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What Pulls Us

Posted on by Fr. Peter

pulling

The Gospel of Luke 8:26-39

At that time, as Jesus arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, there met him a man from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn no clothes and he lived not in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.” For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him; he was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters, but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from them; for they were seized with great fear; so he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but he sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

gizzmo

The Gospel lesson for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost presents us with a man who is being pulled in many directions.  He is possessed by demons, notice I said demons and not a demon for the demons told Jesus they are called legion for they are many.  The word Legion comes from the Latin meaning the leader of an Army Division of about six thousand men.  The poor soul in the story was being pulled to pieces by conflicting interests and drives that made him appear to have more than one personality.

Sometimes we are like the man in the story.  As Orthodox we do not deny the existence of demons and we believe in spiritual warfare and it would appear that modern psychology agrees with us in this regard.  There are demons of greed, guilt, fear; the high pressure demonology of modern competition, stress, conflict and the myriad of others that pull is in many directions at once.

For most of us we have split personality of you will.  We are different people in different situations.  We have the person that we think we are, and then there is the person that we project to others.  There is the person we are at church and the person we are outside of church we are trying to live several lives at one time and that is not working.  Jesus tells us in the Gospel that we cannot serve to masters; we cannot serve both God and mammon.  We cannot serve both God and the crowd, God and Satan we need a single unifying force to bring all of our “selves” together and that is the person of Jesus Christ!

In order for us to develop a mature personality we must be integrated around a single goal in our lives.  Once again we turn to Jesus for the answer, seek first the kingdom of God!  Not only do we suffer from split personalities we suffer from split loyalties, we are partly for Christ but only if it does not get in the way of what we want and what we want to do.  We are either all in or we are all out, there is no middle ground here.  We must integrate our lives around the greatest goal in the universe, God, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, without question.

We need to surrender all of our life not just part of it.  We need to turn over our whole life and just part of it.  We need to let Christ sit on the throne of our hearts and become the chairman of the board of our lives then, and only then, will our ambitious self, the angry self, the jealous self, and the sinful self start to come under control.

We see a man, dwelling in the tombs possessed by man demons, and then we see us sitting in the pews fighting the same fight today, the problem is a divided heart, a divided allegiance, a divided self.  There is no way out of this divided condition except through the complete surrender of us, of our entire self, to Christ as Lord and Master of our lives.

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Mazel Tov ~ Reflections from A Bar Mitzvah

Posted on by Fr. Peter

 

Bar Mitzva

If you are like me, you have only heard or read about the Jewish custom of Bar Mitzvah.  I had an intellectual knowledge of what it was all about – the becoming of an adult in the eyes of Jewish Community and an acceptance of the Jewish faith in a very public way – but I never had any first-hand experience with it.  Well, that all changed when I recently attended my nephew Jacob’s Bar Mitzvah.

I often describe myself as a “church geek”. I like ritual and liturgy, not only of my own church, but of other churches.  I like the history of the development of ritual and liturgy and to see how things change over the years.  One of the first learning moments was to discover that Bar Mitzvah is not an event but a title; one is not “Bar Mitzvahed”, one is a Bar Mitzvah.  Bar Mitzvah is a title that means “Son of the Commandment” and is a person who hears and responds to the commandments.

When a Jewish male, or female in the case of a Bat Mitzvah, turns 13 he is considered old enough to understand and comprehend what is required of him in the commandments and is responsible for fulfilling them.  He is also included as an adult in the religious life of the synagogue.  Although the origins of the Bar Mitzvah are obscure, the present ritual emerged some time during the Middle Ages.

The Bar Mitzvah leads the community prayers, along with the Rabbi and the Cantor, and he will read, for the first time, from the Torah.  Prior to Jacob reading from Torah it is taken from the Ark, located in the very center of the Synagogue and passed from generation to generation.  We were blessed to have three generations of the family present.  The Torah is then taken in procession, much like I carry the Gospel book through the sanctuary of our Church during the Divine Liturgy.  The Torah is covered with various items, and needs to be “undressed” so it can be rolled out for reading.  My parents – Jacob’s grandparents – had the honor of performing this ritual.

The particular Torah that was used has a history all its own.  I am not sure of the exact history but the Torah is a survivor of the Holocaust and has been lovingly restored by the community for continued use.  While Jacob was reading I could not help but think of the number of similar services in history, using this same Torah, and how hatred of a people led to this Torah being in our midst now.  It served as a poignant reminder of how cruel humanity can be and how we need to be on guard so it never happens again!

Various family members were called up to assist Jacob in reading.  They came forward to read blessings or a “Aliyah” prior to the reading of the passage selected.  This is considered a great honor to be called upon for this purpose.  The Bar Mitzvah then reads the selected passage from Torah and gives a little speech, the preparation of which takes much time and study.  The lesson involves a teaching about the passage just read, and in Jacob’s case, a teaching about the Feast of Sukkoth that was presently being celebrated.

The Torah is then lifted and is “re-dressed”  – this was my part, along with my brothers.  So I am thinking, here is this historic Torah, not only that but a sacred object, we are being watched by the Rabbi, the Cantor, the president of the congregation, and the entire congregation, and they asked me to do this.  All I could think of was “God, I hope I don’t screw this up!”  But in the end we performed our task and it was such an honor to do so.  The Congregation was so gracious and welcoming that I was at ease and was able to just worship and enjoy the moment.

I had often thought of this service as just reading a passage from Torah but it is much more than that.  Bar Mitzvah is a celebration of Jewish heritage and culture and it is amazing to see how it all comes together.  Knowing where we have been will help us to go where we are going.  Our past helps to shape our future but, thankfully, it does not determine who we are.  Knowledge of history will help us to avoid making the same mistakes and assists us in staying ever vigilant against hate.  For me this service was about more than a person reading from Scripture. It was the passing on of scared traditions and rituals to the next generation not just as things that we do but as the life we should live.

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What Kind of Soil Are You?

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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The Gospel of Luke 8:5-15

The Lord said this parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and was trodden under foot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.” And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. And as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.” As he said these things, he cried out “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

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On the 21st Sunday after the Great Feast of Pentecost we read the parable of the sower, or as I like to call it the parable of the soil.  You see the focus of this story is not on the seed but on the soil that the seed will be sown into, into other words, us.

Seeds are powerful things.  A seed placed in the wrong place can push through with amazing power, like pushing through asphalt.  But if the seed is going to grow to its fullest potential then it needs well prepared soil and the same is true with each of us.

The seed in the story is the word of God, the truth.  Not some version of the truth but the truth, tested by time and revealed to us through the Church.  Not our version of the truth, not popular watered down I’m okay you’re okay version of the truth but the actual hard truth that we are all sinners and we need God’s help to get us through.  But what of seeds of our hearts?  The seeds of love, the seeds of hate, the seeds of compassion, the seeds of greed, and the seeds of envy?  Do we let all of these seeds take root?

I heard someone say, “If only I had an opportunity to heard God speak in person.”  It is sad that so many to not realize that God is speaking in person, through His Word and through His Church.  Each week the Church proclaims the Word of God, not my word, but God’s Word.  But God will also speak to us through Scripture reading in our own home.  My prayer is that each of you are practicing daily Scripture reading.

The sad fact is that, just like in the story, three out of four times the word, the seed, falls on death ears.  Three out of four will reject the word for various reasons.  Some will reject it because they believe that the church has nothing for them.  My question is what do you have for the Church after all you get out what you put in.  If you are not invested in your spirituality then you will get nothing.  Some will miss the point of the sermon all together or they will hear it and be offended by it.  GOOD!  I hope you are offended that means I am doing my job.  It is not my job to make you feel good about yourself, I will leave the too Oprah and all of the others spinning their nonsense.  My job, the job of the Church, is to move you to action on behalf of yourself but also on behalf of all.  And some will day dream their way through the service counting the minutes until they can get out and fulfill their obligation.

Part of the problem is we have let our hearts become hard.  This happens for many reasons, but it prevents us from receiving the bread of life and thus we kill our souls.  Nothing will stop the Word of God more than a hardened heart.  It stops the word completely and it will not penetrate it no matter what happens.  There is no softness at all and the word will just bounce off.  We look at the speck in someone else’s eye all the time ignoring the plank in our own.

How does this happen?  It happens by pride when we think we know better.  As I said before, we think we know better than the Church.  The Church is not designed to be popular in fact it is designed to be just the opposite.  Why was Jesus killed?  Because he was not popular.  He was preaching the Gospel, notice I did not say “a” Gospel, He was preaching The Gospel and that upset the powers that be.  He was not preaching anything new He was just telling it like it is.  We are all children of God but we are all sinners.

A lack of cultivation will also harden the soil of our hearts.  Plating a garden take an enormous amount of work and if done right the yield will be amazing.  The same is true of our spiritual life.  We have to work it, constantly, feeding the soil of our hearts and of our souls in order for the yield to be what it is meant to be.  The problem with the Church today is not the seed it is the soil!

We can hear the truth but not accept it and this leads to poor yield.  We do not accept that we have to change and so we continue on with our hatreds, our prejudices, our pride, our envy, and our wars.  Again, the soil needs to be worked daily to prevent this from happening.

The saddest part of the parable is the seed that fell and the weeds came to choked it off.  Soil that produces weeds has great potential to produce anything but the cares of the world distract us.  Sure we hear the word, and we even believe it but then the cares of the world come along and derail us and we go off on our own.  We need to resist this temptation with all our being.  What thorns and what weeds to we allow to grow in our lives that choke off the central loyalty to God and His Word?

Of course we all want to believe that we are the good soil, and sometimes we are, but this is the soil we want to be.  The soil where the Word can take up residence and become part of us and grows from us and spreads from us.  We want the Word to take possession of us, of our desires, our emotions, our thoughts, and our actions.  If we let it surely it will and we, and the world will be all the better for it.  But it takes time, it takes work, and it takes patience.  Our world tells that we need everything yesterday but our spiritual life is not that fast.

We need to become sensitive to God’s voice in our lives and life the message of the Gospel each and every day.  This becomes possible by tuning our ears to hear Him when He speaks, and speak He will and does.

“ He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Let us roll up our sleeves, pick up that garden tool, plow the soil, pull up the weeds and become the best soil we can for Christ.

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The Gettysburg Story

Posted on by Fr. Peter

I listen to a number of podcasts as I travel on my rounds and one of my favorites is Civil War Talk Radio hosted by Professor Gerry Prokopowicz of East Carolina University.  Each week Gerry, as I like to think of him, brings authors and other Civil War scholars to his show for an interview about their book or specific topic.  If you are a serious student of the Civil War or just someone who likes history, this show is for you.

The show takes a break for the summer so I have been using the time to catch up on the ten years of archived episodes, I have been binge listening, and I have heard some fantastic interviews however, one of the best thus far was with Jake Boritt the man behind the PBS Documentary The Gettysburg Story.

Jake is the son of retired Gettysburg College professor and author of the book The Gettysburg Gospel, Gabor Boritt and grew up on a farm next to the Gettysburg Battlefield so you could say Jake grew up with the battle in his back yard.

The film was produced in and around the Town of Gettysburg and with cooperation and support from the National Park Service filmed on the battlefield itself.  He uses drone based cameras to give the audience a view of the battlefield never seen before.  Narrated by Stephen Lang, known to Civil War buffs as Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett in the movie Gettysburg and as Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in the movie God’s and Generals.

The film aired on Public Television in 2013 and is now available on DVD and for download from the website The Gettysburg Story.  Do take time to check it out, it is worth it.

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But Love Your Enemies and do Good

Posted on by Fr. Peter

love your enemies

The Gospel of Luke 6:31-36

The Lord said, “And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 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.”

gizzmo

A Russian saint, whose name is known only to God, was once asked how we know whether a person abides in God and is sincere in his Christian faith.  The saint answered that there was “no other way of ascertaining this than by examining the person’s life to see if he loves his enemies.  Where there is love for one’s enemy, there also is God.”  Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.

Love of ones enemies, I believe, is the hardest thing we are commanded to do as Christians, it ranks right up there with forgiveness, which is also part of loving your enemy.  Love is the only thing that can destroy hostility and evil and it throws our enemy off guard since he expects us to return his evil for evil.

There is a story of a man who had suffered some injustice at the hands of a third party.  He was speaking to a friend about this and his friend told him to “give him the devil.”  Now this would seem to be a logical response, he harmed me so I will harm him, but then surprised his friend by saying, “he’s already got the devil.  I’d like to give him God!”  Charm and disarm should be the way we handle these situations.

Getting to the point where we love our enemy does not mean we have to love or even accept what they do. “To love one’s enemy does not mean to love the mud in which the pearl lies, but to love the pearl that lies in the mud.”  We must love the person, and we must forgive the person, but we do not have to love what they have done nor do we need to forget it.

Why must we do this?

We do this that we might become children of God.  “Love your enemies… and you will be sons and daughters of the Most High” Luke 6:35.  But we must also love him because he is first an enemy of himself.  The bitterness that he holds towards you has poisoned his own cup and if we hate him in return that same poison will poison our cup as well.  Is hatred toward you has injured his soul.

We must love him because they need to be loved.  His soul is completely surrounded by his hatred of you and we are the only ones who can warm him and free him from his own bondage.  Hating him binds us and causes two souls to be lost and separated from God.  We love them because they need love and we love them because love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend and that should be our goal.  Returning hate for hate on multiplies the hate.  Only love can break the cycle and turn an enemy into a friend.

Ultimately the reason we are commanded to love our enemies so, in the words of Jesus, we will be “sons and daughters of the Most High.”  We must love our enemies because only by loving them can we truly know God and experience the beauty of His holiness.  We know God by loving those who are unlovable.

So how do we do this?

First we have to love God.  If we do not love God then it will be difficult to follow His will for our lives.  The love of God is the first part of anything we do in our lives as Christians.  We love God by following His commandments but we have to know those commandments and understand them in order to love God.

Second, we do good to them that hate us.  St. Paul says, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him: if he is thirsty, give him drink… overcome evil with good” Romans 12:20-21.  Doing something for your enemy will help him to remove the bitterness from his heart.  But we must take the first step.

Third we pray for him.  How many of us pray for those who have set out to destroy us?  In the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great we pray for those who love us and those who hate us.  The highest privilege we can offer someone is to pray for them, and it costs us nothing to do so.  No person can pray for another and still hate them.

Forth we look for some good in our enemy.  People are created in the image and likeness of God and therefore they are created good.  People learn to hate they are not born to hate.  All of creation has the capacity for good and we need to find that in the person who hates us.

And finally we have to develop the capacity to forgive.  Without forgiveness is it impossible to even being to love one’s enemy.  The forgiveness must begin with us, the one who has harmed or wronged in some way.  Only the one who has been injured can pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.  If we withhold forgiveness from someone then we are withholding the medicine that person needs to find healing.

“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons and daughters of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

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Comments Turned Off

Posted on by Fr. Peter

You may have noticed that the ability to comment has been disabled.  That is due to a high rate of spam comment, more than 100 in one day, so I have been forced to turn of the ability to comment on posts for the time being.

Fear not, commenting will return soon.

Thanks for your understanding.

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Blessed Are Your Poor

Posted on by Fr. Peter

blessed-are-the-poor-in-spirit

The title of this essay comes from the 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke and is part of a much larger talk by Jesus that has become part of the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes.  When I hear this passage I conjure up images of people living on the street or perhaps standing in line for food, but is this what this verse is all about or is it about something else?

We often think of the poor of those who have less than we do in a material sense of our thinking.  Our world today places a lot of emphasis on the accumulation of things.  The bigger house, the larger car, more clothes, etc.  The world measures success by the amount of stuff that we have and for some, even Christians, we have bought into this.  The entirety of the so called “prosperity gospel” is all about the accumulation of things, but is this what Jesus was really making reference too?

I would suggest that the true meaning is unknown but it is also varied in its application.  Sure Jesus was concerned about those who were, and are, affected by economics but what about those who are spiritually poor and left behind and marginalized by the church are these not poor as well?

The people who attend our Community Meals at the church come from many walks of life.  We have those who come because they don’t have to cook.  We have those who come because they live alone and spend most of their day alone and they are looking for company.  We have those who come because it is the only meal that they can afford to eat and welcome the take home meals that we provide.  And we have those who come to visit with friends, new and old.  It is a wonderful group of people who share a meal with us twice a month.

Many of these folks are poor, not materially although some are, but they are poor in spirit and for some they lack meaning in life.  They go thought their day just trying to survive for many reasons.  I am constantly amazed at the number of folks who have opened up to me to discuss situations at home or at work and how lost they feel in their lives.  It would be easy to pity them but pity is not what they are seeking they want someone to listen, just listen and be concerned for them and for their situation.  Often times the only advice I have to offer is that I will pray for them and they seem surprised that I would do that.  But each time they come back they smile and some tell of how things are getting better.  All most people need and want, is a sympathetic ear to just listen to them.

Being a friend to someone and truly listening to them is the best medicine that we can give.  As Christians this is our duty and it requires no special training or sanction from the Church all it takes is a willingness to listen, really listen to another person without judgment.

We are all poor in one way or another but each time we welcome another person into our lives we become a little richer.  Who will you welcome today?

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Orthodox Unity in America

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

Recently, an essay was published on the blog of First Things with the title, Are You Greek? Unifying the Orthodox Church in the United States.  Written by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick the essay takes the reader through a bit or American Orthodox history and the question of Orthodox unity here in The United States of America.

I am a priest in an ethnic Orthodox jurisdiction, the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese, however I am not ethnically Romanian.  Like Fr. Andrew I am a convert to Orthodoxy and I chose the church that I call my home because of a connection to the spirituality of Romania that pre dates my conversion by many years.  What I have come to realize is that Orthodoxy here in America is very young, not that we have not been here long because we have, but we are young because in many churches, and as Fr. Andrew points out, many of the bishops are first generation.

I agree with the statement from the essay that “the Orthodox in America are in the process of figuring out just who we are.”  I will quickly add, as did the author, that this is not a doctrinal discussion but rather an administrative one. “For better or for worse (depending on one’s view), the Orthodox aren’t going to be giving up on our dogmatic ecumenical councils or revising our Divine Liturgy.”  We are unified as a church with our doctrine and our Liturgy.  Sure there might some applications of both Liturgy and doctrine that differ amongst the bishops and the clergy but, “Orthodox is Orthodox, no matter what other adjectives it might wear.”

As I see it the problem of Orthodox unity is not one of figuring out how to make it happen but rather it is one of patience.  I, like many Orthodox here in America, greeted the creation of the Assembly of Bishops with mush joy and hope for the future.  For the first time all of the Orthodox bishops in America would come together in a single place to meet and talk about the future of the church.  What helps is that the “mother churches” given the bishops the mandate to do this so in one sense they are forced to do this and that may not be a bad thing.

There are roughly 50 Orthodox bishops in the United States, when the Assembly was first created it included Canada and Mexico but they have recently been separated into their own assembly, and when they met for the first time in 2010 many of them did not know each other.  They spent most of that first meeting, and they only meet face to face once a year, getting to know each other.  I like to think of it as a marriage, we would not expect a man and woman to get married after their first date so we should not expect the very difficult task of joining together different jurisdictions to take place overnight.

The Orthodox Church here in America is much different from the Orthodox church of even a generation ago.  As Fr. Andrew points out we work together on many levels from the international right down to the local.  The churches here in my town work closer together then we ever have before.  Can it get better, sure it can.  The amalgamation of departments of religious education, clergy benefits, insurance, and the like can happy now and should happen now, but patience is what is needed at the moment.

I am not a fisherman but references to fishing are often used in Scripture to explain a point.  One of my favorite fishing sayings is “you have to hold the fish gently or it will flop right out of your hand.”

There are voices from some quarters of Orthodoxy saying that the Assembly is a waste of time and things are moving too slowly.  I recall a discussion at conference a few years before the creation of the assembly where one of the participants argued that this could, and should, be wrapped up in a year it is like the merger of two corporations, well it is not that simple.

In my opinion, and I welcome others to chime in here, part of this comes down to trust.  Let us not forget that it was less than a generation ago that there were shouts of Communist be thrown at some members of our church which led to the separation of ethnic jurisdictions.  My own Romanian Orthodox Church is split into two diocese that have been trying for the last, however many years, to repair a rift that never should have happened in the first place.  Try as we might, with all of the good and righteous intentions, there is still a layer of mistrust bubbling under the surface.  Until we come to grips with our past we will never be able to move into the future.

We have achieved Orthodoxy unity in America.  Our bishops meet and have friendly discussion.  Our parishioners know each other and work together.  The clergy of the various jurisdictions meet and work together on projects.  This is far more than we had even a generation ago.

It has taken the entire history of Orthodoxy in America to get to this point we cannot expect that the future will be changed and mapped out in a single meeting.

Fr. Andrew concludes his essay with these words:

Someone from outside the Orthodox Church may look at all this confusion and declare us hopeless. Certainly, this division makes it harder to see American Orthodox Christians as the local representatives of the second largest Christian communion in the world. Yet Orthodox doctrine, worship and spiritual life are remarkably unified despite all our administrative confusion, disunity and even rivalries—and given a choice between administrative confusion and confusion over doctrine and worship, I’ll take the first any day. Yes, we have an untidy organization, but we know who we are when it comes to what really matters. Orthodox is Orthodox, no matter what other adjectives it might wear.

I could not have said it better myself.

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The Challenge of Our Time

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Fr. George Florivsky
Fr. George Florovsky

“The great Russian bishop of the last century, Theophanes “The Recluse” (d. 1894), in one of his pastoral letters makes a startling statement. What the Russian Church most needed, he said, was “a band of firebrands,” which would set the world on fire. The incendiaries must be themselves burning and go around to inflame human minds and hearts. Theophanes did not trust a “residual Christianity.” Customs could be perpetuated by inertia, he said, but convictions and beliefs could be kept only by spiritual vigilance and continuous effort by the spirit. Theophanes felt that there was too much routine and convention in the life of Russian Christians. He anticipated a crisis and even a collapse. He resigned his diocese and retired to a monastery, because he felt that he could do much more service to the Church by writing books than by administering a bishopric.”

Fr. George Florovsky

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