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Paths (Part 49: The Divine Liturgy)

It seems to me that the spiritual life, when lived seriously, requires effort on our part. As St. Paul writes in Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. Then also, that we don’t work alone in this endeavor, as he goes on to write, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” So it is, God’s work in us which enables us to act in obedience to His will, and to find sanctification through our work; but we should fear, lest we fall into complacency, and lose sight of our role in this glorious work. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his classic, The Cost of Discipleship, it is easy for those of us who recognize and rely on the love and mercy of our heavenly Father, to cheapen His grace by failing to fulfill our part in our own salvation, and to thereby grow nonchalant towards this amazing grace, and lose the gift, but gain the curse. We don’t want the gift of that pearl of great price, as our Lord describes the Kingdom of Heaven, for which we are to sell everything in order to acquire, to instead become the pearls which are cast before swine; having instead transformed ourselves into unworthy and unholy dogs, unfit for the gifts of God’s grace, because of our own lack of interest, and our disregard for holiness.

Sensing my own tendency towards lukewarmness of faith, my own hardened heart, and the ease with which I can become distracted, I have ever been interested in, and mindful of, a life of discipline. It was in the life and tradition of the Orthodox Church, that I found renewed support, encouragement and guidance in this life of spiritual discipline. Up until this time, since my time in the community with MD, I had by and large worked on this aspect of my faith alone, apart from the church body, mainly because the Christian tradition I had known, from my experience, seemed to lack depth and breadth of understanding about the spiritual life, or lacked the interest to pursue it. Since becoming a Christian it has been clear, if I am honest with myself, that I need a life of discipline, if I hope to follow the commandments of Christ, which He has said, is the true and accurate measure of our love for Him.

The Orthodox Church supports the disciple of Christ, and guides him or her ever deeper into relationship with Christ our Lord; it does this through manifold means, all interconnected and assisting the believer in their life transformation into holiness. In Orthodoxy, scripture is not isolated from the historical traditions of the life of the church, or from the life of its apostles and saints throughout the ages, but instead is informed and elucidated by these, so that the disciple can learn and understand the meaning of scripture, and find its application from within this tradition, thereby avoiding heresy, misunderstanding and confusion. In concert with holy scripture and tradition are the ascetic disciplines which are rightly understood by the church, and hold a prominent position in the life of the church through regular fasting, vigils, prayer and spiritual reading; all of which are exercised judiciously to assist each believer in gaining the upper hand against their vices, and to make strides towards holiness; towards theosis, or union with God. Because, Christ assures us that if we make ourselves holy, perfect and whole, that He will make His home within us.

Added to these things, the Orthodox Church also provides a means of living out our lives in participation with the life of the Lord. The liturgical calendar takes us first-hand through the life of our Lord, deepening our understanding of Him through this experience, and revealing our purpose before God, as well as introducing us to the lives of those saints who have gone before us, who can give us encouragement and inspiration on our own path to sainthood. And then there is the Liturgy itself, the weekly celebration of our God, the central work of the church in joining us to our Lord, in bringing heaven to earth and earth to heaven, in praising the Lord, and in thanksgiving for His life, His sacrifice, and the magnificent gift He offers of eternal life with Him.

All of these things, and many more besides, act upon us little by little, time after time, year after year, changing us imperceptibly at first but then slowly revealing an unmistakable transformation in us, to the degree that God is working within us, and the degree that we are working with Him.

I am like a rocky cliff, barren and hardened. These ministrations of the church, as given by the grace of God, are like a holy waterfall. They begin to flow over me, across my hardened façade, and over time, through repetition, they begin to soften me, change me, and dissolve me into that vast stream of love that is the life of Jesus Christ. This is the beauty and the mystery of the Orthodox way.

The Divine Liturgy exemplifies this beauty and this mystery. There is nothing else like it in the world; and it provides the antidote to the emptiness, fatigue and decay found in the world. It doesn’t try to be like the world; instead, the Divine Liturgy brings us into the throne room of God. The Divine Liturgy was famously described by ambassadors of Prince Vladimir, back in the tenth century, who had been sent to experience the beliefs and practices of the faiths in neighboring lands, and to report back to him what they learned. They said of the liturgy:

“And we went into the Greek lands, and we were led into a place where they serve their God, and we did not know where we were, on heaven or on earth; and do not know how to tell about this. All we know is that God lives there with people and their service is better than in any other country. We cannot forget that beauty since each person, if he eats something sweet, will not take something bitter afterwards; so we cannot remain any more in paganism.”

I had a similar feeling upon participating in the Divine Liturgy. It can carry one outside of themselves, in a sense, and into a heavenly realm, if one allows this to happen. Step by step we leave the world behind, beginning with our entrance into the sanctuary, where we are met by the transcendent beauty of the worship space itself: the warm light of glowing candles shining from their stands beside the icon stands, the equally mesmerizing glow of the oil lamps which light the faces surrounding us, icons of the holy ones, showing us the way to Christ, the intricate and ornately embroidered vestments of the priests, and those who serve with them, the central dome with its icon of Jesus, giving us a real tangible sense of heaven descending, to sanctify us and the earth, to redeem our world and bring it back into His fold.

The Divine Liturgy presents us with a relationship, not just a knowing about God, but a participation in His life, and like any relationship it is tangible, and consists of more than just ideas; it is rather an experience of God, through all our senses. First we see the beauty of the place in which we worship Him, and then we smell the incense, as it coils upwards in communion with our prayers, made in faith, and finally we hear the sounds of heavenly music. It is said that the Divine Liturgy is almost exclusively based on scripture and that each element, or nearly, can be traced to specific scriptural references; and it is also true that the majority of it is sung, or chanted in a manner of singing.

Perhaps there is no other gift that God has given us, other than music, which can reach into our hearts so deeply and then transport us so completely. Music is universal in its power and appeal, and different types of music take us to different places. Many find that the music of the Divine Liturgy takes them, in a sense, to heaven. Many of the hymns were originally written as long ago as the first few centuries of the Christian church and are still part of the Liturgy today and are still being sung every week, just as they were back when they were first penned.  These hymns, and prayers, various psalms, the Beatitudes, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the introductions to readings from the Epistles and from the Gospels, as well as songs of praise and thanksgiving, which are sung while the faithful receive Communion, all of these are sung throughout the course of the Liturgy; transporting us moment by moment more fully into a realm of beauty and mystery, ultimately into the very throne room of God.

Because Christ says that He is the God of the living and of the dead, and He is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, because of these statements and others like them, Orthodox believers have faith that we are one church together, made up of the living and the dead, not separate, but united, and we are unified in time, past and present and future, through Jesus Christ, since He is the essence and creator of time, and we being now unified with Him, as His body, also share in his timeless nature. So it isn’t mere hyperbole, or symbolic talk, to say that we are transported, in a sense, into His very throne room through the mysterious workings of the Divine Liturgy, because spiritually, this is possible even now, here on earth.

But of course we are free to disbelieve, or wait to find this fulfillment in the next life, or distract ourselves with all manner of worldly attachments. We can resist being drawn into His throne room, even while attending the Divine Liturgy, if we wish to remain on earth. We can deny relationship with Him, and settle for ideas about Him, because He is a merciful and loving Father, and gives His children what they ask. But why not ask for it all, spiritually speaking? Why not ask for a real, living relationship with our God and Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and for communion with the Holy Spirit, at every opportunity; and there is no better way to do this than through the beauty and mystery of the Divine Liturgy which the Orthodox Church offers to us every week.

Even so, we are in the midst of spiritual warfare and there are many conspiring against our spiritual success, so finding our way to the throne room of God can be difficult even in the best of circumstances. To help alleviate at least some of these difficulties, St Theophan wrote guidelines to help worshippers maintain a proper attitude and focus during the Liturgy. The fact that there are so many saints, like St Theophan, who have come before us, this great cloud of witnesses, who are our spiritual brothers and sisters, and that many of these have written extensively on the spiritual life, for our benefit, is another remarkable aspect of the Orthodox faith and tradition. We are not alone in our quest for relationship with Christ and communion with the triune God, but rather, we have a wealth of wisdom available to us, and a host of spiritual heavyweights, who we can learn from and who we can call upon for support and encouragement along the way. I’ve included St Theophan’s insights about beneficial worshipful attitudes here for your help, if you desire it. I’ve made some additional notes on the margins to his original diagram, to help clarify some points:

(to be continued)

~FS

 

June 10

The devout soul, even if it practices all the virtues, ascribes everything to God and nothing to itself. God, on the other hand, when He sees its sound and healthy understanding and knowledge, attributes everything to the soul, and rewards it as though it had achieved everything through its own efforts. He does this in spite of the fact that, if He were to bring us to judgment, no true righteousness would be found in us.

For…all belong to God. Man’s body and soul, and even his very being, are his only by grace. What, then, is left to him that he can call his own, by virtue of which he can pride himself or vindicate himself?

~St Makarios of Egypt

June 9

Just as the power of evil works by persuasion, not by compulsion, so does divine grace. In this way our liberty and free will are preserved. If a man commits sins when he is subject to the devil, he himself pays the penalty, not the devil, since he was impelled to evil not by force but by his own will. It is the same where a good action is concerned: grace does not ascribe this action to itself but to the man, giving him the credit for it, since he is the cause of the goodness that befalls him.

Grace does not make a man incapable of sin by forcibly and compulsorily laying hold of his will but, though present, allows him freedom of choice, so as to make it clear whether the man’s own will inclines to virtue or to evil. For the law looks not to man’s nature but to his free power of choice, which is capable of turning towards either good or evil.

~St Makarios of Egypt

Death in Christ

Preparing for the journey;

traveling light.

 

You won’t need those things,

where you’re going.

And you can’t take them with you.

 

Can you squeeze the world

through a pinhole?

 

And if you could,

what use would it be to you,

in your new home?

 

Pull up what you have hidden,

under the floorboards—

throw them all overboard.

 

You’re a traveling light now;

traveling light.

 

Goodbye to darkness,

all your shadows disappear,

dissolving into brightness,

total victory over fear.

 

Perfect light,

contains no darkness.

Perfect love,

contains no weight.

 

Death in Christ—

means traveling light.

 

You are a traveling light now.

So travel light.

 

~FS

June 8

When you hear that Christ had descended into hell in order to deliver the souls dwelling there, do not think that what happens now is very different. The heart is a tomb and there our thoughts and our intellect are buried, imprisoned in heavy darkness. And so Christ comes to the souls in hell that call upon Him, descending, that is to say, into the depths of the heart; and there He commands death to release the imprisoned souls that call upon Him, for He has power to deliver us. Then, lifting up the heavy stone that oppresses the soul, and opening the tomb, He resurrects us–for we were truly dead–and releases our imprisoned soul from its lightless prison.

~St Makarios of Egypt

June 7

If during his earthly pilgrimage a person does not break his connection with evil spirits, he will remain in fellowship with them even after his death, more or less belonging to them, depending upon the degree of intercourse. Unbroken intercourse with fallen spirits consigns one to eternal perdition, while insufficient broken relations render one liable to severe torments on the way to heaven.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

June 6

Brethren, let us be alarmed at our weakness. Let us be alarmed at sin which so easily deceives us, so easily slinks into us, captures and fetters us. Let us be alarmed at our fallen nature which never ceases to produce the tares of sin. We must constantly watch ourselves, check our conduct and spiritual state with the Gospel, and on no account allow any sinful tendency to grow strong and propagate in our soul by regarding this tendency as unimportant….

We must never neglect tares that spring up from the heart, or sinful thoughts that appear to the mind. Thoughts should at once be rejected and banished, and sinful feelings uprooted and destroyed by opposing them with the commandments of the Gospel and by having recourse to prayer.

Tares are easily got rid of when they are young and frail. But when they take root with time and habit, then their removal calls for the greatest efforts. A sinful thought when accepted and appropriated by the mind enters into the composition of the mind or understanding and deprives it of soundness; while a sinful feeling that lingers in the heart becomes, as it were, a natural property and deprives the heart of spiritual freedom.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

June 5

The truly sincere and devout Christian who has tasted the sweetness of divine things, whose soul is infused and mingled with grace, and who has entrusted his whole being to the purposes of grace, hates every worldly thing. Whether it is gold or silver, honor or glory, esteem or praise, or anything else, he is superior to it, and none of these things is able to captivate him; for he has experienced other riches and another honor and glory, his soul is nourished by an incorruptible delight, and through the fellowship of the Spirit he has full and conscious assurance.

~St Makarios of Egypt

Paths (Part 48: St John Cassian)

In 2012, as I was approaching Orthodoxy, my first guide and companion along the way was St John Cassian, a saint revered by both the western and eastern Christian traditions. In the west, his two primary works, The Conferences and The Institutes were both required reading for early Benedictine monks, and Benedict himself fashioned his famous rule upon the precepts laid down by Cassian in The Institutes. It is also said, that his works were very important to the illustrious western theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who supposedly always carried a copy of The Conferences with him in his satchel, along with The Bible. These things, while interesting and speak to his influence on later Christian thinkers, were less interesting to me than the path that he took, in trying to find the best way to know God, and the things he learned along the way, that I could relate with so deeply, and which inspired me to continue on my own journey.

I discovered that Cassian was born in the middle of the fourth century, and as a young adult, he and a friend traveled to Bethlehem, and joined an ascetic community of monks for about three years. Already I was intrigued by his life, because I also had joined an ascetic community in my early adulthood, and had spent some time in and around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. After this, they traveled to Egypt where they studied for many years with the Christian monks of the desert, who were famous for their holiness. This brought back to my mind considerations I had often had, throughout my life, about the value of monasticism, as a model even for laypeople, and as a fountain of wisdom about spirituality, and as a guide towards achieving a deeper relationship with God. I often wondered about my own Protestant tradition and why we didn’t have monks and monasteries helping to inspire and instruct us in the ‘angelic’ life, as it is commonly known. This seemed so strange to me that we didn’t, especially in view of the fact that Christ himself modeled solitude and prayer, fasting, and retreating to the desert to be with His Father. Additionally, John the Baptist (Forerunner) was a prime example of the monastic ideal, and again was a model for all Christians; and he was even described by Christ Himself as the “greatest among all that have been born of women.” But going even further, St Paul also described this path, in his letter to the Corinthians, describing the two ways of living: in marriage, or alone serving God. With all of this scriptural emphasis in support of the monastic life it seemed logical, as a Christian, even if I wasn’t able to be a monk myself, to avail myself of every possible thing I could gain, in my own spiritual journey, from the efforts, struggles, and victories of my monastic brothers and sisters, and to sit at their feet, so to speak, just as St John Cassian had done.

After many years in Egypt, Cassian traveled to Constantinople and served as a deacon under St John Chrysostom, and then went on to Rome, and finally to Marseilles, France where he founded a monastery based on the Egyptian model. It was here that he wrote his books. The Conferences consists of a series of interviews with many of the most accomplished elders that he studied under while in Egypt. This book in particular impacted me because of the topics included, and also the style of writing. Each interview, or conference, addresses a topic of spirituality, such as vice, desire, God’s protection, spiritual knowledge, divine gifts, and repentance, among many others, and almost line by line what is being said is referenced to a verse of scripture. It was incredible to me, the way that practically everything which was said, referred back to a teaching in scripture. I had never read anything like it, something so insightful, and addressed topics about which most Christians I knew, like me, didn’t know very much. And all of the citations allowed me to see the connections between Biblical verses, and the interpretations that these humble monks were teaching. Their teachings were within the context of scripture, but also within the context of the living traditions of the early church; these weren’t just some guys making things up, trying to be entertaining, or trying to be innovative and make a name for themselves. The depth and breadth of the teaching contained in The Conferences, and the gentle and humble manner with which it is written, delighted me and gave me hope that a wise and deep spirituality did exist in the Christian church, it merely had been hidden from me for all of these years, but it still remained even now, and just had to be sought after and uncovered.

I found guidance and discipleship through his writings that encouraged me to keep seeking God intently. He described the vital importance that purity of heart plays in one’s ability to know the Kingdom of God in this life, to participate in the life of God here and now, and not to merely waiting for this participation in the life to come. He described the way to achieve purity of heart through the repudiation of our passions, our vices, through repentance and the development of inner tranquility and most especially through humility before God. As an example, here he writes about this humility:

“If you wish to achieve true knowledge of scripture you must hurry to achieve unshakeable humility of heart. This is what will lead you not to the knowledge that puffs a man up but to the lore which illumines through the achievement of love.”      ~John Cassian

He also introduced me to the idea of praying without ceasing, as St Paul tells us to do in First Thessalonians 5:17, and he provided a short prayer, a psalm actually, that he recommended to use in order to always keep the Lord in our thoughts, and in our hearts. It is from Psalm 70: “Come to my help, O God; Lord (Jesus) hurry to my rescue.”  I added ‘Jesus’ myself, when I began to use this short prayer.  Scripture speaks often about keeping our thoughts on spiritual things and not carnal ones, and this prayer, or others like it, are intended to help keep the mind occupied on spiritual things. Through repeated effort, eventually a habit of thought can be developed, and this prayer can help orient us in the direction of God at all times. Of course, maintaining a prayer of this sort, always in our mind, is extremely difficult, but that is the discipline, and the goal.

Adding this ‘prayer of the heart’, as these types of prayers are known, to my daily prayer rule, helped me in every area of life, but especially at work, where stress and difficulty could be a real burden for me.  When I could remember to say the prayer, silently in my mind, I felt a renewed strength to meet the current challenge, and a greater peace within me, enabling me to create loving outcomes more frequently, as opposed to merely reacting to my circumstances. And I felt connected to God, simply put, by this prayer. It reminded me that yes, in fact, God is available to come to my help; I am not alone. So it is also a bulwark against despair, loneliness and temptation.

As with the other components of my prayer rule, praying without ceasing is a skill I am developing, and progress is slow over many years. I wish I could say I created the habit quickly, within a month or so, and that now I pray all the time, silently in my heart, to God. But certainly this is not the case. Even so, now I do pray within my heart much more of the time than I did when I first started seriously attempting it back in 2012. Progress may be gradual, but it is worthwhile, and I sometimes think that the process itself is also as important for us, and to God, as the success or the outcome. Just as the wise man of Proverbs may fall seven times and each time he gets back up; every moment that I forget to pray, is merely the moment before the one in which I begin to pray again.

(to be continued)

~FS