Thanksgiving Even in Hard Times
Dear Friends in Christ,
2009 has been a tough year for many of us, financially, socially, and spiritually. We are living in an era of great change, which leaves us often feeling unnerved and unsure. While affirming the difficulty that many of us are in, we also are nearing the time of Thanksgiving, when we pause and give thanks, even in the midst of these difficulties.
Some of us were born in places where there were wars going on; we may have had limited food to eat, limited career opportunities. Some of us came to this country via a boat, and some came as refugees. Still others were born here, but lived during harsher times, such as the Depression. In many cases, we were literally born out of difficulty, whether it be here or abroad. Even in a time of economic difficulty, however, we are reminded by the holiday to stop and think of the many things that are going right.
How often, when we are driving down the road, do we marvel at the fact that there is a paved road? And when there is a pothole, it actually does get fixed (eventually…)? We complain about traffic tickets, yet we know that the ticket, when paid, actually goes to the State most of the time, versus a corrupt official’s pocket? We can wake up on Saturday morning and decide to make bacon and eggs, but if we are not in the mood to cook, a restaurant is just down the street for many of us, and it will have food available. More importantly, when we are sick, there are doctors that often have a cure for us, unlike even 100 years ago. Those of us who are unemployed with little income know that there are programs to keep us from starving when we hit rock bottom, which is not the case in some countries even today. All in all, we are very blessed to be alive at this time.
I’ve often remarked that Thanksgiving seems to me to be the most Christian of the American secular holidays. I know others have thought that same way before me, but even an ostensibly religious holiday like Christmas has become so secularized by our culture that for many the Nativity of Christ is an afterthought. Thanksgiving, even though a secular holiday, celebrates the virtues that many of our earliest forefathers practiced, such as hospitality, giving back, and respecting others. When Thanksgiving rolls around, we pause and we acknowledge our blessings.
The Pilgrims were Christians, and they knew that the greatest gift was God’s self-gift of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. He became man and lived a life of self-deprivation. Just image how Christ, who was the creator of the universe, must have felt, being confined in His mother’s womb for nine months. He emptied himself, humbled himself, and came to show us the ultimate love; self-sacrifice by His death on the Cross.
Holy Communion is still called the Eucharist by many. Eucharist is the Greek word for Thanksgiving. When Christ celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, he gave thanks, then broke the bread. We bring our offering of bread and wine, which are not natural elements. It’s interesting to note that we don’t offer a natural fruit or an uncooked grain; rather, we prepare the bread and wine by our toil, and then offer it to God. The Eucharist is our participation in the gift of Christ, because rather than merely reenact the Last Supper, we actually partake in the Body and Blood of Christ, broken for us. Receiving Holy Communion is to give thanks to God and profess our faith in His suffering, death, and resurrection. It is a confession of faith and an acceptance of God’s blessings. Rather than merely give us material riches, He gave us His own life itself. For this, more than a road, food, medicine, or good family and friends, we must give thanks to God.
When Thanksgiving comes around and we are thanking God and each other for the material and personal blessings we have, let us remember first to give thanks for Jesus Christ, who gave us a far greater treasure—eternal life with God.
In Christ,
Fr Anastasios
Stepping Outside of Time
Dear Friends in Christ,
We’ve entered Fall, a time when things should be starting to unwind. We’ve heard about the lazy days of Summer, but how many of us actually had a time to relax? All the things we end up doing make the time fly by. Soon, we will begin the Holiday Season, with a string of parties and events to attend and participate in. So given this period between Summer and the Holidays, we should all be breathing a sigh of relief, ready to kick back and enjoy the leaves changing color and the cool breezes. Yet I keep hearing about people being busy. I must confess, I have claimed this myself!
Busyness is one of those vague concepts that everyone talks about without really examining. We have tightly-packed schedules and transit to and fro, in ways that our ancestors might have never imagined. However, for many of us, we seem to be always busy! Busyness is a chronic symptom of our times, which affects us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It just seems that in the modern world, you have to be busy. But do we?
I often wonder if people in the ancient world felt busy the way we do. In some ways, their lives were moderated by the seasons and the cycle of day and night, the cycle of planting and harvesting. People often were tied to their communities, whether it be in a village or through their associations in a city, for instance by immigrants of a certain type living in a certain quarter. Cycles of time and community provided a good stabilizing agent for people then. In our time, we’ve gotten around such things by technology; we can have lights on 24 hours a day, and we can avoid human contact if we wish by using the Internet for almost anything. Maybe natural forces prevented people from being busy back then.
However, a closer look at the evidence would suggest that while people may not have been busy in the way we are, they still were. Managing a farm or engaging in fishing involved considerable back-breaking work. Many people lived in cities even then, and maintained shops and eating establishments. Armies sometimes had to march under cover of night, and race to get to a far-away place. So busyness probably existed then, too. Maybe the problem is not so much having a full schedule, but how we relate to it. The Church has a cycle of services that sanctify the time. We have morning and evening prayers at home, and on the weekend we have Vespers in the evening and Matins in the morning followed by Liturgy (these services occur daily in monasteries). The cycle of fasts reminds us of what period of time we are in. Time is thus marked and segmented for us, which makes it easier to manage. Instead of approaching our lives as an eternal day, the prayers we engage in help us to stay in sync.
The Divine Liturgy has a special place in all of this, as it occurs during a specific time (the morning), but it is itself outside of time. The liturgy is eschatological, which means it looks forward to the culmination of the world. We stand and face East, awaiting the Resurrection, which is conveniently symbolized by the rising Sun in the morning. But we participate in the Holy Eucharist, which takes us outside of time by re-presenting the Sacrifice of the Cross by Christ. His death on the Cross occurred once in time, but it is made present to us each time the Eucharistic prayers are read. When we participate in this mystery, we come outside of our limits; our flesh is united to Christ’s, which is sitting at the right hand of the Father.
Busyness has no place in the Liturgy. The priest prays, “Blessed is the Kingdom, of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, always now and ever, and unto the ages of ages,” invoking the eternal reign of Christ. The congregation responds “Amen,” which means “may it be so,” thus engaging this blessing. The priest continues, “in peace let us pray to the Lord.” We must begin our prayer in peace. Several times during the liturgy, the priest blesses the people: “Peace be unto you all.” And before the beginning of the Eucharistic prayers, at the Great Entrance, we pray:
Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity, now lay aside all earthy cares. That we may receive the King of all, invisibly escorted by the angelic hosts. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
The thrice-holy hymn refers to the passage from Isaiah:
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory (Isaiah 6:1-3).
These passages encourage us to lift up our minds from our earthly cares to heavenly ones, and to set aside the mindset of busyness. Life will never slow down, but we can choose to set aside these cares at regular intervals in order to pray and engage with God, which over time will help us reorder our priorities and give us peace in the midst of the struggles of the present. I invite you to set aside some time and join with us in prayer.
In Christ,
Fr Anastasios
Our One Year Anniversary
Dear Friends in Christ,
September 2009 marks the first anniversary of Nativity of the Holy Theotokos Orthodox Church here in Greenville! On September 20 of last year we gathered for that first Vespers service, and joined together again the next morning for our first Divine Liturgy. Since that time, we have become an active part of the Greenville community, and I am proud of what we have accomplished so far.
In November, for instance, we held a fundraiser to benefit the Ronald McDonald House, and at Christmas we provided for a needy family in the area so that they would have a good meal and some toys for the children. We also have opened our Clothing Closet to the public on the third Saturday of each month, where members of the community can obtain free clothing.
Besides our charity work, we have maintained a strong schedule of liturgical worship and fellowship. Despite the fact that I have to travel in from Raleigh, we have been able to have a Divine Liturgy one Sunday and two Saturdays a month, and during the “off” week there is a Prayer Service to keep the community together. During Holy Week, we were able to have services on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday/Sunday. Many small mission Churches are not able to maintain such a regular and rigorous schedule, so we are indeed blessed. Our website is regularly updated with written content as well as select videos of sermons. If you haven’t checked it out recently, you may have missed some interesting information, so I encourage you to check it out.
On this anniversary of the founding of our parish community, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the nature of the Church itself. We often think of the Church in its external aspects: a building, a place where we worship, a group of people with like-minded interests and views, etc. We might think of the Church as our local parish community, but we also know that it exists as a collection of Churches together under a bishop, and then as the bishops themselves gathered in Synod. These things are part of what the Church is, but the reality of the Church is far greater than this, and reflecting on the true nature of the Church will help us improve our perspective.
When we think of Heaven, we think of a place where God is. One common idea of Heaven is a place “up there” where God lives; He is often imaged as an old man with a long white beard who looks out for us and answers our prayers. Heaven is seen as a future reward for a life spent well on Earth, or it is seen as the place where we go if we believe in Jesus as our Savior as opposed to Hell being the place where we go if we do not have this belief. The Church exists as a place on Earth where people gather who share a belief in God, and they gather to read the Bible, pray together, and fellowship. All of these images are partially true, but they do not represent the full picture.
Heaven, while being a place, is also a state of being—the state of being one with God. Being one with God is a state of blessed perfection where our human nature is filled with God’s grace; gone is our subjugation to sin, and the effects of sin including pain, suffering, and our estrangement from God and our fellow men. While this state will exist in its perfect sense after the Final Judgment, when time ceases and history is fulfilled, our movement towards it begins now. God became man as Jesus Christ, and drew a body of believers to Himself. His Death and Resurrection restored the full potential of man, and after His Ascension He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell in the Apostles. Our baptism is our participation in the Death and Resurrection of Christ, while our chrismation (anointing with holy oil) gives us this same gift of the Holy Spirit as the Apostles received. The Church, in Greek ekklesia, from the verb “to call out” is the assembly of those called out of sin and the world and in to this body, which St. Paul calls the Body of Christ in his Epistles.
The Church then is not just a place where like-minded believers congregate for fellowship and worship, but is the very place where the life with God is made possible. Being the Body of Christ, being the place where union with God is made possible, the Church can thus be said to be Heaven on Earth, life with God, the foretaste of eternity. The liturgy that we celebrate is modeled off of the prophetic visions of Isaiah and John (in his book of Revelation, which shows the heavenly worship of the angels).
The person who enters the Church may enter a building, and may fellowship with other people, but he or she also is taking a step towards Heaven if he or she approaches in faith. He or she fellowships with men and women, but also worships with the angels, who surround the earthly altar just as they surround the heavenly. The hurting soul can be cured in the Church through the grace of Christ. This spiritual reality underpins all that we do; the liturgical worship prepares us to go out and share this love and spiritual joy with all whom we meet through our outreach programs and charity.
As we celebrate the anniversary of our founding, we thank God for allowing us the great privilege of serving here in the Greenville community. If you have not attended any of our services yet, we invite you to come and see for yourself the blessings that God is working!
In Christ,
Fr Anastasios
The Dormition of the Theotokos
Dear Friends in Christ,
It’s hard to believe that we’re in August already, and we are almost about to celebrate the one year anniversary of the founding of our mission here in Greenville! One of the highlights of the month of August is the feast day of the Dormition of the Theotokos, which we celebrate on August 15/28. The two weeks preceding this feast are kept as a fast, which features the frequent chanting of the Paraklasis service, and is punctuated by the glorious celebration of the Transfiguration of Christ on August 6/19.
The Virgin Mary’s Dormition (or falling-asleep) is instructive for the rest of us Christians. Although she was the highly favored one, and was blessed higher than any other human—the Council of Ephesus in 431 described her as “more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim”—she still participated in the fallen world. Therefore, she had to die, and contrary to the theological opinion of some Western Christians, the Orthodox Church does not believe that the Virgin Mary was assumed in to Heaven without dying. Her death was the natural consequence of being human, but because of her highly favored status, she was allowed to be the first to experience the Resurrection we all shall experience. As Church Tradition teaches us, all the Apostles except Thomas were present at her falling asleep; and when he arrived later, true to his nature (“Doubting Thomas”) he asked to see her body. When the tomb was opened, she was gone; Christ had taken her body to Heaven and restored it to her soul, just as will eventually happen to all of us on the Day of Judgment. From there, the Virgin Mary is the first of the saints interceding for the rest of the Church.
One of the three Old Testament readings celebrated in the Vespers service for the Dormition is the episode concerning Jacob’s Ladder (Genesis 28:10-17) where Jacob beholds the ladder on which the Angels ascend to God and descend to Earth. The Virgin Mary is compared to this ladder, and is called the Gate of Heaven, because through her, God became man. The Virgin Mary is also similar to the Ark of the Covenant, because she carried God within. She prophesied that all generations would call her blessed (Luke 1:48). In all of this, the Holy Spirit is leading us to look at the Virgin Mary as an example, for her humility, for her righteousness, and for her purity. She is the Christian par excellence and we can emulate her example of obedience to her Son, Christ.
The Kontakion hymn sung on the feast of the Dormition explains that, “Neither the tomb, nor death could hold the Theotokos, Who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions. For being the Mother of Life, She was translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb.” For us Christians, the Virgin Mary, the mother of life, could not remain dead in a tomb; she was translated to life, as opposed to the former death that all awaited in Hades before Christ’s resurrection. We call have hope in this resurrection to life, which she was the first to experience.
In order to prepare for this great feast, we observe a two week fast, beginning on August 1/14. It’s a good opportunity for us to get back on track in regards to our eating habits; with the summer’s fill of barbeques, picnics, and get-togethers, we have a habit of losing track of what is coming in to our stomachs. We can also try to pray more, especially the Paraklasis service, which is found in many prayer books and also online. Let us also practice humility, by being slow to anger and slow to judge, and slow to assert ourselves in a conflict. We have the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary as a guide and as an intercessor towards this end!
In Christ,
Fr Anastasios
Trusting in God
Daisy, the dog mentioned in this article, with my daughter Sophia
A few days ago, my dog developed an itch and it became apparent that she needed to go to the veterinarian for treatment. It’s a recurring problem, completely minor, which takes less than a minute to alleviate. For my dog, however, it’s a traumatic experience on two counts; the first is that she hates traveling in the car, and the other is that she is afraid every time she goes in to the veterinarian’s office. The car must do something to her balance or her stomach, and she becomes upset, unsure of her footing, not knowing in what direction she is going. The veterinarian’s office represents greater uncertainty; she sees other dogs, some of whom are in pain, hears new sounds, and sees new things. The floor is cold, and there is a sterile smell in the air from the cleaning agents used to wipe down every surface.
She knows the veterinarian’s office by sight, and as soon as we pull in the parking lot, she begins to cower and shake. For any animal lover, it’s a pitiful sight to see one’s beloved pet terrified. I took her in to the office, registered her, and then we waited. As each moment went by, she became more afraid, and the anticipation was fueling it. I held her in my arms (she is a medium sized dog), petting her gently, and whispering comforting words to her. She continued to shake, but she was not squirming as much. Finally, the veterinarian entered, performed the procedure, and we were done. She was relieved of her itch, and she bolted for the door. I rendered payment, and we went to the parking lot; she went directly for our car, which she recognizes, wagging her tail, utterly relieved.
While my dog was shaking in my arms, and I was trying to console her, an obvious analogy came to my mind. It was nothing profound, but I felt it deeply. As I looked in to her eyes, and saw her fear, I felt utter compassion and love for her. She didn’t know what she was experiencing or why, but she trusted me despite her fear. She didn’t try to claw her way out of my arms, but rested there waiting. She trusted that I knew what was best, even though she was not happy. I thought about how on some level, this must be similar to how God sees us in our pitiful state.
God knows what we need, what is best for us, what the medicine is to cure our souls, and He is willing to patiently guide us towards it. We are unable to see the clear end of the path we are on, and are constantly being cast off course by distractions, temptations, and adversaries. Terrible things happen, even to good people, because this world of sin has become corrupted and knocked off balance. Yet we are not alone in this. God looks in our eyes as it were, but even more than this, He peers into the depths of our souls, and He loves us. He is there to hold us, to nurture us, and to guide us. We may not understand the “why” of any given situation, but we know that there is a solution, a purpose, an ultimate end.
Two key differences between a man and a dog, however, are free will and the noetic faculty of the soul of man. Man possess free will to choose good or evil; he has a choice of response that far surpasses the limited, pre-configured responses than an animal has to any given situation. In addition, while both man and animals have souls, only man has a noetic faculty, the highest part of the soul, which allows him to have rational communion with God. An animal cannot think with the same breadth of rationality, nor can it create an abstraction from an abstraction, and thus it cannot have a rational relationship with God, which is a life of prayer. This has two implications.
The first implication is that while my dog responded to my loving attempt to calm her, she did not abstractly consider the implications of either accepting or not accepting my embrace. She was not able to calm herself by reasoning that the situation was not as grave as it seemed. Man, on the other hand, can both choose to reject the consoling love of God, which sometimes is manifested as a chastisement, as when a father scolds his child for running across the street without looking, in order to protect him; and he can attempt to console himself by replacing the love of God with his own devices. We see people “self-medicating” with alcohol, drugs, giving in to carnal pleasures, and gluttony, for instance. An animal cannot participate or choose not to participate on this level.
The second implication is that unlike an animal, by reason of possessing a more developed soul, man can communicate with God. By constantly submitting to the will of God, man can attain union with Him and can become free of the cares of life by placing all his trust in God. Unlike an animal which can only respond to a stimulus, man can anticipate. By being in an ever more proper and close relationship with God, man can learn discernment and can avoid situations that lead to trouble. At a certain point, as his trust in God continues, he becomes so completely one with God that he is not thrown off by the cheap distractions of this world. He knows that the trips to the veterinarian as it were are for his own good, and that his master, the Lord, is guiding him. He in turn feels the same love back towards God that God feels for him, although in a limited capacity owing to man’s limited nature.
While my dog’s response to me was predictable, man’s response to God is unpredictable. Yet God’s actions towards us are always of supreme love, and we have the freedom to accept His loving embrace. The deep affection that a human feels for his pet is nothing compared to the deep love that God has for His creation (after all, God became man in order to suffer death on the Cross!), but let us learn from the analogy what we can and strive to increase our trust in the Lord.
An Orthodox Take on Death
Dear Friends in Christ,
With the recent passing of several celebrities, we are once again confronted with the reality of death. Whenever someone famous dies, the response is predictable; the modern world has developed its own set of funeral customs for the famous. Our first hint of the news is often from a gossip site; major news outlets unable to keep up cite the gossip site as a source; it is confirmed, and the television specials commence.
It becomes painfully obvious that the networks had prepared stock footage of the celebrity in advance, “just in case.” In fact, I recall a few years ago that such a pre-planned obituary was posted inadvertently on a major news website, causing much embarrassment. The specials, interviews with loved ones, and recaps of the celebrity’s life continue, and finally culminate in a funeral or series of funerals, where assorted bigshots arrive to mourn. There are eulogies and all the negative things of the past are forgotten, in a celebration of the life and the career of the individual. Whereas formerly the individual may have been mercilessly mocked by the media, he or she is now glorified. Then it all suddenly ends, as the next big issue makes news.
The Church, however, offers us a different approach to death—an antidote to it. For many today, this life is all we have, and we must make the best of it. Reacting to the overemphasis found in many Western Churches, where future rewards are promised for self-denial now, a society that doubts or denies God seeks to find fulfillment solely here. Those who accept the belief in an afterlife often view it in a neo-pagan sense, as a world much like our own where our spirit is freed from its fleshy prison and life continues much as it did before, albeit dressed up with some leftover ideas of bliss borrowed from Christianity. Almost everyone is assumed to go to this Heaven.
Orthodoxy avoids both these extremes—that of a life of denial now in exchange for a future “eternal happiness,” and the idea that we should “live life to its fullest” when this implies surrendering the body to the passions and pleasures of life. Heaven is not only a future reward; it is life with God, and this is a state that can begin now. Struggle and self-denial, which are intrinsically part of living the Gospel of Christ, are not practices that we do in the hopes of getting a payoff later, but are rather seen as the tools that help us reorder life, overcoming our bad habits and sins. Sin keeps people from seeing God; for example, selfishness keeps us from being hospitable to others, yet both the Lord and St. Paul emphasize that when we serve and help others, we are serving the Lord or his angels unaware (cf. Matthew 25:31-44 and Hebrews 13:2).
Through the Church then, we become one with God, and thus death loses its power over us. Death is a temporary separation of body and soul, which will be overcome at the Resurrection. The funeral practices of the Church show the difference in approach. Rather than the long lead up to the funeral, where people gather and reminisce about the “good old times,” pious Christians instead read the Psalms over the body of the deceased, keeping a vigil with him or her. Rather than being a celebration of the life of the person, the focus is on praying for the person to be forgiven of all his or her sins. This intercessory prayer for the dead is found in Scripture (2 Maccabees 12:42-45) and benefits both the person who has died and also us, as we are doing an act of charity by praying for them. Through this prayer, we expresses our unity as one family in Christ.
During the funeral, we also show reverence for the body. The body is not seen as a prison of the soul, but rather as equally intrinsic to man. When a person is filled with the Holy Spirit, his body and soul both become holy; we see that the sick even brought people to the street that the shadow of St. Peter as he passed by might fall upon them and heal them (Acts 5:15). The physical and the spiritual are truly united in man; the body will be reunited with the soul one day. In our modern culture, this attention to the body is often considered morbid; the person is to be remembered “in spirit” while the body is a reminder that the person is dead, and thus it is either embalmed quickly to preserve the appearance of sleep, or it is cremated and we see an urn and a photograph of the person. This avoidance of the reality of death is escapism.
The funeral service also reminds us that we too will pass away, and that we should begin our preparation now. The modern world seeks to immortalize people by their deeds, and ignores the reality of the judgment to come. True immortality—life with God—is attainable by all. On Pascha, we chant that “Christ is Risen from the dead, by death hath He trampled down death, and upon those in the tombs hath He bestowed life.” If we die in Christ, we will rise in Christ. But in the preparation, we will already begin to experience life with God, and thus the end of this life and the beginning of the next will be like a transition from good to great, not a time of uncertainty, grief, and loss.
Let us therefore remember in prayer all those who have died, both our loved ones and those who may not have someone praying for them. If you have not offered prayers for your deceased loved ones recently, please consider sending their names to us for inclusion in our prayer list. You may send us an email or letter, or give us a call. Please indicate if they were Orthodox Christians, their baptismal name if so, and the date of their falling asleep.
Yours in Christ,
Fr Anastasios
On the Practical Effects of Baptism
The Scriptures have laid the foundation of baptism, and the Church Fathers and serious theologians through the ages have expounded extensively on the subject, such that anything I could say on the matter would be redundant and insufficient. However, as a pastor, I have the opportunity to relate the theory to the practice for the sake of my flock, and anyone else who might benefit.
Orthodoxy makes no serious distinction between theory and practice; our theology is the result of Christians living the faith over the centuries, becoming one with God, and then using this enlightenment to reflect on issues and questions of the faith. The various manuals of spirituality, such as the Philokalia and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are eminently practical manuals, and not the result of academic codification or sterile reflection divorced from applying the principles in one’s own life. Therefore, when we speak of baptism, we do not speak dryly and academically of an ordinance or practice that we are obliged to practice out of a mental obedience to the command of Christ, but rather we refer to something that was given to us by Christ, which produces a beautiful change in the person being baptized which is observable by others.
Theologically, baptism is our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. His death on the Cross, entombment, and resurrection on the third day put death to death. Paradoxically, it was by death that death was abolished, in that when He was put in the tomb, His soul descended to Hades, where the dead lay, and He restored our Fathers Adam and Eve to life. A hymn from the feast of Ascension refers to Adam being taken in to Heaven with Christ—something which was impossible before Christ abolished the hold of death. Christ’s death, descent into Hades, and resurrection restored man’s relationship to God. His ascension into Heaven placed man’s nature with God, and the gift of the Holy Spirit allowed man to partake of God’s grace intrinsically, from the inside, allowing him to be a partaker of divine nature as St. Peter says in his epistle.
When man is baptized, he descends into the water, which becomes his grave. Emerging from this watery grave, he is resurrected with Christ. After the three immersions, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, man is chrismated, or anointed with oil, which bestows the Holy Spirit on him. His old nature is killed, and he is reborn with the gift of grace. All of his sins are forgiven. It must be underscored, however, that his faith in Christ is a presupposition; and the more he has put in to his preparation for baptism, by beginning the struggle against sin, the more he will be able to experience the grace of baptism. Man is like a balloon in this sense, in that it can expand, and the more it expands, the more air can be contained within. Through the struggle against sin, man expands his soul, and when the day of baptism arrives, God’s grace enters and fills as much of man’s soul as is available. Of course, baptism itself is necessary to attain communion with God, and so as man continues to practice the virtues, he will draw on the grace that has become available to him at baptism. But a good preparation is the only way to have a jump start in this process.
What then are the practical effects of baptism? Baptism bestows the forgiveness of sins. The white clothing that is put on the baptized person symbolize his new life and purity. As a consequence of baptism, a man’s life is reordered in a radical way. Allow me to speak from my personal experience.
The first two immersions were uneventful; I was more concerned about holding my breath. But after the third immersion, everything changed. As I emerged after the third immersion, it was as if scales were removed from my eyes. I could perceive a reality beyond what is perceptible normally by our senses. I “heard” a whooshing noise and felt a calming force come over me. Everything “made sense” to me and what I had read and studied for years became internalized. Saying that I was at peace would be an understatement.
Those being baptized have found that sinful tendencies that previously could not be conquered were destroyed, showing that God’s grace is what transforms man, not his own effort (although his consent and cooperation is required). The disposition of the person who has been baptized often changes; I have witnessed someone who was frequently nervous become a calm person, and in this case this has continued for several years from the baptism. Feelings of overarching and crushing guilt are replaced by an awareness of sin which admits a hope of correction through God’s love. Temptations often increase after baptism, since the person is now closer to God, but the means to overcome them are strengthened and man obtains confidence that the method of spiritual cure can transform him completely.
The practical effect of baptism is then to take the idea of the forgiveness of sins, the idea of the death and resurrection of Christ, which is spoken of in the New Testament and the writings of the Fathers, and bring this idea into a reality in the life of the believer. It must be emphasized that baptism is not magic; its efficacy depends entirely on the free will of the one baptized. The more he prepares, the more benefits he will reap; and he must continue his struggle with sin to maintain the grace he has received. However, the results will be there, and are obvious to more than just himself; others can see the transformation, and this confirms one’s faith. Stepping out in faith, accepting that baptism will effect a transformation, God in His love for man gives the reward of transforming man and allowing him to experience what is written of. What is written of, after all, is a description of what others who have preceded us have also experienced.
If you have not received Orthodox Christian baptism, God is calling you in to His Church, and inviting you to receive this same grace. He wants to give you the tools to experience the new life we have spoken of. Instead of life being a series of wild fluctuations, baptism will give you a base line. There will always be ups and downs in life, but through baptism you will be granted freedom from the apparent randomness of this constantly changing life. All the sins you have committed in your life can be forgiven; no matter what you have done, you can have a clean slate and be given a second chance. But it is up to you to make this decision, because God loves you enough to respect your free will and choice in the matter. If you feel the desire to be received into the Orthodox Church of Christ, contact us today about this. If you are unsure about the truths we have spoken of, and wish to know more, contact us today. Do not put off taking the next step, because there will always be a million other things to do in life, but they will not be meaningful outside the context of what Christ has established for your life.
St. Mark the Evangelist Orthodox Church was founded in 2006 to serve traditional Orthodox Christians in Raleigh, North Carolina. Anyone familiar with the Raleigh area, or who has performed an internet search for Orthodox Churches in Raleigh, knows that there are other parishes in the area, which are well-established and active. Some might therefore question why we began our own mission instead of worshiping in one of the other parishes.
Since 1924, there have been three broad categories of innovations that have affected the Orthodox world, causing division and schism. These issues are Ecumenism, the New Calendar, and Modernism. We will address each one briefly, and why these problems have led us to found a mission unaffiliated with the other parishes in this area.
Ecumenism is a word which is used in different ways by different people, and thus can be difficult to pin down. For our purposes, we will define it as a movement which began in the early twentieth century with the goal of seeking cooperation on a social level between Christian Churches. Seeing the division of Christians has caused thoughtful people great consternation for centuries. However, until the twentieth century, it was viewed in terms of there being truth and falsehood; in other words, there was an original Church, and there were those who have broken off from this original Church. Over time, seeing that there were people who professed Christ in various Churches, the theory of an invisible Church arose, where what matters is not an affiliation with a denomination, but rather a confession of faith in Christ. All those who confess Christ are part of an invisible Church, which subsists in various denominations which may have different beliefs. The doctrinal differences are thus seen as secondary.
Ecumenism began as an attempt by people holding such views to form ways to cooperate on social issues, because they saw the divisions of Christians as irrelevant to social ministry. However, they were not content to remain on this level, and began to discuss doctrinal differences. What was originally a roundtable type of discussion evolved into a type of Parliament of faiths, where members began to vote on issues and release common statements. Orthodox Christians began to participate in these conferences and eventually became organic members of the World Council of Churches, which is an umbrella organization founded to coordinate these efforts on a global scale.
The Orthodox Church has always confessed itself to be the original Church of Christ, and that all other Churches have broken off from it. Christian unity thus can only be return to Orthodoxy, and not an attempt to work out differences by compromise, as there is no way one can compromise the truth of Christ which has been faithfully preserved only inside the Orthodox Church. Some original Orthodox members of ecumenical organizations believed that by attending such meetings, they were witnessing Orthodoxy to others. However, over the decades, so-called Orthodox theologians have participated fully in such meetings, including signing the joint statements of faith and participating in the liturgical worship of heretics. In a short reflection such as this, it is impossible to anticipate and refute any objections that so-called Orthodox Ecumenists may make, and indeed the present author has engaged in numerous conversations on the nature of ecumenism and its effects with members and clergy of the other Orthodox parishes in the area. While many “on the street” object to such ecumenical gatherings, they reason that it is not a big enough issue to warrant breaking communion with their bishops. We obviously disagree with this reasoning, seeing the fact that there are Ecumenists who deny the primacy of Orthodoxy and there are Non-Ecumenists who nevertheless remain in communion with the Ecumenists as one Church presenting an ecclesiological problem as to the nature of the Church and a proper confession of faith. Our conclusion has been that Ecumenism is a heresy that obscures the Church of Christ and reduces the likelihood of people embracing the Orthodox faith, and thus we confess that it is necessary to not commune with anyone who participates in Ecumenism.
The New Calendar. In 1920, the locum tenens (temporary administrator) of the Patriarchate of Constantinople released an encyclical letter “To the Churches of Christ, Wherever They May Be” which detailed a program of proto-ecumenism. In this letter, such things as altering the Calendar of feasts and shortening the fasts, having mutual exchanges of theological students, and other alterations were proposed, as a means to have union between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox Churches. The issue of the Calendar was one of the proposed changes which was adopted in 1924 as a result of this letter.
The Church Calendar was based off of the Julian Calendar, and was sanctified by centuries of use in the Church, just as other pagan customs were “baptized” and adopted by Christians. At the Council of Nicea, the date of Pascha (Easter) was set, and the overriding reason for this was to enforce unity of the celebration, since different Churches were celebrating at different times. The Fathers picked an arbitrary date in the middle of a possible range of dates when the Equinox occurs each year and set this as the date from which the tables for calculating the date of Pascha would be formulated.
As is well-known, the Julian Calendar is gradually drifting since it has too many leap years. Pope Gregory in the sixteenth century proposed a New Calendar, which was ostensibly formulated for astronomical accuracy, but which he also used as a way to assert his primacy over the Christian world. The Protestant and Orthodox Churches of this time rejected his new calendar on religious grounds, ignoring the issue of astronomical accuracy altogether. The Calendar that Orthodox use is perfectly designed for Orthodox worship, and the Fathers did not see a sufficiently valid reason to change it. Three Synods were called in the 16th century, and they produced a document known as the Sigillion in 1583 which rejected the New Calendar.
In 1924, however, the Church of Greece unilaterally adopted this New Calendar by force. A large number of the faithful rejected the adoption of it and monks from Mt. Athos served them on the Old Calendar. In 1935, seeing that the Synod would not budge, three bishops who were opposed to the New Calendar broke communion with the New Calendarists and returned to the Patristic Calendar. They rightly saw that this calendar was causing a division in the Orthodox world.
Unfortunately, as time went on, various other Churches adopted the New Calendar, and many who retained the Old, influenced by Ecumenism, did not see the need to reject communion with the calendrical innovators. In this way, there are two Calendars in use in the Orthodox world, causing embarrassment and division. In addition, those who remained faithful to the Patristic Calendar were generally not supported by members of the other Churches, who betrayed them by supporting the New Calendarists. Thus, for instance, the Moscow Patriarchate remains on the Old Calendar, but supports the New Calendar Church of Greece. However, another Church, the Russian Orthodox Chruch Outside Russia, seeing the New Calendar as part of Ecumenism, supported the Old Calendarists of Greece and Romania, thus allowing them to survive and flourish.
Modernism. Again, different people use the term in different ways, but this phenomenon is an inappropriate reaction to the phenomenon of the modern world by Orthodox peoples. Some were genuinely concerned that purely cultural considerations not cause difficulty for missionary work and Orthodox survival in the scientific age. However, it quickly became an occasion for many traditional Orthodox practices to be discarded by those who sought comfort and conformity with the world. Proper clerical dress was labeled as “Turkish” (a rather uneducated assertion to make), and replaced with Roman Catholic clothing or even street clothing when not in Church; the Church services were shortened and altered; fasting was reduced and in some places is rarely practiced; and a general disregard for Tradition is gradually seeping in.
The reason that these three issues are so dangerous is because Orthodoxy is a received Faith. We learn from our spiritual fathers, who provide us with instruction in the Faith. These practices which may seem secondary or external to those untrained in the Faith are actually the result of two thousand years of living Orthodoxy in each generation. What worked was cherished and expounded upon, while what was considered transient or cultural gave way. The practices of the Church which are being eschewed by Modernists and Ecumenists are the very tools that the Fathers have passed down to us in our time to aid us in our salvation, yet they are seen as merely cultural or outdated. The result is that the Modernists, Ecumenists, and New Caledarists make themselves the arbitrators of Tradition and thus superior to it. What is tried and true is put under a microscope by even catechumens and laymen who are not advanced in the spiritual life, and dismissed. In this environment, it is no wonder that there is a general degradation of the Orthodox spiritual life, a gradual shrinking of parishes, and a shortage of clergy and monastics.
We have made it our purpose to worship Christ in His Church in the way the Fathers passed Orthodoxy down to us, which involves the rejection of these three innovations. For this reason, when we founded our mission in Raleigh, we did so under the bishops of the Genuine Orthodox Church, also known as the “Greek Old Calendarists,” who have preserved Orthodoxy faithfully. The other parishes in the area to differing degrees either participate in these three innovations or are in communion with those who do. While we have had generally good relations with the priests and laypeople of these parishes, we must on principle remain separate. We do not judge ourselves as being more pious or more holy than they, nor do we actively solicit them and try to poach them with unfair methods to join our Church. We are here, following the Holy Fathers, and anyone who wishes to join with us is welcome. The separation found in the Orthodox world grieves us, and we hope that those who are involved in these innovations or are in communion with those who do will cease this participation and restore unity. Unity is not just a unity in the present, but a unity of mind with the Orthodox of ages past, whom we believe would have rejected these innovations. This is why we founded St. Mark the Evangelist Orthodox Mission, in our hopes to remain faithful to the Orthodox Church without compromise, and we hope to continue our work of promoting traditional Orthodoxy as long as the Lord allows us to do so.
Further Reading
A Scientific Examination of the Orthodox Church Calendar
Excerpt from the book Against False Union on the Calendar question
Righteousness Then and Now
“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” John 14:10.
Dear Friends in Christ,
In this passage from the Gospel of John, which we read at Saturday’s liturgy, Christ speaks of the unity between Himself and the Father. What is interesting to note is the play on words; “The words I speak” are contrasted with the Father who “doeth the works.”
For Christ, and by extension for all those who follow Him, there is no distinction between one’s words and one’s works. If we profess to have a faith in Christ, we will demonstrate the works that prove it. Christ continues: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” (verse 12).
Is Christ speaking symbolically? The Reading from Acts (20:7-12) for Saturday gives a clue. In it, a young man named Eutychus is listening to St. Paul speaking, and falls from a window and dies. St. Paul goes to him, and raises him from the dead. Only God can raise people from the dead, yet we see St. Paul doing it here. In other places, St. Peter also raises the dead. We can see in the book of Acts, then, that the very miracles that Christ performed were then given to his Apostles.
We might wonder if such things happen even in our time. The answer is yes, with a caveat. Christ gave the Apostles various blessings to perform miracles, but in a direct proportion to their level of faithfulness. If we recall in the Gospels, the Apostles at one point could not cast out certain demons. By the time Acts was written, they were raising the dead. A certain spiritual progress had occurred. This was due to the Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when the Spirit of God descended like tongues of fire. The Apostles, who had been preparing themselves for this gift, were ready to receive it.
When we are baptized and chrismated with the Holy Oil afterwards, we too are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. However, God does not force us to do anything against our will, and so if we are not prepared for the gift, and do not develop it through a life of “practicing what we preach,” God will respect our decision and pull away. If we continue to develop spiritually, however, he will give us spiritual gifts to be used for his glorification.
In our modern times, we can point to at least two people to whom God chose to give spiritual gifts. St. John Maximovitch was a Russian bishop who lead his flock across the world as communism spread, settling eventually with many of them in San Francisco. He was a wonderworker who healed many people. Elder Ieronymos was a monastic priest who lived on the island of Aegina in Greece. He lived a life of simplicity and comforted thousands of people through their troubled life. Both of these saints were given extreme discernment and were able to diagnose people’s spiritual ailments and sometimes even physically cure people. They lived in different places, but are both contemporary, dying in the 1960’s. When one reads their lives, they see the same kind of spiritual gifts that the Apostles possessed. God does not want us to look back to the past only for inspiration; he calls men and women in each generation to become holy and minister. Not everyone is given such extreme gifts, but God has a plan for each of us, and by fulfilling it, we will not only ourselves be saved, but we will save many around us.
Let us follow Christ’s words and produce the same works; let our lives become like that of St. Paul, St. John, and Elder Ieronymos. He has prepared the gift, but we have to step forward and receive it willingly.
In Christ,
Fr Anastasios
Different people use different names to describe the Orthodox Christian Church: Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Orthodox Christian, and Eastern Orthodox are just some of the terms employed. They all actually refer to the same Church, but the different terms owe mostly to the different perspectives of those describing the Church.
At its most basic level, the Orthodox Church believes itself to be the New Testament Church, which has continued uninterrupted since then until the modern day. For Orthodox Christians, it is simply enough to refer to themselves as “The Church.” However, historically, as various sects formed, and in our modern, pluralistic society, where there are multiple denominations calling themselves Christian Churches, it became necessary to distinguish between them. Here is where the different terms come in to play.
Historically, as other groups claiming to be Christians arose who held views divergent from the Church of Christ arose, councils were called to settle the disputes. Those who held the original faith as defined by the Councils were the Orthodox: “right believing” or “right worshiping” is the basic definition of this term. Those who held divergent views were called heretics, the root of which is a Greek word meaning “to choose” as in to choose a separate belief from the Church, or heterodox (non-Orthodox) to refer to those who did not themselves leave the Church but are born in non-Orthodox Churches.
Eastern Orthodox is a term which is often found in history textbooks and encyclopedia entries. Since most English-speakers are Protestants or Roman Catholics, both Churches descended from the Western regions of Europe, naturally the Orthodox Christians are “Eastern” in orientation from their perspective. Often, the term has a sort of exotic feel to it, as Eastern Orthodox are imagined to be a mysterious and not-well-known flavor of Christianity not often encountered. As “Eastern” Orthodox move in to the West and more and more Westerners become Orthodox Christians, however, this term has lost a lot of its original meaning.
Greek Orthodox is another term that further clarifies the origin of the Church. The first Orthodox Christians in North America were mostly immigrants from various locations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, such as Romania, Serbia, Greece, Russia, and the Ottomon Empire, so naturally the natives referred to themselves as “Greek Orthodox” or “Russian Orthodox” in order to clarify which Orthodox nation they came from. However, all of these Orthodox Christians shared the same faith, despite being Russian, Greek, Serbian, or as time went on, American converts and native-born American Orthodox. Americans often found it a convenient label that described both one’s origin and his faith.
As more and more Americans embrace Orthodox Christianity, the original Christian Church, however, they are finding that the Church can exist naturally in an American context as well. In this multi-cultural society, it is no longer as important to refer to one’s origins, and Orthodoxy is well-suited towards integrating with new cultures it encounters. For these converts, then, it is not natural to refer to themselves as Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox, when they themselves are Americans. The terms persist though, because they are more than just ethnic titles, but describe the historical place where the faith originated as well.
Nativity of the Holy Theotokos is a Greek Orthodox Church in Greenville, North Carolina. It is an Orthodox Christian Church, and it is Eastern Orthodox. It is all of these things, but most importantly, it is open to all people, whether they be Black, White, Hispanic, American, Greek, Russian, or of any other background. We have parishioners from several backgrounds, and are happy to have anyone of any background participate in our prayer and fellowship. All are welcome here.
