Resources
Many informative articles were published in our parish newsletters in the years prior to Covid. Email to the friends and faithful of Holy Cross has replaced our newsletters, but we have collected many of the articles here. Use the indexes below to find articles on the topic or the author you’re interested in. (Once you click on a topic or author, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the search results.)
Also, have a look at the Recommended Readings on the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) website for a list of books covering a wide range of topics. Essential Orthodox Christian Beliefs: A Manual for Adult Instruction is also available for free download on the OCA’s website.
(Speaking of our parent jurisdiction, the OCA traces its origins to the arrival in Kodiak, Alaska in 1794 of eight Orthodox missionaries from the Valaamo Monastery in the northern Karelia region of Russia. Today, the OCA includes some 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries, and institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.)
We hope you’ll find these suggested readings to be both edifying and encouraging!
From the Depths of Hell
It all begins with an idea.
Very Rev. John Breck
The final Old Testament reading for Holy Saturday vespers -- Daniel 3:1-57, the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace in Babylon -- is composite, drawing upon both Aramaic and Greek (Septuagint) traditions. The latter modifies and amplifies a detail the Church's patristic witnesses consider essential. That small detail is a typological image that announces the primary theme of Orthodox Pascha or Easter: the descent of Christ into the depths of hell, to liberate humanity from the powers of sin, death and corruption.
According to the Aramaic version, King Nebuchadnezzar -- for unspecified reasons (the Greek declares it was because he heard the three young men singing from the midst of the flames) -- asks his advisors, "Did we not cast three bound men into the furnace?" Then he adds, "Yet I see four men, unbound, walking in the midst of the fire -- and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!" That descriptive phrase, "like a son of the gods," is a Semitism, signifying an angelic being. The Septuagint replaces it with the assertion, "An angel of the Lord came down into the furnace… and drove out the fiery flame."
In the view of the Church Fathers and Orthodox tradition generally, the angelic being who appears in the midst of the flames is a prophetic image of both the means and the meaning of our salvation. That powerful image points forward to and is fulfilled by the crucifixion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
One of the most significant differences between Western (Latin) and Eastern (Orthodox) theology concerns the means by which we are redeemed from the consequences of sin -- our rebellion against the person and will of God -- and granted access to the blessed, transfigured existence termed by Scripture "eternal life." The Latin view -- focusing on the "original sin" of the first man Adam, transmitted to successive generations like a genetic flaw -- stresses the payment or obligation we have to offer to God, whether of Christ's sacrifice (Anselm's theory of "satisfaction") or of our good deeds (the notion of accumulated "merits"). These medieval themes have been significantly modified by modern Western theologians, but they continue to shape Catholic popular piety, and even that of certain Protestant confessions (the Lutheran "theologia crucis," for example: a "theology of the cross" that places primary emphasis on Christ's crucifixion, while not neglecting the resurrection). An indirect consequence of this accent is the paschal image of the risen Christ in Western tradition. There the Saviour, bearing the marks of crucifixion, is usually depicted rising victorious from his tomb or sepulchre, while the guards are asleep at his feet.
In Orthodox tradition, that saving victory over death is depicted much differently. Here the themes of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and exaltation merge in the motif of Christ's "Descent into Hell," more properly termed his "Descent into Sheol," the realm of the departed righteous who await the Saviour's coming.
If the eternal Son of God, second Person of the Holy Trinity, deigned to become a man, a human being of flesh and blood, it was not in the first instance to assume the consequences of Adam's guilt through a vicarious sacrificial self-offering. He "took flesh," rather, to assume our fallen, sin-scarred "nature" -- what makes us essentially human -- in order to redeem and glorify that nature. This he accomplished by his sinless life and innocent death, fulfilled by his rising from the dead and his ascension or exaltation into heaven, the fullness of the presence of God. In that movement of glorification, he remained the "God-man," bearing in himself both his eternal divinity and his human nature, restored and renewed to its original perfection and beauty. If the Son of God became (a) man, patristic tradition declares, it was to offer to us the possibility of theôsis or "deification," meaning a full participation in God's very life and a sharing with him in a communion of boundless, inexhaustible love.
In this perspective, it is not we who strive to reconcile ourselves to God by appeasing his righteous wrath. It is God who seeks to reconcile himself us to through the gift of his Son, the righteous innocent one, who breaks down the wall of our sin and unrighteousness, in order to unite us through himself to the Father. "God was in Christ," the apostle Paul declares, "reconciling the world to himself."
This is the theme so beautifully and poignantly depicted in iconography of the Resurrection or Descent into Sheol. The Crucified One, lying in the tomb on the day that will become known and celebrated as Holy Saturday, "descends" into the lower reaches of the created world, into the realm of the dead. Here he reaches out to meet and seize the outstretched hands of Adam and Eve, representatives of all humanity. The flow of Christ's robes and the position of his body make it appear that he is both descending and ascending. Enveloped in a resplendent aureole, he stands victoriously above the pit of hell, a dark hole in which Satan and Hades, symbols of sin and death, are bound fast. Death is overcome, and for those who long for eternal communion with God, salvation is at hand. It is enough to reach out and seize the hand that's offered.
As the angel descended into the fiery furnace to protect and save the three young men, so Christ descends into the farthest reaches of hell, to bring reconciliation and life to all those who seek them. In the same way, he descends into our own realm of torment and death, to enfold us in the mantle of his boundless compassion and love. We may provoke our own alienation from ultimate truth and value. We may reject the gift of life and fashion our own hell, a place of living death. Or that hell may take the form of unrelieved suffering, within ourselves or in the lives of those closest to us. Still, the metaphor holds. Into that place of darkness and pain, even into the fiery furnace of our tortured imagination, Christ descends again and again. He comes not only to release us from our suffering; he comes to bear that suffering with us and for us. He comes as Light into our darkness and as Life into our sickness and death. He comes, as he came to the three young men and to the righteous departed of the paschal icon, with outstretched hands, to embrace us, to raise us up, and to exalt us with himself into a place, into a communion, of ineffable glory and joy.
This sacred image of Christ's paschal victory reveals the mystery, the sacramental blessing, of our salvation. And in that mystery lies our most fervent hope, and with it, the object of our deepest longing.
Some Thoughts on Prayer
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
2007
As Great Lent is approaching let us take some time to dwell on prayer. Lent is usually a time of greater concentration on our spiritual lives and a time of renewal and thoughtful reflection on where we need continued repentance in our lives. This should include more intensified prayer. We should make an effort to keep our prayer “rule” more consistent and to make more space to listen to God as he speaks to us through silence and the “Jesus prayer.” Prayer is so vital to our lives as Christians, and we hear much talk of prayer. There are many books written on the subject and many people ready to tell us the “secrets” of prayer. The one thing we don’t do that often is ask ourselves “what is prayer anyway?” What do we mean when we say “prayer?” This word gets thrown around so much that it can be confusing to understand what it is. There are many different ways to define prayer and theologically discuss it. All of these definitions are wonderful and articles could be written detailing all of these wonderful meanings of prayer. For the sake of focusing some thoughts on the subject, I think the best definition that I have found of prayer is the following: prayer is the remembrance of God in all things. We could also say that this is really the goal of all prayer.
The Fathers of the Church speak a lot about prayer and all seem to come back to this one point - that prayer helps us become mindful of God in the midst of every area of our lives. This includes not only intentional prayer at specific times throughout the day, but also in the midst of one’s tasks and responsibilities at work and home. St. Paul’s injunction to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. 5:17) is certainly a possibility with this expanded definition of prayer. Origen once said, “He prays unceasingly who combines prayer with necessary duties and duties with prayer. Only in this way can we find it practicable to fulfill the commandment to pray always. It consists in regarding the whole of Christian existence as a single great prayer. What we are accustomed to call prayer is only part of it.” Thus prayer can encompass our whole lives. Our whole life then can become an extension of unceasing prayer. St. John Cassian once said, “For whoever is in the habit of praying only at the hour when the knees are bent prays very little. But whoever is distracted by any sort of wandering of heart, even on bended knee, never prays. And therefore we have to be outside the hour of prayer what we want to be when we are praying.” Our lives become the “amen” and activity to our prayer. We become a living prayer always offering up ourselves to God in all things. In this way, whatever we are doing, we are continually praying. By doing our God-given tasks and fulfilling our responsibilities as unto the Lord we continue in our prayer.
It is this type of prayer that is less about words and more about action. The Monks of New Skete comment on this in speaking of unceasing prayer. They say, “We can only be faithful to the mandate to unceasing [prayer] when we seek it qualitatively, by reverently listening and discerning the presence of God in every situation in life; by conforming our hearts and minds and behavior with the words and attitudes we articulate in prayer; and by embracing our whole life and presenting it as a gift to God.” This is not to diminish personal prayer time or our corporate prayers in the liturgical life of the Church. Rather, it should encourage us to think of the totality of our life as a continual prayer being offered up as one who “hears the Word of God and keeps it.” We encounter Christ within prayer and we love Him and strive to keep His commandments in every area of our life. St. Maria Skobtsova calls this the “churching of our life.” This is where we become outside of our prayer what we are when we are praying.
The goal of prayer is the remembrance of God in all things. We do this not only through intentional prayer, but also through embracing what we may call “the sacrament of the present moment.” It is our ability to see the presence of God all around us. Christ Himself is present in all our tasks throughout the day. Paul Evdokimov says, “It is not enough to say prayers, one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, every act, every gesture, even the smile on the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should not offer what one has, but what one is.”
May God help us to see the totality of our life as one ceaseless prayer especially as we enter the Great Fast. Let us be open to seeing the presence of God in all things. Let it be so, Lord, have mercy.
Archbishop Anastasios on Prayer
It all begins with an idea.
Very Rev. John Breck
2007
(from “Life in Christ” March 2004)
His Eminence Archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos) arrived in Albania in 1991, to assume archpastoral duties in this impoverished country, which during the Communist period had been militantly atheistic. Since that date, under his guidance and through his prayer, the Orthodox Church in Albania has experienced what has rightly been proclaimed a "Resurrection" (Anastasis!).
Jim Forest, a well-known Orthodox journalist and head of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (OPF), visited the Church in Albania a few years ago and met with the Archbishop and many other people there who are involved in various kinds of mission work. The fruit of that visit was a remarkable little book, published by the World Council of Churches in 2002, entitled The Resurrection of the Church in Albania: Voices of Orthodox Christians. Jim has kindly given permission to quote from that book a portion of Archbishop Anastasios’ thoughts on prayer (pages 123f). They are vibrant words that issue from a living experience of the God of love, who is present and acting in the midst of the world’s turmoil and suffering. Yet their simplicity and depth is such that they offer direction to anyone who seeks, in the midst of everyday activities, to commune with the life-giving Trinity.
Prayer summarizes a longing. The problem is that so often we become ego-centered, lacking humility. Thus it is good to pray, ‘Oh Lord, deliver me from myself and give me to Yourself!’ – a cry of the heart. It is similar to the prayer, ‘Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief.’ Often it is necessary to pray for forgiveness.
Many times in my life, there has been no opportunity for long prayers, only time to go quickly into what I call the ‘hut of prayer’ – very short prayers that I know by heart or to make a very simple request: ‘Show me how to love!’ Or, when you have to make a decision, ‘Lord, help me make the right estimation and come to the right judgment, to make the right action.’ Then there is the very simple prayer, ‘Your will be done.’ I have also learned, in Albania, what it means to be a foreigner, to come from a country many regard with suspicion. This, however, can help one become more humble. It helps one pray with more intensity, ‘Use me according to Your will.’ Often I pray, ‘Lord, illumine me so that I know Your will, give me the humility to accept your will and the strength to do your will.’ I go back to these simple prayers again and again.
“Many times, the psalms are my refuge. You realize that in the spontaneous arising of certain phrases from the psalms you are hearing God speak to you. Perhaps you are reciting the psalm, ‘My soul, why are you so downcast…’ And then another phrase from the psalms arises which is a response. It is an ancient Christian tradition that a bishop should know many psalms by heart. The psalms provide a spiritual refuge. In each situation there is a psalm that can help you, in those critical moments when you have no place of retreat.
Perhaps you remember the words, ‘Unless the Lord guards the house, they who guard it labour in vain.’ You are reminded that your own efforts are not decisive. You also come to understand that your own suffering is a sharing in God’s suffering. It is a theme St. Paul sometimes writes about. You come to understand that the resurrection is not after the cross but in the cross.
Show Us Also Thy Glorious Resurrection!
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
“From the very outset, the coming of Christ represents the fulfillment of hope. From the very beginning the Gospel story means victory arising out of catastrophe. Disappointment, defeat , despair, confusion - and all of a sudden, an unexpected display of the miraculous power of God.” - Fr. Alexander Men
Towards the end of Great Lent we begin to understand what Christ means by taking up our cross daily. Both through our ascetic discipline during the fast and through our negligence we have come to understand our own personal fallenness. We have begun to see ourselves as sinners in need of repentance. We realize that we are the bride who has no wedding garment to wear for the bridegroom. We have many crosses in our lives that we must take up in order to be co-crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). It can be easy to get discouraged at this point. We may begin to feel that there is no hope or possibility of finding the joy of Christ in the midst of these troubling revelations about ourselves.
Then we come to Great and Holy Friday where we mourn and lament the death of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. We begin to understand the depths of His love for mankind. We hear the words of the hymns, “Today He who hung the Earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree. The King of Angels is decked with a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple robe of mockery. He who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face. The bridegroom of the Church is affixed to the cross with nails. The Son of the virgin is pierced with a spear. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. We worship Thy passion, O Christ. Show us also Thy glorious resurrection.” The devastating event begins to sink in. Christ our Lord is being killed. We begin to feel as if the whole world is fading into the darkness of sin and death. It is at this very moment that we utter this last line, “show us also Thy glorious resurrection!” Just when the night is at its darkest depths, light begins to dawn.
While Christ is still in the tomb on the matins of Holy Saturday, we begin to sing of His coming resurrection, “O Life, how canst Thou die? How canst Thou dwell in a tomb? Yet by Thy death Thou hast destroyed the reign of death, and raised all the dead from hell. O , how great the joy, how full the gladness, that Thou hast brought to Hades’ prisoners, like lightning flashing in its gloomy depths.” The tomb becomes the life-giving tomb. We realize that Life had to enter death in order to be raised in glory freeing all of those held captive to sin and death. Here is the victory arising out of catastrophe. It is here that we begin to see the full meaning of the Cross - death is swallowed up in victory and Christ bursts forth from the tomb proclaiming, “Let creation rejoice! Let all born on earth be glad! For hateful hell has been despoiled. Let the women with myrrh come to meet me; for I am redeeming Adam and Eve and all their descendants, and on the third day shall I arise!”
Christ Himself tries to console even the sorrow of His mother while she laments the death of her son. “Do not lament me, O Mother, seeing me in the tomb, the Son conceived in the womb without seed. For I shall arise and be glorified with eternal glory as God. I shall exalt all who magnify you in faith and in love.” Thus in the darkness of the Paschal midnight we begin to sing the hymns of Christ’s resurrection. We sense this building joy springing up within us as we anticipate the light dawning from the east. Even before the rising of the sun we already begin to joyfully proclaim “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs, bestowing life.” All of life is brought to this one moment of resurrection, everything becomes clear in this light of glory. We are filled with a joy inexpressible and full of glory.
Fr. Alexander Men, a 20th century Russian priest and martyr wrote of the centrality of the joy of Pascha for the life of a Christian. He says, “If you want to find something real in Christianity, then search for it only through the risen Christ. Secondly, the Resurrection means victory. It means that God entered our human struggle, the great struggle of spirit against darkness, evil, oppression. He who was rejected, condemned, killed, humiliated, somehow focused all the misfortunes of the world in Himself and triumphed over all of them.” We die with Christ in order to be raised with Him. This event brings meaning and comfort to the world. This is the essence of the Gospel, or the “good news” that we confess and proclaim. Fr. Alexander continues, “This means that the Resurrection is not something that occurred once upon a time proving Christ’s victory to the disciples, something which had its place two thousand years ago. The Encounters continued to happen, they always happened... Here lies the meaning of the Resurrection, today’s meaning, for this time, not for history, not for the past, but for this day... He acts today regardless of human weaknesses. He will triumph always: and He has only begun His work, only begun, because His aim is the Transfiguration of the world, the Kingdom of God. We need only to anticipate this, to feel its coming.” This is the giddy and intoxicating joy that we sense at Pascha. This is the joy that we are take into the world and proclaim in and through our lives. Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
On Keeping Vigil
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
“Christian Liturgy publicly feasts the mystery of our salvation already accomplished in Christ, thanking and glorifying God for it so that it might be intensified in us and communicated to others for the building up of the Church, to perpetual glory of God's Holy Name.”
- Robert Taft
What is unique about our worship? Why is it so important for us to participate in the liturgical life of the Church? If Robert Taft is correct, then there is something that happens when we enter into the feasts of the Church. There is something that we enter into and are changed as a result. This “something” is an experience of Christ Himself. As we are about to celebrate our patronal feast, it is important for us to be reminded about why our participation is so vital to our spiritual lives.
One of the distinguishing characteristics about Orthodox liturgical worship is its preparation and fulfillment. Every feast has a prefeast, or a time leading up to the feast. Then we have the feast itself, and then the leave-taking , or the conclusion of the feast. This is seen most poignantly in the Vigil of the feast and the feast day Divine Liturgy itself. In the Orthodox Church every Eucharistic liturgy, strictly speaking, should be preceded by vigil and prayer. A vigil consists in our "keeping watch" as the disciples did in the upper room awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Early Christians spent the whole night in preparation awaiting the coming of the risen Lord. This was a unique phenomenon in Christianity. Fr. John Ealy expresses this important component in Orthodox Christian worship: "The word vigil itself comes to us from the Latin military term it means a state of alarm and of mobilization. It became connected with the night. It became a negation of that which the natural world did. The world slept but the Christian did not do what others naturally did. The Christian was awake and waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom who comes in the middle of the night (See Matthew 25:1-13). While all go to sleep the Church gathers and watches and waits for the coming of the Bridegroom, Christ. All this at night because night is spent in expectation, while others are asleep and weak. The Christian becomes a partaker of a life not dependent upon this world and death.
“The life of a Christian is the new life of Christ, the Bridegroom, the life that will be experienced in the Eucharist. Christians spend that time which precedes the Eucharist in prayer and expectation. What the Christian does in vigil points to the future. It points to the coming of Christ in the Eucharist at the Divine Liturgy, but it also points to the time of the future when Christ will come again in all His glory, in His second coming. This is already experienced here and now in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the experience now of that which is to come. Our vigil of expectation is fulfilled in the Eucharist. That fulfillment is always Christ, being with Him at the table in His Kingdom in the Divine Liturgy. There can be no vigil without the Eucharist and no Eucharist without a vigil."
Clearly our personal preparation encompasses a part of this vigil-keeping, but in our liturgical tradition, there is always a Vigil service on the eve of any major feast as well as on Saturday evenings. In many places the Vigil has been reduced to Great Vespers, or fallen into disuse entirely.
The Vigil, or sometimes called the All-Night Vigil, consists of the combination of Vespers and Matins into one service. The combination of these two services brings us from the night into the day. It is the Light of Christ that begins to dawn in our hearts as the darkness dissipates. It is at this service that the "meat" of the feast is heard in the hymns. This is where we begin to participate in the Life-giving events of our salvation. This is exactly where we, as the body of Christ, come together to prepare to meet Christ Himself in the feast. It is our preparation together, or vigil, that the experience of the feast becomes more intensified and communicated to us in a deeper way. We don't come to Church to fulfill an obligation, or to say "we went to church today." It is much more than that. We come to Church to participate in Christ Himself, who is our Life. It is our secularism that somehow manages to convince us that these are optional if it "fits into my schedule." It is secularism that makes us think that even by going to Church we have fulfilled our religious obligation. We cannot accept this premise as Orthodox Christians. All these things are given to us for our salvation. Legalism should never be the issue when it comes to Church attendance and participation in the services. Christ desires that we be "true worshipers" who "worship Him in spirit and truth" (John 4:23).
We will be celebrating the Vigil of the Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-creating Cross of our Lord on September 13. I would encourage everyone who can to come so that together we may enter into the feast. This is our patronal feast. Our Bishop has given us this feast as our name. This means that we will always in some way draw our identity from it. The feast is a wonderful one. We celebrate the Cross of our Lord. We feast Christ Himself and the salvation won for us on that cross. And because of this, our own “crosses,” our daily trials, now have the potential to bring us to Christ who is our Life. The hymns are full of joy and exuberance over the Cross as a “token of victory,” a “weapon of peace.” By spending some time with the texts from this service before attending, our ears and hearts will be better attuned to the message of the feast. You can find them at: http://oca.org/Mdtexts.asp?SID=13.
Scroll down to September 14th to download the texts and try to incorporate them into your own prayers and meditation this month.
Here are a few selections from the Vigil service:
Let all the trees of the wood rejoice, for their nature is sanctified by Christ. He planted them in the beginning, and on a tree was outstretched. At its exaltation on this day, we worship Him and magnify you.
The cross is raised up as a sacred horn of strength to all God's people, whose foreheads are marked with it. By this, all the horns of the spiritual powers of wickedness are crushed. At its exaltation on this day, we worship Him and magnify you.
Not allowing the deadly bitterness of the tree to remain, Thou didst utterly destroy it with the cross, as of old the wood once destroyed the bitterness of the waters of Marah, prefiguring the strength of the cross which all the powers of heaven magnify.
Today Thou hast raised us up again through the cross, O Lord. For we were plunged forever into the gloom of our forefather, unrestrained greed thrust our nature down into delusion: but now we have been restored to our full inheritance by the light of Thy cross which we faithful magnify.
Today the death that came to mankind through eating of the tree, is made of no effect through the cross. For the curse of our mother Eve that fell on mankind is destroyed by the fruit of the pure Mother of God whom all the powers of heaven magnify.
The Cross is the guardian of the whole earth; the Cross is the beauty of the Church. The Cross is the strength of kings; the Cross is the support of the faithful. The Cross is the glory of angels, and the wonder of demons.
The degree to which we are able to spend time personally preparing for the feast will be the degree to which we will be able to experience the joy of the feast. It all takes work, but it is important to remember that the word liturgy itself has a connotation of a corporate work done together for a purpose, and what greater purpose than the glorification of God. We can even attend the services, but never really come to Liturgy because we are not Liturgizing, we are not working to offer a sacrifice of praise. Let us remember how important it is to have a vision of why we do what we do, and work hard to make this a reality in our lives. We come to Vigil, and Great Vespers, in order to prepare ourselves for the Eucharist, for Christ as the "coming one" will rise in our hearts as we partake of Him in the Eucharist. We are then filled with the joy of the Kingdom and bring Him into this world to share with others the joy of the feast. “Rejoice, O Life-bearing cross!”
Today the Cross is exalted and the world is sanctified. For Thou who art enthroned with the Father and the Holy Spirit, hast spread Thine arms upon it and drawn the world to knowledge of Thee, O Christ. Make worthy of divine glory those who have put their trust in Thee.
Confession: Hospital or Courtroom?
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
November 2006
“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
James 5:16
“Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
John 20:22-23
Much has been said about the need for confession of sins in the Church and the need to be reconciled to God. There is a tendency to think of confession in some type of legalistic way - where one recounts their trespasses and gets the due punishment and forgiveness and goes on their way. There has also been a tendency to see confession as a type of yearly obligation in order to have a "pass" to come to communion. Unfortunately, these views of confession have done great damage to this "sacrament of reconciliation." So, what is confession exactly? Is it a legal transaction that takes place in a "courtroom?" For the Orthodox Church, confession has always been understood more in terms of hospital language, rather than a courtroom.
Sin as Sickness
It is important, first of all, to remember that sin is not the breaking of a moral code of conduct. Sin means literally, to "miss the mark," like an arrow that is shot and misses its intended target. The target here is man being what he was intended to be - created in the image and likeness of God. When we sin, we cease to be fully what God intended for us to be. It is we who break communion with God through our sin. We all sin and "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). There is a story from the desert fathers about a disciple who came to a certain elder one day and said, "Father, I have fallen!" The elder said to him, "Get up!" Again and again he came to the elder and said, "I have fallen!" And invariably the elder responded, "Get up!" The disciple then asked, "When will I have to stop getting up?" "Not until the day you give your soul up to God," the elder replied. Thus it is not a matter of if we sin, but when we sin, what are we going to do about it? In the First Epistle of St. John we read, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So the first step in confession is the acknowledgment of our sins. In hospital language, sin is a parasitic sickness or wound that needs to be cleaned out. Before it can be healed, one must acknowledge that there is a wound in the first place. Christ, as the Divine Physician, came to heal the sick. Christ Himself said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick ... For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."
Confession as Surgery
Confession is primarily naming and taking responsibility of the illness in order for the spiritual hospital (the Church) to prescribe a remedy to aid in the healing process. This is just one of many metaphors that the Fathers of the Church have used to speak of confession and reconciliation. In the charge that the priest says prior to the confession of sins we find a strong injunction about not hiding anything, "lest you depart from the Physician unhealed." Confession of sins is the rooting out of the infected wound. It is surgery that prepares the wound for the healing balm of penance and Holy Communion. This medicine of the Church comes from the same root as pharmacy (pharmakon). This medicine is given so that healing would continue to take place within the wound and not become infected again. This is how a penance is understood. It is not a punishment or an earning of forgiveness, but a prescription from the doctor for the sake of healing and restoration. Fr. John Romanides, a well-known 20th century Orthodox theologian says, "Having faith in Christ without undergoing healing in Christ is not faith at all. Here is the same contradiction that we find when a sick person who has great confidence in his doctor never carries out the treatment which he recommends."
Recovery
It is impossible to be saved on our own. It is only when we are able to admit our complete powerlessness over sin that we can be open to Christ's healing in our lives. We need the Church in order to root out this sickness. Think of how silly it would be for a surgeon to operate on himself. A Father of the Church has said, "he who sees his owns sins is a greater miracle than raising the dead." This means that it is a miracle when we are truly willing to see ourself as we really are, to see the infection, and be willing to submit to the "knife" of the Church for the sake of true healing and restoration. Fr. Alexander Schmemann said, "It is when man is challenged with the real 'contents' of the Gospel, with its divine depth and wisdom, beauty and all-embracing meaning, that he becomes 'capable of repentance,' for the true repentance is precisely the discovery by man of the abyss that separates him from God and from his real offer to man. It is when the man sees the bridal chamber adorned that he realizes he has no wedding garment for entering it." This recalls the story from Matthew 25 about the virgins who had prepared their lamps with oil for the meeting of the bridegroom and how he came at midnight to claim those who were prepared. The bridegroom is Christ and the bridal chamber is the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what we sing during Holy Week on the first three days at Bridegroom Matins, "Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me." Let us be ever open to a vision of Christ who desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of Thy Truth. He has given us His Holy Church as a place for recovery - that intensive care unit for our sinful souls where we are given medicine to aid us in our healing.
Note: See also "Preparation for Holy Communion" by Fr. Thomas Hopko, an article from Orthodox Education Day Book October 7, 2000
How We Worship: The Struggle of the American Experience
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
December 2006
Fr. George Florovsky once said that “Christianity is a liturgical religion” and because of this “worship comes first.” If worship is primary, then how we worship determines and expresses what we believe, and what we believe determines and expresses how we worship. This is summed up in the expression “the rule of faith is the rule of prayer and the rule of prayer is the rule of faith” – lex orandi lex credendi est. The Church has always understood itself as a worshiping community. We are not a “mystery cult” that does liturgical actions on behalf of itself or to remember certain events from the past. Nor is our worship simply one of many things that we do as part of our weekly activities. The word liturgy comes from the word, leitourgia, which literally means “the work of God’s people.” We come together to be what we can never be alone, the body of Christ, the Church. It is in our corporate worship that we become who we truly are - members of one another in God’s Kingdom (Ephesians 4:4,15,16). From early on in the history of the Church, this corporate worship was centered around Christ’s Body and Blood offered and distributed at the Eucharist.
We live in the United States of America at the beginning of the 21st century. We are a product of a modern secularized society that prides itself on individual rights. There are many wonderful things about being raised in America, but also many problems. As Orthodox Christians living in the West, we are faced with many complex ethical and moral dilemmas. The beauty of our Orthodox Tradition is that it has always engaged the cultures it found itself in always trying to find a way for Christ to be incarnated (contextualized) in a particular culture. This being said, how do we properly engage our culture with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ? How much do we allow our culture to dictate how we worship, live, and conduct ourselves? Where should we draw the line between “relevance” and drawing people to a "higher" standard. What is the proper balance? This can be a hard road to navigate, but I think there are some specific things we can say that can aid us in contemplating this question.
There are no individuals in the Church. We are not autonomous beings who come to Church in order to get our needs met. This is an aspect of our Orthodox self- understanding that sets us apart in our American Christian culture. We are connected to one another. We worship together. We are saved together in the Church. We are members of one another in the body of Christ. Mainline Christianity in America assumes that we are selfsufficient individuals and all we need is "me, God, and the Bible." This is very different than our historical, Orthodox Christian Faith. The Church is made of persons created in the image and likeness of God that come together to be what they cannot be alone, the body of Christ, which is the one body, confessing the one Christ, celebrating the one Eucharist at the one altar, worshiping with one voice.
What does it mean to be American and Orthodox? Do we have a responsibility to communicate this Faith to an American audience? What does that look like? Yes, we need to be concerned with a uniquely American Orthodox Church that takes the best that this culture has to offer (language, architecture, music, etc.), BUT we need to be very careful to differentiate what in this culture is also at odds with our Orthodox worldview (secularism, individualism, commercialism, materialism, etc.). Our worship should first and foremost reflect this. We are not individuals who come to Church as spectators to be entertained by a talented and aesthetically-pleasing choir (even though we have one). We don't come to Church to watch a spiritual "professional" do the services for us. We don't come to Church as "non-spiritual lay people" that just sit and watch a "spiritual" play and performance. We don't come to hear a skilled orator talk for 45 minutes and give us an inspiring and talented talk. Our worship is quite the opposite. It is communal and corporate. We worship together as the "priesthood of all believers" offering up with one voice our sacrifices of praise, doxology, and thanksgiving, eucharistia. We are all concelebrants in this heavenly worship. We all are participants in this angelic worship around the Throne of God. This is precisely why we stand for worship. We come together to worship with one voice in the presence of God. Scripturally speaking, the two postures for worship are on one's face in prostration or standing with faces turned towards the great I AM with arms outstretched.
Our worship is corporate, free, and involves the whole community. Everyone, including small children, participates for the Eucharist is our family meal. In the early second century there was a document in the Church called The Shepherd of Hermas, in which the Church is compared to a tower built of stone. From far away it looks as if it is built of one large stone, but on close inspection it is made up of little jagged stones all fit together to build one tower. All perfect round stones were rejected because they would not fit together with the other jagged stones. Round stones could represent in our time rugged individualism, or people that are self-sufficient and do not need others. No tower can be built with these stones. The Church is built of persons, or jagged stones, fit together in order to build a strong tower, a beacon of light in this darkened world. The point here is that the tower is not one stone carved to look like tower, but it is many stones that constitute the one tower.
Let us be attentive enough to understand the subtle ways that our culture can influence even how we think of Church, especially our worship. The Church is to change us and provide a place where we realize our true vocation, which is a priest of creation offering the world back to God in thanksgiving, our participation in Christ. The Church is our life in Christ and should shape and inform every area of our life. We are Orthodox Christians who live in North America and uniquely experience the Orthodox Church in an American context. We are not American Orthodox. We are not hyphenated Orthodox Christians who define ourselves primarily by an ethnic identity and then try to fit our Orthodoxy into that designation. The Church has even condemned as heresy the identification of Christianity primarily in ethnic terms - phyletism. There is nothing wrong with saying "American Orthodox Church", "Greek Orthodox Church". etc., as long as one understands that this is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Orthodox Church as found in a particular geographic area (America) and incarnating itself in that area for the sake of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people from that area. Thus an American Orthodox Church should be able to bring in things appropriate from the culture in order to communicate the Gospel in a culturally appropriate way. This also means that, prophetically speaking, it would reject anything from the culture that is inappropriate in communicating the Gospel.
Let us be mindful of the subtle ways that American secularism can creep in and influence even the Church. We are to be a light to the culture, not the other way around. On the other hand, we can bless and name Truth wherever it may be found. Uniting our worship to our beliefs is of the utmost importance for what we believe influences how we worship and how we worship influences what we believe. Lord, help us and guide us.
Stewardship & The Gospel
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
December 2007
This is from the homily given on 12/9/07. This is good food for thought as we prayerfully contemplate our tithes and offerings to the Church this year.
All discussion on giving to the Church must begin with the Gospel. In the Gospel we hear many passages dealing with being good stewards of the gifts that God has given us. As Christians we are to be good stewards of everything: our gifts, talents, the earth, our families, our possessions, and yes, even our finances. Christian stewardship, as everything in the life of the Church, needs to be founded on the truths of the Gospel. We tend to think of our financial contributions only in material terms. The Church needs money and we need to make the budget, and no Orthodox Christian would ever dispute the reality of the fact that the Church exists in the world and needs money to conduct its business and operating costs, however, we need to make sure that this is not the basis for a discussion on Christian stewardship and giving. Christian stewardship is not "fundraising" and should not be thought of only in utilitarian terms. The Church budget should be seen as an opportunity to edify the body of Christ, an opportunity to grow givers hearts who generously respond to the Gospel.
The theology of giving rests in these two principles from the Gospel:
We are created in God's image. God reveals Himself as love and pours out His mercy upon us. He is a God who gives of Himself to us for our salvation. Then Christian stewardship is a loving response to a giving God. We offer up all of ourselves to Him in a loving response. The whole thrust of out liturgy is offering. We offer up ourselves, each other, and our entire lives unto Christ our God. "Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all." The center of the Liturgy is an offering up to God, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that is returned to us as Christ Himself in the consecrated gifts. Thus, to give is to offer up all that we have in praise and thanksgiving to God for His wonderful mercy towards us.
We are subject to the law of love as Orthodox Christians. We have a need to give for the sake of others and our own salvation. Our giving benefits others. There are many places in Scripture where we see this. The Gospel is full of Christ's injunctions that we are to care for others and provide for those in need. We have a responsibility in love for our neighbor. But giving also benefits us spiritually. The Lord knows our needs and he promises to take care of us, but we need to give of what we've been given.
The Fathers often speak of the three pillars - fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. These 3 pillars are necessary for Christian growth. Christ links these three together in the sermon on the mount. One priest has commented,
This means that we give for the same reason that we pray or fast. We do not pray because God or the Church needs our prayers. We do not fast because God or the Church needs our fasting. Why then should we imagine that we give for the benefit of the Church's needs! We pray because we have a need to experience the communion with our heavenly Father that prayer provides; we fast because our development of Christians requires that foundation of discipline that fasting provides. W e also need to give because it is only through expressing our Christian love that this love can grow and mature. It is only through giving that we can cultivate the proper Christian attitude toward the world and toward that part of the world's bounty which God has entrusted to us, our material possessions.
Thus, we do not give only out of the need that the church has to "meet the budget", this would be thinking only in material terms. This leads to a "scarcity" mentality that only leads to emergency appeals and continually begging for money.
Giving is a spiritual discipline and we should give out of a need to grow spiritually. We rob ourselves of the benefit of spiritual growth by not giving. Thus, we see that giving is intimately connected to how we actualize the Gospel in our lives. It is part of our answer to the question, "Who do you say that I am?" that Christ asked His disciples. Giving to the Church is a participation in the mission of the Church which is to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." To think first of the Church's "needs" and then decide how much you want to give is backwards. We need to think first of all about the Gospel and our response to the salvation offered to us in Christ.
Christian stewardship is a loving response to a loving God. It is generosity based in response to a vision and faith. The goal of financial stewardship in the Church is not so much about "funding" as it is growing the hearts of Christians in response to the love of Christ. "Success" then should be judged on how much a Christian is maturing in His life in Christ in the Church so that their whole life becomes one all-embracing act of worship. Only growth in Christ produces true generosity.
Worship in the Church: The Sanctification of Time
Fr. Christopher Foley
October 2006
“Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
2 Cor. 6:2
“Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord , our maker!”
Ps. 94:1,2,6
Why do we go to Church? Why make an effort to attend the services and stand for long periods of time? Certainly there are more entertaining ways to spend a Sunday morning. What is it about our worship particularly that gives one a reason to "go to Church?"
We have been given an incredible legacy of beautiful services that celebrate the sanctification of time. Each year we journey through the cycle of the Church year in order to enter in to the reality of the events commemorated. The Greek word for symbol means just that - "to bring together." We remember these events in the present. There is a technical word in the Greek for this "remembrance" - anamnesis. This word denotes much more than recalling an event from the past, it is a remembrance that brings the event into the present. It is a participation in the event in the present. Many of the hymns for each feast and service begin with the word "Today..." This is the sanctification of the present day in order for us to participate in the reality of what we are commemorating. This is seen in our Divine Liturgy where we thank God for the "cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and His second and glorious coming." We are "remembering" events from the past and the future at the same time. This sanctification can only happen in its fulness in the life of the Church - the gathered community with the priest around the altar upon which the Gospel, which is Christ, is present. Fr. Alexander Schmemann states, "We can only worship in time, yet it is worship that ultimately not only reveals the meaning of time, but truly 'renews' time itself. There is no worship without the participation of the body, without words and silence, light and darkness, movement and stillness - yet it is in and through worship that all these essential expressions of man in his relation to the world are given their ultimate 'term' of reference, revealed in their highest and deepest meaning." Our worship is our real participation in the future Kingdom. We begin every Divine Liturgy with the words. "Blessed is the Kingdom..." It is in and through our leitourgia, our liturgical work, that we enter into and experience this world as encounter, an encounter with Christ in the midst of "our time."
The secularism in our culture works against this idea of all of creation as epiphany. Secularism is the denial of worship. Symbols are reduced to a means of communicating relevant ideas in order to convince or sell something to someone. Symbols become mere illustrations rather than something that "makes present" a reality. There is a strong preoccupation with "relevant" worship and "relevant" churches. This has led to an implosion of worship. Worship has become so individual centered and consumer driven. One goes to Church in order to "get something out of it for myself." All of worship is to be grounded in the Incarnation of our Lord. He who became matter for our sakes, now invites us to participate in Him through matter. All of creation becomes an epiphany, a manifestation of God to us. Worship is epiphany, it is our tangible experience of the love and mercy of God. Again Fr. Schmemann says, "Being an epiphany of God, worship is thus the epiphany of the world; being communion with God, it is the only true communion with the world; being knowledge of God, it is the ultimate fulfillment of all human knowledge." This is why we place such a strong emphasis on our liturgical worship and try to do everything with a spirit of excellence. This is how our worship is "relevant." It reveals to us who God is, and we participate in Him through matter. Now the world becomes transparent, enabling us to see a glimpse of the Glory of God, rather than opaque, reduced to colorful rites and ceremonies at best, or worldly entertainment at worst.
It is vital for us to catch a vision for this, so that we may know why it is we come to Church. It is not to understand God deeper, or to feel better about ourselves. Church is not an aesthetic experience, or a psychological boost. We don't come to Church to "get" anything. We come in order to participate in the joy of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is "made present" in our worship. "The Liturgy, we may say, is something that happens to us," says Fr. Schmemann. It is our entrance into the Kingdom, our participation in the eternal worship around God's throne in the heavens. May God help us to "see" our worship as a participation in the future kingdom surrounded by angels and archangels who unceasingly praise and glorify Him.
“O Most Strange Wonder”
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
September 2006
O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians
over their adversaries, and by virtue of Thy Cross,
preserve Thy habitation.
(Troparion Tone 1)
This is the first line from one of the stanzas of the Praises sung at Vigil of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. This sums up the totality of the message of the cross. It is the convergence of many things. Over the centuries the Cross has been the center of our Christian faith, and, unfortunately has also been sorely misunderstood by some. What is this Cross that we sing hymns to on this blessed feast? What is this Cross that St. Paul preaches and says is the power of God? Why would the Church commemorate the finding of this Cross by Sts. Constantine and Helen and sing hymns to a device of torture, an inanimate object?
What the Cross Is Not
What does it mean when we pray for the Lord to "grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries?" There has been a tendency in modern times to disregard any allusions to the cross having to do with smashing enemies. Unfortunately, if we take all of these out of our hymnody and worship we miss an important element of the cross - the cross of our Lord has the power to crush sin, death, and the Devil. This is what we mean when we sing hymns about destroying our enemies by the cross. Everything is to be understood in a Christo-centric way. When we think of the Psalms of David, we can also apply this same way of reading. Though David may have been writing about real experiences of enemies trying to hunt him down and where he prays for deliverance from those enemies, we now read them in the Church as God delivering us from our enemies that wage war against our souls and bodies - the passions - pride, lust, greed, and all manner of evil. This is what we mean when we pray for deliverance over our adversaries and the preservation of our life, or habitation.
Nor is the cross some sort of talisman or good luck charm that we use as some sort of magic to bring us blessings, wealth, deliverance, or power. The cross is always tied to a personal encounter with the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, as well as our co-crucifixion with Him. As St. Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ, . It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Christ Himself says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mk. 8:34). There is no Christianity without the cross, and no cross without voluntary suffering. Christ bids us to come and die: die to our sins and be killed, or co-crucified, with Him. It is here that we participate in His death and are resurrected to true life in Him. It is through our baptism that we die to our sins and are raised to newness of life. This is actualized in our real life on this earth in the Church. The power of the cross lies in the revelation of the God-man, Christ, suffering and transforming this into life. Death has lost its power.
What the Cross Is
The cross of our Lord is so central to our salvation. It is on this tree of shame that the God-man willingly and voluntarily went to His passion and death for our sakes. He reversed everything that mankind had messed up. It is the reversal of the sin of Adam. We continue in this sin because we choose to miss the mark of the image and likeness of God every day. When Adam partook of the fruit of the tree, man died. The wood of the cross is often compared to the tree in the garden of Eden. "The tree has been healed by the Tree." Now in Christ, the heavenly fruit who hung on another Tree, has made it possible our salvation. This is seen in the hymns from this feast:
O most strange wonder!
The cross which carried the most high as a
cluster of grapes full of life
is seen today exalted high above the earth.
Through the cross we are all drawn to God
and death has been forever swallowed up.
O undefiled wood, through thee we enjoy the
immortal fruit of Eden as we glorify Christ.
The cross is always linked to Christ, the one who triumphed over death and weakness in order to save the world. It is here that God is revealed in His glory. In icons of the crucifixion the plaque above Christ reads: the King of Glory. We hymn, glorify, praise, and venerate the cross at this feast for what was accomplished and revealed on this life-bearing wood. We pronounce with boldness the Gospel - through death, resurrection - through suffering, life. This is
the preaching of the Holy Apostles that has been preserved through the Holy Spirit in the life and worship of the Church. We actualize this in our own lives.
Thanks be to God who has deemed to save us and reveal Himself to us! "But now the cross is exalted! Today the power is realized in us” (from Litya Stichera at Vespers)!
Various quotes to dwell on with this feast:
"For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God!" I Corinthians 1:18
"But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." I Corinthians 1:23,24
"When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM." John 8:28
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." John 3:14,15
"And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly." Mark 8:31, 32a
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before it shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth... Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Isaiah 53:7,10
"O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24:25-27
"Thus if you wish to see the mystery of the Lord look at Abel who is likewise slain, at Isaac who is likewise tied up, at Joseph who is likewise traded, at Moses who is likewise exposed, at David who is likewise hunted down, at the prophets who likewise suffer for the sake of Christ." St. Melito of Sardis
"St. Gregory of Nyssa argued that the Passion of Christ is not 'evidence of his weakness,' but evidence of 'the surpassing act of power, by which this was possible,' so that 'it is necessary to honor the God revealed through the Cross just as the Father is honored.' So far is the Passion from being a mark of weakness, for St. Gregory, that 'the God revealed through the Cross' is not only honored, but honored equally with the Father." Fr. John Behr.
Titles for the Cross from the Hymns of the Feast:
banner of godliness
gate of paradise
protection of the faithful
might of the Church
enemy of demons
invincible weapon of peace
sign of true joy
help and strength of the faithful
power of the righteous
majesty of priests
shepherd's rod
guide to the blind
physician of the sick
resurrection of the dead
hope of Christians
guide to the lost
haven of the bestormed
confirmation of the universe
guardian of the whole earth
beauty of the Church
strength of kings
support of the faithful
glory of angels
wonder of demons
life-giving tree
strange wonder
undefiled wood
Divine ladder
life-creating wood
redemption of Adam
confirmation of sufferers
glory of the faithful
protection of the righteous
salvation of all the saints
Divine footstool
blessed tree
healing tree
driver away of demons
On Fasting
It all begins with an idea.
Fr. Christopher Foley
August 2006
Since we are currently in one of the four fasting periods of the Church year questions always arise about what is the proper approach to fasting as well as what is the actual prescribed fast. According to the Holy Canons of the Church, the Dormition fast calls for an ascetic fast which means no meat or meat products, fish, dairy products, wine, oil, or oil products. Wine and oil are permitted on Saturday and Sunday and fish, wine, and oil are permitted on Transfiguration. While this is the strict definition of the fast each one must prayerfully take into consideration their health, family concerns and spiritual considerations when approaching any fast. One should ask his or her Father Confessor when undertaking any fast. The main point to remember is the fast is not an end in itself, but a means towards an end which is continual abiding in Christ.
We fast for a number of reasons, one of which is so we can learn to eat properly. This may sound strange, but we fast from food in order to learn how to feast properly. We learn to be thankful to God for every good thing including our food. It is through food that Adam fell, and we all continue in this sin of Adam by seeing food as an end in itself. The root of all sin lies primarily in our appetites. We spend most of our time living "by bread alone." Food, and all of creation was meant for a means of communion with God, but we mistakenly see it as an end in itself, thereby making it out to be a god. Christ was also tempted by food in the wilderness and he refused to believe the lie that man lives by bread alone. Fasting restores our spiritual nature that has been corrupted by sin. Sin has mutilated and disfigured the image and likeness of God in man so much that when we feed our appetites as ends in themselves we have the impression of being alive, when in fact we are dead in sin.
Fasting helps to restore that image and likeness. We begin to see life as it truly is - in Christ. There is a tendency to either explain away the fast and reduce it to "giving something up", or to reduce it to a set of dietary laws that we follow in order to earn God's favor. According to Fr. Alexander Schmemann:
Fasting is our entrance and participation in that experience of Christ Himself by which He liberates us from total dependence on food, matter, and the world. By no means is our liberation a full one. Living in the fallen world, in the world of the Old Adam, being part of it, we still depend on food. But just as our death-through which we still must pass-has become by virtue of Christ's death a passage into life, the food we eat and the life it sustains can be life in God and for God. Part of our food has already become "food of immortality"- the body and blood of Christ Himself. But even the daily bread we receive from God can be in this life and in this world that which strengthens us, our communion with God, rather than which separates us from God. Yet it is only fasting that can perform that transformation, giving us the existential proof that our dependence on food and matter is not total, not absolute, that united to prayer, grace, and adoration, it can itself be spiritual.
God grant us the strength to fast and grant us the transfigured vision of life as communion with the one thing needful - which is Christ Himself.
St. John Chrysostom on Fasting:
Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works.
If you see a poor man, take pity on him.
If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him.
Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all members of our bodies.
Let the hands fast, by being free from avarice.
Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin.
Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful.
Let the ear fast, by not listening to evil and gossip.
Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism.
For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?
May He who came to the world to save sinners strengthen us to complete the fast with humility, have mercy on us and save us.
