"The fathers assert that perfect love is sinless. And it seems to me that in the same way a perfect sense of death is free from fear."
"...some of us are married and some are not. Some of us are called to be priests and ministers and some are not. But the sacraments of matrimony and priesthood concern all of us, because they concern our life as vocation. The meaning, the essence and the end of all vocation is the mystery of Christ and the Church. It is through the Church that each one of us finds that the vocation of all vocations is to follow Christ in the fullness of His priesthood: in His love for man and the world, His love for their ultimate fulfillment in the abundant life of the Kingdom."
"The Christian belief in the resurrection is not merely a selfish assurance that the “I” will not perish. Jesus says that in his Father’s house are many rooms (John 14:2). Love is the foundation and mortar of that many-roomed house. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23).
On my first visit to Armenia in 1990, I visited the home of Anahid and Kevork Oynoyan. They had lost their twelve-year-old son, Armen, in the catastrophic earthquake of December 1988, and Kevork was profoundly depressed as a result; Late onee evening, after the electricity had been cut off, Kevork and I sat at their small kitchen table lit by a solitary candle. He got up and brought back a copy of the New Testament and a book that had been distributed by the Hare Krishna sect describing the transmigration and reincarnation of the soul. He asked if I would explain the difference between reincarnation and the Christian belief in resurrection. He said that in his atheism classes years before he had been taught that Christianity is spiritualist. If that was so, weren’t reincarnation and resurrection essentially the same?
I suggested that we read 1 Corinthians 15, where St. Paul defends the belief in the resurrection of the body and the soul. In silence, visibly and deeply absorbed, Kevork read that chapter not once but several times. Then joyfully he shouted, "So Christianity is materialist!” The darkness had lifted because in St. Paul's teaching Kevork had discovered what he had hoped would be there but had not found in the book on reincarnation: the assurance that he would see his son again, recognize him, and be able to love him in an embrace of resurrected flesh. In the person of Jesus Christ, Gods love is manifested as life. Jesus’ resurrection proclaims the triumphant power of love and life over death."
"You are talking about is free will which is a theological topic. What's happened is that scientists are learning values. They just aren't admitting that they learned this from the theological language.
It's the same when the theologians ignore the science, and instead of taking account of it, starts talking about the warfare and use that monastic vocabulary, the warfare of the flesh, the warfare with the world, the separation of flesh and spirit and all that kind of stuff.
There's a book ... The last bullet here is about therapy and that's really the outcome of this dialogue. The outcome of this dialogue is that it is ... If we are going to be loving, if, as it says here, "The greatest mystery is love" then the outcome, in that case the applied outcome of the dialogue between science and religion should be therapy; but it's got to be a therapy that is adequately scientific and adequately theological.
The example of what I am talking about, there's a book by Archmandrite Vlachos called The Orthodox Psychotherapy, which over and over and over and over again, the Orthodox hold up as, "See all of this psychotherapy stuff is all bunk," You look at it and it could have been written by 5th century monk. It's all about diseases of the soul.
I took a course from Father Hopko, Tom Hopko; it was so powerful I took it twice, called Vices and Virtues. What he did was to put the 12-steps program on one hand and monastic literature on the other hand and show ... Analyze the relationship.
The outcome of this was that if you do it this way you end up with a dialogue. So if you want to be therapeutic you don't just give the person the monastic literature and say, "Repent." You send them also the 12-steps. It's hard to describe this, it was exceedingly powerful because it was taking account of both sides to create a therapy that took advantage of the best that science had created as well as the best spiritual that pastoral care created. Now that we’re in a more biochemical age, it’s gotten even more complicated. There’s even more for therapist, for therapy to learn about the brain, about neurology, about all those kinds of things. Schizophrenia is the great example of course.
At the moment, the pendulum is swinging toward a biomechanical model of mental conditions. In the ‘70’s, the pendulum was all the way at the other side. What we need is some kind of dialogue here.
I end with two examples. The one example is to illustrate my point of a therapy. This son who is the monk, he ought to be dead.
He ought to be dead. When he was one year old, he was put to an irreversible coma by cerebral meningitis. This was in France, to all intent and purposes, he was dead. The doctor was prepared.
Now, without any hesitation, without any doubt, he was saved miraculously. He was saved, first of all, by the sacrament, by unction. In the middle of the sacrament, he went from coma to full consciousness. He was saved by prayer, by community service, by care, by the intervention of St. Herman of Alaska; by a whole lot of things. It’s a long and complicated story. It is also absolutely unmistakable when he was saved by the wisdom of the doctor, who was an atheist.
The meningitis was of a sort that it was incurable at the time and she had to use all kinds of her scientific knowledge; she had to use experimental drugs that were only known in Chicago, in a laboratory in Chicago. So she had to have this scientific knowledge. There were all kinds of interventions. Nevertheless, it’s a miracle. He’s supposed to be totally brain damage. The scientific measurement, the EEG said he was supposed to be totally brain damaged. At the end of the process, the MRI said there was nothing wrong with his brain. It was a first MRI, one of the first MRI’s in France.
Now, If we fall back on the old language, this starts to look like monastic ideography, life of the saint. If we fall back in the old theological language, we say, “It’s a supernatural, not a natural theory.”
The point I’m trying to make here is that there’s no possible way, no possible way to draw the line to what cause what. If both religion and science explain existence by looking for causes, which is what they do they both do. In religion the cause of everything is God. In science, the cause of everything is whatever the laws nature say, is the cause.
If one is searching for causes to explain this, there’s no possible way to draw the line. If one is trying to analyze out the threads, how much was sacramental power? How much was the worthy power of the experimental drug? How much was the care of the community? You can’t filter it out. It’s all this … The story is one single piece. You understand?
The clue to the old story is love. I came in one night, they allowed my wife to live in the hospital with this boy because we were in France and he was new to France. It was first time that the hospital had broken its policy and allowed the parents to stay, because we told them that the boy only spoke Russian. By the way, when he came out of the coma, his first language was French, which he only heard in the hospital in a coma.
I came one night and found this strange woman sitting in the room with my wife, they were holding each other and crying. It turned out to be the doctor. What she used to do was be Madam Doctor all day long, using her best scientific knowledge and then she just came and visited my wife at night. That’s love.
When she saw the boy walked for the first time, that’s when she told us that she was an atheist. She said in French, it’s very good in French, she said “This is the true resurrection.”
There was another patient of the same doctor, another kid. The kid was born hydrocephalic. He never learned to talk. At this time, he was about twelve years old, he was dying, he was dying of leukemia. It was the end of the road. There was no cure. The hardship on his parent’s family, they lived fifty kilometers away, it was terrible. They have six other children.
I watched this boy’s behavior, everyday he’d walk down the hallway and he’d leave one of his toys outside the isolation room. I thought, “What is going on here? What is this?” In the meanwhile, I am asking, “God, why is Kristoff,” his name in Greek means the one who carries Christ, “Why is Kristoff dying and why is my son living? What does this mean? How is this the great plan of God?”
What I realized is that Kristoff had reached the total fullness of his capacity to love. He had learned as much as he could learn about love. So the arc of his life is complete. Therefore, it was alright. Obviously, it meant, my son still needs something to learn, something ahead. That’s why God is planning to live his coming back to life.
The point of the story is that, there is no way to separate these things out. Saint Basil was right, the wisdom of God is a whole. We’re all in the dialogue together, that has been the point of all three of these lectures. We’ll get somewhere if we realize that we’re all in the dialogue together."
*Image source: "Cassandra at Sick Kids," by Andrew Stawicki from PhotoSensitive, Precious Time, Andrew Stawicki, http://www.photosensitive.com/project-gallery-n.php?i=20&id=2&p=1
+ St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
"...some of us are married and some are not. Some of us are called to be priests and ministers and some are not. But the sacraments of matrimony and priesthood concern all of us, because they concern our life as vocation. The meaning, the essence and the end of all vocation is the mystery of Christ and the Church. It is through the Church that each one of us finds that the vocation of all vocations is to follow Christ in the fullness of His priesthood: in His love for man and the world, His love for their ultimate fulfillment in the abundant life of the Kingdom."
+ Fr Alexander Schmemann, For Life of the World
"The Christian belief in the resurrection is not merely a selfish assurance that the “I” will not perish. Jesus says that in his Father’s house are many rooms (John 14:2). Love is the foundation and mortar of that many-roomed house. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23).
On my first visit to Armenia in 1990, I visited the home of Anahid and Kevork Oynoyan. They had lost their twelve-year-old son, Armen, in the catastrophic earthquake of December 1988, and Kevork was profoundly depressed as a result; Late onee evening, after the electricity had been cut off, Kevork and I sat at their small kitchen table lit by a solitary candle. He got up and brought back a copy of the New Testament and a book that had been distributed by the Hare Krishna sect describing the transmigration and reincarnation of the soul. He asked if I would explain the difference between reincarnation and the Christian belief in resurrection. He said that in his atheism classes years before he had been taught that Christianity is spiritualist. If that was so, weren’t reincarnation and resurrection essentially the same?
I suggested that we read 1 Corinthians 15, where St. Paul defends the belief in the resurrection of the body and the soul. In silence, visibly and deeply absorbed, Kevork read that chapter not once but several times. Then joyfully he shouted, "So Christianity is materialist!” The darkness had lifted because in St. Paul's teaching Kevork had discovered what he had hoped would be there but had not found in the book on reincarnation: the assurance that he would see his son again, recognize him, and be able to love him in an embrace of resurrected flesh. In the person of Jesus Christ, Gods love is manifested as life. Jesus’ resurrection proclaims the triumphant power of love and life over death."
+ Vigen Guroian
"You are talking about is free will which is a theological topic. What's happened is that scientists are learning values. They just aren't admitting that they learned this from the theological language.
It's the same when the theologians ignore the science, and instead of taking account of it, starts talking about the warfare and use that monastic vocabulary, the warfare of the flesh, the warfare with the world, the separation of flesh and spirit and all that kind of stuff.
There's a book ... The last bullet here is about therapy and that's really the outcome of this dialogue. The outcome of this dialogue is that it is ... If we are going to be loving, if, as it says here, "The greatest mystery is love" then the outcome, in that case the applied outcome of the dialogue between science and religion should be therapy; but it's got to be a therapy that is adequately scientific and adequately theological.
The example of what I am talking about, there's a book by Archmandrite Vlachos called The Orthodox Psychotherapy, which over and over and over and over again, the Orthodox hold up as, "See all of this psychotherapy stuff is all bunk," You look at it and it could have been written by 5th century monk. It's all about diseases of the soul.
I took a course from Father Hopko, Tom Hopko; it was so powerful I took it twice, called Vices and Virtues. What he did was to put the 12-steps program on one hand and monastic literature on the other hand and show ... Analyze the relationship.
The outcome of this was that if you do it this way you end up with a dialogue. So if you want to be therapeutic you don't just give the person the monastic literature and say, "Repent." You send them also the 12-steps. It's hard to describe this, it was exceedingly powerful because it was taking account of both sides to create a therapy that took advantage of the best that science had created as well as the best spiritual that pastoral care created. Now that we’re in a more biochemical age, it’s gotten even more complicated. There’s even more for therapist, for therapy to learn about the brain, about neurology, about all those kinds of things. Schizophrenia is the great example of course.
At the moment, the pendulum is swinging toward a biomechanical model of mental conditions. In the ‘70’s, the pendulum was all the way at the other side. What we need is some kind of dialogue here.
He ought to be dead. When he was one year old, he was put to an irreversible coma by cerebral meningitis. This was in France, to all intent and purposes, he was dead. The doctor was prepared.
Now, without any hesitation, without any doubt, he was saved miraculously. He was saved, first of all, by the sacrament, by unction. In the middle of the sacrament, he went from coma to full consciousness. He was saved by prayer, by community service, by care, by the intervention of St. Herman of Alaska; by a whole lot of things. It’s a long and complicated story. It is also absolutely unmistakable when he was saved by the wisdom of the doctor, who was an atheist.
The meningitis was of a sort that it was incurable at the time and she had to use all kinds of her scientific knowledge; she had to use experimental drugs that were only known in Chicago, in a laboratory in Chicago. So she had to have this scientific knowledge. There were all kinds of interventions. Nevertheless, it’s a miracle. He’s supposed to be totally brain damage. The scientific measurement, the EEG said he was supposed to be totally brain damaged. At the end of the process, the MRI said there was nothing wrong with his brain. It was a first MRI, one of the first MRI’s in France.
Now, If we fall back on the old language, this starts to look like monastic ideography, life of the saint. If we fall back in the old theological language, we say, “It’s a supernatural, not a natural theory.”
The point I’m trying to make here is that there’s no possible way, no possible way to draw the line to what cause what. If both religion and science explain existence by looking for causes, which is what they do they both do. In religion the cause of everything is God. In science, the cause of everything is whatever the laws nature say, is the cause.
If one is searching for causes to explain this, there’s no possible way to draw the line. If one is trying to analyze out the threads, how much was sacramental power? How much was the worthy power of the experimental drug? How much was the care of the community? You can’t filter it out. It’s all this … The story is one single piece. You understand?
The clue to the old story is love. I came in one night, they allowed my wife to live in the hospital with this boy because we were in France and he was new to France. It was first time that the hospital had broken its policy and allowed the parents to stay, because we told them that the boy only spoke Russian. By the way, when he came out of the coma, his first language was French, which he only heard in the hospital in a coma.
I came one night and found this strange woman sitting in the room with my wife, they were holding each other and crying. It turned out to be the doctor. What she used to do was be Madam Doctor all day long, using her best scientific knowledge and then she just came and visited my wife at night. That’s love.
When she saw the boy walked for the first time, that’s when she told us that she was an atheist. She said in French, it’s very good in French, she said “This is the true resurrection.”
There was another patient of the same doctor, another kid. The kid was born hydrocephalic. He never learned to talk. At this time, he was about twelve years old, he was dying, he was dying of leukemia. It was the end of the road. There was no cure. The hardship on his parent’s family, they lived fifty kilometers away, it was terrible. They have six other children.
I watched this boy’s behavior, everyday he’d walk down the hallway and he’d leave one of his toys outside the isolation room. I thought, “What is going on here? What is this?” In the meanwhile, I am asking, “God, why is Kristoff,” his name in Greek means the one who carries Christ, “Why is Kristoff dying and why is my son living? What does this mean? How is this the great plan of God?”
 |
What I realized is that Kristoff had reached the total fullness of his capacity to love. He had learned as much as he could learn about love. So the arc of his life is complete. Therefore, it was alright. Obviously, it meant, my son still needs something to learn, something ahead. That’s why God is planning to live his coming back to life.
The point of the story is that, there is no way to separate these things out. Saint Basil was right, the wisdom of God is a whole. We’re all in the dialogue together, that has been the point of all three of these lectures. We’ll get somewhere if we realize that we’re all in the dialogue together."
+ Professor Richard Schneider, Transcript of Lecture on Dialogue and Christian Unity
"In our act of dying, God beckons us one last time to relinquish all of our earthly loves and place them on the heavenly altar of his enduring love. If we redirect these loves toward God, as Christ did, then these loves needn't end in death, for God will raise them with us into eternal life."
+ Vigen Guroian
"In 1919 at a moment when the Civil War was raging like a storm over Russia, when our cities were falling prey to one army after the other, a woman with two young children was trapped in a city which had fallen into the hands of the Red Army, while her husband was an officer of the White Army. To save her life and their, she hid in a small cabin at the outskirts of the city. She wanted to wait until the first surges were over and try to escape afterwards. On the second day someone knocked at her door towards the evening. She opened it in fear and she was confronted with a young woman of her age. The woman said ‘You must flee at once because you have been discovered and betrayed; you will be shot tonight’. The other woman, showing her children that stood there, said, ‘How could we do that? We would be recognised at once, and they can’t walk far.’ The young woman who so far had been nothing but a neighbour, someone living next door, became that great thing which one calls a neighbour in the Gospel. She grew to the full stature of the Gospel of God, of the good news of the dignity and graciousness of man, and she said ‘They won’t look for you, I shall stay behind.’ And the mother said ‘But they will kill you.’ ‘Yes’, said the woman, ‘but I have no children, you must go.’ And the mother went.
It is not easy, I would say it is almost sacrilegious, to try to imagine what happened in the heart and mind of this woman in the course of the hours that preceded her death. But we can look back to the Gospel and see what happened in the Gospel to those who were the prototype, the archetype of this great and holy woman.
Almost two thousand years before, a young man of her age was waiting for his death. His name was Jesus. He was in a garden wrapped in darkness of the coming night. There was no reason within him why he should die. He was young, healthy; he had done nothing wrong. He was waiting to die in a vicarious way other people’s death. He was waiting in the darkness of the night, and death was coming to kill life eternal itself. Three times he went towards his disciples, hoping for a word that would strengthen his heart, for companionship: not to be released, not to be saved from the oncoming death, but to feel that there was a human presence, compassion, love and awe. The disciples were asleep. He got no help.
Natalie in the coming night, in the gathering darkness, in the cold that was falling from the walls and the roof, had nowhere to turn; there was no-one to whom she could turn. She was alone, facing the coming of another woman’s death that would be enacted in her body, in her destiny. She could have walked out. The moment she passed the threshold, she was again Natalie, not the mother. Two thousand years before on that same cold night when Christ was betrayed into the hands of his murderer, the strongest, the most daring of his disciples was challenged three times, twice by a little maid in the courtyard, once by a group of standers-by; he was not asked ‘Are you Jesus?’ he was told ‘You were with him!’ and three times he said ‘No’, and walked out of the courtyard. Into what? Into security. He turned round and the eyes of Christ met his eyes, and he remembered and he wept. But he walked out. Natalie did not walk out, she stayed inside.
How often must she have thought ‘Is there any hope that at least my sacrifice will be useful?’ Again, two thousand years ago a man was waiting for death, John the Baptist, and before he died, he knew that death was inevitable, he sent two of his disciples to Christ to ask Him ‘Are you He for whom we waited, or shall we expect another one?’ That means ‘If you are Him, then my life of asceticism, my aloneness, my preaching, my imprisonment and death, all the tragedy and hardship of my life, make sense. But if you are not, then I have been betrayed by God and by man, by my own inspiration and by the weakness of the living God. Are you He?’ Christ did not give him a direct answer. He gave him the answer of the prophet ‘Go and tell him what you see – the blind see, the lame walk and the poor proclaim the good new – news about God – news about man.’ The humility of the one and the greatness of the other.
Natalie probably asked herself the same question – was it in vain that she was dying? There was no answer, only the hours passed, the cold of the early morning came and with it, death. The door was brutally opened and they did not even take the trouble of dragging her out. She was shot where she was.
This is the answer which the Christian can give to the tragedy of history. The place where we must stand. Natalie stood where Christ had stood, and where indeed Christ stands now, risen in Heaven with his hands and sides seared with nails and the spear. He stands at the very heart of human history, human suffering, human death, human anguish and tragedy. But He stands there like a rock. He stands there firm, having endured everything, every human suffering in thought and body, and he says to us Christians, ‘That is where you must stand, not in the dreamland of a faith that gives you the illusion that you are already in heaven while you have never been on earth. No, at the heart of human suffering and tragedy but with a faith unshaken, with a certainty that He was expected by Job, has come’. And if we stand there, we may undergo all that was promised by him. You remember the passage: ‘Are you prepared and capable of drinking the cup which I shall drink, of undergoing what I shall go?’ ‘Yes’, said his two disciples. This must be our answer, and when tragedy comes, we must answer again as Isaiah spoke: ‘ “Whom shall I send?” said the Lord. “Here I am, send me.”’ Like a sheep among the wolves; like the Son of God among men."
+ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
*Image source: "Cassandra at Sick Kids," by Andrew Stawicki from PhotoSensitive, Precious Time, Andrew Stawicki, http://www.photosensitive.com/project-gallery-n.php?i=20&id=2&p=1
