A Glimpse of the Resonances with Chastity and Fasting

"Now he had come to a part of the wood where great globes of yellow fruit hung from the trees—clustered as toy-balloons are clustered on the back of the balloon-man and about the same size. He picked one of them and turned it over and over. The rind was smooth and firm and seemed impossible to tear open. Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment’s hesitation he put the little aperture to his lips. 

He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. “Not like that” was all he could ever say to such inquiries. 

As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favour of tasting this miracle again; the childlike innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future, all seemed to commend the action. 

Yet something seemed opposed to this “reason.” It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity—like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day. As he stood pondering over this and wondering how often in his life on earth he had reiterated pleasures not through desire, but in the teeth of desire and in obedience to a spurious rationalism, he noticed that the light was changing."

+ From CS Lewis' The Space Trilogy, Book 2 Perelandra.

To Always Desire to Know God

 Another ecclesial union, a gathering expressed in the icon is that of mankind and angels...

Every liturgy we celebrate is not just a gathering of humans but also of angels, we sinned against the good angels when we listened to the fallen angels and we therefore need to be reconciled to the good angels for not listening to them. .

According to St Maximus the Confessor, Christ reintroduced us to the good angels when ascending into heaven he passed through all nine ranks of angels and reintroduced us to the angels saying "I forgive them so you must forgive them" .

So one might ask why one needs all this complexity and richness? Is not the Christian life just between me and my God?

We need this communionality, not just of people, but of angels and all this stuff because we're made in God's image and God is a Trinity, God is a community. We are in God's image and likeness as a community rather than as isolated individuals. And this Trinitarian source of everything in this Icon is indicated at the very top of this icon where we see a single source of light seperating into three rays...as an aside but an imporant sort of aside, the heart of this partial hidden sphere at the top is of a dark blue and this symbolizes that God in His essence is entirely uknowable, even in the age to come we will never know God in His essence. He is always the Creator and we are always the creation. However in the outer edges we see white light and this symbolizes God's outgoing grace, His knowability.

I've been married to my wife for about twenty years and I know her but I also don't know her, the day I think I know her, I've lost her. I got to keep reminding myself here's a profound mystery and to get to know her through her energies, but at the heart of my wife made in God's image is a pround mystery.

The more we know this, we'll want to bow down and kiss each other's feet, because before us we have an awesome creature.

So we can say that Christians aren't pantheists, we don't say everything is god, rather we are panentheists, we say "God is in everything"

+ Iconographer Aidan Hart, 'From Genesis to Jerusalem' - Talk on a new icon of creation (talk & panel conversation), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ugxxxz2vAU&t=2094s , fromInstitute for Orthodox Christian Studies Cambridge Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/@institutefororthodoxchrist517 )

The Liturgical Rearing of Saints

"Raise up Children that God recognizes, not that the world honours. Worldly honour may come and that's wonderful when it does but that's not the job of a parish and the job of a parent is to raise up children and say to God, "Lord they are Yours." And to raise them up in such a way that God will recognize thom in every moment of their life.

It might be easy when you're in church and you and the children are being anointed during an Orthodox service or when you're saying prayers together, but there are times when parents and parishes have to struggle to raise up children that God would say to them "I know you".

There's also the opposite side of that...children have to know the voice of their mother, the Church. They have to know the voice of the Church and the only way that children know that voice is by time spent with their mother. Only by time, again and again and again, so that they get used to the mother's voice, our mother the Church. She's a good mother because she always calls us, she's always calling her children to her to come and to be with and spond time and receive the blessings of God that are there and awaiting them.

These blessings are unique, they're many, they're special, they're often individual but they can also be corporate but in order for child to know it's mother's voice it has to be close to her. The child has to be embraced by her, fed by her, held by her, guided by her, sometimes chastised by her, but always loved and cared for by her...and that's the Church.

And as a parish and as a people and as parents that's where our children belong, that's where they find out who they are, that's where they know who they are. It's so essential to spend time with our most holy mother the Church.

I would not trade anything for these kinds of beautiful moments in the Church because they are the seeds that grow the right fruit. It takes a while for us but those seeds grow into the right fruit, properly watered and properly tended to, properly cared for, properly embraced by our mother the Church."

Spoken by a humble Priest, father and servant of the Orthodox Church, September 2024