"Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Almost daily, at least once, I get this question: what is Orthodox? what is Orthodoxy? What is the difference between Orthodox and Catholic? Or Orthodox and you name it? What is the Orthodox faith? What is the difference?
Occasionally some person will engage me, whether it's some person with a Ph.D who is working on some thesis, or someone who is writing an article in the newspaper, or someone who is often literally is living on the street, will ask, what is Orthodox? What's the difference? What's it about?
What is the difference between Orthodoxy and buddhism? What is the liturgy? What is prayer? Why do people have icons? Why do you have candles? Why fasting?
There are many answers of course one can give to this question. I'm sure many if not all of you at some point in your life have been asked this question by neighbours, friends and family. Certainly as I said it's almost a daily question here.
So what is that? What is it that makes us, what is it that drives us to the church and the Orthodox church? What is the truth that we find within her? And simply to the point, I propose to you that Orthodoxy is the experience of God. The experience of God. In a God who is wonderful among His saints. Or as we also heard in Orthos, God who is Holy.
That's not all though. God is holy and he rests among his holy ones. God is holy and he rests among his holy people. The God we believe as Orthodox calls us to Himself and to one another in a community of love, and it begins right here, right now in our lives, as married, as single, as priests, as monks, as office workers, whatever your status in life, it begins in the here and now. There is no “Jesus who loves me” in Orthodoxy. There is no “just Jesus and me.” There is no full experience of God that ignores the saints, His holy people, His people.
What is Orthodox faith? what does Orthodox faith? We hear in St John of Damascus. He says, if somebody asks you that question, bring them to church and let them see the faces of the saints. Don't get into some philosophical or some theological dispute. Just show them the facts. Bring them into the church and show them the face of the saints. That is what we believe.
In the church among God's people, among the saints, we find the mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary. This woman was not spared. Many of the hardships that Saint Paul spoke about to us this morning in his epistle, if you remember, all the things he lists, the hardships that he had to endure. But Mary of Nazareth was not given a privileged life
She didn't come from some palace, she didn't live some kind of protected life where she just sat around with nothing to do, of didn’t have things like most people have to deal with. And like Saint Paul she could say to us, imitate him. Imitate Him as I imitate my Son and my God.
Like Saint Paul she could say that she also had spiritually given birth to Christ in us. She is, because she gave birth in Christ, but the mother of God can say in a more fuller way that she is spiritually our mother who gave birth to us in Christ through her constant intercessions. Through her constant prayers, she brings to birth Christ in our souls. And more than any of the apostles, more than any of them, more than any of the disciples, she, the mother of followed Christ, she listened to Him and obeyed Him. She is the perfect disciple. We speak sometimes about discipleship, and how can we ignore her? She did it perfectly, not without suffering, without pain. Not without ignorance and sometimes wondering but she did it. More than anyone.
But her unique call, what sets her apart is what they call her calling to become Theotokos. To become one body with her Son. And that is why I would liken for us and the other saints.
The Theotokos’ life, from her very conception to her falling asleep has a universal meaning. It is embraced within salvation history.
And the only other saint of which that is true is Saint John the Baptist. Those are the only two feast days we celebrate both the conception, the birth and the falling asleep or the martyrdom of these holy people.
And that is why the church prepares to celebrate the dormition as a moment that touches deeply our, and I underline, I stress, our, OUR… not just of saints and monks on some mountain.
It's our experience of God, this lived experience of God that is in the midst of the coming feast, a feast that from a human point of view is a feast of sorrow but there we are comforted. In the midst of suffering, the loss of someone you love, you discover a surprise: joy. In death we are told of the resurrection.
In loneliness we find in fact there is a call to absolute communion with one another and with God. This experience of God that is made so infinitely present to us in our lives, with all the sufferings, the losses, the grief and the deaths we experience, by the life and the death of a woman, the holy Theotokos and ever Virgin Mary.
Mary of Nazareth is not great because she was super human. She is not the Orthodox version of a superman. She was in fact poor, and that meant a lot in those days. By the political standard of the time, in the Roman empire, she was worth nothing! She was a Jewish young woman from an insignificant depressed little village of no historical worth, and who’s birthgiving was surrounded by gossip. And yet we are preparing for her death as a moment of great joy and hope for humanity.
The experience of constant power, her constant protection and her constant miracles. It is so because of God's good judgement. And because Mary, Miriam, that's what she would have very probably been called on the streets of Nazareth…Miriam of Nazareth completely abandoned herself to do God's will in her life. No matter the cost, no matter the circumstances were. Let it be done to me, according to Your word she said when the Angel visited.
So let us turn to her so that she can help us to imitate Christ as she did, and Saint Paul and all the other the saints did. There are many sufferings, losses and places in our lives where we live a small death. Or where we have been touched by the death of a loved one, let us turn to her. She is close to us in all of these tests, in all of these tribulations, and one is never turned away from her. There is not one teaching, there is not one father of the church, there is not one saint, there is not one prayer in the last 2,000 years that has ever said, that anyone no matter how rotten, how sinful, how ugly, how grace deprived he may be, there's not been one case, one prayer, one teaching that says, that anyone who has gone to her begging for help has the judged, has been condemned, or has been turned away.
No. Absolutely no one.
Let this feast that approaching us, fill us with joy and may it fill all our different tombs, whatever those are, our past, with the flowers of virtue and so that we may experience how profound it is…
There’s a prayer we hear in the Paraclesis many times that says:
May through her, in the coming great feast of the Dormition, may we experience in our lives the grace and the mercy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen."
Occasionally some person will engage me, whether it's some person with a Ph.D who is working on some thesis, or someone who is writing an article in the newspaper, or someone who is often literally is living on the street, will ask, what is Orthodox? What's the difference? What's it about?
What is the difference between Orthodoxy and buddhism? What is the liturgy? What is prayer? Why do people have icons? Why do you have candles? Why fasting?
There are many answers of course one can give to this question. I'm sure many if not all of you at some point in your life have been asked this question by neighbours, friends and family. Certainly as I said it's almost a daily question here.
So what is that? What is it that makes us, what is it that drives us to the church and the Orthodox church? What is the truth that we find within her? And simply to the point, I propose to you that Orthodoxy is the experience of God. The experience of God. In a God who is wonderful among His saints. Or as we also heard in Orthos, God who is Holy.
That's not all though. God is holy and he rests among his holy ones. God is holy and he rests among his holy people. The God we believe as Orthodox calls us to Himself and to one another in a community of love, and it begins right here, right now in our lives, as married, as single, as priests, as monks, as office workers, whatever your status in life, it begins in the here and now. There is no “Jesus who loves me” in Orthodoxy. There is no “just Jesus and me.” There is no full experience of God that ignores the saints, His holy people, His people.
What is Orthodox faith? what does Orthodox faith? We hear in St John of Damascus. He says, if somebody asks you that question, bring them to church and let them see the faces of the saints. Don't get into some philosophical or some theological dispute. Just show them the facts. Bring them into the church and show them the face of the saints. That is what we believe.
In the church among God's people, among the saints, we find the mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary. This woman was not spared. Many of the hardships that Saint Paul spoke about to us this morning in his epistle, if you remember, all the things he lists, the hardships that he had to endure. But Mary of Nazareth was not given a privileged life
She didn't come from some palace, she didn't live some kind of protected life where she just sat around with nothing to do, of didn’t have things like most people have to deal with. And like Saint Paul she could say to us, imitate him. Imitate Him as I imitate my Son and my God.
Like Saint Paul she could say that she also had spiritually given birth to Christ in us. She is, because she gave birth in Christ, but the mother of God can say in a more fuller way that she is spiritually our mother who gave birth to us in Christ through her constant intercessions. Through her constant prayers, she brings to birth Christ in our souls. And more than any of the apostles, more than any of them, more than any of the disciples, she, the mother of followed Christ, she listened to Him and obeyed Him. She is the perfect disciple. We speak sometimes about discipleship, and how can we ignore her? She did it perfectly, not without suffering, without pain. Not without ignorance and sometimes wondering but she did it. More than anyone.
But her unique call, what sets her apart is what they call her calling to become Theotokos. To become one body with her Son. And that is why I would liken for us and the other saints.
The Theotokos’ life, from her very conception to her falling asleep has a universal meaning. It is embraced within salvation history.
And the only other saint of which that is true is Saint John the Baptist. Those are the only two feast days we celebrate both the conception, the birth and the falling asleep or the martyrdom of these holy people.
And that is why the church prepares to celebrate the dormition as a moment that touches deeply our, and I underline, I stress, our, OUR… not just of saints and monks on some mountain.
It's our experience of God, this lived experience of God that is in the midst of the coming feast, a feast that from a human point of view is a feast of sorrow but there we are comforted. In the midst of suffering, the loss of someone you love, you discover a surprise: joy. In death we are told of the resurrection.
In loneliness we find in fact there is a call to absolute communion with one another and with God. This experience of God that is made so infinitely present to us in our lives, with all the sufferings, the losses, the grief and the deaths we experience, by the life and the death of a woman, the holy Theotokos and ever Virgin Mary.
Mary of Nazareth is not great because she was super human. She is not the Orthodox version of a superman. She was in fact poor, and that meant a lot in those days. By the political standard of the time, in the Roman empire, she was worth nothing! She was a Jewish young woman from an insignificant depressed little village of no historical worth, and who’s birthgiving was surrounded by gossip. And yet we are preparing for her death as a moment of great joy and hope for humanity.
The experience of constant power, her constant protection and her constant miracles. It is so because of God's good judgement. And because Mary, Miriam, that's what she would have very probably been called on the streets of Nazareth…Miriam of Nazareth completely abandoned herself to do God's will in her life. No matter the cost, no matter the circumstances were. Let it be done to me, according to Your word she said when the Angel visited.
So let us turn to her so that she can help us to imitate Christ as she did, and Saint Paul and all the other the saints did. There are many sufferings, losses and places in our lives where we live a small death. Or where we have been touched by the death of a loved one, let us turn to her. She is close to us in all of these tests, in all of these tribulations, and one is never turned away from her. There is not one teaching, there is not one father of the church, there is not one saint, there is not one prayer in the last 2,000 years that has ever said, that anyone no matter how rotten, how sinful, how ugly, how grace deprived he may be, there's not been one case, one prayer, one teaching that says, that anyone who has gone to her begging for help has the judged, has been condemned, or has been turned away.No. Absolutely no one.
Let this feast that approaching us, fill us with joy and may it fill all our different tombs, whatever those are, our past, with the flowers of virtue and so that we may experience how profound it is…
There’s a prayer we hear in the Paraclesis many times that says:
“No one is turned away from you,
ashamed and empty, who ?ee to you,
O pure Virgin Theotokos;
but one asks for the favor,
and the gift is received from you,
to the advantage of their own request.”+ From the Intercessory Troparia, of the Paraclesis Prayer prayed during the Fast of Dormition
May through her, in the coming great feast of the Dormition, may we experience in our lives the grace and the mercy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen."
+ P.R., Orthodox Priest in Toronto
