Ancient Church

After Liturgy today, Marina seized the opportunity to do some work on one of her class assignments from school. She had been instructed to interview an older adult, not related to her, about his or her life. She decided to ask one of the older ladies at our parish to talk to her. She was already someone we knew and enjoyed talking to, but we had never really asked her about her childhood or her life in much detail.

As it turned out, her story is fascinating. She was born in the United States of parents who had immigrated from Slovakia. In fact, she was born in a house that was on the same street that the World Trade Center was later built on. She talked about her childhood, and how she and her husband courted, how they raised their family …all of it was fascinating. Of course, almost all of us have immigrant backgrounds of one kind or another, but what made today’s story compelling was the way that her parish and her faith — and all that goes with it — provided the environment, as it were, for her life. She is Orthodox in her very sinews. Where we converts have to puzzle it out, people like her simply live it, like fish swim in the sea or birds fly in the air. Of course, converts are always seeking guidance from cradles, but hearing this lady describe her life suddenly gave her advice greater clarity and context.

It made me wonder whether or not any parishes have any oral history projects involving their older parishioners. There is a lot of wisdom there which would benefit so many of the rest of us, converts and younger cradle alike. As we see parishes start to evolve from wholly ethnic, cradle groups into increasingly convert heavy communities, oral histories like that might provide valuable wisdom for those of us who are following that path.

If any of my readers have projects like that in place at their parish, I’d be very interested in hearing how it has gone, and what kind of fruit it has borne. If not, how does such a project strike you?

The true measure of a feast, I have begun to think, is its resilience. In the midst of trouble and nagging inconvenience, does it still bring us to a dead stop, smitten with love, and filled with awe? That is a more exacting standard than you might think. Christmas, for example, is notorious for failing as a feast, particularly among the non-Orthodox. If success comes to depend on whether or not it has met your emotional expectations, then the feast has failed. A truly magnificent feast, however, will transcend our expectations regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

I was thinking about that this past week, as my mission struggled through Holy Week, and approached Pascha in difficult circumstances. Mind you, our straits were nowhere near as bad as some we have all read about: Paschas celebrated in concentration camps, in the Gulag, in dungeons and oppression. Instead, we were facing a more humdrum set of problems, some minor, some serious, and some simply unexpected.

The more or less minor ones were the glitches that all Orthodox are familiar with during Holy Week. Fatigue was evident as the week wore on, voices became frayed and allergies flared in Atlanta’s pollen-rich spring weather, while at the same time every day brought severe thunderstorms and tornado watches, just to snarl things. One of our catechumens, who was scheduled to be chrismated today, came in for Resurrection Matins barely able to stand, the victim of a two day long migraine. A lot of people, including my whole family, were plagued with minor viruses, which didn’t have sufficient strength to put us under, but were irritable enough to make us feel just plain icky. Still, that is common place for Holy Week, and we all recognize that the Week entails some amount of struggle. I suspect we would all feel secretly deprived if the week was wholly enjoyable and trouble free.

Other attacks were more serious. One of our families was in an auto accident on Saturday, and today we still did not know the full extent of the injuries that were sustained. Of your charity, please pray for Jean, Nicholas and Lee.

We also had an unexpected problem, although judging by Ian’s comment on the last post, not an unheard of dilemma. Earlier this week I mentioned that we had unexpectedly lost the use of our home for the last five years or so. After some frantic scrambling, one of our members wrangled the use, from Thursday through today, of an empty Presbyterian church. I am not sure why the building was empty. It is fairly new, and very nice. Still, the congregation has had it for sale for some time, and have now apparently sold it to a company who will raze the church and build one of those gas stations with a kazillion pumps and twelve varieties of gourmet coffee on tap inside. Our services this weekend will be the last of any variety in the building.

So it was a strange and unsettling set of circumstances that led us up to this final weekend of Holy Week. I should probably explain that in my diocese the tradition concerning Pascha is that we celebrate Resurrection Matins on Saturday night, and then go home and return Sunday morning for the Divine Liturgy of Pascha. This is the cause of spirited debate, but is the way things are.

In any event, Pascha dawned bright and clear, and a very decent crowd of close to a hundred gathered at the church. Our usual attendance runs around fifty or so, but there were a number of inquirers and curious folks, as well as fallen away family members dragged in by their ears. Despite the problems of earlier in the week, there was an air of expectation, of simmering joy. We chrismated the now newly-illumined Angela, recovered from her migraine.

Then we started the Liturgy. In my quasi-diaconal function, I stood in front of the Royal Doors, and sang:

“Bless Master!”

And we were off. In an instant, the uncertainty, the problems, the tragedy of the preceding week simply disappeared. Sure, there was a train wreck or two in the choir, although on the whole they were better than great. There was an oddly entertaining moment during communion. Father had closely questioned two communicants in a row as to whether or not they were Orthodox, and as the second one kissed the chalice and walked away, Father poked in it with his spoon. Without looking up, he asked “Are you Orthodox?”

In this case, the recipent of the question was the wife of my fellow subdeacon. Not having been privy to the two earlier conversations, she was a little nonplussed. “Good grief, I hope so!” she whispered, with some evident alarm. When Father saw who it was, he blushed, if such a thing is possible. Still, for the rest of the day, every time the poor woman asked or said anything, particularly to two wise guy subdeacons, she was met with suspicion. “Are you really Orthodox?” we asked narrowly.

Still, the Feast had seized us, had transcended time and circumstances to transport us to a truly Holy Pascha. Afterwards, we kissed and hugged, and exuberantly broke the fast. In the end, it really does not matter what difficulties face us in Holy Week. As Orthodox Christians, if we persevere, and trust in the goodness of the Lord, the Feast will find us.

Now we have to find another location for our services. But we have all of Bright Week in which to do it, and in the cleansed atmosphere and miraculous environment of this week, anything can happen. For now, it is Pascha, and Christ is risen, and our hearts are filled with wonder and love.

Part of the problem with living two hours from church is that things like Holy Week become unmanageable. From a practical viewpoint, one simply has to pick up and move one’s base of operations for the duration. That is what I wll be doing this afternoon. After putting in a good day at the office, I will move on to Atlanta and stay there until Pascha, starting with tonight’s service of Holy Unction. Hopefully, that will allow me to focus a little better than I have been.

So — I’m about ready to go. Cassock and vestments? Check! Travel icons? Check! Texts from classes in Johnstown, to fill in the down time? Check! Laptop? Check! So that seems to be it. Perhaps my posts later this week won’t be so goshdarned foolish. Like they had been written by this person:

Which, I should add, is not me.  My bunny hat is green.

What a pleasure it is to reach Holy Week! Lent has been its usual mixed bag — some edifying aspects, some abject failures. I wouldn’t trade it for anything — how else can one truly engage in such an astonishing interior journey? — but it will be nice to change to the more focused rigor of Holy Week.

Mind you, it will be exhausting, even at our little mission. There was liturgy this morning for Lazarus Saturday, and tomorrow, of course, is Palm Sunday. Last week we suffered the disconnect, as we arrived for the fifth Sunday of Lent and passed the Roman Catholics next door carrying their palms, but this week we get to offer the disconnect with our palms and pussy willows. Even though it is but a shadow of Pascha, Palm Sunday will be joyous, a welcome coming up for air before Holy Week begins in earnest. I’ll admit that I will enjoy the fish, although I feel like I cheated. I not only had fish for the Annunciation under the new calendar at our mission, I also had it in Johnstown for old calendar Annunciation. I feel a little bit overloaded on protein. My excuse, aside from the feast, is that tomorrow offers an excellent oportunity to celebrate Marina’s 18th birthday. Our baby! Still, you know they are grown up when her own schedule prohibits a celebration on her real birthday, which is Monday.

Once Palm Sunday closes, though, the real adventure begins: presanctified liturgies Monday and Tuesday, Holy Unction on Wednesday, the Twelve Gospels on Thursday and then the amazing services on Friday and Saturday, culminating in Pascha. We will be exhausted, but I can almost taste the joy, so close is the goal.

So as I sit here on Saturday night, there is nothing profound, nothing particularly intelligent on my mind. There is simply anticipation, of the momentous grief and overwhelming joy that resides in Holy Week. I’m so glad it is here.

The widespread excitement over the Gospel of Judas is a little hard to comprehend. That has less to do with what the “Gospel” may say than it does with the astonishingly meager level of knowledge of history, the canon of scripture and simple Christianity among Americans, and, perhaps, western Europe as well.

The story on any gnostic gospel, regardless of who it is attributed to, is this: gnosticism was a widespread and fairly amorphous set of belief systems that were rampant throughout the Mediterranean basin in the 2d and 3d centuries after Christ. They really represented the last gasp of classical paganism: each such system depended on “secret knowledge” which was necessary for a person to reach paradise. They typically included an absent or uncaring God, hierarchies of angels and demons and, of course, the magic word or words for that cult. They originated from numerous sources, including a great many mystery religions, such as the cult of Mithra. There were dozens — or even hundreds — of such belief systems, but they shared those common characteristics. Thus, we have gospels — of Mary Magdalene, Phillip, Thomas, Jesus’ tailor (just kidding - I think) and now Judas. Typically these gospels were not written until decades or centuries after the death of the person whose gospel it is supposed to be.

In the end, gnosticism represented an effort to blend Christianity with paganism. It was discredited by the Church from the very outset (see, for example, St. Irenaeus’ “Against Heresies”, c. 180), and rapidly lost steam as a force in the religious field — until the 21st century.

Currently, gnosticism is the new growth industry, especially for people like Elaine Pagels and now, apparently, the National Geographic panel. The reason people love it is because it is new and mildly interesting and it is not the boring thing that many people are convinced Christianity has become. In addition, different “gospels” lend themselves to various ideologies — feminism, gay rights and other causes du jour. We sense - correctly - that there must be something more to all of this, and we grasp at the “gospels” for answers to satisfy that feeling of incompleteness.

But let us not point a finger at the anonymous pagan writer of the Gospel of Judas, or even at Ms. Pagels. The problem, the reason that gnosticism exercises such fascination for Western culture, is that we no longer know what Christianity is. The great majority of people believe that Christianity is a confining belief system — that it exists to burden us with rules and restrictions. We have no conception of the fact that true Christianity is liberating, that it is the door to a mystical journey that makes any gnostic look silly and foolish. Sadly, we no longer have any accurate conception of who Christ is. He is not our buddy, not our co-pilot, not a guy who stands next to us in post-modern churches waving his arms in the air as the praise band cranks it up. But it is because of our wholly narrow, wholly mundane vision of Christ that people fall prey to any foolish piece of papyrus that the desert coughs up. We can’t blame Judas for this — we have led ourselves happily and comfortably down the broad path of ignorance.