Ancient Church

Like everyone else in the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, I was in Johnstown, Pennsylvania earlier this week for the consecration and enthronement of our new Bishop, His Grace, Bishop Gregory of Nyssa. It is almost impossible to fully describe what we experienced there. I was there along with my two choir directors, and I’m sure we’ll all be talking about it for months. I’ll try, as best I can, to boil things down. I have no doubt that I will fail in fully describing what happened, but here goes:

1. Consecration and enthronement of His Grace, Bishop Gregory: An awful lot of people were there, and an awful lot more watched the consecration and enthronement over the internet, and heard His Grace’s statement at the conclusion about his goals and concerns for our Diocese. His grasp of the needs of our Diocese was very impressive, and his statements regarding children, those who have fallen away from the flock and the need to bring non-Orthodox into the church were inspiring.

You may not have heard his second set of remarks given at the banquet that afternoon. In a more informal setting, His Grace revealed himself to be warm and gracious and truly loving. He promised not only to visit each parish, but to be at each one for several days, to look each person in the eye and discuss the parish in depth. He showed a humor and directness which was disarming. And, significant to me, he showed himself to be a true son of North Carolina, in his wit, his cadence, his speech and his mannerisms. This is a man that it is easy to feel at home with.

A meaningful sign of the measure of our new Bishop was the presence of so many from the Greek Archdiocese who came both to celebrate the day and to mourn their loss. Seated next to me in the Cathedral was the pastor of a large Greek congregation near Atlanta. Over and over, he kept telling me “you guys are so lucky! So lucky!” And a former priest of our Diocese, who now pastors a Greek church in Florida, drove nonstop to Johnstown, fueled by coffee and an unquenchable love to be present for the consecration of his spiritual father and friend. It is early, very early, but I will confidently say that we have been greatly blessed by our gracious and loving God.

(Of course, some things never change, Johnstown being one of those constants. True to form, it snowed the day of the consecration.)

2. The appearance of the miraculous weeping icon from St. George Church in Taylor, Pennsylvania: Many of you are probably aware of the weeping icon of the Theotokos in our parish in Taylor, Pennsylvania, St. George Orthodox Church. I was not aware of it beforehand, but the icon and a second weeping icon from that parish were brought to Johnstown and placed in the altar of the Cathedral during the consecration. Fr. Mark Leasure, pastor of St. George, told me after the consecration that upon being placed in the altar the icon immediately began to exude myrrh in great amounts. So great was the flow that the myrrh was used to anoint the new bishop during the consecration.

(As a side note, our Bishop’s name before he became a monk was…George Just saying….)

Those of us visiting from Murphy know this to be true, because we were in the presence of the icon shortly afterwards in the chapel of Christ the Saviour Seminary. In separate, rather roundabout ways, we all ended up at the seminary after the service. I walked down there with my former roommate, who is now the priest in residence there. He and I entered through the chapel door, and then my choir directors came into the chapel by another door. There was a knock on the outer door, and my friend said, “They’re here.” I didn’t know who he meant, but I opened the door and Fr. Mark and a seminarian entered, carrying the icons.

I have had very limited experience with miraculous icons, and I’ll confess that I had the impression that when an icon wept, it did so in a trickle, in small rivulets.

The Taylor icon was not operating in that way at all. Myrrh was sheeting down the front of the icon, the entire surface covered with the fragrant oil. The flow was so great that Fr. Mark went to each person in the room and allowed drops of the myrrh to fall on each person’s hands. We were all overcome with emotion, and began to sing some hymns to the Theotokos.

Think about this for a minute. An ordinary piece of wood, some paint — things that are in our homes, are common in our everyday life. Have you seen your home, your furniture, your woodpile, even any of the paintings or artwork in your home exuding a thick myrrh which is fragrant with roses? I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t happen in my house, or in my experience. Instead, we know that God (and the most holy Theotokos) permits this to happen for any number of reasons, but always for our benefit, always as a blessing to those of faith. Ponder on this a little bit. This is a miracle. This is grace that we can smell, that we can feel, that we can see.

At my request, Fr. Mark gave me a generous piece of cotton batting, soaked with myrrh, to bring back to St. Nicholas.

It is my intention to use the oil to anoint everyone at the end of Liturgy on December 9, when we celebrate our parish feast day. If, by chance, you are near Murphy that day, please make every effort to be there.

Well, as anyone can plainly see, I haven’t done anything with this blog in well over a year, and precious little in the year before that. There is a reason, although you must decide if it is good or not.

I started this blog about five years ago, at about the same time I was tonsured as a reader in the Orthodox Church. It originally resided at a blog space called journalspace, and then migrated to the present site, changing names along the way. Still, the original name of minor clergy remained fully appropo, as I became successively a minor subdeacon, deacon and finally, this past May, the most minor of priests. The further along I went, the more I neglected the blog, as duties of one sort or another laid claim to my time. Not that I mind! It has been a wonderful journey, both terrible and awesome on the original sense of both words.

Which brings us to today. My bishop has been good enough to assign me to open a mission in Murphy, North Carolina, in the southern highlands. St. Nicholas Orthodox Church opened its doors in August of 2009. I cannot begin to say how gratifying this work has been. Pray for us!

So the time has come to close down this blog, although I’ll leave it up to satisfy the incredibly huge number of people who come here in search of a good pumpkin cornbread recipe. But it is not the end of blogging. As an adjunct to our parish web page, you will find a blog, St. Nicholas in the Mountains. You are welcome to keep up with us and my occasional ruminations. Please visit!

And (in case you forgot) pray for us!

This is a homily I gave on Sunday, February 3, at my parish. Unless you go to my parish, you will likely be disappointed. (Well, actually, I suppose even if you went to my parish, you might have been disappointed, but let’s pretend otherwise.) In any event, it was directed at more local concerns than my usual. The last twelve months have been a little difficult for us, which accounts for some of what you will read, assuming you continue on.

Now we just have to build the Temple. Pray for us!

Yesterday we celebrated one of the twelve feasts of the Lord, a major feast of the Church. It was the Meeting of the Lord at the Temple, and as we stood at the property on East Cherokee Drive, consecrating the land to the service of God, I could not help but be struck by the rightness, by the appropriateness of the day.

You will remember the story of the Feast. In accordance with Jewish law, the Virgin Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after Jesus’ birth. There, they presented the child, as a first born son, to the service of God. This was a requirement of the law. In the Book of Exodus, we find God’s commandment that the people “sanctify to me all the first-born, whatever opens the womb”. As we see repeatedly, Christ in every way fulfilled the ancient law, being obedient to His Father in all things.

But the law was also directed at purification. As Metropolitan Hierotheos points out, it was considered that under the law both the mother and the child required purification. This is not to say that children are not a blessing, nor that childbirth is itself something which is unclean, yet under the law it was a matter which required ritual purification.

As we know, of course, neither Christ nor the Theotokos required purification or cleansing. The birth was virgin, and the Father of Christ was no man. Yet it was fitting and entirely expected that Christ, the Son of God, would fulfill the law in each and every respect.

But there were others in the Temple that day, and it is on them that my thoughts have turned over the last week, and particularly yesterday. The first is the Righteous Simeon. The tradition of the Church tells us a great deal about him. We are told that he was one of the 70 translators of the Old Testament into Greek, the Septuagint. Locked into separate rooms, so that each of their translations would be their independent work, uninfluenced by others, each of the 70 produced identical translations. Simeon, however, expressed skepticism at the translation of the passage in Isaiah which foretold that a virgin would give birth, saying that it was impossible and could never happen. He received a revelation from the Holy Spirit, was scolded for his disbelief, and was told that he would live to see the Son of God in the flesh. For many long years, Simeon lived in expectation of the day that he would be blessed to see the Messiah, truly born of a virgin. On the day on which the Infant Jesus was taken to the Temple, he was told by the Holy Spirit to go to the Temple, and that the time he had awaited for so long was at hand.

The Prophetess Anna was the other person that St. Luke talks about on that day. An elderly woman, long a widow, she had devoted her life after her husband died to prayer and to fasting. Her devotion to God was so great that she was divinely given insight into the truth concerning the child, and what his coming meant to all people.

Two people. A man and a woman. For years they had dreamed of and longed for this day, when they would finally saw God face to face. And while God in the flesh could have been revealed to them anyplace, that ultimate revelation happened in the Temple, in the house of God.

It is in the Temple that Simeon saw the fulfillment of his greatest desire, of the salvation that he has sought for so long.

It is in the Temple that the Righteous Anna, having devoted her life to prayer and supplication to God, is finally allowed to see God face to face, and is granted her ultimate understanding of the meaning of the Lord’s birth.

It is in the Temple that the old met the new, and the New was revealed. It is in the Temple that the Lord was presented as a pure sacrifice. It is to the Temple that the Virgin Mary, the very Theotokos, and St. Joseph humbly came, without complaint and with joy, to fulfill their duty in all piety and peacefulness.

The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, but we now stand on the threshold of building and offering our own Temple to the service of the Lord. It is no coincidence that Orthodox churches have traditionally been referred to as Temples. The Lord himself said that “where two or three are gathered, there I am also”. While God reveals Himself in all places and at all times, it is in the Temple that we come together to worship, to join our voices with those throughout eternity, saints and believers, angels and archangels, before the very throne of God. We meet to serve a molieben, to supplicate God for aid and assistance. We meet and serve vespers, and ask that “our prayers may arise in Thy sight as incense”, offering our evening worship to God. And on Sundays and feast days, Soul Saturdays and Presanctified Liturgies, we meet and eat and drink of the most pure body of Christ.

All of this happens in the Church, in the Orthodox temple. Just as the Christ child was presented at the Temple so many years ago, he comes and he meets us. To be sure, He has always done so, in all the years that this mission has been in existence. He has met us in chapels of other faiths, in restaurants, in conference rooms and in basements. But never before have we been in a position to build a true temple, a sacred space in which God abides, and where every time we open the door, the Lord meets us. A space where icons grace the walls and we can gaze into the eyes of the great saints of the church. A space where our incense freely rises to mingle with our prayers. A space where angels guard our altar, where we tread sanctified and holy ground every time we open the doors.

We have never had this. But we are on the threshold, the very doorway, of this great blessing and stunning miracle of God.

We have never had a home. But now we can see it, taking shape before our very eyes. I assure you; the angels see it and sing. The saints see it and thank God for the fulfillment of their prayers. We should look at it, and fall to our knees in thanksgiving.

The importance of this act, of this struggle, cannot be overstated. It is an act of faith, not in ourselves, not in the building committee, not in Father or in this Deacon, but faith in God Himself. We build so that we may see our salvation. We build so that we may see God face to face. We build so that people we do not know, men and women who have not yet been born, will come to God, and will come and worship at the Divine Liturgy and at Vespers, long after each and every one of us is gone, our souls remembered only by our merciful God. Like us, the people in years to come will gather in times of great joy, in times of great sorrow and fear, but always in gratitude and with love.

If we stop to think about it, this is something that we can scarcely comprehend. Imagine! In a pasture, located in a place where Orthodoxy is largely unknown, a temple arises, bringing the faith to great numbers of people who have never heard of the Apostolic Church. You cannot tell me that St. Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent, Sts Cyril and Methodius, have not stood before the throne in supplication for us.

We have an opportunity to bring the witness of true Orthodoxy to those in desperate need of hearing of the genuine spirit of faithfulness, of sacrifice and of love. We have the opportunity to bring pure doctrine and true faith to a place that is awash in shallow spirituality. You cannot tell me that the great saints of love, St. John the Theologian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Seraphim of Sarov, have not interceded for us.

We have survived for over a decade, through difficulties and discouragement. You cannot tell me that our patroness, St. Elizabeth, has not beseeched the Lord for us.

And you can never, ever tell me that our beloved Theotokos has not constantly interceded for this mission, and for each and every one of us.

In the consecration of our land yesterday, we took an enormous step. This is an act of consummate faith, and of consummate obedience. The saints intercede for us. How can we despair? The Theotokos comes to our aid. How can we be faint hearted? God himself is with us. Who can stand against Him?

This Sunday – this weekend – let us be glad. If you have been distressed, take courage. If you have been doubtful, thrust your cares on God. This year, at the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, we have met Him in a new and astonishing way. We see before us the vision of a new Temple, in the Orthodox church of St. Elizabeth. In this Temple, we and our children and our children’s children, along with great numbers of people we cannot know and cannot imagine, will meet the Lord.

Congratulations, belated as they may be, are in order. My spiritual brother, Michael Rustick, was ordained to the diaconate on December 22 at his home parish in Rahway, New Jersey. The only picture I have seen of the event was taken with a camera phone immediately after the ordination. It shows the new Fr. Deacon looking mildly befuddled, standing next to his mother, who is beaming and looking not at all befuddled. I completely identify with the look on Fr. Deacon’s face, having worn it myself about a year ago.

I have known Fr. Deacon Michael for several years. We started together in the diaconal program at Christ the Savior Seminary, and are almost the only survivors of the group that began in the fall of 2004. We share a room at the seminary, and have spent many an evening in conversation. After all of that time, I can honestly say that I deeply value his friendship and counsel.

I will tell a tale on my friend. At the seminary, for reasons that we cannot fathom, sleep is hard to come by. In the middle of one long night last fall, I was awake as usual, and Michael was uncharacteristically sleeping. I heard him start thrashing around, muttering in his sleep, and then, by the light of the moon, I saw him sit bolt upright in bed. “Matthew! Mark! Luke! John!”, he cried out, and then immediately fell back asleep.

Clearly, he was ready for ordination.

Congratulations, my friend. Many years to you, in the service of God!

The Apostle and Evangelist John tells us, very simply, that “God is love.” We take this as an article of faith, but sometimes it is good for us to be reminded of how deep, how limitless, that love is. Our gospel today gives us that opportunity, for in the story of the widow of Nain we see that side of Christ which demonstrates his boundless compassion.

In our reading today, we are told that Jesus was traveling in the vicinity of the village of Nain. It is worth noting that as far as importance goes, Nain had none. It was simply a small place on the side of the road, and Jesus is simply traveling past it. It is not his destination, nor does it ever appear again in scripture. It is not like Jerusalem, or Capernaum, or any of the places we associate with our Lord. It is an unimportant place, and there is no good reason for Jesus to perform a miracle there.

Nonetheless, as Jesus is passing by, he comes upon a funeral procession leaving the town, making its way to a freshly dug grave. The deceased is a young man, and foremost among the mourners is his mother, a widow. The fact that his mother is a widow has some significance. In that age, a woman was wholly dependant on her husband, or if her husband is dead on her sons, for her support. We are led to understand that in losing her son, the widow was losing her last support. This is not only an emotional loss. It is a loss which devastates the poor woman in every way. She has lost the one she loves, and her life stretches out before her, empty and forbidding.

In an instant, Jesus understood the situation. The evangelist tells us that he was moved by compassion, stretched forth his hand, and brought the man back to life. We are not told that the widow was a Jew. We are not told that she was one of his followers. We are not told that she even knew who Jesus was. We are told only that Jesus was moved, that he performed this miracle simply and solely out of love.

If we look at this story in context, it gains even more power. Immediately before this passage, Jesus had healed the servant of the centurion. You will remember that in that instance, the centurion was a God-fearing gentile, a man who admired and tried to follow the dictates of Judaism, who had sent word asking that Christ heal his servant of an illness. “Don’t bother coming,” the centurion said, “I am not worthy to have you in my house, but I know that you have authority over all things. A word from you, and my servant will be healed.” In that instance, it is the faith of the centurion that causes Jesus to marvel, and to heal the servant.

In rapid succession, there are two miracles. One is compelled by great faith. The other is compelled by great love. The contrast is important, for it teaches us two very great things.

The first is this: our faith is crucial to us. We are Orthodox Christians, and we know that our entire life is directed at matters of faith. We are members of the church of Christ, and we have unimaginable riches, great sacraments that literally allow us to meet God face to face. We commune the Body and Blood, we stand before God and confess our sins and receive absolution, we are married in the sight and presence of God. Every time we receive a sacrament, we receive God himself. Our whole life is devoted to growing in faith, growing in purity, growing in holiness, becoming ever more obedient to God. We strive for the great faith of the centurion, because we have seen God in our lives, and we know his power and his presence. Faith is the bedrock of our communion.

But we know this as well: at times we are distraught by fear or pain. We may be beset by our own sin. Our faith may not be as sturdy as we would like. We may have friends or family members with no faith at all, but for whom we are deeply concerned. We pray and we pray, but life continues to be chaotic, and sin is the hallmark of the world around us. Our own faith may be shaken. In that case, we rely on the love of God, the love that caused Jesus to resurrect the son of a woman he did not know. Do you remember the story of the raising of Lazarus? When Jesus reached his friend’s tomb, he found Lazarus’ family and friends grieving over his death, and scripture tells us that at the sight, Jesus wept.

Do you see? Our faith is what carries us toward God. God’s love is what brings him to meet us. God is never blind to our suffering, or to our deepest needs. On an individual level, we identify with all of these people. One day, we may be the centurion, full of sturdy faith. The next, we may be the widow, sorrowing over our loved ones. And on yet another day, we may find ourselves in the position of the young man, spiritually dead and desperately in need of the unsought and undeserved compassion of God.

But there is another dimension to this, a vitally important one that speaks to us in a somewhat different way. The Church Fathers see in the figure of the sorrowing widow a representation of the Church itself. The great British saint, the Venerable Bede, writing of this passage, said

We are told that ‘she was a widow’; for every soul which remembers that it has been redeemed by the death of her Lord and Spouse confesses that the Church is a widow.

Saint Ambrose of Milan follows the same thought, when he says:

Although there is grave sin that you cannot wash away yourself with the tears of your penitence, let the mother of the church weep for you. She who intercedes for all as a widowed mother… is she who suffers with the spiritual grief of nature when she perceives her children urged on to death by mortal sins.

It is a beautiful image. Our mother, the Church, weeps for her children out of a true love. Yet what is the Church, but we, ourselves, assembled as the Body of Christ? Saint Ambrose completes the picture:

We are the heart of the Church, since we are the members of his Body, of his flesh and of his bones. Let the pious mother grieve, let the crowd, too, help. Let not only the crowd but also the multitude feel pity for a good parent. Already at the funeral you will arise, already you will be released from the sepulcher, the attendants at your funeral will stand still, you will begin to speak the words of life.

We – the Church – pray in faith and in love for each other. We lament for our own sins, we grieve for those around us, we beseech the Lord for mercy, for each and every one of us. We pray in faith, like the Centurion. We pray in grief and in urgent need, like the widow. And God responds. He hears our prayers. He raises us from spiritual death, and after physical death, he rescues us from the grave.

Never let anyone tell you that prayer is futile. Never let yourself be persuaded that your heartfelt prayers fall on deaf ears. We may not always recognize the answers to our prayer. We may even conclude that God is not answering our prayers. But be assured, prayer is always answered by our loving and compassionate God. At times, like the prodigal son, people may themselves delay the fulfillment of prayer, but God is always ready to meet us, and heal us. He does not promise us fame or wealth or everlasting good health, or worldly happiness and success. But in his love, He promises peace for our spirit, and love for our soul.

Similarly, never let anyone tell you that prayer for those who have passed on is meaningless. People who tell you that, usually in ignorance, are really committing a terrible slander on the Lord. Does love stop at the grave? Do you no longer love those who have been important in your life – mother or father, wife or husband, son or daughter, brother or sister, friend or companion – simply because they have passed from this life? Our love never stops, and if that is true for us, how much more is it true for God himself? That is why we pray and give alms, and do works in remembrance of those who have passed, and God responds, in compassion and in love, in ways that we cannot fully understand. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco spoke passionately of this in a homily of his own, saying:

Relative and dear friends of the departed! Do what is needful for them and what lies in your power…(give alms) helping the poor, in memory of your close ones who have fallen asleep, and on churches, where prayers are offered on their behalf. Show mercy to those who have fallen asleep; attend to the good of their soul. That path awaits all of us….Let us be merciful to the departed.

The story of the widow of Nain is a wonderful story. It reminds us that the Gospel, like the Christian life itself, is seamless and perfect. The demands made on us are no less than the demands of love and of faith. As the Apostle John said, God is indeed love. And He responds to us, to the Church, as we in faith and in love cry out to him. For ourselves, for each other. For the living; for the dead; for the entire world. We cry out for mercy and for love and always – always – God responds. It is for this – faith and love – that we will be held accountable at the dread judgment seat. Nothing else. Not buildings, not numbers, not visible success. Faith and love. This is our life in the Church, it is our life in Christ.