Thou Who at all times and at every hour, in heaven and on earth, art worshipped and glorified, O Christ God, Who art long suffering, plenteous in mercy, most compassionate, Who lovest the righteous and hast mercy on sinners, Who callest all to salvation through the promise of good things to come: Receive, O Lord, our prayers at this hour, and guide our life toward Thy commandments. Sanctify our souls, make chaste our bodies, correct our thoughts, purify our intentions, and deliver us from every sorrow, evil, and pain. Compass us about with Thy holy angels that, guarded and guided by their array, we may attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of Thine unapproachable glory; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Orthodox Spirituality Part 3
In the first essay in this series I wrote about the differences in Monastic and Lay spirituality in the Orthodox Church. I began with a basic outline of where I thought this series was going to go. In the second essay, I wrote about fasting and our need to fast as part of our Spiritual life in the Orthodox Church.
In this third essay I was going to write about confession, but I have written on confession in the past so rather than write about it again I am just going to link to the essays I have written in the past.
Confession and the Interior Life
Confession and Parish Revitalization
Orthodox Spirituality Part 2
In my last essay, I began a study of the differences between the Orthodox Monastic Spirituality and the Orthodox Lay person’s Spirituality. There is indeed a difference between the two, and as I mentioned in the last essay I think we do not talk about the differences enough.
In this essay, I will compare and contrast the differences in prayer and fasting. As I mentioned, we are all called to pray and fast. The Church has set aside times of the Church year for us to focus on fasting and the work that needs to be accomplished during the fast periods. Fasting is not supposed to be penitential but is to enable us to reject the passions. The Church Fathers write about the need to deny ourselves in order to get the passions in check. The fast periods of the church, or more appropriately the abstinence periods of the Church, are penitential but fasting in and of itself is not.
The Church calls us to fast and abstain all Wednesdays and Fridays of the year, with some exceptions. Wednesday is to remember the day that Judas betrayed Christ and handed him over, and Friday is to bring to mind the Crucifixion. On these two days, we follow the strict abstinence from all meat and dairy products to include eggs. We also abstain from alcohol and oil. But we should also limit the amount of food that we consume on those days. Hunger is to remind us of the need to pray and work to gain control over the passions that can control us. The amount of food we eat is the one thing that we can control and the fathers say that if we can control that then the work on the passions can begin. Traditionally Orthodox monastics do not eat meat at any time during the Church year. They also abstain from eating fish except on high feast days.
This fast is separate from and not connected to the Eucharistic fast. In traditional practice, the Eucharistic fast is nothing by mouth after midnight on the day before communion. That would mean that after midnight on Saturday, we can have nothing by mouth. That means no Sunday morning coffee before Church! However, if you take medication and you need to drink water or eat some food then by all means you need to follow the direction of your physician.
As a spiritual father, to many people I always suggest starting slow and work up to what the church advises. My opinion is that we all should be doing something and the fast as I have presented it here is a goal for us all to attempt to achieve and we can reach it if we work at it. But we need to start slow and build on what we have perfected. As with all things, consultation with your spiritual father is essential.
Prayer is another aspect where the lay state and monastic state are separate. St. Paul writes that we are to pray continuously, and I agree with what St. Paul has written. We should, regardless of our state of life, be praying at all times and all places. But what of liturgical prayer? Our prayer life needs to include more than just Sunday morning Liturgy or Saturday evening Vespers. We need to pray each day as the Church asks us too.
One excellent resource for this prayer is contained in the Orthodox Study Bible. Located in the back of the Orthodox Study Bible is a short and easy morning and evening prayer. If prayed each day this should take no more than 15 minutes each. As I said about fasting, start small with just the morning or evening prayer and build on it as you go. Quality of time is better than quantity of time. Spending 15 minutes of your day in prayer and conversation with God will have a substantial impact on your day. I recommend the prayers of the Church rather than extemporaneous prayer because these prayers are the ancient and traditional prayers of the Church and are prayed by people in all corners of the world at all times of day and by praying these prayers we are participating in the prayer life of the Church. As you progress include the Psalm for the day and the Lectionary Readings.
Monks are called to several hours of prayer, both communal and private, each day. St. Benedict in his rule for monasteries writes that the day should be half spent in work and half spent in prayer. Ora et labora is what he calls for, work and prayer. Our prayer should be work and our work should be prayer. Lay people can practice this if their particular situation in life allows it, but not everyone can or should try this kind of life.
All of these practices should be done in consultation with your spiritual father. If you do not have one then get one, but start with your parish priest.
Orthodox Spirituality Part 1
When I talk with people about the Orthodox Church I often relate the discussion to the Orthodox sense of Spirituality. One of the things that first attracted me to Orthodox was the Spirituality. I had a chance to read the little book The Way of the Pilgrim. This is a splendid little book about the deep spiritual roots of the Orthodox Church. In one sense, we are all pilgrims but can any of us just chuck it all and go on pilgrimage?
There are two forms of spirituality in Orthodoxy, monastic and lay, and I sometimes think that we try and put the two together, but they are remarkably different from each other. I hope over the next series of essays to point out the similarities and the differences in an effort to deepen our own spirituality.
I will start with the similarities since that will be the easiest place to start. As Orthodox Christians, we are called to a similar course on our spiritual journey regardless of our vocation, married, single, or monastic. We are called to fast and pray all during the year as well as the designated fast periods of the Church year. However, there is a difference between monastic fasting and prayer and that of the lay person.
We are also called to celebrate the Divine Liturgy at a minimum on Sunday, but we should also attend during the feast days of the Church. In my own parish, we celebrate the Vespers service on the eve of the feast so more of the parishioners could attend. The Divine Liturgy is essential to our life as Christians. That weekly time together is of the utmost importance, and we should strive to attend Liturgy each and every time it is offered. Our lives have become tremendously busy with all sorts of activities, and it seems that Liturgy is the one thing that gets tossed to the side. The two hours we spend in Liturgy each week is a small portion of our time.
Another often overlooked part of our spiritual life is confession. Confession is one of the lost Sacraments in the Church. Each year fewer and fewer people avail themselves of this magnificent healing Sacrament of our Holy Church. I am pleased to say that the number of people and the frequency of their confessions has increased in my small parish over the last year. I believe this to be in part of my renewed emphasis on the Sacrament in my preaching as well as the renewal of the Sacrament in my own spiritual life. I will leave the frequency of confession for another essay, but if it has been some time since your last confession, why not go soon.
Spiritual fatherhood, or Spiritual Parenting is another essential part of our life in the Church and another almost entirely lost art here in the Church in America. We have mentors for all sorts of things in our lives, work, sports and many more. Why do we treat our spiritual life with less importance? One would not consider starting a journey across the country without first consulting a map or now a GPS for guidance but so many of us stumble along the spiritual path with no guide at all.
My aim is to spend time in future essays on each of these areas to chart a course as we continue the journey along the path of transformation of our lives. Becoming serious about our lives in the Church and the life that we are called to lead is an essential part of that transformation that we all need to be part of.
Sermon ~ You are the Temple of the Living God
The Reading is from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians 6:16-18; 7:1
BRETHREN, you are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.
Each year, just before Pascha, we spend a little extra time cleaning the Church. The Church gets cleaned every week, but we pay a little closer attention to the corners and other places where dirt and dust tend to congregate. We need to care for God’s House, not this that is the only place where he lives, but this place, this sacred space that has been sanctified, is indeed a sacred place. This is not just another building, this building even the ground that it stands on has been set aside for the worship of God. We need to keep this Church is good repair, and yes the columns over here to my left will be painted real soon, so that it is simply a proper place for God to dwell.
But this is not what St. Paul is talking about in the Epistle to the Corinthians that we heard a few moments ago. St. Paul says “we are the temple of the living God.” He goes on to quote from Leviticus, “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.” St. Paul is talking about us and the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit in each one of us.
But what of our temple? How much time do we spend cleaning those dark places?
We have been spending time talking about our interior life. The totality of our lives as Christians has to do with the interior life. Don’t get me wrong, the external expressions of our faith are necessary but it what goes on inside of us that matters most. We heard in the Gospel of St. Luke “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” This requires the mind of, and heart of God to be able to live up to this. And this is not a suggestion, this is a requirement.
Dear ones, our lives here on earth involve a spiritual struggle, a war if you will, between what we know we should be doing and the world wants us to do. Life in this world and the life of a Christian are not compatible with each other for the world wants us to be concerned about ourselves and as Christians we need to be concerned about others. Not just some of the time, but all of the time.
We are in a spiritual war zone where our entrenched patters on sin have become a habit. For some of us, these habits are so complex that we do not even know when we have sinned. To cleanse ourselves from this requires work, and that work is the inner work of the Church and the promises of God allow us to embark on a sustained struggle for holiness.
We need to do more than just think thoughts of repentance we need to repent. We need to come out of this world, and its false religion, and turn or faces back towards God.
When I was in seminary, I spent a year working at the Billerica House of Correction in the office of the prison chaplain. Each week I would travel to the jail and spend time visiting the inmates in their cells and the common areas. Part of the program of corrections is to do just that correct the behavior that landed them in prison in the first place. The idea is to break the cycle. Part of that is to take responsibility for what they had done and to seek restitution and forgiveness. They were locked up, paying their debit to society if you will, but much of the work that needed to be done was on the inside. These were some truly angry people, and they had many, many excuses for why things happened to them. It was fascinating; over the year, I was there, to see the change in many of those guys. They gradually came to realize that they were the ones who did what they did, they were not “victims of the system” and only they could pull themselves up and get back on the right path. They were slaves to their anger and once they let that anger go the real work could be done. Now this did not happen to all of them, but for the ones that did do the work, their lives changed.
You see, we need to face our sin, not beat ourselves up for it, but we need to face it. We need to look it in the eye and shout at the top of our lungs, “I am done with you!” We need to be genuinely sorry for what we have done, and this is not just lip service, this is not coming to confession once a year and running off the list as fast as we can and getting the absolution, this is spending some real time, digging into the corners where the dust and the dirt is and cleaning it all out.
One of the skills that is taught to the prisoners is to avoid the life that they had before prison. Studies show that after release, if a prisoner returns to his old neighborhood and life chances are he will reoffend and end up back in prison. People who are in recovery from addiction are taught to avoid the places they used to go so to help avoid that behavior. Well for us, we need to adopt the same mind set. We are in recovery, recovery from sin, and it is a life long process.
We need to avoid those situations where we are drawn to sinful behavior. We need to identify what those are, we need to bring them to confession and repent of that behavior. The last line of today’s Gospel is “be merciful, for your heavenly Father is merciful.” God has a tremendous capacity for forgiveness, more than any human could ever imagine, and that mercy will be shown to each and every one of us if we ask for it!
Much of our spiritual life can be figured out by following the 12 steps of AA:
Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable (spiritual awakening)
Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity (God is Lord of all)
Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs (confession)
Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings (confession)
Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all (examination of conscious)
Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others (reconciliation)
Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted
it (examination of conscious)
Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out (sacramental life of the Church)
Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs (evangelization)
Is this too difficult for us mere humans to do? Yes it is. That’s why we have to ask that the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us, cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to turn away when we need to turn away, it is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live a life of peace with God and our fellow human beings and all of creation, and it is this same Holy Spirit who empowers us to repentance before the living God and enables us to truly become Temples of the Living God.
I have five favorite quotes from the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. I use them from time to time to make a point or to remind myself of why I do what I do. Saint Seraphim of Sarov is credited with my most favorite, “Acquire the spirit of peace, and a thousand souls will be converted around you!”
We need to find that peace, the peace that passes all understanding. We need to come home, just like the prodigal son, and feel the warm embrace of a father who loves us. We need to find that peace with each other, with creation, and with ourselves. Just imagine what the world would be like if we were able to do this!
Education and Morality
There is a common narrative that tells us the better educated one is, the better decisions one will make in life. I think there was a time that was more true than not, but it is looking like that simply isn’t the case anymore.
One thing education cannot do is provide morality unless morality is part of the education curriculum and the atmosphere of the educational system. These days, it isn’t true.
We could make an argument that our educational systems are providing a type of morality, which is, by historical standards, rather ‘immoral.’ College is now more about sex and intoxication as important cultural experiences rather than critical thinking and learning the aspects of good character.
Here’s an example of what college students are really thinking about:
Yes, folks, an ‘alcohol enema.’ What does this tell us?
Well, not much on its own. But, when held up with the other many examples we have from colleges, we are seeing young people who have be purposefully subverted from entering adulthood by being kept as ‘teenagers’ mangle themselves with horrid experiments in immorality.
They are not being prepared for adulthood, but rather for excess. By introducing debauchery and putting off the growing specter of adulthood, maturity becomes harder and harder for young adults. Like Adam and Eve in they are being given the choice to indulge and avoid maturity or take on the hard lessons of life, with all the encouragement going to the former.
Colleges are laying the foundations for a whole generation that will struggle with addiction because they are teaching that adulthood and responsibility are to be avoided (except when it suits administrators) and that morality is an ‘inconvenient truth.’ Students are not being taught critical thinking but rather to repeat the ‘critical thoughts’ of their professors. On their own, they make horrible decisions, like alcohol enemas.
Adulthood requires the ability to think critically and understand morality, but since we now depend on ‘the system’ to provide these, and they are not, college students are thrust into the world with a number of rude awakenings:
1) the world expects them to be responsible, even though they have been taught not to be responsible.
2) the world expects them to be honest and upright, even though they have been taught that needy people can’t be expected to do those things, and who is needier than a college grad with no life experience?
3) the world expects them to earn a living and pay taxes by working hard and showing up on time, when their experience of work before graduation has been partying punctuated by a few classes.
Tossing the coddled into the cold water of reality makes adulthood all the more painful. Where do we turn when we are in pain?
We see it already: alcohol, drugs (legal and illegal), food, porn, sex, gambling… is their really any difference between the addictions of the ‘underclasses’ and those of the ‘college grads?’ I would say very little. Addiction is addiction.
I think our educational systems are part of the larger social problem of addiction. Things need to change.
God’s Love Abides in Us
Lately, one of the common conversations, I have had with people is to tell them that God loves them. It seems there are so many people who are lost in anguish and even think that God has abandoned them. God does love us, and we know this because He sent His only Son so that we all will now eternal life. God will always love us no matter what we do or do not do. The love of God is unconditional, and He loves us even when we do not love Him back. That is the essence of the Gospel.
In the 4th chapter of the First Letter of St. John we see that God abides in us,and His love has been perfected in us. But there are a few conditions that are placed upon us. These conditions are not required for God to love us since His love for us in unconditional, but they serve as a guide so that the Love of God will dwell in us and will aide us on our journey towards the interior peace that we are in search of.
St. John shows us the way so we can see the love of God in us. He provides for us four proofs of his love.
1. If we love one another 4:12
2. If we have been given the Spirit 4:13
3. If we confess that Jesus is Lord 4:15
4. If we abide in the love of God 4:16
St. John tells us that if we have love for one another and if we confess that Jesus is Lord we will have God’s love in us and that love will give us the boldness that we will need on that Day of Judgment. In several places in Scripture Jesus commands that we love one another. We do not only have to love those who love us back or love those we like, but we have to love those who hates us and want to do us harm. This is what it means to love everyone.
Loving people who love us back is the easiest thing to do. We do not even have to try and love them, it just happens. But true love, the love of everyone, takes work.
We were all shocked by the recent riots in Egypt over a movie. The United States Ambassador and several others were murdered in these riots. It is an intensely human emotion to want to hate those who carried out these murders. But hatred does not come from God. Hatred is a negative passion that we need to work to banish from our lives if we are going to be true followers of Jesus Christ. To be able simply to love someone takes the love of God working in us and our ability to see that love of God.
This is a difficult part of the transformation of our lives. If we allow the love of God to work in us and through us, we will be able to love all.
Spiritual Warfare
The Reading is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 6:10-17
Brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Spiritual warfare is a very real thing in our lives. The closer we move towards our relationship with the Lord the stronger the forces of the evil one will work on us to drive a wedge between us and the Lord.
In the Epistle reading chosen by the church for the Thursday of the 1st week is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul is writing to his beloved Church as a father giving advice to his children. He is reminding them that the evil one is real in the world and that we must arm ourselves against him. We do not fight an enemy that is flesh and blood, that would be easy, but we are fighting against the powers and the one who rules this world.
Those of us who stand for good and are willing to wage battle must do this constantly. We must be on guard at all times and watch our thoughts as well as our actions. Until Christ comes is his glory we will need to fight this fight. We are not alone in this fight. We fight this battle with the arms of God, not the arms of man. We fight this fight with our spirituality and the sacramental life of the Church.
At our baptism we put on the armor of God. In verse 17 of this periscope quoted above St. Paul explains this armor. We gird our loins with truth, we put on the breastplate of righteousness, and we shod our feet with the Gospel of peace. How do we do all of this? With the shield of faith that will quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. We put on the “helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”
We cannot fight the fight alone; we need the community around us to give us the strength to get through. When Jesus sent out His Apostles they were sent in groups of 2 of support and accountability. We need that other person to “watch our back” as we continue the battle. We also need a good spiritual guide to assist us in the fight.
St. Gregory Palamas wrote, “You should strive to have a spiritual father throughout your life and to confess to him every sin and every evil thought.” Our spiritual father will help us and guide us along the right path and we can all use the help.
“Brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”
The Prayer Rope
The prayer rope was formed by St. Pachomius in the fourth century. The rope is used with the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Historically it typically had 100 knots, although prayer ropes with 300, 50, or 33 knots or, less commonly, 250 or 12 can also be found in use today.
Moral Courage
By Fr. George Morelli
A message from the President of Society of St. John Chrysostom —Western Region(www.lightoftheeast.org)
Members of the Society of St. John Chrysostom, in fact those baptized into any of the Apostolic Churches, have a very important responsibility this Fall 2012 season. American citizens will have the opportunity to vote for the President of the United States as well as for any number of other national, state and local offices. The mix of religion and politics in issues in this electoral season has made the usual politicking even more contentious and challenging than in past years.
In no manner shape or form is this message meant to support any particular candidate or political party. The only purpose of this message is to serve as a reminder for all to carefully discern the Mind of Christ and His Church on the critical moral issues raised in this election and to let Christ and the teachings of His Apostolic Churches be our guide in our witness by our political words, deeds and votes.
Unfortunately, some candidates want to usurp our right speak up for ourselves on issues. A particularly egregious statement I constantly hear from candidates for office from all political parties in the United States is, “What the American people want is. . . .” To have some modicum of honesty, politicians could at the very least somewhat qualify such arrogant rhetoric by saying: “Some American people want . . . .” I, for example, am one of these “American people.” For a candidate to imply that I want something against the teachings of Christ and His Church is to take away the freedom of speech and religion granted to me – and all – by the constitution and, more importantly, granted by God to all to mankind by His making us in His image and giving us free will.
Despite the differences that still prevent full communion of all the Apostolic Churches, our witness should be informed by a Christ-like conscience. Furthermore, our conscience should be nurtured by deep prayer and by cultivating the virtue of discernment. It would be well for us to meditate on the counsel of St. Gregory of Sinai found in the Philokalia, Vol.4 (p.222): “A person is perfect in this life when . . . he receives the grace to assimilate himself to the various stages of Christ’s life . . . . belief is knowledge or contemplation of the Holy Spirit . . . . scrupulous discernment in matters of dogma constitutes full knowledge of the true faith.”i In union with His Church, may the Holy Spirit accompany all of us in this matter.
ENDNOTES
i Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, P. & Ware, K. (Eds.). (1995). The Philokalia, Volume 4: The Complete Text; Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain & St. Makarios of Corinth. London: Faber and Faber.
V. Rev. Fr. George Morelli Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Marriage and Family Therapist.
He is the Coordinator of the Chaplaincy and Pastoral Counseling Ministry of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese and Religion Coordinator (and Antiochian Archdiocesan Liaison) of the Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine, Psychology and Religion.
Fr. Morelli is also Assistant Pastor of St. George’s Antiochian Orthodox Church, San Diego, California.
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