Joint Missions as means of Orthodox Unity

Met Boulos Yazigi & Met Yohanna Ibrahim
(Kidnapped doing humanitarian work in Syria on 22 April, 2013)

I wonder if cooperation in our missions and service can also be a way of actualizing the agreements between the Orthodox families that were worked out in the Orthodox Joint Commission? A similar suggestion was discussed in this post http://orthodoxyisorthodoxy.blogspot.ca/2012/12/practical-steps-to-implement-joint.html :

EPISCOPAL COLLABORATION in such areas as parish visitation, publishing, and social service programs. As soon as Chalcedonians see their bishops alongside non-Chalcedonian bishops, and vice versa, working for a common cause, bonds of fraternity will be quick to form. Bishops of the two communities could make plans for joint visitation of certain parishes, especially in cities where both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian parishes are found (e.g., Boston, New York, Los Angeles). Publication projects, especially those relevant to the common roots and shared faith of the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian traditions, could be undertaken jointly. When responding to the human needs created by natural disasters and political strife, why could our churches not pool their resources, thereby manifesting a united Orthodox witness in the secular world? Why, for example, should the non-Chalcedonian churches not be asked to join with their Chalcedonian counterparts in the work of the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC)? Such common effort produces common vision.

+ Fr Theodore Pulcini, "Eastern Orthodox-Oriental Orthodox Relations: Practical Steps Toward Unity." St. Nersess Theological Review 1. no.1 (New York: St. Nersess Armenian Seminary Press, 2006) 63-65.

Perhaps such unity can be worked out on a lay level even as they are being worked on on the level of our hierarchs. 

Rather than setting up competing jurisdictions in the mission field...

"... in every area there should exist one Orthodox Bishop, with his simple or rather combined flock, who as the true spiritual father and pastor will labour to meet the needs and sensitivities of his flock demonstrating reverence and understanding in regards to the language, particular customs and traditions, etc.

United Orthodoxy will progress and will triumph. The hope of the world today is Orthodoxy and all of us Orthodox need to understand this, putting aside every minor difference and to respond in unity to the will of the Lord, who “desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Tim 2:4)."

+ Metropolitan of New Zealand, Amfilochios, http://modeoflife.org/2013/01/30/the-greatness-of-pan-orthodoxy/

On the Dread and Holy Mysteries of Christ
Delivered four days before Christmas.
by St Gregory Palamas, Translated by Fr Christopher Veniamin.


THE WORD which brings about the salvation of our souls is analogous to seed. Just as farmers first cultivate the earth with the plough, then sow seed, so must we prepare ourselves beforehand to accept the heavenly seed, by which I mean the word of spiritual teaching. But we are not inanimate, unfeeling earth which is cultivated and sown by others, but living, breathing, rational ground. For that reason we must make ourselves ready by means of repentance. To give you an indication of the starting point of repentance and the cultivation of the soul, it is what those who approached John’s baptism did on their own initiative: “They went out”, it says, “and were baptized in Jordan, confessing their sins” (cf Matt. 3:5—6, Mark 1:5).

Ecclesia: More than just community

"I remember attending a Protestant service a few years after we became orthodox, and listening to how earnestly the pastor urged the people to be a community. The church was using so much energy to create programs and groups to create a sense or perhaps reality of oneness. It seemed exhausting and also ineffective considering how passionately the pastor was asking people to get involved.

I remember thinking how strange it seemed in light of the gentle community that we had entered into at our new Orthodox parish. The parish is full of people from various cities, ethnicities, ages, financial backgrounds, and job situations. And yet somehow there I truly feel as though I share something deeply common with these people. I don’t know how to describe the connection and closeness I feel to them, many of whom I still haven’t had a chance to know well at all. But they seem joined to my life and my suffering so deeply. And all I’ve done with them is shown up at church together and shared a common cup."

+ Anna, comment on Fr Stephen Freeman's blog

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/02/11/america-and-the-perversion-of-christianity/

On Interpretation

"I have often inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men, eminent for their sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and, so to speak, universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or anyone else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete  in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

But here someone perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? For this reason; because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another way, so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic," which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the unanimous definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors."

+ St. Vincent of Lérins (+445), Commonitory

The Mission of Being

"one must LIVE the life of a Christian before others—this does more than all preaching, teaching and evangelization.  Pray for them and live the true Christian life before them, then let God affect them, if He wills."

+ Mother Theoliptie amma Demiana, Egypt

Love Between Spouses

Love Between Spouses

What is it that makes a marriage endure? It's not that both are the same character.  For we compliment each other through our differences as we face the tasks of life.

Elder Paisios uses the following common sense example, "A car needs the gas pedal to move but it also needs the brakes to stop." It is through our differences that we find harmony. Elder Paisios said think what would happen if you were both the same character. "For example, if both of you had a short fuse you would tear the house down."  Our compatibility in difference is the harmony of God.

What is essential for a good marriage is respect for each other's uniquness. Respect is what leads to pure love.

Elder Paisios puts it this way:
Couples should have a purified love for one another... To live harmoniously couples need from the very start to set their love as the foundation of their life, a true genuine love, one that is found in spiritual nobility, in sacrifice, not in fake, worldly and carnal love.  If there is love there is sacrifice, one will always arrive at the standpoint of the other, understand the other, have compassion for the other. And when we take our neighbor into our suffering heart, then we take Christ Himself into our heart, and He fills us with His ineffable exultation.
Too often we think of love in terms of carnal or sexual encounters.  Such physical love is not evil in a marriage relationship but such love only unites people externally. When the worldly attributes of such encounters are gone such love separates them and there is the feeling of loss. But the Elder says, "When there is spiritual true love between a couple, and if one spouse losses his or her worldly attributes, not only will this not separate them, but it will unite them all the more."

The Elder shares a story of a Greek-American doctor who told him about what was clearly an encounter with the uncreated light of God. Elder Paisios then seeks to find out the condition for this encounter. The story follows:
I marveled realizing that this man had been made worthy to see the Uncreated Light, and I asked him to tell what had preceded this. "Father", he went on, "I'm married and have three children. We had a good family in the beginning. But later on my wife didn't want to stay home with the children; she wanted us to go out with friends. I went along with her wishes. After some tme she said that she wanted to go out with her freinds alone, without me. I accepted this too, and stayed home with the children. Later, she didn't want us to go on vacation to gather and asked for money to go by herself. Finally, she asked for a separate apartment to live alone. This, too, I did for her; but she had her friends over all the time. During this entire time, I tried to help her through various means, by caring for her, loving her and giving her advice; I tried to make her think of the children who missed her, but she remained unmoved. In the end she took a great deal of money from me and disappeared. I searched and asked for her everywhere, but it was in vain.  I had completely lost track of her. One day, I learned that she had come to Greece and was living in a house of ill repute. I just can't describe how upset I was by her sorry state. In my utter grief, I knelt down to pray. 'My Lord,' I said, 'please help me find her and do whatever I can to help her not lose her soul. I can no longer bear to think of her utterly fallen state of being.' It was thn that the light flooded my room and my heart was filled with peace." "My brother," I told him, "God took notice of your patience, your forgiving spirit and your love, and brought you consolation in this manner."
The central idea behind lasting love is respect and sacrifice.  This is how God loves us.  He shows us how we are to love each other.  Harmony in marriage only comes from this pure love that is beyond all physical aspects of a sexual relationship. With pure love we will see God. Marriage can be a powerful path to union with God.

Reference: Elder Paisios of Mount Athos: Spiritual counsels IV: Family Life, pp 41-48

Posted by FrDn Charles Joiner: http://orthodoxwayoflife.blogspot.ca/2013/05/love-between-spouses.html

Mission and Salvation in Orthodoxy

"Perhaps no single doctrine is more classically expressive of the Orthodox faith than the doctrine of the Divine exchange (divinization or theosis)." + Fr Stephen Freeman

Theosis is salvation in the Orthodox Church (all Orthodox Churches share this teaching. It has been preserved and continues to be witnessed through Patristic Teaching, the Liturgical ethos and the Lives of the Saints).

A Church that doesn't encounter, teach or embrace deification in her lived theology and witness of her saints, cannot in essence be understood as Orthodox.

At the risk of appealing to moralism, one can say that an Orthodox Church cannot remain Orthodox while rejecting deification, because deification is the process of salvation in the Orthodox understanding and a mystery of participation in the Divine Life of Christ by the Love and Power of the Holy Spirit.

A local Church or Orthodox rite that rejects the Orthodox witness of deification will soon begin to appeal to reductionism and misplaced presuppositions to dialogue with the world. She will begin to forget her priestly calling, the offering of all things back to God for the life of the World. She will acquire the language of secularism and feed into the secular machine because she will have forgotten the grammar that the world so desperately needs but has suppressed.

She will look incessantly for contemporary messages of relevance in order to fulfill the very experience her worship and her traditions record, actualize and are evidence of: the divine life of Christ, the life in communion with the Living God.

This has even more significance for a Church that proclaims the evangelical light of the Cross and Resurrection.

Suppress the theology of Theosis and mission becomes a triumphalist colonial outpost, a nationalist endeavor, a marketing strategy, or a means of "getting as many people to a place." Remove or obscure the theology of Theosis and a Church's missionary activity will either be shaped by suffocating rigorism, 'world-changing' handouts, theoretical faith, or sugar-coated sentimentality. Remove the theology of Theosis and she will no longer be an Orthodox mission but will lapse into a missiology of utility and crusade, a reduction of life to ideological certainties instead of a maximalist encounter of apophatic Holiness that manifests and lives in the Light of the Kingdom.


Of the centrality of theosis and of theosis in Orthodox missiology, His Eminence Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathiose (Indian Orthodox Rite) writes:

“Salvation is more than liberation of humanity or humanization, but divinization of the humanity and the cosmos. Finite salvation of the created is not infinite liberation, that is the infinite divinization as humanity is not created for one another alone, but for the Creator as well.

The aim of salvation is not restitution of the unfallen state and Adam and Eve, but elevation to the status and fulness of the Second Adam, which is called Christification or Trinitification.

The first Adam fell when tempted, but the Second Adam did not fall. Therefore our aim is not just humanization, but theosis. It is for this theosis that the Incarnation took place as "good news of a great joy which will come to all the people" (Lk 2:10)...

Ulltimately all the differences and separations between human beings will be dissolved in a mutual sharing of beingness (perichoresis) where 'thine and 'mine' are different in the case of property, purpose or will, but different only in different personal and group identities with full openness to penetrate each other...

The aim of mission can't be anything less than the deification, unification and reconciliation of all churches and the whole world into the unity of the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ. It is not humanization or socialization but divinization, which is social transformation in the model of Holy Trinity, which may be called Trinification. The aim of mission is not only Theosis but along with it the establishment of the Kingdom of God.” 

+ Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathiose . “Sharing God and a Sharing World” (India: ISPCK & CSS, 1995), 150-152.

Awareness of the Orthodox Identity

This past weekend one of our bishops in the Coptic Orthodox Rite graduated from Holy Cross Orthodox School of Theology. We congratulate His Grace Bishop David for this milestone and ask for his prayers as his sons and daughters in Christ follow his step in Orthodox Education. Many years Sayedna!

During the graduation ceremony His Beatitude Ieronymos of the Greek Orthodox Rite gave a beautiful address to all the graduates and by extension to the clergy and lay of the North America. The entire address is worth reading as His Beatitude emphasizes Lex Orandi Est Lex Credendi, living a liturgical life (ie.this implies living parishes who live Orthodox theology...theologia prima) and the need for Orthodox to encounter the world with truth and love, to preach with an Orthodox theology and also participate and advocate in letourgia with the poor, oppressed and confused. 

I hope that his words resonate with you, that as Orthodox the imperative for cooperation and collaboration among each other is as important as our agreed theological statements. That when we hear about kidnapped Orthodox metropolitans in Syria we can advocate for freedom and order in the same way as we would if the same were to befall one of our own bishops. That we speak truth and proclaim Resurrection in the midst of the cultures of death that distract us from the sanctity of life by appealing to secularized versions of choice and freedom. That we proclaim the end of the separation of sacred and profane, and address the distortions of the diabolic categorizations of the world into 'religious' and 'secular'. 

That we witness what we partake of, beholding the beauty of the Lord and becoming Christ.

Glory to the Holy Trinity. Je Nai Nan. May God have mercy on the Church. 

Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and those in the tombs bestowing life!

"This means that we, clergy and laity together, should live the developments of the Church. However, the people’s essential participation in the life of the Church presupposes living parishes. Amidst the confusion of our times what needs to be made clear is that parishes are not like branches for delivering religious services but the centres and the points of reference of our lives. This is where life begins. This is where it finds its meaning, is sanctified, brightened and distinguished. This is where life finds its way to eternity. 

The parish is the place, and parish life is the way where, through Holy Communion, worship and partaking of the mystical Body of Christ, survival is transformed into life and death is defeated. 

Wherever each faithful lives, the parish is his or her greater family and the priest is the father. And what parent who wishes a holy and virtuous life for his or her child will ever remain indifferent if he or she sees that child sick or starving or taking the wrong way? 

Similarly, in our ministration too we should never lose the balance between the sanctifying work and charity. Personally, I do not know of a single saint of our Church who was not charitable or who remained indifferent to human suffering. 

Worship is the driving force which cultivates and nourishes love; which makes us turn to our fellow human being and generates charity. It is therefore of vital importance that the life of worship, our charitable and, more widely, cultural and social works should exude an ecclesiastical ethos and Orthodox spirituality. Let me insist on this point, because some of you have been born and grown up within environments of other religious traditions and must now, as Orthodox clergymen and theologians, constantly cultivate the awareness of the Orthodox identity and self-consciousness and of the uniqueness of the Orthodox theological tradition."

+ His Beatitude Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece at the Graduation Ceremony of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology on 18 May 2013. http://www.goarch.org/news/ieronymosaddress20130518 (Also included in the rest of the post)

Address of His Beatitude Ieronymos at the Graduation Ceremony of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology

Source: http://www.goarch.org/news/ieronymosaddress20130518 

Moralism and Pietism

Of late, I've been pondering on two aspects of 'pop' Christianity that might be contrary to the authentic Christian witness and which feed into the 'Second Storey Universe' and the packaging of God. 

One could say that moralism and pietism are two temptations that the Church faces.  In past posts we've discussed 'ethos' and it becomes difficult to positively list what this Orthodox 'ethos' is, because to do so could be a reduction itself. However perhaps we can point out that looking at the presuppositions of moralism and pietism, both definitely tempt the Church away from her calling.

If Packaged

 "The great tragedy, of course, is that contemporary Christianity has been so “gutted” by those who claim to be its reformers, that a central doctrine of the faith can now be used by non-believers in an effort to undermine a modernized Christianity that was only invented a few years ago."

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2009/04/23/a-faith-that-cannot-be-defended/

An interesting statement which I think suggests the dangers of reducing lived theology to moralism (codes and moral do's and don't's) and pietism (second storey, personal salvation and spiritualism). 

There is also an subtle suggestion concerning the presuppositions when one deals with moralism, pietism or question about the Orthodox faith. One would hope that Orthodox presuppositions and Orthodox encounters with the world are not based on reductionism and the tendency to package. 

Of course Fr Stephen is pointing out the issue of the "packages" created by the Reformation. Such packages are eventually threatened whenever someone challenges the materials or the methods of that "easy to access pacakge" or "box." 

Another Orthodox priest once said a rather profound statement in a talk introducing Orthodoxy: "we don't start discussions of Orthodoxy with proving the existence of God." 

Likewise in another blog post Fr Stephen points out:

I was challenged on the question of “proving God’s existence.” I understand the question but I do not think the question understands God.

http://glory2godforallthings.com/2010/06/20/reasons-god/

I think our theology, our social responsibility and our worship, if packaged, if reduced, truly runs the risk of misunderstanding God and distracting us from union with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perhaps this is why the appeal for non-Orthodox, or popular evangelical mega-Church materials and methods run contrary to the Life of the Church, because at the level of their presuppositions these popular consumer products branded as Christian only perpetuate the packaging and reduction of God and His people, His Bride, His Holy Church.

Je Nai Nan. Lord have mercy on us Your people.