Kevin Basil

Ephesians 5.20–33a (epistle reading 230) is the epistle reading for the sacrament (or mystery) of marriage in the Orthodox lectionary. Here is a quote from St John Chrysostom’s commentary on the passage:

So if you think that the wife is the loser because she is told to fear her husband, remember that the principal duty of love is assigned to the husband, and you will see that it is her gain. “And what if my wife refuses to obey me?” a husband will ask. Never mind! Your obligation is to love her; do your duty! Even when we don’t receive our due from others, we must do our duty. If a spouse doesn’t obey God’s law, you are not excused. A wife should respect her husband even when he shows her no love, and a husband should love his wife even when she shows him no respect. Then they will both be found to lack nothing, since each has fulfilled the commandment given. (John Chrysostom, Homily 20 on Ephesians)

Read the full homily (in an older translation, with an antiquated and awkward style) at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Fr Ted Bobosh has some excellent background on fasting and what it means in the twenty-first century: Fasting: Curbing the Desires of the Heart.

I love that the rules for fasting were originally meant to curb ascetical showmanship and place fasting in a communal context of discipline and obedience.

I wish I could spend my time posting delicious recipes of our family’s fasting menu. Instead, I’ll be struggling with providing three different diets to my family (mine, [my eldest daughter]‘s and everyone else’s which includes some serious Asperger’s-related food aversion issues). I guess I’ll write about the struggle. It’s just so NOT neat and tidy, so NOT well organized and so NOT perfect. Morning Coffee: I’m not READY!!!!!.

It sounds like you are ready.

According to a fellow traveler (a choir director whose late father was a prominent priest and whose brother is an archdeacon), in Russia if you cut out meat you are fasting.^[1] During the Christmas fast the refectory was not without a steady supply of hard-boiled eggs. (For the weak, of course. And I was so weak.)

In directed reflection on the purpose of the fast, one of our classes discussed the probability that the aim of all the ascetic struggle and lenten hymnody is to break down the delusion that we have done anything. If we keep the fast, we are accused of pride and self-righteousness. If we break the fast, we are accused of slovenliness. (And we all break the fast.) At the Pasch, Saint John Chrysostom’s preaching kills us:

You are welcome at the banquet anyway. You have not done anything to deserve the feast: That is the whole point. (Still, what do we do with the soiled wedding garment which we were to keep spotless? Or those Boy Scout virgins when we run out of oil? Or those frightening tales of burning trash heaps and lakes of liquid fire?)

The great fast not about getting anything right; that is why the Triodion^[2] begins with a contrast between a sinful tax collector and a religious zealot four weeks before Lent. The fast forces us to admit that we are broken and destitute without Christ, and Christ himself will give each of us what we need to bring us home.

sung at Psalm 50(51)
In Tone VIII:
Open the gates of repentance for me, O giver of life, * for at early morning my spirit seeks your holy temple * though the temple of my body remains defiled. * In your compassion, cleanse it with your loving kindness and your mercy.

Direct me back to the path of repentance, O Theotokos, * for I have defiled my soul with sin, and wasted my life in laziness. * By your prayers, preserve me from every impurity of soul and body.

Then, Tone VI:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness, * in your great tenderness wipe out my sin.

And:
When I ponder the number of my sins, * the day of judgment looms before me. * But in your compassion do I trust, O Lord, * and, like David, I implore you: * Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness.

These hymns are sung after the reading of the resurrection gospels on Saturday evenings. They are sung from the beginning of pre-lent until the end of the great fast (Lent). Pre-lent begins on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, yesterday. Lent ends with the Saturday of Lazarus, marking the transition to holy week. This year, Lazarus Saturday is March 27. This year we see one of the earliest dates for Easter (Pascha) in the East. Easter falls on the same date in both Eastern and Western calendars this year. (This serendipity is a coincidence of the two formulas for determining the date of Easter and not, unfortunately, a sign of sympathy for union among the Orthodox.)

Lists of paschal greetings are everywhere. Stéphane Bigham has paschal greetings with sound files! You know, just in case you wanted to actually say them, or something. Maybe I’m just weird.

In the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the Ultramontane party supported the power of the papacy. Their name means, “beyond the mountains,” that is, beyond the Alps in Italy. Ultramontanism ultimately ruled the day, in part because the Conciliarists were prevented from attending the Council of Florence and talking with the Eastern Orthodox bishops.

And this [unity] is something of the utmost importance, and it is something imminent. It is not something where we can wait and say “Oh maybe in my grandchildren’s time there will be Orthodox unity.” I’m talking about June. And, if you think I’m kidding, there is a conference being convened in the Phanar in June to discuss exactly this — (actually, it’s in Cypress) — to subject the Diaspora to the single, singular control, the so-called Diaspora, to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and thereby come into unity.

Well, that’s one model for unity. I would submit if we wanted a Pope we’d be under the real one. And I don’t think any of us want a Pope, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

Metropolitan Jonah is in Dallas, Texas — the see city of our diocese — to facilitate transition between him as temporary administrator and our former archbishop, his eminence, Dmitri. Last Sunday, he gave a sermon on Orthodox unity in North America to a pan-Orthodox assembly at the cathedral. I was blown away at every moment as I watched.

Check out the video: Pan-Orthodox Sermon by His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah. Watch the video first, because he’s a magnificent homilist, and this is one electrifying. However, if you would rather, there is also a transcript of the homily.

For background you may wish to read the lecture, “Challenges of Orthodoxy in America and the Role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” if you have not already. It was given at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology a few weeks ago by the Very Reverend Archimandrite Dr. Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, Chief Secretary of the Holy and Sacred Synod (of Constantinople).

Whether it is beyond the mountains or beyond the sea, if it is beyond the local church, it is alien to our tradition.

Note: This post was formerly titled, “Greek Ultramontanism.”

Imagine this: You are a Native American living on a reservation. Because some members of your reservation have been agitating for change, your home has been blockaded by the National Guard for several years. You cannot get in or out, and basic living supplies are difficult to come by. Attacks by the American troops sometimes destroy power plants, and you survive without electricity or running water for days. The American people, many of whom are descendants of European colonists, first arrived a few centuries ago on the soil that your ancestors inhabited for thousands of years. In spite of this, the international community is deaf to your cries for help and relief. Now imagine that the United States has had enough of your agitators and is launching a full-scale assault on your people with all its military superiority, even though your people are barely armed with rifles and a few missiles. Your home looks to be a parking lot in a few years.

Sounds outlandish! Unreal. Even as fiction, no one would believe it. Now, stop imagining and see that this is the reality of the situation in the Gaza strip.

The current conflict has been marked by little or no restraint on the part of Israel. Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said in an interview with the Washington Post, “I don’t like the term cease-fire since it looks like an agreement between two legitimate sides.” Elsewhere in the same interview she said, “Israel is not going to show restraint anymore. . . . it is not a missile against a missile. We are going to attack strongly if they continue.”^[1] If we were to decode the political rhetoric, Livni’s statement might read:

“We have a far bigger stick than you, and we will level you to the dirt.”

Israel supports its overwhelming use of military force by saying it is a response to “terror.”^[2] Many nations list Hamas as a terrorist organization.^[3] Yet according to many sources, Israel originally supported Hamas secretly to destabilize support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). “according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. … Israel’s support for Hamas ‘was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,’ said a former senior CIA official.”^[4] In a recent email letter to her supporters, Dr. Maria Khoury, a Palestinian Christian who lives in Taybeh, West Bank, relates a personal memory of this support for Hamas by the Israeli government. If this knowledge was widespread throughout Palestine, how demoralizing it must be for Palestinians to be used as pawns.

Far more demoralizing, though, is the human cost. Families seeking refuge from the destruction are killed while they try to escape.
“Movement [while fleeing] is complicated by the confusion over when it is safe to leave,” writes the New York Times. “When the Abu Hajaj family received a leaflet last weekend, they took it as a sign of safe passage. But Majad Abdel Karim Abu Hajaj, a teacher at a United Nations school, said his mother and sister were killed as they walked holding a white flag. Their bodies remain where they fell, he said, because ambulances cannot get to the area.”^[5]

We have a far bigger stick than you, and we will level you to the dirt.

And what has been the cost for Israel? The Los Angeles Times reports that the death toll for Israel is thirteen. “Israel has suffered 13 dead: 10 soldiers, four of them by ‘friendly fire,’ and three civilians by Hamas rockets.” How does that compare to the cost suffered by Palestine?

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported Monday that the death toll had risen from 884 to 910, according to an update from United Nations officials in Gaza. The dead include 292 children and 75 women, the officials said. The number of injured Palestinians stood at 4,250, of whom 1,497 are children and 626 are women….

More than 28,000 Palestinian civilians have been displaced, inundating makeshift refugee centers.^[6]

We have a far bigger stick than you, and we will level you to the dirt.

We can do little to change the political situation. The nations of this world will continue their demonic use of military power until the end of the age. However, we must help sacrificially as we are able. Recently, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen), the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, released a public statement encouraging support of the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) and spoke directly about our obligation to Palestine:

The parishes and members of the Orthodox Church in America should urgently offer their financial support to IOCC, earmarking this support at this time for work in Gaza. As Orthodox Christians, members of the Orthodox Church in America are in deep solidarity with the suffering people in the Middle East — Christians, Muslims, and Jews. The many hundreds of dead and wounded civilians in Gaza and in the whole region bear witness in their suffering to the real meaning of military and political conflict: it is innocent people who suffer the most.^[7]

We are mostly powerless to change the political situation, but I can express solidarity with the Palestinian people through sacrifice — giving of myself as an offering. Here are three things I will be doing:

1. Give. I will give to the IOCC.^[8] They already have an infrastructure on the ground in Palestine, because they have been working there for many years. Give sacrificially.
2. Pray. “The heartfelt prayer of someone upright works very powerfully.”^[9] I will pray an akathist for the people of Palestine and specifically for Gaza. Take extra time during your day or your week to pray for the people of Gaza and Palestine. Pray an akathist, a decade of the rosary, or an additional round on your prayer rope (chotki, komboskini) for release and relief. If set prayers are not part of your faith tradition, set aside extra time to pray extemporaneously for Palestine. Pray sacrificially.
3. Speak. Declare it. I have already written this article, obviously. Get the word out. Blog, tweet, or post on Facebook and other social networking sites. I will also speak out at my church. Speak out at your church, mosque, temple, or other house of worship. Be bold. Tell people what you know. Speak sacrificially.

Of course, there is so much more. Be creative. You can sacrifice your time, either by organizing a fundraiser or even by participating in one near you. The most daring among you can sacrifice your time by volunteering with an organization and traveling to Gaza in the flesh. This is ultimately the deepest sacrfice you can make. Do not let your fear put your motivation on the shelf: Do something.

When I attended a Greek parish in New Hampshire, I was always asked if I was Greek. That is, if I was spoken to at all. After all, it does not take an ethnological genius to determine that the 6’3″ gentleman with fair skin and blue eyes is probably not of Hellenic extraction. While looking for Orthodox news, I stumbled upon this editorial, and I thanked the holy Trinity that no one in the Orthodox Church in America talks about Russian culture like this.

The inevitable consequence of converting Christians and non-Christians who have no Greek heritage is that the more successful the outreach, the greater the erosion of Greek identity within the Church. The only counter-argument made to this observation by many who support the conversion strategy is that, given the demographic challenges at hand, a larger, more inclusive Church is the only realistic way to preserve the Greek cultural heritage in America.

Modern Greek is a certain loser in the conversion scenario. The historical structure of Orthodoxy has been to have a Church based on a national language/culture headed by a national hierarchy which stands on an equal basis with other Orthodox entities. In that sense, the idea of “Americanizing” Orthodoxy is to adhere to the major Orthodox tradition, rather than continue with Greek American exceptionalism.

At its core, however, Orthodox tradition is culturally Hellenic. If the emphasis of the Church turns to conversion efforts, there will surely be parishes that will seek affiliation with, or form an Orthodox organization which prioritizes, Greek identity. Simultaneously, especially in areas with a limited Greek population, other Christian denominations supported by American friends will become increasingly attractive.

At present, the Greek culture of the Church is ebbing away, and the conversions come in dribbles. Just talking about the need to revitalize Greek culture or just talking about an evangelical mandate is not useful. What is required is a dynamic commitment by the Church to what it wants to be and do in this new century.

The future, and perhaps even the existence, of a viable Greek America is at stake.

Read more: The Ethnic Church and the Hellenic Identity – The National Herald (via Orthodox News, an organ of Orthodox Christian Laity).

Allow me a postscript to add that I have also had very good experiences with many Greeks. Specifically, the people at Annunciation Cathedral in Norfolk, Virginia, have always been quite friendly to me, as was the priest at St Sophia parish in New London, Connecticut.

The first week of Lent (called “the Great Fast” in the Byzantine rite) always reminds me of the doctrine of creation and the various discussions that spring from it, because our scripture readings are from the beginning of Genesis (along with the opening of the Prophet Isaiah and the Proverbs of Solomon). I was thinking about writing about my reflections this year, and as it turns out, Archpriest John Breck has beaten me to it with a wonderful reflection on the stories of creation in Genesis.

He begins with the most important point, that of our contingency — our complete dependence on God, without whom we would be nothing:

The concept of “nothingness” is impossible for us to grasp. “Nothingness” suggests a void, an emptiness, bounded by something. Yet nothing existed to circumscribe that void or provide contrast to that emptiness. Nothingness is not just the absence of being; it is its denial, its rejection. It is an absolute negation, immeasurable and incomprehensible. It is non-existence, non-being, a negative power that by its very nature is devoid of all meaning , purpose or hope. As such, nothingness finds its closest human analogy in despair.

Then suddenly, “in the beginning” there was something. In that timeless moment, from a locus that transcends every notion of space or dimension, God created ex nihilo. He fashioned being from non-being, space-time from non-existence. Out of that beginning, God – who is Himself the arche or ultimate beginning, principle and source of all that is – brought forth the heavens and the earth.

The idea of non-being as a “power” seems a little strong, as if something existed outside the holy Trinity which was negating being. If “nothingness is not just the absence of being; it is its denial, its rejection,” then an agent must be denying and rejecting.

The agent here, though, is not pre-existing but created along with the cosmos: It is I. I am the agent who rejects God’s life-giving existence and denies my own being. I fear death and so I choose death over life, because that is the ultimate meaning of our freedom. We are free to choose life, the life that is communion with God, or we are free to choose death, to embrace the nothingness from which we are created. This is the death that the first man chose first, passing on mortality to us all. We are born to die, and so we act in fear of that death.

That is why, in the Eastern tradition, death is the enemy that is overthrown. Satan? Sure, he’s a major player in the drama. But death is the power that kept us bound, the power that keeps us from hitting the mark (hamartia, miss the mark, usually translated as “sin”) and keeps persuading us to live in death’s dominion rather than die to ourselves and live in God’s resplendent new creation.

That is why the Christian faith can be summed up in these words: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and on those in the grave bestowing life.

It is as an aside that Fr. John mentions the “tedious” arguments between “‘creationists’ and ‘evolutionists’”:

These opening verses are not meant to describe historical process or provide a scientific explanation for the appearance and development of the world and human life. The passage says nothing that can be exploited one way or another in the tedious debate between “creationists” and “evolutionists.” Its concern is not with historiography or paleontology, and its curious chronology (water existed before heaven or earth, living things appeared on earth before creation of the sun and moon) should not trouble the minds of any but those who insist on reading the narrative as a description of cosmological or biological development. The Genesis creation story is not concerned with scientifically determinable events. A we shall stress in the next column, it is concerned with salvation history, the creating and redeeming work of God, from the first creation to the last.

As the polarization intensifies in our schools and legislatures between “believers” and “Darwinists,” it is important for us to remember this point. Increasingly, Christian scientists are coming to see that this is a false choice, that on the question of the origin and development of species there is no necessary conflict between the biblical witness on the one hand and the findings of geologists, paleontologists and molecular biologists on the other. [See in this regard Francis Collins' recent work, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006).] “Young earth” theorists and fundamentalists of various stripes will reject this point, as will those who insist on the total “randomness” of mutations in the process of natural selection. Evolutionary process (if not Darwinian theory in all its details) has been confirmed by recent studies of DNA, the genetic code of living organisms. Yet this need not call into question the basic conviction that the Creator of all things is God, that God created ex nihilo, that He infuses all things with ultimate meaning and purpose, and that apparent randomness conforms wholly, if for us imperceptibly, to His divine will.

Read all of Fr. John’s article: OCA – “Life in Christ” Articles

Remember the destruction by the Taliban of irreplaceable Buddhist statues? Raising an outcry about that (which I did, because it was the right thing to do) was hip. Raising an outcry about the destruction of churches hundreds of years old is apparently not as hip.

There is little that we can do to stop the spread of hate that springs up like a prolific weed from the bloody soil of our planet. However, surely we can elect officials who will stop interfering in the affairs of others as if we were omniscient. We are not. In fact, we are often quite ignorant and belligerently so. If you wish to call the libertarian and classic American position isolationism, so be it. Perhaps it would be a welcome respite from nosy interference in the affairs of others.

Hat tip: tmatt @ GetReligion

Having chanted the Paschal hymn “Christ is risen” for the past forty days, today we recall his ascension in glory. In our common and personal worship, we have replaced the hymn to the Holy Spirit, “O heavenly king,” with “Christ is risen.” Now, we chant this hymn instead until the Conclusion of the Ascension, a week from tomorrow:

Troparion, Tone IV
You ascended in glory, O Christ, our God, * having gladdened your friends with your promise of the Holy Spirit. * And your blessing confirmed their belief that you are indeed God’s son, * the redeemer of the world.

See more of today’s hymns: O Great Mystery

Christ is risen!

As today is the Conclusion of Pascha (apodosis / αποδοσισ), most of us bid farewell to the favorite greeting of the season. I cannot help but note that Saint Seraphim of Sarov, among others, favored using this greeting year-round. Perhaps someday I will decide that I, too, like this greeting to much to say good-bye.

Χριστοσ ανεστι!
Христос воскресе!

Indeed, he is risen!

Sober Joy: THE DELUSION OF RELIGION

Barnabas recently looked at the relationship between religion and orthodox faith in Christ: Following Father Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory, he states that religion medicates man against the reality of death. Orthodoxy, he says, teaches that Christ has overcome death.

Dr. David Bentley Hart spoke on a similar subject when he addressed the Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Summer Institute last year. The lecture was based on his earlier book, The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the tsunami?. According to the lecture, he never intended to write this book. It grew out of a series of columns he wrote. He found the various religious responses to the tsunami entirely inappropriate and not accurate as descriptions of Christian beliefs about death and suffering in this life.

He begins by noting an old anthropological study entitled The Primitive Mind which shows that indigenous peoples are nearly universal in seeing death as unnatural. (In my mind, this is exactly the opposite of what I expected.) In the various animist and spiritist cultures, death is always viewed as an interruption. Whether explained by spirits that come to take the soul or some other model, death is always a stranger, an interruption. It is a break, ending a story which could otherwise have continued indefinitely.

You should listen to the lecture; Dr. Hart is far more articulate in describing this than I.

Barnabas’ says that religion attempts to medicate us against the reality of death. My spiritual father frequently uses the image of medicating oneself against the various pains of this world. We use various pleasures to feel good and numb the pain, the bad feelings. We use good things that have been created by God as drugs to numb ourselves to the pain.

This pain is nothing other than death and the fear of death.

No one has to teach us to fear death. Before we even realize that the life of one we love can be ended, we learn that we die a little every time we are told no or something is taken from us. And we learn — are we taught by example or do we develop responses by instinct? — to protect ourselves from death. We learn to act motivated by the fear of death.

In the resurrection, Christ conquers death by his own death. He submits, of his own free will, to the punishment for sin, though he knew no sin. He fills death with the presence of God — the holy Trinity which gives life to the world and is the source of all life. Death is turned inside-out! It ceases to be the end and becomes the end of the beginning. Christ has conquered death; it has been down-trodden, trampled upon, and completely stripped of its power.

As a result, all the little deaths that we face are paths to new life. They prepare us for the last death, and so they prepare us ultimately to expect the resurrection. When we balk at the prospect of what we must do — whether living virtuously or merely praying a simple rule — and the same old voice says, in whatever manner, “If I do this, I shall surely die,” it is true. We will die just a little; yet be not afraid. Christ has conquered death. You will be raised from this little death, and you will be raised from the final death to an eternal, incorruptible life.

But these deaths must be faced without being numbed by religion or sex or television or food or alcohol or any other addiction that we use to numb the pain. The pain must be borne without medication; it must be faced in its full reality.

Only then, when we have learned to face reality, will we be raised to new life. We will be made real, to borrow an image from The Velveteen Rabbit. We will finally be real and alive.

Dogwood blossoms, a traditional symbol of the Pasch in the South. Photo courtesy cjd.

Christ is risen!

Every Orthodox blog in the world right now is posting their Paschal blog post.

“Christ is risen, and not one of the dead remains in the grave.” — Paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom

Not one of the dead remains in the grave. What a proclamation! What universality! On this day, we have hope unbounded by a dusty dogmatism: “You sober and you heedless, honour the day! / Rejoice today, both you that have fasted / And you that have disregarded the fast.” Save your moribund objections for a more mundane day, for on this day, death is despoiled, and all creation is invited to the feast, for Christ is truly risen!

Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko addresses the orthodox approach to scripture:

CC.com: Do you think things like that could ever be modified, in terms of church practise, when the church comes into cultures where people don’t, for example, kiss as frequently as people do in the Orient, for example?

Fr. Hopko: Yeah, it could, but I think what happens is you have a culture of the Church itself, that is not bound to any human culture. The Church itself is a cultural phenomenon — I mean, it’s basically christened Judaism.

I happened to be at McGill University once when they were having one of these discussions — they had an Orthodox priest, a Jew, an evangelical, a liberal Protestant, and a Roman Catholic, and they were talking and talking, and finally somebody in the audience raised a hand and said, “I’d like to ask that Orthodox priest a question. What religion are you closest to anyway?” And just, I guess, for the fun of it, the guy answered and said, “Judaism.”

And they said, “What do you mean, aren’t you Christian?” He said, “Yeah, but in our way of hearing the Bible, worshipping the way we do, you might say that we feel that sometimes we are closer to the Jews than we are to other Christians because of the way they approach the Bible, the way they approach authority, the way they approach worship,” and I think there is a certain truth there.

But the Church itself has a culture. It has songs and icons and hymns and sounds. I think there is a kind of ethos, a culture of the Church itself, that is not just reducible to Slavic or Hellenic or Semitic, that people can relate to. And so a thing like giving a kiss, or making a bow, or lighting a candle — that’s kind of Church culture, it’s not just human culture.

Read the rest: Interview: An Orthodox professor ponders the scriptures

Hat tip: Barnabas Powell