, in an intriguing essay titled “Worship in a Secular Age.” In that essay, Schmemann wrote that man is fundamentally a homo adorans—a “worshipping being”… “the one for whom worship is the essential act which both ‘posits’ his humanity and fulfills it.”

In making this point, Schmemann was writing from the perspective of Christian revelation, which holds that God gifts man with existence for the sake of sharing in his divine life, and man’s fundamental act in response to this gift is thanksgiving in the form of worship.

Wallace also makes the point that man is a “worshipping being,” but from an experiential point of view. Experience shows, he argues, that men and women inevitably end up worshipping something. If it’s not God, then it’s things such as money, comfort, sex, sports, fame, power, success, their bodies, their careers, or themselves.

As we know, to effectively pursue excellence in any one of these things requires a significant commitment of time, attention, and discipline; it requires an ongoing binding of oneself to the activities required to achieve the desired goal.

And that’s literally what religion is—the word itself comes from the Latin verb religare, which means “to bind.” It refers, as Lactantius said in the third century, to the act of voluntarily binding oneself to God.

In Wallace’s thinking then, all human beings are ultimately “religious”; what differentiates them is merely the “god” to which they happen to bind themselves.

Source:

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/famous-author-there-no-such-thing-atheism

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Sayings St. Silouan the Athonite ~ Here is Freedom and equality

The Lord wants us to love one another. Here is freedom: in love for God and neighbor. In this freedom, there is equality. In earthly orders, there may not be equality, but this is not important for the soul. Not everyone can be a king, not everyone a patriarch or a boss. But in any position it is possible to love God and to please Him, and only this is important. And whoever loves God more on earth will be in greater glory in His Kingdom.

(St. Silouan the Athonite, Writings, VI.23)

Source:

http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm

Monday, December 11, 2017

Sayings St. Philaret of Moscow ~ The slavery of broadening the laws

Some people by the word freedom understand the ability to do whatever one wants ... People who have the more allowed themselves to come into slavery to sins, passions, and defilements more often than others appear as zealots of external freedom, wanting to broaden the laws as much as possible. But such a man uses external freedom only to more severely burden himself with inner slavery. True freedom is the active ability of a man who is not enslaved to sin, who is not pricked by a condemning conscience, to choose the better in the light of God's truth, and to bring it into actuality with the help of the gracious power of God. This is the freedom of which neither heaven nor earth are restrict.

(St. Philaret of Moscow, Sermon on the Birthday of Emperor Nicholas I, 1851)

Source:

http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Remembering St. Nicholas, Recovering a Christian Heritage ~ Robert Arakaki

Remembering St. Nicholas, Recovering a Christian Heritage

December 7, 2011September 14, 2017 · Robert Arakaki

http://www.easterngiftshop.com/index.php?app=ecom&ns=catshow&ref=PuzSts&count=10&offset=10 — Icon – St. Nicholas of Myra

One of the unexpected blessings of becoming Orthodox is discovering a Christian heritage forgotten in the West. One example of this is St. Nicholas of Myra, the original Santa Claus. He is well known in the Orthodox Church. Every December 6 the Orthodox celebrates the life of St. Nicholas of Myra. When I was a Protestant Evangelical I was barely aware of the historical St. Nicholas, but soon after I became Orthodox I became quite familiar with this popular saint.
St. Nicholas lived in the fourth century on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor (present day Turkey). He lost his parents when he was young and was raised by uncle also named Nicholas who was bishop of the town of Patara. In time he was ordained to the priesthood and became a bishop. He was present at the Council of Nicea and was reputed to have been so incensed by Arius’ blasphemy against Christ that he went up and slapped Arius in the face. One well known story tells how St. Nicholas would secretly throw a purse of gold into the home of a poor man with three daughters. The gold provided the dowry that enabled them to marry and prevent them from resorting to prostitution.
In modern American society everyone knows about “Santa Claus” the jolly old man who lives in the North Pole and comes out every Christmas Eve to deliver presents to good children everywhere. Virtually every American child today has paid a visit to Santa at the mall where they are gently questioned whether they have been good this past year. After a gentle scolding and encouragement to do better the child is sent back with an implied promise of something good coming their way.
This raises the question how did St. Nicholas become Santa Claus? And how did Western Christianity come to have such a divergent view of this great Christian saint?

From Dutch “Sinterklaas” to American “Santa Claus”

Sinterklaas was part of the Dutch culture. Every year on December 6 in the Netherlands a town resident would dress as Sinterklaas – elegantly garbed with a bishop’s miter, red cape, shiny ring, and a jeweled staff. During the night Sinterklaas would ride his white horse through the town knocking on doors bringing goodies for the good children. He had a sidekick, Black Peter, the Grumpus – a wild looking half man, half beast – who threatened to take away the naughtiest children in his black bag, and for those not so naughty he had birch switches as lesser punishments. Here we can see the resemblance between the Dutch Sinterklaas and the Eastern Orthodox St. Nicholas. The Dutch remembered him as a bishop just as the Orthodox do. The name Nicholas became altered into “Klaas.”
When the Dutch migrated to the New World they brought many of their traditions and customs with them. They first settled on the island of Manhattan and so it became known as New Amsterdam. When the British took control of the island, it was renamed New York. The British adopted the customs popular among the Dutch residents and often merged it with their own English customs like Winter Solstice and the jolly Father Christmas.
In the New World a kind of cultural assimilation and syncretism took place over several generations. The writer Washington Irving created a jolly Sinterklaas for his Knickerbocker Tales in 1809. Then in 1822, an Episcopalian priest named Clement Moore wrote a lighthearted poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which soon became known by the opening line: “Twas the night before Christmas.” It is here that we find the origins of the Santa Claus familiar to modern day Americans. Moore’s poem depicts St. Nicholas as a jolly old elf with a long white beard and a pipe in his mouth. He drives a sleigh pulled by eight reindeers, flies through the air from house to house, and magically jumps down the chimneys to deliver presents to the children. What we see here is a dramatic mutation of a familiar Christian figure. This may seem harmless to Protestants who view extra-biblical traditions as non-essential to their faith but it also points to the untethering of American culture from its historic Christian heritage.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

cokelore_santa_toys_cutout — Modern Santa Claus

Following the Great Depression and World War II, the US entered into a period of unprecedented economic affluence. The 1950s marked the emergence of a consumer society where mass consumption would be the engine of economic growth. It was during this period that Christmas underwent a significant secularization. Retailers began to look to the Christmas season as a time when sizable customer purchases would help them close out the year in the black. To ensure high sales volume manufacturers and retailers began to rely heavily on mass advertising in the print media, radio, and television. The message soon centered on Christmas as a season to be jolly and the giving of gifts to loved ones. Sometimes the message of giving to those less fortunate was also mentioned. There also came the message that if one got just the right present one would find happiness. But it soon became evident that Christmas had undergone a shift in meaning away from its historic Christian roots. Part of the reason for the blurring of the Christmas season’s religious content was the fear of alienating any segment of the market which would result in loss of potential sales.

Santa Claus as a Culture Myth
I wondered why Santa Claus was so much an integral part of American culture. More specifically, I wondered why grownups would purposefully lie to children about a fictional character who flies once a year delivering gifts to children everywhere. Why is this deception so embedded in modern American culture? Does it serve any particular function?
I believe the answer lies in viewing the modern Santa Claus as a culture myth. Every culture relies on stories to explain how the world works. The Santa Claus myth operates on two levels. For children he teaches them the need to be good even when there’s nobody around and he teaches them the joy of getting presents. Children also learn the lesson of self-restraint — one had to wait for the right moment before opening the presents.

For adults the Santa Claus myth teaches that as children we inhabit the world of faith and make believe but when we grow up we become conscious of the world as it really is. That is why the moment of realization that Santa is really Daddy is so important to the Santa Claus myth. The Santa Claus myth reenacts the emergence of modernity. Pre-moderns live in an enchanted world based upon blind faith; moderns live in a world based upon facts, scientific research, and rational calculation. The day the child realizes that Santa is Daddy marks a step towards adulthood with the subsequent loss of innocence and pure faith. It is fun to be a child but we must all grow up and face the facts. This classic scene captured by Norman Rockwell shows a “saucered-eyed” look on the boy’s face which Johns Hopkins University Professor Richard Halpern described as a “flash of youthful disillusionment. At this moment the question is planted in the boy’s mind, “What else are they lying about?” This question can create an attitude of skepticism which can lead to scientific investigation. It can also lead to an attitude that challenges authoritarian claims to truth. When they have children, many grownups reenact the Santa Claus myth, not only because it is part of popular culture, but also because doing so enables them to recapture the innocence and magic of childhood.

Counter-Cultural Orthodoxy
As Christmas became increasingly depleted of its religious and Christian content, many Christians, especially conservative Evangelicals, became uneasy. They would counter with slogans like: “Putting Christ Back into Christmas” and “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” This led me to wonder why Evangelicals are so concerned about this.
I suspect that unlike high church traditions that have a strong sense of the visible church, Evangelicalism’s low church ecclesiology has resulted in the public space functioning as the equivalent of the visible church. The church is not just a weekly sermon, songs, and a building; it is a way of life, that is, a culture. For a long time Evangelicals in America relied on popular culture for the visible expression of their faith. This would explain their often shrill insistence: “America was founded as a Christian country!” It would also explain Evangelicals’ obsession with crossover hits in music and movies. The dream for many Evangelicals is a bestselling novel, record, or movie among both the born again Christians and general population. By means of these bestsellers they witness to America about Jesus and help millions make a decision for Christ. The dream of many Evangelicals is a spiritual revival or awakening that sweeps the nation restoring America as a Christian nation.
Lacking a historically grounded theological framework Evangelicalism finds itself drifting and shifting in multiple directions in recent days. Trevin Wax in his blog Kingdom People recently published a four part series “What Is An Evangelical?” The recent discussions shows that Evangelicals have no unified stance towards popular society, some take a defensive stance while others take a more open and embracing stance.
Unlike Evangelicalism which assumed the public space to be its birthright, Orthodoxy’s experience in America has been that of an obscure religion. While Orthodoxy enjoys official standing in the old countries, it also has memories of the time when it was a persecuted and illegal religion under Roman rule. With its well defined structures and sense of Tradition, Orthodoxy is in a much better position to deal with the drift to a post-Christian America than the Evangelicals. The Orthodox Church has the resources to maintain a culture within culture much more effectively than many Evangelical churches.

Remembering St. Nicholas in Grand Rapids, Michigan

St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church – 2009

The Grand Rapids Press published an article written by Andrew Ogg which describes how the members of St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church celebrated the life of their patron saint.

GRAND RAPIDS — Children tagged behind brightly dressed clergymen as they carried an illustration of Saint Nicholas and one of his bone fragments in a box.
Parishioners crossed themselves as the celebratory procession wound around pews, with the smell of incense filling Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church, 2250 E. Paris Ave. SE last Sunday.
No reindeer. No toy-filled sleigh. No jolly old elf with a sweet tooth. This kindly gift giver was — kids, cover your eyes — real.
“The typical department store Santa, he’s quite a long way from the historical saint,” said Father Daniel Daly, pastor at Saint Nicholas.
Still, Daly doesn’t begrudge youngsters their Christmas wish lists.
“It’s a fun time for the kids,” he said. “I don’t see it as particularly bad or dangerous or anything. As long as people get to the real celebration of what is truly the center of Christmas, of course, and that’s the mystery of the incarnation.”

For more about how this particular parish maintains an Orthodox perspective on Christmas click here.
The lesson here is that while counter-cultural, Orthodoxy is not necessarily hostile to American culture as a whole. We take what is good and beneficial in our culture and try to correct what is lacking or misleading. We do this because we see culture as a gift from God.

Celebrating the Life of St. Nicholas
For those concerned about the post-Christian drift Orthodoxy provides resources for resisting this drift. One important means is the Christmas fast (I’ll write about this another time), another is the celebration of the life of St. Nicholas. On December 6 the Orthodox Church commemorates the life of St. Nicholas. For the Orthodox this is not an option but part of our liturgical calendar. We do this because it is part of the Tradition of the Church to remember its saints.
The historical memory of the Church is embedded not so much in books as in its liturgical life. Through these liturgical celebrations the Orthodox learn about the heroes of the faith. An examination of the Akathist (hymn/prayer) to St. Nicholas shows the Orthodox approach to commemorating the life of a saint. Thus singing in the choir is a great way to learn the Orthodox faith.

Kontakion 1

O champion wonderworker and superb servant of Christ
thou who pourest out for all the world
the most precious myrrh of mercy
and an inexhaustible sea of miracles
I praise thee with love, O Saint Nicholas;
and as thou art one having boldness toward the Lord,
from all dangers do thou deliver us,
that we may cry to thee:
Rejoice, O Nicholas, Great Wonderworker!

In the first kontakion (hymn in verse form) St. Nicholas is remembered as a servant of Christ who went about doing good to others. It also shows how Orthodoxy understands the communion of saints. St. Nicholas is understood to be very much alive and in the presence of God. He is part of the invisible company of saints in heaven who are praying for us.
Ekos 2

Teaching incomprehensible knowledge about the Holy Trinity,
thou wast with the holy fathers in Nicea
a champion of the confession of the Orthodox Faith;
for thou didst confess the Son equal to the Father,
co-everlasting and co-enthroned,
and thou didst convict the foolish Arius.
Therefore the faithful have learned to sing to thee:

Rejoice, great pillar of piety!

Rejoice, city of refuge for the faithful!

Rejoice, firm stronghold of Orthodoxy!

Rejoice, venerable vessel and praise of the Holy Trinity!

Rejoice, thou who didst preach the Son of equal honour with the Father!

Rejoice, thou who didst expel the demonized Arius from the council of the saints!

Rejoice, father, glorious beauty of the fathers!

Rejoice, wise goodness of all the divinely wise!

Rejoice, thou who utterest fiery words!

Rejoice, thou who guidest so well thy flock!

Rejoice, for through thee faith is strengthened!

Rejoice, for through thee heresy is overthrown!

Rejoice, O Nicholas, Great Wonderworker!

In Ekos 2 (earnest request) St. Nicholas is remembered for being at the Council of Nicea which resulted in the affirmation of Christ’s divinity. Where Kontakion 1 remembers St. Nicholas for his deeds of charity, Ekos 2 remembers his defense of right doctrine. Here the Orthodox faithful are given both a history lesson and a lesson in Christology.

Conclusion
The liturgical life of the Orthodox Church helps the Orthodox faithful to resist being conformed to the ways of the world. If we are faithful in our participation in the liturgical life of the Church and attentive to what is being sung we will be rooted in the Orthodox Faith. There is a stability and rootedness in Orthodoxy that Evangelicals and Protestants can learn from.
Let us remember the real St. Nicholas and let us seek to be imitators of great saints like St. Nicholas of Myra in this Christmas season.
Robert Arakaki

Source:

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxbridge/remembering-st-nicholas-recovering-a-christian-heritage/

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