Looking Forward 05/02/2012
 
One of the issues that philosophy has spent a lot of ink on is the answer to the question: who we are? Many thinkers have tried to give a proper answer to this basic question, and yet , despite their efforts, the world is confronted with a huge identity crisis with profound effects at all levels of our society. In Christianity however, this question is already answered and answered in a very fulfilling way. We know who we are: the Creation of the Most High, fashioned out of His boundless love. Our origin is in Him and this suffices for us. The more important question, as Christians, should be however:  where are we going?

The human life should not be regarded as static, defined by who we are, our life is a dynamic progression towards deification, theosis, focused not on what we are, but on what we can be. The theologian H. Yannaras said once: “the intensity and the authenticity of life is measured by originality and change. The mortal enemy of life is the passive repetition, the routine, the weakness that often hinders man’s ability to acquire the new in life.“

The Christian way is not a flat, open road, that offers the same monotone vistas along the journey and even the end of the road is no different than its beginning; the way to salvation is a treacherous ascent with dangers at every step, but offering the greatest reward when, sitting on top of the mountain, one meets God.

A person that is not happy of any current condition will look for change, will foster transformation. A sick person will want to be healthy, a weak would like to be strong, a poor to be rich and so on. The difficulty, for the rest of us, is that we live with an illusion of normality, the illusion that we are fine and we don’t need anything else. This is a very dangerous place to be, because in our current status of fallen mankind, we are in a position of involution, we are inferior to our potential and what we call today life is nothing but a shadow of what it can be in Christ.

If we fail to reach out towards our potentiality in God, we essentially fail as human persons missing the call “be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) Our fulfillment as persons is not realized through education, career, successes.  We cannot achieve anything worthy outside of God. This is but an illusion that has been served to us from the very beginning by the crafty devil and is still served today at every step of the way. Our true personhood is revealed if we let ourselves be united with God, and in Him, reflecting ourselves as in an honest mirror, we discover more than just who we really are, but more importantly who we are called to be.

Any responsible Christian should ask the question: how can I become more, rather than simply affirming I have reached a good level of life. This is why the Publican was found greater than the Pharisee in the synagogue. The publican wish of repentance, his will to evolve into a better person, is what lifted him up above the boasting and self-sufficient Pharisee.

This continuous aspiration towards bettering ourselves should not be with us only when we sin, when we feel down, but even when we do good things we should always strive for more, to get yet another step closer to our perfection in God.“ So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, `We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do.’” (Luke 17:10)

This is the driving force of Christianity, unceasingly moving from an empty image of God into His very likeness, from a resemblance to an identification in Him, an identification that has to go through accepting the cross of a responsible Christian life: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

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This year there were rumors that the tomb of Jesus was found. The other day some claimed to have found the nails that were used to crucify Christ. More and more news like this surface today and, although most of them prove to be untrue, the people avidly read them because we, even as Christians, are not happy anymore with what the Holy Tradition has passed unto us for centuries and we want new proof for everything. We have ceased to believe in the catholicity of the Church, in the universal truth shared in the community of the ecclesia for generations and we trust more the intellect of man, despite its shortcomings, ignoring the divine Sophia, the Wisdom of God that the Church upholds The gospel read in the Sunday following Pascha seems to pinpoints the origin of this trend to the proverbial doubting Thomas, but the Apostle Thomas is far from being the first to start this pattern of disbelief that goes back to the very beginning of Man. Adam and Eve were told in paradise that they will “surely die” (Gen 2:17) if they eat from the tree of knowledge, but they wanted more proof and, without any delay death and corruption became reality for the entire human race. The pharaoh of Egypt did not believe Moses when He told Him that he represents God and he should free the people Israel and he rather preferred to go through all the nine plagues, and see his first born die in his arms before getting the point God was making. The people of Israel and Moses himself doubted God could take care of them in the desert and none of them entered in the Promised Land. We can go on with examples, but every time man doubted God and trusted rather in himself the outcome was grim. 

God never wanted us to believe without proof, or obey without explanation, that’s why “He performed mighty works by His holy ones who in every generation were well-pleasing to Him, He spoke to us through the mouths of His servants the prophets, who foretold to us the salvation which was to come” so when we will see the miracles and when the prophecies will be fulfilled we will have no doubt.

Still all proved insufficient, and even the apostles, the closest people to Christ, were not able to see what was in front of their eyes. Despite the miracles they witnessed, despite living day and night with the Son of God Himself, they all failed to perceive the obvious. Not only Thomas doubted, but Peter denied Christ three times and he had to go the tomb to see with his own eyes if the account of the myrrh bearer women was not a tall tale.  Luke and Cleopas did not believe the women either and failed to put together the prophecies leading to Christ, until their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread.

Man needs more that his broken rationality and his narrow senses to believe. It is difficult to trust God when your eyes are closed, your ears shut, and your mouth is filled with the taste of dirt, the material world we so much cherish. No heavenly aroma can penetrate through our thick armor of unbelief and human hubris. As long as we believe that man is everything, we won’t see God, we won’t see His works into the world, we will be insensitive to His great love and we will ignore Him like He does not exist.

Nietzsche said: God is dead. Well, we killed Him; not only on the cross, but in every aspect of our lives. We don’t pray because we don’t have time, we can’t greet ourselves as Christians because someone might get upset, we don’t come to church because we are involved in other activities, mostly entertainment and the list is long. We pursue our petty interests without Him, emptying God’s creation of its very Creator despite the gospel’s warning: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.”(Mat 6:33).

Christ however does not take offense in our ignorance and mistrust. He always calls us, as He called Thomas: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.”(John 20:27) Not blind belief, but belief that goes from the mind into the heart, belief that comes not only with one proof, but with a “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1) that shout into the world the good news of our redemption in the Resurrection of Christ.

It is time for us to stop demanding proof and ask ourselves, what if God doubts me? What do I have as evidence of my allegiance to Him? What are the fruits of my faith? I think we will all discover that trusting God is a much easier job than trusting in Man. God has never failed us, God has always acted in our best interest, He even heroically sacrificed Himself for us. But Man failed God from the very beginning and even though God has kept every side of His covenant toward mankind, Man violated his promise and continues to sin and to forget that he has been bought from death with too precious of a price.

Jesus said to Thomas “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29), but I dare to say:

Believe because we have seen the Risen Lord through the eyes of the Myrrhbearer women.

Believe because we have entered the empty tomb with Peter.

Believe because we have touched his wounds with Thomas’ hand.

Believe because we built our churches on the graves of the Martyrs that died proclaiming the Resurrection.

Believe because we have the Scriptures and His words give life.

Believe because Resurrection is the only truth that matters.

Rejoice in the Truth of the Resurrection, don’t split the hair to find a dry secular explanation to the greatest mystery in the history of mankind, but believe that Christ is risen and so enter paradise with the wise thief.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

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In order to proclaim the Good News of the risen Christ, to teach and baptize in the Name of the Holy Trinity, to “persevere in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42), we intend to participate in the restoration of the Western Orthodox  Catholic Church.

We are Orthodox, that is to say that we profess the Christian faith as expressed in all the writings of the Apostles and the Holy Fathers, in the Creeds of the Ecumenical Councils of the whole Church, in the whole ascetic and liturgical tradition of the Early, Undivided Church.

We live and minister in the West. Our spiritual line of descent is the one we received from the tradition of the Saints of Provence, the martyrs of the Gauls, from our Father Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, from the Fathers of Gallican monasticism: Saint Martin, Saint John Cassian and the Fathers of Lérins: Saint Honoratus, Saint Vincent, Saint Caesarius, the holy Fathers of the Jura: Saint Romanus, Saint Lupus, the Irish missionaries: Saint Columbanus, Saint Gall, the missionaries of Belgium: Saint Amand, Saint Servais, Saint Lambert, without forgetting the Father of the monks of the West, Saint Benedict of Nursia and all the others, no matter jurisdiction or era.

Following the example of the Undivided Church, our faith does not primarily mean adhering intellectually to truths to be believed, but experiencing the mysteries which the Church confesses. At the heart of everything and above all there is Someone: the active Presence of the paschal Christ, dead and risen, Who gives life, energizes and gives meaning to every aspect of our daily lives. This means clearly affirming the primacy of the spiritual, the concrete practice of a Way of transformation and access of the heart to reality. We recognize our own position completely in this powerful assertion by Father Alexander Schmemann: “The first Christians did not provide any program, any theory, but wherever they went the seed of the Kingdom germinated, the flame started to burn, their whole being was a living torch of praise for the risen Christ; He and He alone was the sole happiness of their life, and the Church had no other aim than to make present in the world and in history the Joy of the Risen Christ, in whom all things have their beginning and their end. Without proclaiming this Joy, Christianity is incomprehensible!”. We wish to be the witnesses to this reality at the heart of human distress in a world searching for God, going as far as loving our enemies according to Christ’s commandment.

Not out of moral laxity, nor out of spirit of relativism, nor in order to proselytize, but out of obedience to Christ who said: “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat; and I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.” (Mt 15:32) , we welcome into Eucharist Communion all Christians who have been baptized into Christ in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We understand however that the mainstream Churches, for their part, do not always look favorably on these small Christian communities like ours, which are both so ancient and yet so new: their very presence seems to challenge “religiously correct” ideas. Admittedly we are at present just a small minority. Nevertheless this minority should be a real spiritual force, and that depends on each one of us. “The grain of mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds” says the Gospel (Matthew 13: 32). But the Gospel adds that the grain of mustard seed can become a tree where the birds of the air come and make their nests in its branches. Does God wish to make our grain of mustard seed grow? We do not know. What we do know is that we must strive to make ourselves more worthy of such growth. Without clashing with others, without pushing ourselves forward, we must seek the Kingdom of God in humility and charity. We must strive until this word becomes synonymous with two things in the eyes of those who discover Orthodoxy in us: belief in Jesus Christ, life in Jesus Christ.

In conclusion, we make our own the declaration by Bishop Kallistos Ware: “Neither an Ecumenical Council, nor the Patriarchate of Constantinople or of Moscow, nor any other Mother-Church can create a new local Church. The most that they can do is to recognize such a Church. But the act of creation must be carried out in situ, locally, by the living Eucharistic cells which are called to gradually make up the body of a new local Church.” (SOP 302, Nov. 2005, given at the St. Serge Institute of Theology in Paris)
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The Shepherd's Heart Old Orthodox Fellowship takes very seriously Jesus' prayer that all be one as he and God are one. We believe the pursuit of Christian Unity is an important and noble endeavor and is the will of God. Sadly, we look around at the various groups within the Universal Church and see so many broken spirits as all struggle for common belief, practice, theology or doctrine. With this in mind the Fellowship holds to the following:

1. By its very nature, the signing of agreements of Communion may harm rather than help further the process of Communion. Implicit in agreements is an exclusive attitude that if one group of people do not sign a particular statement they are not welcome to the table of another group. The Fellowship holds that all people who feel drawn to the table are to be welcomed regardless of their particular station in life, economic, social, physical, or gender. This too holds true for belief in particular non-essential doctrines or opinions. For it is God alone who sees and can judge the secrets of the heart.

2. The Fellowship holds that all people of the catholic faith who strive to witness to the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ, are in fact already in communion with one another, for Christ cannot be divided in himself and in recognizing Christ in each other we are all a part of the whole body.

3. The Fellowship holds that there are a variety of expressions of this body of Christ in terms of practice, custom, tradition and theological emphasis. We therefore recognize that all these things are simply a way to express our interaction with God and God's interaction with us. The criteria is to be open to that movement, as far it holds to genuine Orthodox doctrine and ethos; and Communion is the simple holding dear of one another's struggles to live this out in faith.

4. Therefore, the Fellowship holds all like-minded communities and individuals of faith in Communion with us, who live out the Love of God, who follow the radical message of Jesus, and who recognize the face of Christ in all they encounter, thereby upholding the dignity of every human being. We recognize the validity of the various ministries, lay and ordained and are always open to their participating fully in the life of this Church.

5. Thus it is not the custom of the Fellowship to sign contracts or agreements with other groups, thereby being bound by word or law but rather we are committed in a Communion of the heart and Spirit, thus struggling to be one as Jesus and God are one.
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In our opinion, the essence of being canonical constitutes following the teachings of Jesus Christ as:

(a) in the dogmatic proclamations of the Seven Ecumenical Councils;

(b) in a diocese or church body being in communion (whether formally or not) with all jurisdictions, individuals or groups which have remained faithful to the Apostolic Christian way of life in both teaching and practice;

(c) in the bishops having a legitimate Apostolic Succession and genuine catholic Tradition. This means that Apostolic succession is always rooted in Apostolic Tradition, not a mere independent laying on of hands.

In all due respect, being part of a particular branch or Synod obviously does not make one canonical. This is especially crucial, as certain parts of the mainstream in modern times seem to have changed the ancient understanding of `canonical' into a new version of papacy.

Their definition of `canonical' is focused on being recognized, for instance, by the Patriarch of Constantinople (as if he were some sort of Eastern pope), whereas there is no such rule in their entire Canon Law. They appear to have adopted the corrupted Ecclesiology of Roman Catholicism by making legitimacy or canonicity dependant upon recognition by a particular Patriarch or the Pope.

This "neo-papal" concept has no historical precedent in true orthodoxy and contradicts centuries of Church tradition back to the times of the Apostles. It is as if by being in communion with a particular segment of Orthodoxy, whether Patriarchal or not, somehow would make one a "valid" and true follower of Christ!

Seeking worldly recognition in the eyes of men and a corrupted society by merely understanding the administrative, legal unity of the church instead of the true unity, which only can exist in the authentic Christian way of life, is spiritually detrimental, utterly false and not at all orthodox. The forming of self-styled organizations in mutual recognition with the purpose of denouncing others as being not canonical or in proclaiming themselves as the only legitimate ones, constitutes the grave sin of "condemning one's brother and sister" (St. Ephraim).

What is our call in this situation? - In order to remain canonical by God's standards, we cannot join in such unholy endeavors. Living the right way of life must be most important to us. Engaging in assaults on others is contrary to our Faith and most sinful. We said "assaults" which means that we must upbraid our brothers in the vineyard when they fail or refuse to abide by all that which had been handed down to them. Let us continue to live as true Christians who obey the Gospel commands as we invite those "of good will" (Luke 2:14) to join us.

Once the worldly-minded through the grace of God will understand what `being canonical' really means - then the truth shall be revealed: Where faith, doctrine and practice prevail, there is orthodoxy. Where faith, doctrine and practice are compromised, canonicity, catholicity and orthodoxy are absent despite any claims of communion or sort of recognition that may exist through artificial means.
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