The Hinge Question

When the glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of the feet, then Judas the ungodly was stricken and darkened with the love of money; and to lawless judges he delivered you, the just judge. O lover of money, look upon him who for its sake hanged himself; flee from the insatiable soul, which dared such things against the Teacher. O you who are good to all, Lord, glory to you.

(Troparion for Great & Holy Thursday)

As I was listening to the hymns at matins for Great & Holy Thursday, I began to realize that I had my life exactly backwards. I do not serve others because I love them, I love them because I serve them It is service that leads to love, and for that matter to all manner of good and virutous things in my life. Our service is what make us holy and the less we serve, the more narrow our circle of those who we actively care for, the more constricted our hearts will be.

This was all made more concrete for me when I read Gary A. Anderson's article “Faith and Finance” in the current (May 2009) issue of First Things (which is not yet online for those who subscribe). Anderson, a professor of Old Testament at the University of Notre Dame, draws a linguistic parallel between “ faith and finance.” “It is,” he argues, “no accident that the word creditor in English comes from the Latin credere , 'to believe.' . . . A set of deep theological ideas lies behind this tight semantic joining of the disposition of trust and the act of issuing loans.” (p. 29) Indeed, as he fleshes out in the rest of his article, the disposition of trust—faith—is at the heart of the financial system and it is because of the absence of trust—faith—that in the system (and I think more pointedly, those who manage the system in our name as stewards of our shared wealth).

Where his article takes an interesting turrn, and this brings us back to Matins of Great & Holy Thursday, is the translation of “righteousness” ( tsedaqah ) in the Septuagint as almsgiving . “If the Greek translation is correct, it would appear that forgiveness is not completely an action of done by God alone but requires some sort of human participation.” For this reason, he concludes, to “be redeemed form one's sins requires the good work of showing mercy to the poor.” (p. 29)

Please, if you can, do read the whole of Anderson's argument. But for now, it seems to me that the services for Holy Thursday represents something of a crescendo in the service of this week. Or maybe it might be more accurate to refer to Holy Thursday as the liturgical “ hinge” of Holy Week. Having first been challenged to lay aside my own ego (Holy Monday) and remain open to the human face of divine love (Holy Tuesday), I then am shown, in graphic terms, between the life I am called to live and the life I actually live (Holy Wednesday).

And the life that has been described for me liturgically on Holy Thursday at Matins I discover, at the Vesperal Liturgy of St Basil on Thursday morning, is nothing more or less than the life of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the line, if I am to grow in Christ (to say nothing of inherit the Kingdom of Heaven), I need not simply to repent or not simply commit myself to struggle against my sin. I must also cultivate the life of virtue at the center of which is both a life of prayer (both personal and liturgical) and service of my neighbor in his or her poverty.

The form that service takes is as broad and diverse as human neediness itself. What matters is not the form of my service relative to yours (and vice versa), but the fact of service. It is also important that my service is merely some form of “do goodism” to satisfy my own ego and win the praise of others. My service must embody (and bring about) a real purification of my egoism and entrenched self-centeredness. Service in the sense I'm using it here is not social work (though social work can, and for many is, certainly a form of true Christian service), but the ascetical reformation and graced transformation of my life.

And again, all of this is rooted in Christ and my willingness to conform my life to His. While in the early stages of my spiritual life my imitation of Christ might be somewhat forced, or even unintentional, I must grow to more and more pattern my life on Christ's. This will necessarily require that, as with Christ, I suffer for the sins of the world; suffering in my life reflects both my own sin and the sin of my neighbor. This suffering can, however, be purifying and life-giving if I allow it to be so.

I thought about this during the Reading of the Twelve Passion Gospels at Matins Thursday evening. The service itself is long (over 2 ½ hours in my parish and this after an early morning Liturgy, a full work day for my parishioners and several hours of hearing confession for me) as we hear every word from the Gospel about the death of Jesus on the Cross. (For those interested, here are the readings in order: John
 13:31-18:1
;
 John
 18:1-29
;
 Matthew
 26:57-75
;
 John 
18:28–19:16
;
 Matthew
 27:3-32
;
 Mark
15:16-32
;
 Matthew
 27:33-54
;
 Luke
 23:32-49
;
 John
19:19-37
;
 Mark
15:43-47
;
 John
 19:38-42
;
 Matthew
 27: 62-66
.)

Of all the readings, it is the last one from St Matthew that stands out for me every year:

On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, "Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, 'After three days I will rise.' Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, 'He has risen from the dead.' So the last deception will be worse than the first." Pilate said to them, "You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how." So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard. ( Mt 27: 62-66
)

I can refuse purification, I can refuse to serve. Why do I do this? Because I do not want my plans and projects undone by God.

In my desire to retain control of my own life I can find no end of collaborators both “in the world” and even, I am sad to say, “in the Church.” But as the events of the next few days will make clear, and as Pilate himself even alludes to, no matter how much help I get, I simply cannot secure my life against the grace of God. God's love will come to me. I may refuse that love certainly, but I cannot prevent God from loving me, from working to save me.

And so Holy Thursday comes to the stark ending of the Gospel passage above. Do I wish to secure my life against divine grace or will I move forward to the Resurrection? On this question, I think, hinges not only the services of Great and Holy Thursday but each human life.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Harlot and the Disciple

When the sinful woman offered myrrh, then the disciple made an agreement with the lawless. The one rejoiced as she emptied out something of great price, while the other hurried to sell the One beyond price. She acknowledged the Master; he was parted from the Master. She was set free while Judas became the slave of the foe. Dreadful is sloth! Great is repentance! Grant it to me, Saviour, who suffered for us, and save us.

(Hymn at Lauds for Holy Wednesday)

At Bridegroom Matins for Great and Holy Wednesday we read from the Gospel of St John ( 12:17-50 ) while the hymnography for the service is drawn from the Gospel according to St Matthew ( 26). Far from being opposed to each other these two passages compliment each other with the hymnography for the canon serving as an illustration of the general theme of the Gospel reading: that in imitation of Christ, I must loose my life in order to save it. Or, as we read in John:

He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. (12.25-26)

For its part, the hymnography contrasts the actions of the unnamed harlot who anoints Jesus' feet with myrrh with the disciple Judas who will soon betray Him. While the content of the hymns is of the utmost seriousness, there is nevertheless a certain playfulness in them as they compare and contrast the two disciples of Christ.

The theme we have been following through the Matins services is also one that compares and contrasts two different ways of relating to Christ: planning or openness. While planning cannot be dismissed outright or minimized, it is after all an important part of our stewardship of the gifts God has given us, there is always a temptation to plan in a manner that makes our planning, and their successful accomplishment, the goal of not only our material and professional lives, but also of our spiritual life.

My planning, therefore, needs to be balanced (and often restrained) by an eager openness on my part to the will of God for my life. As we saw on Great and Holy Tuesday, to be human is to be open to love.

This openness, as the contrast between the harlot and Judas illustrates, is often hidden from not only outside observers but also even from me. Imagining myself in the position of the harlot, I can't help but think that she was as surprised by her behavior toward Jesus as anyone else. How often had she in the past anointed and cared for men with immoral intent? Now, however, there is nothing unchaste in her actions. I would even go so far as to suggest that even given her wrong intention, her past life as a prostitute was something of a preparation for the Gospel. Granted it was in many ways a perverted preparation, but however skewed her intent, no matter how false her actions, how often she was coerced by circumstances or the lust of men to attentive to the desires of others, in Christ this past is transformed into the gentle attentiveness that we see in her relationship with Christ.

None of this is to suggest prostitution as a way of life. It is rather only to illustrate that in Christ even the harshest of our experience can be transformed and transfigured and become by God's grace life giving for us and for the world.

Compare the transfigured harlot to the fallen Judas.

If her life embodies the eager, if often hidden, openness to love that we should all cultivate, Judas embodies a life that reduces human life, and especially the spiritual life, to a matter of planning and its attendant calculations. Until the moment of the harlot's encounter with Jesus, Judas was simply a disciple. As with the other disciples, he no doubt struggled with His Master's teachings and actions. If Philip and Andrew are any indication, even at the end of His ministry, the disciples didn't seem to understand that discipleship, following Jesus, requires a life of real sacrifice.

No, up until Jesus' encounter with the harlot, Judas seems to worse than any of the disciples. Like the others, Judas simply doesn't understand what it means to follow Jesus.

And then there is the whore.

Trying to place myself in his position, I think it was at this moment that Judas parts “from the Master” and becomes “ the slave of the foe,” as we sing in one of the hymns of the day. When love is made manifest, not only the human face of God's love for us, but also our love for God, Judas the disciple becomes Judas the betrayer. Why? What is it in this encounter that is so unbearable for Judas that he rushes out to betray his friend?

When I reduce my own life to a plan and my encounters with God and neighbor to a series of calculations (even if my calculations are “Christian”), I do so because I have closed my heart to divine grace. Instead of an openness to God and His love for my neighbor, for me and for all creation, my life comes to orbit around my own ego and the ever shifting pattern of my own desires. When this happens anything that does not ratify my ego, does not satisfy my desires at that moment, becomes necessarily a foe to be defeated.

As with Judas, we come to this moment slowly; incrementally my heart becomes evermore closed to grace until finally I turn from God in one finally act of rebellion.

But this is not the whole story. As with the harlot, we also come slowly to the moment of our definitive encounter with Jesus. Again, incrementally, the human heart can become evermore open to grace until finally the person turns definitively to God in an act of abandonment.

My preparation for these two acts is simultaneous. Day by day, moment by moment, my heart is both closing and opening to love. The difference between a heart which is open and one which is closed is not so much in the preparation but in the consequences. The closed heart is static, stagnant, like death and Hell themselves; the open heart is a dynamic, beating heart that grows and expands like life and Heaven themselves.

Given the strongly monastic character of all of the Orthodox liturgical tradition, and especially the services of Great and Holy Week, it is noteworthy that the worship of the Church place before us as an exemplars of the decisions we each face a harlot and a disciple. It is the harlot whose heart is pure and who embodies best what we all hope for our own life in Christ; it is Judas, the apostle and disciple, the intimate friend of Jesus, whose heart is unchaste and who illustrates the consequences of rejecting Christ. There is more than a little irony that it she who I imagine myself to be least like is closest to Christ, while he who seemed to have for three years the relationship with Christ I want is the one who will betray him.

Kalo Pascha.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Woe of the Scribes and the Pharisees

This should have gone out last night, but I was too tired to finish it up before services. My apologizes.

Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom he finds watching; but unworthy is the one whom he finds slothful. Take care then, my soul, not to be overcome with sleep, lest you be given up to death, and be shut out of the kingdom; but rouse yourself and cry: Holy, holy, holy are you, O God; through the prayers of the Foreunner, have mercy on us.

(Troparion, Bridegroom Matins For Great & Holy Tuesday)

The Gospel ( Mt 22:15-23:39) assigned for Matins records some very harsh language and sharp comments from Jesus. Seven times our Lord says to the Jewish authorities: “W oe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” And after each utterance, our Lord summarizes their hypocrisy:

• You shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. (v. 13)
• You devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. (v. 14)
• You travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as as much a son of hell as yourselves.
• You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. (v. 23)
• You cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. (v. 25)
• You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. (v. 27)2

And finally, in His last call to repentance Christ summarizes their offense:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. (vv. 29-36)

I said last night that these first service of Great and Holy Week radically relativize my own propensity to plan, to imagine that my life is subject in an absolute sense to my own will and desires.

Instead of planning, the service of these first few days call me to be vigilant. A central theme of Bridegrooms Maitns is watchful preparedness.

But are preparations are not like that of an adolescent who decides never to decide. Yes, we are to remain open and expectant, but our ready is like of a soldier who, having prepared for war, find himself waiting out the last moments before the battle begins.

And what is it that we wait for? We wait for the revelation of Divine Love.

It is here that the scribes and Pharisees have failed. Though they scrupulously kept the Law, their very fidelity blinded them to the revelation of God's love. What they did not see, maybe even what they could not see, is that when God's love comes to us it comes with a human face. This is why when Jesus is challenged by the lawyer to name to greatest commandment of the Law He offers a two-fold answer:

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (vv. 34-40)

Looking back at the woe of the scribes and the Pharisees, their sorrow is that their love of God made them indifferent to the love of neighbor and insensitive to their neighbor's poverty and need. The woe of the scribes and the Phraisees is this: The love of God killed in them compassion for their neighbor!

In this the scribes and the Phraisees are mirror image of many of us today. If once the love of God obscured the love of neighbor, today it is rather the other way around. Compassion for my neighbor in his or her weakness has now come to trump our love and fidelity to God. For the scribes and the Phraisees their love of what was greatest became to excuse to disregard what was smaller, but closer; for us today, we love what is small and close but we often neglect what is greatest.

In either case though, our severing of the “two commandments” on which “hang all the Law and the Prophets,” inevitably leads to violence and even bloodshed. Again, why? Because love comes to us with a human face.

The human face of love is, I think, one of the most extraordinary elements of the Gospel. It is not simply that God loves me, it is not simply that God comes to me as a human being, it is also that He comes to me in you. Love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion for my neighbor in his weakness and need, all of these are essential to the Gospel.

And it is because of these, that I will at times find myself having to be—like Jesus—harsh. But my harsh words or actions are not, or at least should not, born from a desire for power and control. Rather, and again mindful that the model here is Christ, my harsh words reflect my willingness (and again, like the soldier) to place myself between the innocent and those who would victimize or exploit them.

Much is sometime made of the fact that God offers us mercy and not justice. This is true as far as it goes, but only if we understand carefully what we mean by “justice.” It is certainly true that I often appeal to justice to hid my desire for revenge or to rationalize my hatred or desire for power and control. Justice in this sense has nothing to do with the Gospel much less with God.

But there is another understanding of justice. We can think of justice in this second, more radically sense, as consonance, harmony or (if you prefer) synergy , that profound working together of the Divine and human wills that the Apostle Paul alludes to when he calls us “co-workers” with Christ (see, Phil 2.25). The woe of the scribes and the Pharisees is the fruit of a lack of justice in this second sense.

And so, to yesterday's counsel to eschatological preparedness, we should add I think this: A willingness to work for justice in human affairs. Not justice as vengeance or control, but of synergy , of a cooperative working together of the whole Church not only with Her Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, but all the members with Him and each other and indeed all people of good will.

Kalo Pascha!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Behold the Bridegroom

Behold, the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom he finds watching; but unworthy is the one whom he finds slothful. Take care then, my soul, not to be overcome with sleep, lest you be given up to death, and be shut out of the kingdom; but rouse yourself and cry: Holy, holy, holy are you, O God; through the protection of Bodiless Powers, have mercy on us.

( Troparion for Bridegroom Matins)

This evening in many Orthodox parishes, we will gather to begin our liturgical celebration of Great and Holy Week. Having left Great and Holy Lent behind with our celebration of Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, we now fix our gaze more intensely on the Resurrection of Christ (Pascha or Easter).

We begin our journey—o f if you prefer, continue our journey—to Pascha by recalling not historical events (though we do that aplenty this week) but rather giving voice to our hope for the future. For all that we refer this week to the events in the last week of Christ's life before His crucifixion, our point of reference is eschatological and not strictly speaking historical. Or to put it another way, the Church only looks back to the past in order to look look forward to a future that is wholly outside of our own control.

My daily life, my everyday attitude, is often filled plans. Just this morning after Liturgy, for example, I sat with the parish council and made plans for the near future. Planning is certainly not wrong—and more often than not it is essential.\

But there is something undeniably seductive about planning. You see my plans our mine. Whether I am planning a desirable future toward which I race or a future I dread and would flee from if I could, in both cases my plans can become for me an idol of my own making. G. K. Chesterton's observation about the relationship of truth and fiction are applicable to the relationship between the future and my plans for the future. “Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction,” Chesterton writes in his work Heretics , “for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.”

Likewise my plans. Whether comforting of frightening, my plans for the future always seem somehow my attractive, more reasonable, and much less frightening than the future since—unlike the future—my plans are made to suit my own views of how the future ought to be. There is something inescapably narcissistic about planning.

Not, I want to emphasize, that we shouldn't plan. We should plan; planning is an essential part of our stewardship of God's many blessings to us. But it is easy to confuse my plans for the future with the gift of the future itself. It is easy to confuse my desire for the coming years, next week or tomorrow, with the future itself as it comes to me from the hand of an All-Loving God.

And so for sound theological and anthropological reasons, we begin Holy Week by recalling that we do not such much move toward the future as it is that the future comes to us, to me. And when the future comes, it comes as a judgment.

The judgment of the future is not a narrowing of human life as if somehow God were some kind of Victorian moralist. No the future that comes toward me is God Himself, His Glory revealed; the judgment which is to come is His love for me, for my neighbor and the whole creation made manifest. I am judged by love revealed in all its fullness and it is in this Divine Light the narrowness, the self-satisfaction of my own heart, will be revealed.

Every year during Holy Week and Pascha I am challenged less by fasting and the many (and longer!) services and more by the smallness of my love when compared to not only to Christ's infinite love but also the finite, but still overwhelming, love for Christ in the hearts of those whose confessions I will hear.

Is it any wonder, as the troparion for the day suggest, that when faced with this challenge I am tempted simply to sleep? To lay down the burden of joy and instead allow myself the illusory luxury that the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls the “natural atheism” of the soul that seeks to consume creation rather than be responsible for neighbor in his poverty and need?

And so, this year again like last year, I being Holy Week by being reminded that the future belongs to God. My plans and projects have their place—they are even after a fashion necessary—but they are not ultimate. As necessary as my plans might be, what is more necessary is that I remain ready and open to the grace that rushes toward me through the Cross and the Tomb from the Kingdom of God.

Kalo Pascha.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Enthusaism of the Crowds

Sunday, April 12, 2009: ENTRY OF OUR LORD INTO JERUSALEM (Palm Sunday). St. Basil the Confessor, Bishop of Parium (8th c.). Hieromartyr Zeno, Bishop of Verona (ca. 260). Ven. Isaac the Syrian, Abbot of Spoleto (550). Monk Martyrs Menas, David, and John, of Palestine (7th c.). Ven. Anthusa the Virgin, of Constantinople (801). Ven. Athanasia, Abbess, of Aegina (860). Ven. Acacius the Younger, of Kavsokalyvia (Mt. Athos—1730).

Then, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom He had raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper; and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. But one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray Him, said, “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, "Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial. For the poor you have with you always, but Me you do not have always. Now a great many of the Jews knew that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus. The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: Hosanna! 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' The King of Israel!" Then Jesus, when He had found a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written: Fear not, daughter of Zion; Behold, your King is coming, Sitting on a donkey's colt." His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him and that they had done these things to Him. Therefore the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness. For this reason the people also met Him, because they heard that He had done this sign.

(John 12:1-18)

The Gospel for Palm Sunday divides neatly in to two different, though internally related, stories.

We have the first half of the story that looks back to yesterday's celebration when we commemorated the restoration of Lazarus to life after four days in the tomb. The second half of the Gospel commemorates Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. The first half looks backwards to what was done, the second half forward to what is yet to be done: the death of Christ on the Cross and His glorious third day resurrection from the dead. And in both parts of the Gospel, there are the various human actors who never quite seem to understand Jesus.

Jesus is shown sitting at table Lazarus with Martha—as always—busy with much serving. And there is Mary who, again, has chosen the better part and anoints His feet with costly ointment. There is Judas, the disciple, the thief and the one who will soon betray his friend and teacher.

Outside this domestic tableau there are the Jewish authorities who jealousy and fear of Jesus has turned murderous not only toward Jesus but Lazarus who restoration to life has caused many to come to believe in Jesus.

And of course, as always, there are the crowds. Today the crowds welcome Jesus as their King and Liberator. As St John Chrysostom has it, today the crowds “showed now at last that they thought Him greater than a prophet: And went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel, that comes in the name of the Lord.”

In this, of course, the crowds are more correct then they know.

Unlike the undisciplined enthusiasm of the crowds, St Augustine, looking at the events of Palm Sunday with the eyes of sober faith. He knows that it is “a small thing to the King eternal to be made a human king. Christ was not the King of Israel, to exact tribute, and command armies, but to direct souls, and bring them to the kingdom of heaven. For Christ then to be King of Israel, w as a condescension, not an elevation, a sign of His pity, not an increase of His power. For He who was as called on earth the King of the Jews, is in heaven the King of Angels.”

It is in the space between undisciplined enthusiasm, or if you will a faith that is untempered by asceticism and reason and the sober faith that has been so purified that will grow the seed of the crowds later rejection of Jesus. The crowds, for all their passion and noise, cannot bear the difference between who they think Jesus is and Who He is actually.

As with the crowds, so to I think with each of us in our own spiritual lives. It is easy for me to fall in love with my idea about God or (for that matter, my neighbor) and to love the image more than the Person that the images points me toward. Like the crowd, I am tempted always to sentimentality, to falling in love with my own feelings and thoughts at the expense of my supposed Beloved. In the Church's more exact language, like the crowds, I am subject to prelest , spiritual delusion.

While the Apostle Paul does not use the word, he nevertheless is aware of prelest and its effect on the person. He warns the young bishop Timothy to not “give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.” (1 Tim 1.4) He warns Timothy that those who do give themselves over to prelest eventually stray from Christ and instead give themselves over to “to idle talk” and pride “desiring to be teachers of the law,” but fail to be such since they understand “what they say nor the things which they affirm.” (vv. 6-7)

The idle talk that Paul mentions is rather more serious than we might imagine. It is because of idle talk that over the next week the crowds will turn against Jesus. Their prelest inspired disappointment will quickly turn to rage, a rage that not only kills their own souls, but is unwilling as it is to accept any limits on itself, will turn Christ over to be crucified.

Compare this to the words we heard last night at Vespers:

Thus says the Lord, 'Rejoice, daughter of Sion. Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your iniquities, he has ransomed you from the hand of your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall see evils no more. At that time the Lord will say to Jerusalem, 'Be of good courage, Sion Do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst. The Mighty One will save you. He will bring joy upon you and renew you by his love. He will rejoice over you with delight, as on a day of festival. And I will gather your afflicted. Alas! Who has taken up a reproach against you? I will work for your sake at that time. And I will save her that was oppressed and receive her who was rejected, and I will make them a boast and famed in all the earth'. ((Zephaniah 3:14-19, LXX)

The therapy for prelest is, I think, found in the prophet's words: I must rejoice in God. I must do this not in undisciplined enthusiasm, but as the fruit of repentance, of my acceptance of God's forgiveness not only of me, but all humanity. To do so requires from me courage. Why? Because once I see all humanity as loved and forgiven by God in Jesus Christ, I set myself against those who imagine—as did the Jewish authorities—that they, and they alone, know God's mercy, a mercy they hold fast to as if it was something of their own making. Those who do this are like Judas, for their own selfish ends they steal from the common grace of God for all humanity. If I am like this, how can I imagine that I will not murder God once I have Him in my grasp?

My brothers and sisters in Christ, God delights over His People today; God delights over you and all humanity. He knows that in a few days they, we, I, will betray Him and yet this in no way lessens His delight, His love, His forgiveness, for us, for you and for me. Even though by my own actions I give myself over to sin again and again, God in Jesus Christ will renew me, as He renews all of us, by His love.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

A More Than Moral Life

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: "How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be like a strong wind? Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice?

(Job 8:1-3, NKJV)

Writing in FIRST THINGS: On the Square, R. R. Reno offers an interesting observation. In his review of "Jacques Barzun's searching analysis of modern education, The House of Intellect," in which Barzun explores "the triumph of the Bohemian ideal, and the end of what John Lukacs has called the Bourgeois Era," Reno comments briefly on what he terms the "Bohemian project," which

retails itself as the royal road to self-discovery through the alchemy of self-expression. It promises a more "real," more authentic, and more individual existence. As Barzun suggests, the claims are hollow. The emerging Bohemian Era will be anti-intellectual: characterized by an externalized and collective sense of purpose (politics über alles) and an undifferentiated, amorphous inner life (the empire of desire).

As I read this, I began to think about the difference in character between Job and his friends. For all that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar might present themselves as champions of religious orthodoxy in the face of Job's (seeming) dishonesty and self-deception, these men embody in their words to Job the very anti-intellectualism and "externalized and collective sense of purpose . . . and an undifferentiated, amorphous inner life" that Reno argues has taken hold of contemporary Western culture.

Precisely however because of the historical and cultural distance between Job's time and our own, it seems to me that these men typify not only cultural decadence, but a collapse, and even a rejection, of the human possibility of transcendence. Rather than undergo the deep, inner struggle as does Job, his friends flee to mere moralism a way of life that is not only the opposite of a life of transcendence, but the sign that we have refused the possibilities open to us in the spiritual life.

This is not to suggest by any means that we can dispense with the moral law. Indeed, reading through the patristic commentary on Job, it becomes clear that the fathers generally agree with the anthropology that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar articulate. Even when a particular father disagrees with the applicability to Job's situation of the words spoken, they nevertheless see the general applicability of statement. Just to offer one example, in his own reflection on the Bildad's comment to Job that I quoted above, St John Chrysostom writes:

[E]ven though Bildad's words are not entirely applicable to Job, let us see what he means. Do you not perceive the profound justice that reigns in the creation and its profound order? And how everything is well regulated and settled? Therefore could He Who maintains justice and order among the senseless creatures overturns the rules in your case?

Instead of answering his own question, Chrysostom asks more questions, the asking of which reveals (as we say earlier) the convergence of cosmology and anthropology in the life of the particular person:

Further why did God create everything? Is it not because of you . . .? And so He Who has created so many things, did He not give you what was right to share? He Who has created you out of love, if He has shown His benevolence toward the universe, this also is proof of His power.

This then is the crux of the matter: We are created in the image and likeness of the God Who creates "out of love" and Who, again "out of love," has ordered and regulated the whole creation in justice. Creation makes manifest the goodness of God precisely because of its own inner harmony, its own internal integrity on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. Or, in a word, the justice of creation "declares the glory of God." (Ps 18/19.1)

And what of us?

Again, while he may have missed the mark in his estimation of Job, in Chrysostom's view Bildad has nevertheless grasped something profoundly true about humanity in general: "We often overturn justice because of our powerlessness, but "He has created everything" he says. Will He, Who is so wise, so just, so powerful, be unjust?" ("Commentary on Job," 8.2A-3B, ACCS, vol VI, p. 44)

Here then is the difference between the spiritual life, the life of the inward man, and life of mere moralism, of merely external conformity and pseudo-self-expression. This difference turns on my response to my own powerlessness.

As Job says of himself in his retort to Eliphaz, "My life is lighter than speech and perishes with an empty hope." (7.6, LXX) He continues:

Remember then, my life is a breath, and my eye will no longer return to see good. The eye of him who sees me will not see me again; your eyes are on me, I am no more. I am like the cloud that cleared away from the sky. (7.7-9, LXX)

Job and his friends all acknowledge the powerlessness of the human. Each in, his own way, offers us a meditation on the often converging themes of human contingency and sinfulness. But for the critics of Job, there is (I think) some comfort to be found in the possibility that Job suffers because of some secret on his part that makes him qualitatively different from them. The reason I say this is because even though Eliphaz cannot convince Job that this is so, it is still worth his effort to make the argument if only to convince himself that he is safe from the affliction that has visited Job. In this Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar reveal themselves to be men of pure externality in response to their own inner poverty.

Job, for his part, does not, and will not, take this route. He will not use the occasion of meeting a friend, even a friend who has betrayed him, as the opportunity to comfort himself at the expense of the truth of the human condition. For Job, there is no denial of his own powerlessness; he denies neither his contingency nor his sinfulness. At the same time, he sees himself and his condition in others, even as he sees others in himself.

Commenting on Job's words, St Gregory the Great says that "this mortal life passes day by day; . . . . Just as we said before, while the time in our hands passes, the time before us is shortened. Moreover, of the whole length of our lives, the days to come are proportionally fewer to those days that have gone." ("Morals on the Book of Job," 8.26, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 41) It is the pain of human morality, of their own contingency, that Job's friends fight against. And it is just this, the fragility of all humanity, that, verse by verse, Job grows to more and more accept in his own flesh.

None of this is to suggest that Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are bad men. They aren't. But they are weak men and so seek safety and security in the merely moral. Like Job, they have learned "to restrain the flesh by continence." Unlike Job, however, each man suffers because his "mind has not been taught to expand itself through compassion" for his neighbor. (Gregory the Great, "Morals on the Book of Job," 6.53, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 32) Later in his reflections on the book of Job, St Gregory reflects on the condition of those in the Church who are like the friends of Job. He says that they are the one "who certainly keep from the gratification of the flesh, yet grovel with all their heart in earthly practices."

Gregory continues his mediation by imagining the Church saying of these "earthly" and "dusty" Christians that

are members of me in faith, yet . . . are not sound or pure members in practice. For they either are mastered by foul desires and run to and fro in corruption's rottenness, or, being devoted to earthly practices, they are soiled with dust. For in those whom I have to endure, people filled with wantonness, I do plainly lament for the flesh turned corrupt. And in those from whom I suffer, those who are seeking the earth, what else is this but the defilement of dust that I must bear? ("Morals on the Book of Job," 8.23, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 41)

Even while he says that his life "is a breath," Job shows himself to be a man of substance. He sees the fragility of his own life but there is no hint of narcissism in his complaints nor does his own suffering become the excuse for a lack of compassion for his neighbor.

And now we see the real struggle of the spiritual life: To embrace the whole truth of our situation, the good and the ill. But as Job's own situation also makes clear, to live this way will—necessarily it seems—put us at odds with those who, like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have yet themselves to turn inward.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Mystery of Purification

Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.

(Job 5.17-18, NKJV)

Eliphaz's response to Job highlights the struggles that are inherent in the first moment of my inward turn. Let me explain.

He argues that if Job is truly an innocent of any wrong doing he would not suffer. As he says to Job (4.12, LXX), "if there had been any truth in your words, none of these evil would have befallen you." In other words: Those innocent of sin do not suffer (4.7, LXX), since Job is suffering he must be guilty of sin.

St Gregory the Great rejects this line of reasoning. He sees in Eliphaz and the other "friends of blessed Job," the image of the "heretics," of those "the evil ones" who "are as much to blame in their admonitions as they are immoderate in their condemnations." For the Pope of Old Rome both experience and Scripture testify to the fact that the innocent and the righteous do suffer and suffer often. He goes further and says that

They, then, are genuinely righteous who produce the love of the heavenly country to meet all the ills of the present life. For all who fear enduring ills in this life are clearly not righteous people. They have forgotten they suffer for the sake of eternal blessings.

Turning explicitly to Eliphaz, Gregory explores why it is that this friend of Job "does not take into account [why it is that] either the righteous are cut off or that the innocent perish here." The saint argues that this memory lapses reflects an even more profound lapse: "For people often serve God not in the hope of heavenly glory but an earthly recompense." He continues that as does Eliphaz, many "make a fiction in their own head of that which they are seeking. Thinking themselves to be instructors in preaching earthly immunity, they show by all their pains what is the thing they love." ("Morals on Job," 5.34, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 22)

Reading through Job, I am struck that—for the second time—Eliphaz is overwhelmed by Job's situation. Just as at the end of chapter 2, he and his friends are struck dumb in the face of Job's suffer (2.18), so too Eliphaz begins his admonish by acknowledging his poverty in the face of Job's sorrow: "Have you been often spoken to in distress? But who can endure the force if your words?" Though Job's circumstances are more than he can endure, Eliphaz nevertheless takes it upon himself to lecture his friend.

St John Chrysostom helps us see the irony here of Eliphaz's intervention. Chrysostom observes that Eliphaz is hesitant and uncertain in his response to Job not from "moderation," but because he knows he "cannot convince Job about an evident fault on his [Job's] part." Instead Eliphaz is undone by Job's insistence of his own innocence AND his willingness to share "the same fate as the impious." ("Commentary on Job," 4.2 quoted in ACCS, vol VI, 21)

Having begun now to detach himself from his inordinate loves, Job finds within himself the possibility of identifying with the unrighteous and the sinful to such a degree that—in anticipation of Christ—he is willing to share with them the consequences of their sin. This is beyond what Eliphaz and the other friends of Job can imagine for themselves—or indeed for anyone—because they have not yet taken that inward turn. They are still very much attached to their own egocentric desires.

They can reprove Job—but they can have no compassion for him. To do so, to be willing to suffer along with Job—which is to say, to imitate his own imitation of Christ and bear innocently the consequences of human sinfulness—is impossible as long as they are attached to their own egoic desires. Job is a provocation to Eliphaz and to all who structure their lives according to the desires of their own will.

My inordinate attachment to the created does not reflect the intrinsic value of the things themselves. Rather my attachment to the created order reflects the egocentric value I posit of creation. My desires are inordinate because they are arbitrary; they reflect my momentary, transitory whims. I do not desire the goodness of creation as is given by God. Rather what I desire is the self-referential utility to which I can bend creation, my neighbor and even God Himself. What I value in God and creation is their value for my own plans and projects.

More tragically, reflecting as it does the desires of my ego, the life I live life is one ever decreasing appreciation for the goodness of God and His creation. Even the images of the self that I catch in the fleeting reflections from the world around me are ones I select and arranged according to my own egoic desires. And so my attachment to my desires leads to a similar, personal, downward spiral in which I come to see ever less of my own goodness.

A moment ago, I said that Job embodies a provocation to Eliphaz. The provocation, I think is this. I can no more choose the path of purification than I can choose my own birth (or death for that matter). Just as birth is the condition of possibility for my freedom, and so prior to freedom itself, purification is what makes me free, but it is not something I am free to choose. In fact, if my analysis of the diminishing sense of my own goodness is true, I am not free either to reject purification since this merely ratifies the work of sin and death in me (if I may borrow from the Apostle Paul).

Finally, let me conclude with what I see as the fundamental difference between Job and Eliphaz and for each man represents for the spiritual life.

For Job, unlike for Eliphaz, the truth of cosmology, the truth of anthropology, are not merely abstract facts to be manipulated by me as I seek to make a point or win an argument. Yes, Job can say with Eliphaz, "blesses is the man whom God corrects; therefore do not reject the chastening of the Almighty." (5.17). Unlike Eliphaz, however, Job would not stop there. He would confess his gratitude to the God Who "causes a man to be in pain, but He restores him again. He smites, but His hands heal again." (v. 18) For Eliphaz this is simply a truth about God and about humanity's relationship with God. While Eliphaz gives voices to what is true for all and is willing to apply this to Job, he (curiously) does not apply this truth to himself. And again, this is not how it is for Job. Like Christ, Job lives in his own flesh the mystery of God's wounding and healing love for every human person. And, needless to say, it is to this way of life, to Job's way of life, that we who are in Christ are also called.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Facing the Danger of Looking Inward

The inward journey is not, as the text of Job illustrates, without its own dangers.

For Job, at the end of the second chapter, the first such danger that he encounters is this: Even as he comes to see himself more clearly, he becomes increasingly unrecognizable to those who are closest to him. Soon after Satan strikes "Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head," (v. 7) his wife comes to him and says "'Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!'" (v. 9) Job, however, remains faithful to the journey he has begun: "'You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?' In all this Job did not sin with his lips." (v. 10)

Writing in about the fifth century, the Christian priest, Hesychius of Jerusalem, in one of his homilies on Job offers the following reflection on the brief exchange between Job and his wife:

Now, since the betrayer [i.e., Satan] had been defeated in every battle, had failed in all his attempts, had been hindered in all his hunts, had been deprived of all his schemes, and all his traps had been broken, after destroying Job's wreath, after the death of his numerous children, after ripping Job's body with his blows, at last, and in the betrayer's opinion, most compelling resource, he leads his wife against Job. ("Homilies on Job," 4.2.9, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 13)

The more I make the inward journey, the more I allow myself to feel the grief that is symptomatic of my love of the gift over the Giver, the more I realize that I have confused myself with my possessions, my accomplishments, and ultimately my own egocentric desires.

I cannot judge Job's wife harshly. As with his friends (vv. 11-13), Job's wife does "not recognize him." (v. 12) Just as he is becoming clear to himself, Job becomes a cipher to those closest to him. And why not? They know only the mask, the false self, which Job projected to the world. Having themselves not yet turned inward, they see only Job's loss, his suffering, but not his purification, not his gain in self-knowledge and peace. Truth be told, even though he does "not sin with his lips," at this point Job is still a cipher to himself.

One of the great dangers of turning inward is the temptation is to abandon our journey rather than face the rejection of those closest to us. Abandoning the journey means that, like Job's wife and friends, giving I instead give myself over to a despair born of untransformed grief. Seeing but not understanding her husband's transformation, Job's wife can only say, "Curse God and die." Job's friends, "Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite," are all likewise undone by their grief. The appearance of Job in the first moments of his new birth strikes them dumb; all they can do is weep with grief at the loss of the man they knew. And Job must face the temptation to join in their untransformed grief and forgo a life of compassion and forgiveness.

In the first moments of my inward turn, the burden of grief that can so overwhelm me that I simply give up. The sign that I have given up is that I see my suffering is purely external. Forsaking the inward journey mean that I see my grief not as it is, rooted not an inordinate attachment to my own ego, but rather to the circumstances in which I find myself. "If only," I tell myself, "my life had been different."

Job faces this temptation in chapter three. Mindful of all that he has lost, mindful of his alienation from his wife and friends, "Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth." (v. 1) Quickly, Job's curse takes on a life of its own as it passes from personal to cosmological (vv. 4-9). Nevertheless, he is still able to again considers himself:

"Why did I not die at birth?

Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?

Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? (vv. 11-12)

Thinking about his own life in light of these larger, cosmological issues, inspires Job to think more deeply about his life. But now cosmology must become anthropology and he realizes that his is the lot of all humanity, "kings and counselors" (v. 14), "princes" (v. 15), "infants" (v. 16), the "wicked" (v. 17), "prisoners" (v. 18), the "small and the great . . . and the slave." (v. 19) It is at this moment that we see the beginning of the real fruit in Job's (and our own) inward turn— compassion and forgiveness.

Job understands (as I still must) the terrible mystery of creation. Nothing and no one is ontologically necessary. That all is a gift is true enough. But to the one who would control life rather than receive it thankful as a gift from the Divine Giver, this realization is a frightening. The choice is clear; I succeed on God's terms or fail on my own. Or, as St Gregory the Great has it,

Those who are endued with might in love of their Maker are those who are strengthened in the love of God as the object of their desire. Yet they become in the same degree powerless in their own strength. The more strongly they long for the things eternal, the more they are disenchanted with earthly objects. The failure of their self-assertive strength is wholesome. ("Morals on the Book of Job," quoted in ACCS¸ vol VI, p. 18)

Job's struggle, the struggle of his friends and family with him, is that they do not—at least in the first moments of his revelation—recognize the real Job. They failed to do so because they were attached to the facsimile of the true man within. Like Job I must first face my own inordinate attachments if my grief and despair are to be transformed.

Job struggle is part and parcel of the journey of not only the Great Fast, but the whole of the Christian life. Like Job I must confront the gratuitous, but not capricious, character of all creation including my own life. Again this is an inward journey and it is only by turning first turning inward that, by God's grace and my own effort, I am able to "transform . . . very evil habits into virtue." (Gregory the Great, "Morals on the Book of Job," quoted in ACCS¸ vol VI, p. 14)

As I said above, this transformation, should it come at all, bears the fruit of a life of compassion and forgiveness. Why do I say this? It is only when I am mindful of my own weakness, I can have compassion for my neighbor in his weakness and so extend forgiveness to him. This neither Job's wife nor friends were able to do for him—they could not forgive his weakness because they had no compassion having not accepted their own poverty before God.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Transforming Life’s ‘Little’ Ironies

Naked I came from my mother's womb,

And naked shall I return there.

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the LORD.

(Job 1.21)

One of life's bitterest and most tragic ironies is that which symbolizes the great gift of my life has been corrupted by sin. Instead of being a source of great joy, this symbol has become instead the symbol of my deepest shame. I am speaking here of nakedness.

In the beginning, we are told in Genesis, the man and the woman are created naked. And naked they stand before each other in gratitude to God an purity of heart, with neither lust nor shame to mar their lives for God or each other. It is only after their transgression, only after their eyes are "opened" that each becomes a stranger to the other. And underneath this hostility toward the other, there is as well a self-loathing, a shame and self-alienation ground in an even deeper estrangement from God.

Compare this to the naked Job.

There is, so St Ephrem the Syrian tells us, no hint of this bitterness in Job's words quoted above. Rather for the longsuffering patriarch and despite all the pain that has come upon him, Job, unlike Adam, has not "covered [his own nakedness] with crimes and evil deeds." Instead, and again unlike Adam who hides from God, Job is "firm in his holy frankness" before God and man. Easily we can "imagine [that] he had never turned aside from righteousness nor would [he pass] from virtue to vice in the future" ("Commentary on Job," 1.21, quoted in ACCS, vol VI, p. 7).

Job's steadfastness in the midst of his suffering highlights for me my own lack of gratitude before God for the gift of my own life. Reflecting on my own, rather ordinary suffering and my own rather pedestrian smallness of heart, I am struck by the words of Clement of Alexandria.

Clement in his commentary on Job focuses his attention on the anthropologically rich fact of human nakedness. Unlike all other creatures, the human being "alone is born in all aspects naked, without weapon or clothing." He continues by telling me that "This does not mean that you are inferior to other animals." Our nakedness is given to us by God "to produce thought." It is because of our original physical, even ontological, poverty that "in turn, we [are able to] bring out dexterity, expel sloth, introduce the arts for the supply of our needs, and beget a variety of ingenuity."

Reflecting on the practical consequences of our nakedness Clement continues by observing that "naked human beings are full of contrivances, being pricked by their necessity, as by a goad, to figure out how to escape rains, how to elude cold, how to fend off blows, how to till the earth, how to terrify beasts" and even "how to subdue the more powerful" of our own kind. Because of our nakedness, because of our poverty, we are "wetted with rain" and so "conceive of a roof." Because we have "suffered from cold" we "invent clothing." He says of poor humanity that being "struck," we "construct a breastplate" to guard ourselves. Our "hands bleeding with the thorns in tilling the ground," cause us to "avail [ourselves] of the help of tools. Because our "naked state[makes us] liable to become prey to wild beasts," we have "discovered from [our] fear an art which frightened the very thing that [frightens us]."

And so, he concludes, there is a certain irony to our poverty. "Nakedness begets one accomplishment after another." Going further he say that "even [our] nakedness" the sign of our poverty and our weakness must be seen as "a gift of benevolence." For his part, having understood and accepted as a gift his own physical and ontological poverty, "Job [though] being made naked of wealth, possessions, of the blessing of children, of a numerous offspring, and having lost everything in a short time" is able to utter "this grateful explanation: 'Naked came I out of the womb, naked also I shall depart thither,' to God and the that blessed lot and rest" ("Catena," Fragment, 1, ACCS, vol VI, p. 8).

The book of Job presents me with a standard that is well beyond me—and which I suspect will always be well beyond me. If I am honest, while I may regret the former, I am just ever so slightly relived by the latter. is frankly so much easier to cultivate in myself a sense of gratitude when, unlike Job, I get to pick and choose the parts of my life for which I am grateful. But it is for this reason, because I am so willing to limit my gratitude to what confirms to my own ego, that each year during the season of the Great Fast I am brought again to sit in the place of Job.

As he always does, St Augustine goes right to heart of the matter. With his usual eloquence, he highlights one of the bitter ironies of my spiritual life. It is hard not to recognize myself as one of "those feebler souls who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, still hang on to them with a somewhat modest attachment." How am I able to recognize myself here? Because, as with all feeble souls, I discover "by the pain of losing . . . things how much [I was] sinning in loving them." Like all feeble souls, my "grief is of [my] own making." (City of God, 1.10, quoted ACCS, vol VI, p. 9).

If we are not careful, we can look at the season of the Great Fast as purely negative event. There is, to be sure, a negative quality to this time of year, but is it the negativity of the catharsis (purification) that leads to theoria (illumination) and eventually theosis (divinization). It is during the season of the Great Fast that I am lead each year to discover evermore fully not only what Augustine might call my inordinate attachments to created goods, but also, to paraphrase Clement, the ingenious variety of my own, and my neighbor's, creativity and intelligence. And all this I must come to see in thanksgiving as God's gift to us.

But again, I can only discover the benevolence of the latter if I am willing to suffer the grief cause by the slow and steady purification of my "somewhat modest attachments." As I said yesterday, this purification only happens if I willing, like Job and with the Church as my guide, turn inward, dive deep beneath the surface of life's bitter and tragic ironies, and rise on the Third Day with Christ our True God.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Heart’s Hidden Depth

So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed[a] God in their hearts." Thus Job did regularly.

(Job 1.5)

For Great Lent, I have encouraged my catechumens to read the book of Job. Since I generally follow the counsel I give, I began today to read Job.

For my first reading, I am using the new Orthodox Study Bible's (OSB) English translation of the Septuagint (LXX). Afterwards, I go back over the text a second time, but this time using the volume dedicated to Job in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) series. This series allows me to get a bit of the flavor of patristic commentary on the book. While I am of two minds about both texts, I think it is good now and then to look at a familiar text of Scripture from a different perspective. But, this is really neither here nor there.

Reading through the commentary of chapter 1, my attention was drawn to the words of Didymus the Blind (ca. 313 – ca.398) Reflecting on the verse at the top of this post, Didymus says that, "the text stresses the great purity of Job's children." He then something interesting, while Job "did not perceive any sin" in his son, he nevertheless offered sacrifices because of the sons' "disposition." The explanation for this is straightforward: "Job was aware that the human weakness and sluggishness that mark young persons often escalates. This is also what St. Paul said, 'I am not aware of anything against myself.' (1 Cor 4.4) And the psalmist, 'Forgive my hidden faults.' (Ps 19.12/18.13 LXX)"

Thinking about this, two thoughts came to mind.

First, I am aware that I often do not have any sense of my own sinfulness. Or rather, my awareness is often limited to only my surface sinfulness. Yes, I know that I am a sinner, but I do not know this in depth. This why I think that not only the season of the Great fast, but all the penitential periods and disciplines of the Church can be beneficial. They can help me come to know a bit more of the depths of my own sinfulness. In words of the Great Canon of St Andrew that the Orthodox Church celebrates during Lent (9^th Ode):

The mind is wounded, the body is feeble, the spirit is sick, the word has lost its power, life is ebbing, the end is at the doors. What then will you do, wretched soul, when the Judge comes to try your case?

I have reviewed Moses' account of the creation of the world, my soul, and then all canonical Scripture which tells you the story of the righteous and the unrighteous. But you, my soul, have copied the latter and not the former, and have sinned against God.

The Law has grown weak, the Gospel is unpractised, the whole of the Scripture is ignored by you; the Prophets and every word of the Just have lost their power. Your wounds, my soul, have multiplied, and there is no physician to heal you.

For many, including man Orthodox Christians, these words are hard to say. And they are even harder to apply to oneself.

But they don't exhaust the hidden depths of the human heart. Yes, there is in my heart profound sin but not only sin. Again, in the words of tonight's service:

I am bringing before you examples from the New Scripture, my soul, to lead you to compunction. So emulate the righteous and avoid following the sinners, and regain Christ's grace by prayers, fasts, purity and reverence.

Christ became man and called to repentance robbers and harlots. Repent, my soul! The door of the Kingdom is already open, and the transformed Pharisees, publicans and adulterers are seizing it ahead of you. (Matthew 21:31; 11:12)

Christ became a babe and conversed in the flesh with me, and he voluntarily experienced all that pertains to our nature, apart from sin; and He showed you, my soul, an example and image of His own condescension. (Matthew 1:25)

Christ saved wise men, called shepherds, made crowds of infants martyrs, glorified old men and aged widows, whose deeds and life, my soul, you have not emulated. But woe unto you when you are judged! (Matthew 2:12; Luke 2:9-12; Matthew 2:16; Luke 2:25-38)

When the Lord had fasted for forty days in the wilderness, He at last became hungry, showing His human nature. Do not be despondent, my soul, if the enemy attacks you, but let him be beaten off by prayer and fasting. (Matthew 4:1-11; 17:21; Mark 9:29)

The human heart, my heart conceals within itself not only sin and death, but also the possibility of repentance and renewal in response to God's grace. If I may speak this way, not only sin but also repentance is a possibility for me. I suspect that, to the degree people turn inward at all, most of us remain on the surface.

But if I go deeper and see the sinfulness that is right underneath the surface of my respectable life, I am tempted to turn away from the ugliness with me and retreat once more into a life of mere respectability. Or else, if I avoid flight, I can find myself mired in the reality of my own sinfulness, my own pettiness and shortcomings.

The real anthropological genius of the Church's liturgical tradition is that it takes me even deeper into myself and shows me the image of God that is obscured by my sinfulness. It is at that point, when I see my life as it has come to me from the Hand of God that I can begin, by God's grace, the upward climb that is the life of repentance and theosis.

The great paradox though is that I cannot ascend unless I first descend into the "weakness and sluggishness" that characterizes not only the life of young people, but my own life as well.

A blessed Lent and a glorious celebration of Christ's Resurrection.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Joy, Love and Our Common Good

Image via WikipediaContinuing yesterday's post Institutional Problems, Personal Solutions:

In moments of transition, there is a need to acknowledge, to affirm, what is going on in the community. Especially when that transition is associated with powerful feelings, be they positive or (as is more likely) negative, these need to be acknowledge and given a place within the life of the community. Practically this means helping people listen to and identify their feelings. More important still, people often need help in situated their feelings within the larger process of the community's transition, even as the community's transition needs itself to be situated within the larger story of the Gospel (i.e., oriented).

As I think about things, it seems to me that helping and compassion are fundamentally about orientation and acknowledgment. This doesn't mean I ought not to offer practical solutions where that is possible. But these solutions to actually be practical, to really be helpful and compassionate, must grow out of orientation and acknowledgement. At a minimum, if I don't know where the community is going (orientation), or if I don't know what people are struggle with (acknowledgment), then my help and compassion is likely to be ineffective. Worse, I may be serving my own needs rather than the community's.

Finally, playfulness.

Playfulness is not a value we usually associate with the Orthodox Church. And yet, in every traditional Orthodox culture there is a tradition of feasting, of music and dance. Pastorally I have found that one the best ways to unite an ethnically mixed community is to encourage people to eat each other's foods, sample each other's alcohols, and to encourage and welcome everyone's music, language and customs.

None of this can be done if the leadership—clerical or lay—or overly serious. There is a place, a valuable and important place, in our spiritual lives for frivolity, for fun.

If I were to make any critical comment about the way in which the Orthodox Church response pastorally to transitions, it is that we are often not very playful. Sometimes we are so deadly serious. But playfulness admits a bit of space, it allows us some room to move without being self-conscious or anxious. This all to say, that we must cultivate in our communities, a real sense of joy.

This is hard to cultivate of we are unwilling to look at ourselves honestly. It is hard to cultivate joy if we either take our eyes off the Kingdom of God, or the practical steps along the way. And apart from our willing to bear each other's burdens there can be no joy.

But while all this is true, without joy these other things are likewise impossible.

In a 1983 homily for Forgiveness Sunday, Fr Alexander Schmemann says:

As once more we are
about to enter the Great Lent, I would like to remind us – myself first of all, and all of you my fathers, brothers, and sisters – of the verse that we just sang, one of the stichera, and that verse says: "Let us begin Lent, the Fast, with joy."

Only yesterday we were commemorating Adam crying, lamenting at the gates of Paradise, and now every second line of the Triodion and the liturgical books of Great Lent will speak of repentance, acknowledging what dark and helpless lives we live, in which we sometimes are immersed. And yet, no one will prove to me that the general tonality of Great Lent is not that of a tremendous joy! Not what we call "joy" in this world – not just something entertaining, interesting, or amusing – but the deepest definition of joy, that joy of which Christ says: "no one will take away from you" (Jn. 16:22). Why joy? What is that joy?

Fr Alexander answers his own question by saying that Lent is a gift. And while this gift has many facets, is the gift that makes possible our

return to each other: this is where we begin tonight. This is what we are doing right now. For if we would think of the real sins we have committed, we would say that one of the most important is exactly the style and tonality which we maintain with each other: our complaining and criticizing. I don't think that there are cases of great and destructive hatred or assassination, or something similar. It is just that we exist as if we are completely out of each other's life, out of each other's interests, out of each other's love. Without having repaired this relationship, there is no possibility of entering into Lent. Sin – whether we call it "original" sin or "primordial" sin – has broken the unity of life in this world, it has broken time, and time has become that fragmented current which takes us into old age and death. It has broken our social relations, it has broken families. Everything is diabolos – divided and destroyed. But Christ has come into the world and said: "... and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself" (Jn. 12:32).

In the final analysis, all communities are, in one form or another, in transition because all human beings are in transition. What we learn from those communities that are suffering because of a trauma is that our love for one another is maybe not as deeply rooted and firmly held as we might like to think. I am not as loving as I imagine I am—the sign of that is my lack of joy.

In helping communities and individuals negotiate transitions, I must first and foremost love them. This love is not by any means sentimental. It is rather the willingness on my part to bring to place all that God has given me personally, professionally and as a priest of the Orthodox, at the service of the person in front of me. Reflecting both as a social scientist, and more importantly as a Christian, I have come to realize that it is only in my willingness to serve the good of this unique person that I am able as well to serve the common good of the institution, of the parish or diocese that is also my concern.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory