The Pastor, the Pulpit and "the Word"

Risque? O yes!
To the point? You bet!
Orthodox message? I believe so, actually....

Food for thought...

Beguiling and deceptive is the life of the world, fruitless its labor, perilous its delight, poor its riches, delusive its honors, inconstant, insignificant; and woe to those who hope in its seeming goods: because of this many die without repentance. Blessed and most blessed are those who depart from the world and its desires.

Elder Nazarius

Forgive your humble rambling servant, but I thought that particularly the people of the US who are suffering the approach of TAX DAY (EEK!) might find solace and some measure of comfort in the Blessed Elder's words.

I was party to a spontaneous joke a long time ago. It said: "Money can't buy you happiness, my son; (pause for effect) but you can rent it!" Of course the truth is money can't buy, rent, borrow, or give happiness to anyone. Happiness, the fleeting outward emoting of approval, always eventually dissipates either into numbness or melancholy. This is because what most people consider to be happiness is not so; it is the expending of a pleasurable emotion.

True Happiness is the physical incarnation of spiritual Joy that is only experienced by a person who has humbly submitted the entirety of his/her life to the Most Holy Trinity. In such a person there is strength and peace, joy and hope, all springing from the fountain of Faith. Accepting God's generous invitation to Holy Love and Divine Light can result in a lifetime of experiencing the vicissitudes of this life with equanimity because the challenges and disappointments of life are not able to defeat the Spirit within us. Instead of depending on the passing things of life, we cherish and are embraced by Life Himself.

It is thus that even when we read a Church Father, or prayer, or listen to a Troparion or Canon that emphasizes our sinfulness and unworthiness, our desperate need for repentance and the cliff's edge of damnation at which we all stumble, we rather can discover joy than sink into despair. Joy, because we correctly understand these spiritual words as carried on in the context of a Divine Dialogue of Eternal Love.

The level of our "fear of the Lord" is precisely related to our realization that I really don't deserve the Grace and Mercy our Lord lavishes on me. This produces ever more prayerful moments of praise, repentance, adoration and thanksgiving. The tears of repentance are tears of joy, the tears of a parent who thought his/her child were dead and suddenly finds it alive. These are the tears of a child who knowing his culpability, recognizing his responsibility, and expecting the punishment that is meet, discovers that his turn of heart has produced forgiveness and with it brought thankfulness.

This is why the great Fathers of the Church always speak of contrition accompanied by tears. It is not the emotional collapse of the defeated; it is the spiritual triumph of the humbled repentant prodigal accepted back by the Loving Father.

Thanks be to God for the undeserved Gift of His Salvation so freely offered to us. May we all repent so completely that our eyes stream with tears of thankfulness. As we find ourselves healed of sin let us rejoice in the ability granted us to grow in His Divine Image and Likeness.

Let that be our goal, yours and mine, and the toils and trials of this life will account nothing in comparison to the security of Love we will possess in Christ.

May it be God's will that I achieve that ascetic goal and so keep clean my baptismal garment. Pray for me. I am praying for each of you my appreciated, dear and beloved readers.

Thanks be to God!

Wisdom for our day from St Ephraim the Syrian

53*
Lament over the scarcity of saints
My heart is pained, my soul agonizes and my inner parts are torn! Where am I to find the tears, where am I to find the contrition and the sighs to rightly mourn our orphaned state and the paucity of sanctity among us?

I see, O Master, that Thou takest Thy saints, like choice gold, from the vain world to the resting-place of life.

Like a farmer who sees his fruits well ripened and prudently hastens to gather them that they might not be the least bit spoiled, so doest Thou also, O Savior, gather Thy chosen ones who have labored righteously.

Yet we, who are slothful and weak-willed, remain hardened, and our fruits never ripen; for we have not the resolve to labor without sparing ourselves, in order to ripen the good works and rightly be gathered into the storehouse of life.

Say: woe is me, alas, O soul, and weep; for thou hast been left an orphan so young by the blameless fathers and righteous ascetics. Where are our fathers? Where are the saints? Where are the vigilant? Where are the sober? Where are the humble? Where are the meek? Where are those who vow silence? Where are the abstinent? Where are those who with a contrite heart stood before the Lord in perfect prayer, like angels of God? They have left here to join our holy God with their lamps brightly burning.

Woe is us! What times are these in which we live? Into what sea of evil have we sailed? Our fathers have entered the harbor of life, that they might not see the sorrows and seductions that overcome us because of our sins. They are crowned, yet we slumber; we sleep and indulge in selfish pleasures.

O Lord, have pity on us! Make sober our thoughts which whirl about in vain. Grant us contrition and tears, that they might shed some light on the blindness of our hearts, and we might see that way in which our fathers walked when they followed Thee. Grant us the desire and the strength to follow in this same way, so that we too with them might receive the lot of those who are saved, to the glory of Thy Name.

*From A Spiritual Psalter: or Reflections on God excerpted by Bishop Theophan the Recluse from the works of our Holy Father Ephraim the Syrian.

While I would prefer to post joyous things during this Holy Season, perhaps we still need to consider our lives in the light of the urgent necessity of repentance.

A Prayer

Most merciful Lord Jesus Christ my God: I thank Thee for deeming me, the sinner, worthy to receive forgiveness from Thee through the Mystery of Confession to my spiritual father. So then, imitating David who said, "I have sworn and resolved that I will keep the judgments of Thy righteousness" (Ps 118.106), I promise Thee, with the resolute will of my soul, that I would rather die a thousand deaths than ever commit a single mortal sin again and grieve Thine infinite Goodness. But because mine own will is weak on its own without Thy help, I fervently ask Thee to strengthen me with Thy Grace, and establish me with Thy mighty help, so that I may remain steadfast in my holy resolution until the end. Yea, my most-loving Jesus, enable me to pass the rest of my life in repentance, in order to receive Thy Grace here blow and Thy blessed Glory in Heaven above. Through the intercessions of Thy supremely blessed Mother and all Thy Saints. Amen.

Counsel for the Penitent, Exomologetarion, St Nikodemos the Hagiorite