With our 'modern' eyes we are often tempted to identify success and worth with a certain specificity to utility and usefulness. Personhood is measured according to a reduced 'normative' expectation of ones contribution to the society, the country, the economy, the family, the mission, the Church, to humanity, to the cultic desires of fallen nature.
Even Orthodox parishes can fall into this temptation, identifying success with numbers, functionality and 'rational' practicality of our Liturgical ethos, or a missiology focused on bringing 'the poor' to a level of social reintegration and usefulness.
The focus of liturgy risks becoming a reward for good behavior, the faith becomes a moral ideology, the mission becomes 'crusade' for souls, and Eucharist a sign of membership or personal blessing. In each of these reductions is an presupposition about the value and the function of the Church and of Personhood. A reduction that appeals to a divide of the sacred and profane, an appeal to pagan dualism instead of the recapitulation and restoration that Christianity witnesses and encounters as Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy as the Person of Christ, as the Church and as the hope of restoration to our authentic humanity which is realized, actualized, worked out and lived in union with the Holy Trinity.
For...
"...when God made you, He at once endowed your nature with this perfection: upon the structure of your nature He imprinted an imitation of the perfection of His own nature, just as one would impress upon wax the outline of an emblem...You must then wash away, by a life of virtue, the dirt that clings to your heart like plaster, and then your divine beauty will once again shine forth."
"Our value as a human person, therefore, is not determined by our accomplishments or lack thereof. Our value is not determined by our age, race, gender, nationality or economic status. Our value is not determined by our mental or physical abilities or disabilities. Indeed, it is not determined by our faith or our religious activities. In spite of all, even our sins, we forever remain daughters and sons of the Heavenly Father, who calls us to live in communion with Him. The person of Christ is for all the model and example of life lived in communion with the Father."
+ Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, "Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships" (Berkeley: InterOrthodox Press, 2006) 27.
Even Orthodox parishes can fall into this temptation, identifying success with numbers, functionality and 'rational' practicality of our Liturgical ethos, or a missiology focused on bringing 'the poor' to a level of social reintegration and usefulness.
The focus of liturgy risks becoming a reward for good behavior, the faith becomes a moral ideology, the mission becomes 'crusade' for souls, and Eucharist a sign of membership or personal blessing. In each of these reductions is an presupposition about the value and the function of the Church and of Personhood. A reduction that appeals to a divide of the sacred and profane, an appeal to pagan dualism instead of the recapitulation and restoration that Christianity witnesses and encounters as Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy as the Person of Christ, as the Church and as the hope of restoration to our authentic humanity which is realized, actualized, worked out and lived in union with the Holy Trinity.
For...
"...when God made you, He at once endowed your nature with this perfection: upon the structure of your nature He imprinted an imitation of the perfection of His own nature, just as one would impress upon wax the outline of an emblem...You must then wash away, by a life of virtue, the dirt that clings to your heart like plaster, and then your divine beauty will once again shine forth."
+ St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes, Sermon 6.
"Our value as a human person, therefore, is not determined by our accomplishments or lack thereof. Our value is not determined by our age, race, gender, nationality or economic status. Our value is not determined by our mental or physical abilities or disabilities. Indeed, it is not determined by our faith or our religious activities. In spite of all, even our sins, we forever remain daughters and sons of the Heavenly Father, who calls us to live in communion with Him. The person of Christ is for all the model and example of life lived in communion with the Father."
+ Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, "Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships" (Berkeley: InterOrthodox Press, 2006) 27.
Glory to the Holy Trinity.
