Second Terrace

carried away

"Blown Away," by Winslow Homer

Some of you have wondered why I make such a big deal out of theology and doctrine. Here, I will tell you.

It’s safe to say that we live in a very “un-Orthodox” moment. Most people in America and Western Europe do not believe in the Nicene Creed, nor do they participate in Divine Liturgy and receive the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Most people think that God “may or may not exist,” and that it is not important to be sure. More people believe that God is all about power and anger rather than love. Most people think that God is a “take it or leave it” proposition, and that they don’t have to be concerned with the wisdom or morality of their behavior.

And — I’ll say this mainly because I feel older right now, having gone to my 40^th high school class reunion and not recognizing most of my old classmates — I think America's gotten nuttier than I’ve ever seen it before. And I blame neither the Democrats nor Republicans, President Trump nor Secretary Clinton, leftwing or right.

I blame doctrine. Bad doctrine, that is.

And doctrine is something that you cannot ever get away from, even if you’re a raging atheistic materialist (which you’re not). “You gotta believe in something,” Bob Dylan once sang, and that something is up to you.

* * * * * * *

For the twenty years I’ve been a priest (and twenty years before that in ministry), I have been deeply persuaded that at the root of all unhappiness and disorder is the presence of “various and strange doctrines” (Hebrews 13.9).

What should be there in the heart is the presence of the Jesus Christ Who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13.8).

He is the One Who brings the love and fellowship of the Divine Trinity to us, to all humanity: “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept … But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17.11-13).

It is too bad that usually, we pay attention to these words at the first and longest reading of the Twelve Passion Gospels on Holy Thursday. We are busy standing, perhaps shifting our weight in our shoes, worried that the children will stay calm, but we might not appreciate the fact that these very words establish the only hope for peace and joy in this world. Mental, emotional health is centered on these sentences. Spiritual health, most of all, depends radically upon John 17.11-13.

You can become truly human, perfected, only when you pray, believe and commune in the Body of the One Who is the same yesterday, today and forever … because, at the end of all things — even at the end of your earthly life — the Only One left standing is Christ: and we can be a part of His Body … if we truly want to.

All you have to do to have your “heart be established by grace” (Hebrews 13.9) is to stop being “carried about with various and strange doctrines." Look at your lifestyle, how you really live. What occupies most of your time? Where is your head? Where is your body? Do some “reverse engineering.” What opinions and beliefs are there that keep you thinking what you think? that keeping you doing what you do? that keep you feeling what you feel?

Because at the root of every human behavior (whether good or bad) is a doctrine, whatever it is. If you are not certain that God is real, or that He wants to rescue you, then there is no way you’re going to want to participate in Liturgy or desire the Eucharist more than any other thing. If you are not convinced that Jesus is your Good Shepherd, Who accompanies you through “the valley of the shadow of death,” then you will certainly “fear evil” (Psalm 22.4 LXX), then you will necessarily try to go your own way, through the soul-sucking lifestyle of anxiety and self-protection, through angry attacks at whoever you think is your enemy (and you'll always, always be dead wrong). If you do not know in your heart of hearts that God is “the God of all comfort,” (2 Corinthians 1.3), then you’ll be left to comfort yourself on your own, whether you’ll choose from the self-comforting array of any number of addictions (i.e., drug, alcohol, gambling, food, TV); or simply just running away to the self-isolation of despair.

I look at behavior and never once do I say “they cannot help it,” or “that's just the way I am.” Choices and thoughts, feelings and behavior -- all of them come from freely-chosen doctrine. The way we are is the result of what we freely believe. So when I see bad, destructive or just negligent behavior, I don’t judge or condemn. I look for the “strange doctrine" that is “carrying away" a human heart. Most of the time I feel sad, sometimes even distressed. And I pray.

Count on it. When someone has not shown up in the fellowship of the Church, I pray. Whenever — for four decades now — I have witnessed quarrels and distemper and weakness, I run to that Altar, “seeking the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13.14), and pray for the peace of the New Jerusalem.

* * * * * * *

Today, we celebrate the Holy Fathers of the First Six Ecumenical Councils. There are seven of these, I know. This feast that we celebrate today was established before the year 787, when the Seventh Council convened to uphold the piety and worship of the Orthodox tradition, especially the veneration of icons.

But the first six Ecumenical Councils (excepting maybe the Fifth) established for all time, at the center of history and human life, this central truth:

For a human to be human, he or she must believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and must know that they exist in the Trinity's Divine Being: “In Him we live and move and have our being," as St Paul said to the Areopagites (Acts 17.28).

And for a human to live forever, humans must join themselves to the Body of Christ, through Baptism, Eucharist, and full-fledged, no-holding-back belief and trust.

This is the Wisdom we seek, the “pearl of great price” (Matthew 13.45). Seek this wisdom. Learn from it. Make it and it alone your doctrine. “Do this and you shall live” (Luke 10.28 and Leviticus 18.5).

I strongly believe that it was for the work of the Seven Ecumenical Councils that the Byzantine Empire was ordained by God to exist. When its work was done, and when the tradition of prayer and hymnody was established by the fourteenth century, the Empire became a memory, and the Christian State was never to be again until the end of time.

* * * * * * *

Jesus once talked about this problem of "strange doctrines.” He described the human race as a herd of sheep that needed shepherding. Throughout time, unfortunately, many “thieves" have come in, sneaking in over the fence, and leading the sheep astray.

These “thieves” are the “strange doctrines.” And, as I’ve said, they’re not just other religions or heresies. They are mainly “bad opinions,” or just downright “foolishness.”

It turns out, for the Prophets and the Apostles and all the Holy Fathers, that the free moral choice between foolishness and wisdom is really a choice between life and death.

Bad opinions, foolishness and lazy thinking in general are all toxic. Strange doctrine is killer.

Only Truth, Who is Jesus Christ Himself, Who is the Word of Wisdom, is the only Shepherd Who comes to bring life that is abundant and freedom, and forever (John 10.10) — because, and only because -- the Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep.

Pay attention: “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater One than Solomon is here” (Luke 11.31).

This is why my simple and central pray has always been that you will become wise in Him, to truly have "a heart established by grace.” If Orthodoxy is not in such a peacemaking and lifegiving business, establishing the heart by grace, then it is not Orthodoxy at all.

* * * * * * *

If Jesus is the Word of Wisdom, then Mary and the Church, whose Mother she is, is the receiver of Wisdom, the "becomer" of Sophia and the model and “true culture” of belief. It is hard to believe in Wisdom outside Holy Tradition. But it makes no sense to be part of Tradition, only to let yourself be carried away.

Orthodoxy cannot be Orthodoxy unless it is first a society of love, wisdom and peace.

Make yourself meek and kind like the Mother of God, the best receiver of Wisdom. Make yourself desire more than anything else the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Make yourself become a peacemaker. Fix your heart on Jesus Who is Truth and thus become pure of heart.

Then you will have become a fulfillment of Jesus’ High Priestly prayer: “… that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.”

You'll be happy.

And so will I.

— Fr Jonathan Tobias

according to your faith let it be to you

Sometime after the Transfiguration, when the Lord started preparing His disciples for the Crucifixion, the Apostle John interrupted Him with a troubling problem. The disciples had seen someone else outside the group of Jesus’ followers actually succeeding at casting out demons. The exorcist was using the Name of Jesus to do this — but that person was not a “follower.”

Jesus then said: “He who is not against us is for us” (Mark 9.40).

There are only two possible responses to the Gospel of the Orthodox Faith. There is opposition, or there is openness. There is no in between.

Let’s think first about the “openness” possibility. Frequently, in the Gospels, “openness” comes from surprising and sometimes even scandalous sources. Jesus’ invitation to “Follow Me” is answered positively from a few of the expected people, like James and John the Evangelist, who were connected to the family of the High Priests Annas and Caiaphas, and Judas Iscariot, who was probably a religious scholar. But there were unexpected people: a violent insurrectionist (Simon the Zealot); common fishermen (Peter and Andrew); tax collectors (Levi, or Matthew, and Zacchaeus); and even a prostitute (Mary Magdalene).

What is surprising is the fact that there were probably more unexpected people than expected. The “expected” people, just as surprisingly, were more likely to end up on the side of the “opposition.” More on that later.

We see this surprise (about the unexpected source of openness) in its perfect, climactic form in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, set at the end of Time, on the Day of Judgment (Matthew 25.31-46). All Parables of Christ involve some sort of “turning things upside down,” but this one involved the greatest turnover of all (excepting, of course, the Crucifixion of the Son of God as a slave — Philippians 2.8). In this parable, the ones who “made it” — the sheep — were those who recognized love, who received it and gave it away. In a deep mystery, their opening their hearts to love and joining themselves to the life of love was the same as recognizing Christ and living in Him. 

You would expect that in a story about the Judgment there would have been some mention of religious pedigree — but there was not. The main concern at the end of Time will be for love, and through it — and it alone, as in forgiveness and service — the recognition of the Truth, the Word of God, Jesus Christ.

We see this "standard of judgment” previewed in today’s Gospel story of the healing of the two blind men (Matthew 9.25-35). The men followed Jesus and His disciples into the house where He was staying. In this, they were like every other person who called upon the Lord to stop and recognize them in their suffering. But for these two blind men, there was a big difference. In most of the other healing miracles, there was a specific request for help from the start (as in, “Lord, my servant is sick,” or “Your disciples couldn’t help my son who’s being pushed into the fire by a demon,” or “no one lets me get in the water first after the angel comes”).

But for these two blind men, all they say is “Son of David, have mercy on us!”

This is almost an exact reversal of what happened in last Sunday’s Gospel reading. There, the expectation was that Jesus would heal the paralytic. Jesus frustrated at least some in the room by simply forgiving the paralytic his sins, and only then — to prove that “the Son of Man had power to forgive sins” — did He heal the man.

Here, the first expectation was for forgiveness, which is the greatest healing of all. It was the Lord Who brought up the issue of making the blind to see. 

“Do you believe that I am able to do this?” Jesus asked. “Yes, Lord,” they said.

Then the Lord said something which is also different from most of the other healing miracles. When He touched their eyes, He said “According to your faith let it be to you.”

What does this mean? Surely, it cannot mean that Jesus would heal them only as much as their faith: that would make their faith the “decider” (or determinative factor). Rather, it is like we say in the Creed: “And on the Third Day He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures.” That is, “just as the Scriptures said it would happen.” Even so, “just as” your faith, your recognition of Christ said this would happen.

At this point, it is important to remember the Parable about the Last Judgment. The sheep received mercy and complete healing (which is what Heaven is) because the fully recognized Christ and participated in His life -- they joined Him and followed Him in His path of righteousness, His journey through Time.

The blind men fully trusted in Jesus, fully received the Word of God, fully surrendered their time to His Time, fully entered into His life. This is the “faith” according to which Jesus said “let it be to you.” This is true of all healing. Healing can only happen through life in Christ: “To [the saints, members of the Body of Christ] God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1.27). Christ is life, Christ is truth, Christ is the Way, Christ is Heaven. Even now.

Of course, in the “here and now” of this world there are the blindnesses of hatred, anger, violence and despair. That is why St Paul described faith as a vision of transcendent reality, even though that vision is sometimes not so obvious: “Now faith is the substance [i.e., “hypostasis”] of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen … By faith we understand that the worlds [i.e., both material and spiritual, both Time and Eternity] were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Hebrews 11.1,3).

Everything that is seen, even in daily life, is meant to be interpreted in wisdom, as revealing a higher meaning, as linked to the transcendent reality, as manifesting the invisible through the visible.

Faith means recognizing Christ, even when He is not obvious. It means following Him, even so much in the world makes you rather not.

So, openness means an openness to vision or wisdom: it is a willingness to believe. As in that poor father of the demon-possessed boy, who fell on his knees, weeping and crying out “Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.”

The Word of God Who is Truth — Jesus Christ Himself -- does not expect a fully accomplished perfect faith from you. He asks only a willingness to be perfected in Him. He calls for childlikeness, wonder, openness, a desire for peace and beauty.

On the other hand, opposition means deliberate refusal and rejection. It means closing the eyes of the heart against vision and wisdom. Christ is there and all around. To fail to recognize Him means a purposeful shutting of the eyes and, more importantly (and deadly), the heart.

The Pharisees should have been the first ones to recognize Christ. They were the best at reading Scripture (which, for them, was the Old Testament). Unlike the rationalist Sadducees, they read the Prophets along with the Law and Wisdom .. they believed in the spiritual reality and the unseen universe … they believed in immortality. They were, more than any other group, intellectually prepared to follow the Good Shepherd when He called them by name.

But they couldn’t because they were allergic to love. They wanted to go to heaven only if it meant that others — maybe the majority — would go to hell. They had no interest in beauty or peace.

So because of this, many Pharisees — though not all — ended up opposing Christ as He was bodily and spiritually bringing the reality of the Kingdom of God. They became blinder than the two blind men. They accused Jesus of using demonic power to perform these miracles of healing. Which is an insane idea — how could the demonic ever produce healing? How could the darkness ever produce light, peace and restoration?

James, the step-brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem said that goodness comes only from the Source and Presence of the Good, Who is God Himself: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1.17).

God’s Will is only a Good Will. “Peace on earth,” the angels sang, “Good Will toward men.” And that Good Will, the Word of Divine Love, is Jesus Christ Himself.

Recognize Him in love. Participate in Him in peace and beauty. Give your future, your eternity to Him in Hope. Pour out yourself to Him in donation, just as the Three Persons of the Trinity pour out Themselves to Each Other in divinity, just as Jesus Christ poured out Himself to you.

And, at the very moment when He touches your eyes and wipes away the tears from this present darkness and the burdens of the valley of the shadow of death, you will hear Him say,

“According to your faith let it be to you.”

only the meek shall inherit the earth

"The gentle will He guide in justice, 
the meek will He teach His ways.
All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth
for those seeking His covenant and His testimonies."

-- Psalm 24.9-10 LXX, in the inestimable personal translation of the good poet, +Rdr Donald Sheehan

(from today's morning recitation of the 4th and 5th kathismata)

When I read this, I usually remember a brief note made by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), in a brief study on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. He noticed that the criterion of judgment at the separation of the sheep from the goats was not a self-designation of religious or ethnic identity, nor was it even of a correct response on a credal interrogation, or even a forensic examination of cultic propriety. 

Rather, the judgment was all about a recognition of the transcendent Word in the daily, immanent mass of the worldwide neighborhood.

And it seems that this recognition is possible only in the condition of gentleness and meekness.

Maybe I should work harder against hardheartedness then ... even hardheadedness.

Gentleness seems to require a recognition of enemies that mob every human being, and that the enemy is never essentially human. Enmity seems to be an inhuman, unnatural overlay -- perhaps analogous to the way that we tend to invent a false psycholinguistic framework of secular atheism just to shield us from the ugliness of our own unrighteousness (see Psalm 35 LXX for this). 

Instead, gentleness is the upward call of recognizing in every human appearance her or his eternal logoi in the Divine Wisdom, and the erotic desire of the Divine Husband for that particular soul.

And meekness? Meekness is the willingness to wait and to endure. Meekness is the result of kenosis, of pouring oneself out in many small moments of love ... of not seeking the false justice of revenge ... of deferring anger into forgetfulness. Meekness is openness. Meekness is a teachableness, ready for Lady Wisdom (divine, and human) to teach her ways of beauty and peace.

Gentleness and meekness are linguistic terms. The swearing so denounced by the Word is a secularist speech of self-deification, of hallowing out a space from the stream of time. 

Instead, softheartedness speaks prayer and joy. And hope.

not enough

Old Believer icon (from the 19th century) of the "Blessed Silence Saviour,"
red, as it is a reflection of the Holy Sophia

 

 

These days -- and I'm not sure why -- there is a lot of discussion about despondency and anxiety within the Orthodox and wider community of Christianity. The discussion -- which can get pretty heavy-handed, let me tell you -- oscillates between emotional/physical difficulties (sometimes with clinical diagnostic categories) and theological challenge.

I have thought, ever since 1991 when I entered Orthodoxy, that our eastern community possessed a robust "theory of personality" (or "theological anthropology") that lay at the basis of an effective treatment method: i.e., the psychotherapy of the Hesychastic Fathers, especially as outlined by Met Hierotheos Vlachos in "Orthodox Psychotherapy." I thought this model far better than older "insight" theories like the Analytic tradition, or the client-centered program of Rogers, Truax, Carkhuff et al. I even thought it better than my own training in Adler's individual psychology, Frankl's logotherapy, the Big 5 Factor Model and my favorite, Beck's Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. 

It was exciting, years back, when I read Fr Alexis Trader's book that outlined the commonalities shared by the Hesychastic psychotherapy and Beck's model. And I should note that I, and my colleagues in child and adolescent psychiatry, were not averse to utilizing various treatment methods from Rogers and Skinner.

I say this because there is a central weakness in secular psychotherapeutic philosophy: the method, and the theory, is mostly reactionary and negative. We treated many pathologies well with a toolbox of re-intrepretation work, coping skills, problem-solving, rehearsal of improved behavior skills, and yes, even pharmacology. 

But the lion's share of the therapeutic energy lay in responding to negative challenges.

I remember long discussions with my friend and atheist-hippy supervisor about this central weakness. He and I thought the term "Mental Health" was uproariously ironic -- simply because there was nothing about health in the mental health business we worked so hard at. Our business was about disease. And we both said, from an atheistic and theistic perspective, that it would have been nice for treatment had we had a better grasp of what health looked like.

Of course, this is probably not a new insight (it isn't). But after my adoption of the Hesychastic program (and I keep it still), I wonder whether the same thing isn't true of Orthodox psychotherapy as it is of the secular array of models.

So to the point: I do not think that Orthodox psychotherapy is sufficient for daily life. 

It is always necessary, as there is always the potential for pathology. But its utilization as a framework for general pastoral practice may produce unintended applications for believers living in a non-monastic environment. One example is clergy supplanting the decision-making process of a father and mother who are making career choices, or how much money to give to church and charity, or what car to purchase or what color they should paint their house. Another example is clergy attempting to impose a monastic discipline upon families who cannot and should not profess vows of poverty, abstinence and radical obedience.

I am troubled by the dismal place given to the imagination in much ascetical literature. I do not accept the equation of imagination with demonic fantasia, nor do I believe that Scripture and Tradition come close to requiring this equivalence. Further, I suspect that Wisdom calls humanity to imagination precisely to perceive transcendence, and the "suspended" nature of Creation. In this note, it is more troubling to detect how univocal and secularist is the typically ascetical condemnation of imagination. After all, allegory requires the imaginative faculty: it is only a culture sworn to immanence that suppresses allegory (the way this present culture has). It is enough to understand that Wisdom requires imagination, the perception of being that "leaps over the wall" (Ps 17.29 LXX) of the immediate material present. 

These examples (along with others) proceed from the hyper-application of psychotherapy outside of the framework of obvious pathology. When there is not an obvious manifestation of a passion objectively observed or simply discerned, then psychotherapy (i.e., "soul-healing") is not required. The sacraments are always required: spiritual direction and psychotherapy are not simply because pathology, I would hope, is not always there (unless, of course, one believes in "total depravity").

The Orthodox Church is more than a hospital, more than a psychotherapy. Someone once suggested that were Orthodoxy to arrive on the scene today without any antecedents (as if that were remotely possible, even in a hypothetical sense), then it would not be seen as a religion, but rather a new psychotherapeutic science.

I used to like that idea. Now I do not. I think, for Wisdom's sake, that we should make better friends with the word "religion."

How much pathologizing I -- and my colleagues -- have been guilty of because we did not heed this boundary line of confining psychotherapy to pathology over the last few decades. And we failed to notice this boundary because we forgot that psychotherapy (in the old religious sense of the term) is only the negative (though necessary) part of pastoral work.

The positive part is nothing other than, and nothing less than, wisdom. Wisdom, obviously, extends light-years beyond the mundane-seeming advice dictated by Solomon and others in what we call "wisdom literature" in Scripture (to be fair, the everyday, common tone of this advice is a superficial mask that veils, on first glance, the real depth of this "advice"). 

Wisdom, in general, is the ability to perceive transcendence apparent in even the lowest, most demotic levels of experience. It defeats reductionism and an analysis that holds everything to the same program of quantification. The thought of wisdom comes to you and you arrive simultaneously at the same moment, and you are convinced then that wisdom is no mere stuff of subjectivity or sheer immanence.

Wisdom is the permeation of divinity into human consciousness. By it, we escape from the reactionary fight and leap into the true freedom of deified "expanse": "He [i.e., Christ] led me into spaciousness, he will deliver me because he delights in me" (Ps 17.19 LXX). I should note here that this "delight" is nuptial, and is rooted in the eros of the Wedded Lamb with His Bride (a nuptial union that is "iconified" in every marriage). 

Pardon that little sermon, but I want to emphasize the fact that the pastoral work of the full Gospel, the church of Holy Tradition, can only be structured by Wisdom, and informed by sophianic content. 

Priests must be wise, and the people must be wise. Wisdom alone is the vision without which the people will perish. (I dare you to associate Theoria with Sophia: you'll survive if you try.) The people do not have to succeed as a business or as an institution. But they must certainly gain Wisdom --

-- especially in the critical moment of language, when the particular, absolute Word of Wisdom is revealed and communed. Then, in Divine Liturgy, Wisdom is climactically seen as the only ethic, the only narrative cosmology. Then religion leaps beyond prophylaxis and soars into its adult perfection: the yearning and becoming toward telos, the discernible Will of "Thy Will be done."

I say this only as an introduction. Surely, Wisdom for our moment is a work that should be done in volumes. This argument pleads only, and negatively, for its articulation. It suffices as but a preface.

But I end with this urgency: too many of our clergy suffer a condition that is known, for better or worse, as "burnout." They have encountered chronic levels of frustration and conflict because their situation often requires what they cannot give. Often, the parish wants many things that conflict with the priest's ethic: but sometimes, the parish wants something that goes beyond the usual negative framework of "psychotherapy."

On the other hand, parishioners, too, experience "burn-out," because they are understood only as pathological: they are not given the positive content of transcendental, beautiful Wisdom that alone can help them discover the Good Will of God.

"Burn-out," you know, is a quite useless diagnostic term. But beyond the framework of clinical pathology, and into the brighter space of Sophia, the phenomenon of "burnout" may simply be a sign of an urgent necessity.

Yes, if you cry out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures;
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.

-- Proverbs 2.3-5 RSV --

the necessity of orthodox mariology

"Therefore the steps in the revelation of the Holy Spirit are essentially and necessarily steps in the showing of the Mother of God to the world, which has not been completed and in fullness belongs only to the future age."

-- Fr Sergius Bulgakov, in The Burning Bush, p100.

If anyone ever thought (as I think some do, who have moved from protestantism into Orthodoxy) that Orthodox Holy Tradition is less "Marian" than the Roman Catholic Church and thus more amenable to modern, rational sensibilities, they could not be more mistaken.

Mary's complete "Spirit-filling" is one and the same with her "divinization," or theosis. And to turn this statement around produces an even more arresting proposition. "Spirit-filling," or what the evangelicals like to call "sanctificiation," really cannot be understood at all outside of the history (past and present) of the Theotokos.

While Christ Himself is the "hominized divinity," as the Second Hypostasis becoming human (and, I might add, with nothing of His hypostasis left un-hominized), the Virgin herself is the perfected "divinized humanity." She is the model of theosis, and is the interceding agent of theosis for all who come after her.

As the one human who is present with Christ before all the rest of Creation is transfigured at the Last Judgment, Mary is the fullness of "creaturely Wisdom," just as the Trinity's divine essence is "divine Wisdom." 

Thus, Wisdom and theosis cannot be separated. "Sanctification" cannot be isolated from Mary nor Sophia. 

Perhaps the constant appeal of Nestorianism can be explained by the world's resistance to this linkage, between wisdom and theosis, or between sanctification and Mary. If Mary is the mother only of the human nature of Christ, then she is effectively removed from all religion, spirituality and faith. 

She has become unnecessary in the Nestorian frame. But her removal produces just another appearance of Docetism.

The Holy Spirit, in coming upon Mary at the Annunciation, brings Christ with Him and creates a motherhood that is first spiritual and also physical. Mary is the mother of Christ divine and human. And her motherhood continues in a singular, but also exemplary, way.

Christianity -- especially Orthodox Christianity -- cannot be non-Mariological in any moment. The Wisdom of the Theotokos is necessary for every prayer, every sacrament, even every institutional or administrative moment of Church life. 

I think, because we live in such a secularized, flattened age, that the most immediate indication of our crypto-secularity is our invention of non-Marian, non-sophiological moments.

God will not be entertained (or "pleased," which is probably the same thing in the modern psyche) by our institutional experiments, especially if they are launched in the dreary non-wisdoms drawn from the marketplace and social theory. He will probably remain deafeningly silent.

Until we think, and speak, the way we are. "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. Be it unto me according to your Word."

immaculate? yes, but conception?

Without irony or sarcasm, I really do wonder why there has been an effort to import the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Theotokos in the Orthodox community.

I do not question the reason why this doctrine persists in the Roman community. It seems to me that it is necessary if you accept a essential division of nature and grace.

But I thought that this division is out of place in Orthodox theology. And thus, Mary -- in the humanity that has always been essentially graceful, despite the Fall -- needed nothing extra to be the Theotokos, or even to be sinless and ever-pure. I do not question her exceptionality: she was exceptional precisely in that she was the most successful at being human (excepting, of course, her Son, the Godman).

Now, if one gravitates toward the notion of total depravity, in which human nature has become totally disabled after the Fall, then I suppose one would have to gravitate toward Immaculate Conception. The Virgin would thus be set apart from this totalizing sense of complete disaster of Original Sin, and also "inoculated" against the possibility of personal sin.

Again, this sort of thinking is really not traditional in the Orthodox community. I don't think that Mary needed anything more than I received in my constant creatureliness -- and thus, her faithfulness and meekness is all the more heroic.

She seems to be the best and greatest minister of Divine Wisdom in the creaturely world (angels included). I think, too, that this sort of Wisdom, from Genesis through Sirach to Revelations and beyond, is so shot through Creation that it cannot be divided into nature with, on one hand, and without, on the other, grace.

I think that for the most part, this Orthodox welcome, by some, of the Immaculate Conception represents a courteous sensitivity to our Roman friends. I know that Fr Lev Gillet suggested that this doctrine can be held at least as "theologoumena" (i.e., private opinion), especially with an eye toward such rapprochement.

I'm all for rapprochement, and for unity (with the preservation of difference, of course). But, speaking only for myself, I think that the Immaculate Conception does not square with a non-juridical ontology.

the war is over

 

The War is Over

On October 31^st 1945, Tech Sgt Henry Beben was honorably discharged from the United States Army Air Corps by Major Edward S Babcock, at the Patterson Air Field near Dayton Ohio. He was awarded the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Purple Heart for injuries suffered on January 11^th 1944.

On that cold January day, ten young men under the command of Second Lieutenant Robert Hallden took off from the Molesworth Air Base in Cambridgeshire England. Soon after leaving English air space, the fighter escort left this ill-fated bomber group on account of the turbulent weather. So this brave bomber group – the First Division of the Fighting 303^rd, called the (original) “Hell’s Angels” – flew through 400 waves of fire from Luftwaffe aircraft and ground-based anti-aircraft flak. Despite this withering opposition, the group successfully attacked an aircraft factory in Oschersleben Germany.

But this was a daylight raid in the most dangerous moment of the Allied air offensive against the Nazi war machine. That particular raid on that day became the most disastrous three and a half hours of the entire Allied air war. Over forty two B17s failed to return home to Molesworth that day.

Henry’s B-17G was one of them.

That B-17 was fairly new. Henry told me that the crew hadn’t even settled on a name to give her, like “Memphis Belle.” I only know the aircraft as 42-37896. But I can see it ever in my mind’s eye from a fuzzy photo snapped by a navigator in a nearby plane. You can see the tail ripped off, and Henry’s plane in flames, falling out of the sky.

Lieutenants Hallden and co-pilot Raymond Gentry were already dead from machine-gun fire. Henry and the remaining seven crewmates were parachuting 20,000 feet down to enemy ground near Kirchlengern near the Dutch border.

Henry could never remember how he got his chute on, or the moment he jumped out of the doomed craft. Pani Marsha and I think that his guardian angel strapped in on at the last.

He landed finally, permanently damaging his ankles, waking up from the shock to a ring of pitchforks thrust by angry farmers. He was then marched off to Stalag XVII-B in Krems, Austria, where he would spend the next sixteen months as a prisoner of war.

Up till now, I am afraid that I have painted an overly romanticized picture of war, and I don’t mean to. There is nothing good about war. I used to think so when I was younger and more foolish. But as I got older and closer to Henry in age, I understood the cranky remark he’d used to utter when he heard the saber-rattling on the news: “Whoever’s been in a real fire fight would never want to send anyone else there. The only people who love war are cowards or monsters.” Henry died a pacifist.

God never designed human nature for war. War is about the worst consequence of sin and the fall of man. The human heart was never meant to tolerate the sight of friends shot clean through by Messerschmitt cannon-fire. No young man was ever meant to drop bombs on other human beings.

Humanity suffers from war, and my, how well we know this – we and all his family and friends who loved Henry and every other soldier who comes back with a soul in tatters. We know, the loved ones who also suffer the aftermath, that you can take the young man off the battlefield, but you can never, ever take the battlefield completely out of the man, who will never be young again.

For the next seventy two years, Henry would replay the disaster of January 11^th 1944 every single night in his nightmares, and occasionally in flashbacks in his waking hours.

That is just the way it is in a fallen world.

But that is not all it is. Because God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, God has invaded this war-addicted world with intimations of Paradise, visions of Eden Again.

One such vision Henry found one day in 1959 while he was driving his mail truck in downtown Warren Ohio. He stopped at the sight of a stunning Rusyn woman called Rose David, and asked her to dinner. A year and a half later, they welcomed to the world a pretty little girl, who became the love of my life, Marsha Ann.

I’ve known Henry for over thirty seven years now, and he’s always been something of a mystery to me. When I would stay overnight in his house on Warren’s North End, I would hear his pitiful cries from the nightmares: 42-37896 was breaking, burning, falling again, and again, and again.

But in the daytime, I would see a man dedicated to love. He wasn’t bitter. He was not, as you might expect, filled with hate and revenge. He worked unfailing as a church school teacher, a choir member, a pirohi-pincher on two successive crews: the first at Holy Cross Polish National Catholic, then at St Nicholas Orthodox Church, having been received into Orthodoxy (finally following Rose) by Fr Ken Bachofsky.

He utterly lived for his family, his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. And when he became a grandfather – who my girls called “Jaju” because they could not quite pronounce the Polish “Dziadziu” completely – when he held Marisa and Alexis in his arms, it was as if the lights turned on in his war-darkened world. And it even got brighter the moment he saw his great-granddaughter, Evelina Rose.

Intimations of Paradise seeped into his hands, and he became a self-taught artist. He was the best pen and ink sketch artist I know. He began to paint, his style of bright colors following close after the illuminated impressionism of Matisse. His vision was becoming un-warred.

So I wondered. How could a man whose youth was destroyed in violence, so soul-damaged by oppression as a POW, could have ever shown these glimmers of Edenic peace?

In one of his numerous hospitalizations, I found out from Henry what I think was the explanation of this mystery, in what I call “The Tale of the Green Sausage.”

Some time late into the sixteen-month stay at Hitler’s Stalag XVII-B, one of the 100,000 POWs imprisoned there received a heavy, cylindrical package from home. It was sent by Catherine Shinosky Beben Smedi, and it was addressed to Sgt Henry Beben. It had gone through the Red Cross mail, but it had taken at least four months, battered and bruised from crossing enemy lines.

Henry unwrapped the package, and found a large sausage. Kielbasa? Salami? Kishka? We could never tell from the narrative. In any case, it was mouldering now, covered in green crust, spoiled, from the look of it. Immediately, one of Henry’s POW buddies offered to get rid of the unappealing sausage.

Henry knew better. POW’s didn’t throw anything away, and this guy was probably going off to his dark bunk to scarf down the whole thing, green and all.

Instead, Henry grabbed a shard from a tin can and carefully scraped off as much as he could of the green slime. And underneath, miraculously, an edible sausage remained.

Even more carefully, Henry sliced, thinly, equally, enough so that he could give at least one slice to the hundred men of his barracks. It was the best Christmas ever outside of December.

So. Here is the explanation, the secret of Henry. When the world war takes and takes, you can give a sausage … you can share kindness and hope. When all is dark, you can make it bright with friendship.

When your world around you knows only death and darkness, you can shine with love … the very same Resurrection Love of the Saviour Who shattered the deepest darkness of all.

I started out by reporting that Henry was discharged on October 31^st 1945.

But actually, the date is all wrong.

Henry was really discharged on Tuesday night at 10 pm, April 25^th 2017.

And not by Major Edward S Babcock, but by Jesus Christ.

Rest now Henry, where there is war no more. It’s time to beat the swords into ploughshares. It’s time to walk on an unbombed earth.

God has washed the war out of the sky now, forevermore.

Go see your Rose in Eden Again, your mama and papa, your family, your crewmates and friends.

Say to them all “Dzień dobry!” and never say goodbye again.

The war is over.

the stone at the center of time

 

Pictured above is the stone slab inside the Aedicule of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On the night after the Crucifixion, after Jesus was taken down from the Cross, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lay the Body of Christ down upon this actual stone.

Some day, I would love to venerate this stone, as these two pious young women are doing so. And so would you.

The Aedicule looks like a little church. It stands in the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Ever since the first Easter in 29 AD, a bluish flame leaps up from the middle of this stone slab on Holy Saturday.

This is the oldest, ongoing miracle of the Christian faith. Since the fourth century, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem has entered the Aedicule on every Holy Saturday. There he kneels in front of this stone slab. After he offers prayer, the same miraculous flames springs up on the stone, and leaps out to lit the two great candles held by the Patriarch. Then he emerges from the interior of the Aedicule and lights the candles of the Armenian and Coptic Patriarchs. The flame is then passed around to the many, many faithful present, as you can see from the photo below.

Sometimes, the Holy Fire bursts from the external walls of the Aedicule itself, and jumps to the candles and oil lamps within the larger structure of the Church.

There is no satisfactory explanation for this, other than Divine Grace -- the Grace and Love that is at the center and base of all things at every moment (“every beat of the heart, every breath you take, every shining of the stars, every molecular bond”) ... the Grace and Love that intervened at this Holy Fire Moment of the Resurrection of this stone slab, that intervened at the death-crisis of humanity, when all of us -- along with Adam and Eve -- turned away from the fellowship of Paradise and ran away like fools into the toxic pollution of passion and sin. Where there is existential leprosy and psychic dread at the selfish end of all prodigals (yes, this includes you and me).

Thank God, even in a fallen world, the leaves are still green and the roses  bloom. The nuthatch sings even in winter. And the infant smiles, children still play and Love still shines as a sign that the Holy Fire is here to save, and to stay.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is actually the Holy Trinity joining the Life of God to our dying humanity, and invading the dark shadows of death unto its deepest depth. The Cross destroyed the wrath of sin’s curse. The Descent into Hell destroyed the proud authority of death’s sentence. 

This Holy Fire is a reality, and is also a mystical symbol. “The Light of Christ shines for all!” as we’ve sung repeatedly in all our Pre-Sanctified Liturgies. “It shines in the darkness, but the darkness does not and cannot overshadow it” (John 1.5).

"Come, receive light from the Light Eternal, and glorify Christ Who is risen from the dead." Thus, we passed the flame from candle to candle at the beginning of Resurrection Matins.

You may have thought from the title, “the Stone at the Center of Time,” that I was referring to the stone that was rolled away from the tomb.

No.

In fact, that stone no longer exists. It could not keep Jesus within. Like the Holy Fire leaping out from the Aedicule, He rose from death, from the grave, from Hell’s ruins. 

The stone rolled in front of the tomb to seal it has vanished from history. It is not the center of time: it is the center of meaninglessness now. Nothing could keep the life of Jesus down. Nothing could contain the fire of the Trinity. Nothing could keep it from rising -- an ongoing, unstoppable Resurrection -- in your heart, through your body and soul, to your family and friends, neighborhood and world.

Nothing. The stone is rolled away by the power of the Resurrected Christ Himself, through the agency of an angel (Matthew 28.2). Not so He could get out. But to let you in, just so that you could see, with your own eyes, the emptiness of the grave and the overcoming of death. 

I am tired of death. Aren’t you? Tired of endings, of saying goodbye. Tired of the inevitabilities of a death-prone world, a sin-addicted age. Tired of hopes deferred, of distance and loss. Tired of decay. Tired of anger and pride, despondency and greed, violence and despair.

The Resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ is the launch of the Divine Revolution at the center of time. From now to the Return of Christ, in this period we call the Last Days (which can last for a moment or thousands of years), the glowing embers of the Holy Fire of Christ’s rising will go forwards and backwards in time: rescuing what was lost ... returning friends and loved ones to from mere co-existence to perfect love ... restoring all that had fallen ... renewing everything that had grown old and cold. Eden Again.

Because of the Resurrection of One Who is Man as well as God, then all death must be overturned. The Resurrection Today means Rescue. It means Return. It is Restoration. It is the Renewal of every Winter into a Spring that has no end.

And that is why I believe. I cannot tolerate loss and death as a permanent thing. I must, must always hope that an end is only temporary, that I will see, and love, again. I must because I am human. That is how I am. That is how you are, too. It is not in our nature at all to tolerate death. It is the DNA-character of our family to hope, to rise, in the Risen Body of Christ.

Today, Jesus has Rocked the Grave.

The stone is rolled away. The gravestone is now meaningless, at the center of nothing.

All we have left is the stone He was raised from. That stone (and every Altar of the Eucharist) is a Sign, which signifies: “Why seek the One Who lives among the dead? He is not here, the Angels said to the Myrrhbearing Women, early in the morning, “He is risen!”

And what we have this Day is a Holy Fire, in our hearts set ablaze by Deathless Love.

 

 

 

the tender center of the universe

-- the Lantern Festival celebrating the eve of the nativity of the Virgin Mary in Ahuchapan, El Salvador, on 7 September 2016

 

I think you should be happy about Christmas. 

Of course you know why you should be: the Son of God is born, at the Nativity Feast we celebrate today: the Son of Man is born in the flesh, has become as human as any of us. 

But I wish for you that, body and soul, you will feel the warmth of joy and wonder, peace, contentment, radiant mystery, sweet longing, a depth of seeing into the quiet beauty of all things -- even the creatures that do not know that they are made in the delight of God. It is a “happy homesickness” of sorts. 

You know what I mean.

“God rest you merry, gentlemen.” I want you to experience peace, to breathe the peace that the Incarnate Son of God breathes on you. He offers peace on earth to all humanity, to whom He gives His good will. You were made for this.

There really is peace on earth, in the here and now, in the Body of Christ. But not everyone wants it.

When have humans learned to be so cruel? to cut themselves off from natural affection for the demotic and quotidian, the small, the weak and defenseless? How have we gotten so used to rough, calloused humanity? so inured to it that we, to be philosophical, must sound cynical in order to sound intellectual?

The supernatural experience of “sentimental merriness” is what the human heart must have to simply live, now and forever. This is the life our Lord spoke of when He said that “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10.10).

I want you to be happy, to be sentimental. Not in a mawkish or sugary way, but tender and meek. Look at the icon of the Nativity. Look at the icon of the “sweet-kissing” of the Theotokos with her baby Son and her Lord God. Look at the icon of the Theotokos Ὁδηγήτρια (literally: "She who shows the Way"; Russian: Одигитрия), the Directress, as she points to her Son, the tender center of the universe.

At this center, we finally understand. At the center of everything, at the essence of all reality and concentration of all power, there is not what you would expect. There is tenderness instead of terror. The universe turns on the point of the radiant stillness in this Cave.

As we say in one of the most important songs about the Feast, in the Ikos of the Nativity:

Bethlehem has opened Eden: come, and let us see. We have found joy in secret: come, and let us take possession of the paradise that is within the cave. There the unwatered Root has appeared, from which forgiveness flowers forth: there is found the undue Well, whence David longed to drink of old. There the Virgin has borne a Babe, and made the thirst of Adam and David to ceae straightway. Therefore let us hasten to this place where now is born a young Child, the pre-eternal God.

Be sentimental about this. Feel this. Think this. 

Too many people, especially academic types, set sentiment and feeling on one side and reason on the other, as opposites. But emotion and thought are not against each other: they are both part of a larger unified movement in the soul and body: they should not be separated. Every thought is accompanied by a feeling: and there is no action that is not started and maintained by both feeling and thought.

Christian love -- the pouring out of one’s heart for another, the repentant life of self-donation -- is possible only from an emotional heart resting at peace in joy, and in a rational soul full of the knowledge of God.

To say the same thing in a picture: You can live as a Christian in this world in abundance, only when your soul is like the Cave of the Nativity, where the tenderness of the Virgin with her Infant Lord is your logical focus and overwhelming emotion -- like a bright Sea at Dawn.

* * * * * * *

The young, ever-virgin Mary is the representative of the human race and all creation (even the bodiless creation: that is why the angels especially venerate her). She is the gate foreseen by the Prophet Ezekiel, through whom God could enter into creation. There was no other human, no other way. Everything depended upon her willingness to participate in the work of creation and salvation (there really is not much difference between those two words).

God became human to save humanity and all His beloved and much-desired creation.

Salvation is a joyous work that can only be done in communion, in nearness, by contact ... miracles are not magic. Say that again: miracles are work done by God, not lazy, aristocratic magic.

So the Creator entered Creation by becoming human in the Cave of the womb of the Theotokos.

There was no other way ... I will say that God could not have done otherwise ... it is not true that God can do, arbitrarily, whatever He wants, because there is only one way to create (through His Word and His hands), and only one way to save (through the Cross).

in other words, God could not have simply “snapped His fingers” and wiped away sin and death ... remember, there is no such thing as “magic” or “distant action” ... all action -- even on God’s part -- is work and must be done by personal contact.

This is also true of the even older and wider work of the incarnation for theosis. For God to deify humanity and all creation, He “had to” become Creation. There was no other way. To say otherwise is to speak against reality. The other word for such speaking is to lie. and we all know who the father of that sort of practice is.

When we say “God can do anything,” as in “With God all things are possible,” we are talking about God’s infinite love and power and the ability to do anything real -- we are not talking about “infinite options” or alternatives -- because in the economy of the incarnation and salvation, the options are not infinite ... indeed, there is only one way ... and that way, for humans and all creations, is terribly impossible.

But with God -- as we heard for the first time from Jesus -- all things are possible. There is no determinism, no fate, no idiotic horoscope, no diagnosis, no law, no obligation, no unforgivable sin, no demon that can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8.35-39).

* * * * * * *

If you believe anything about salvation as theosis (which is the only Orthodox way to know salvation), then I think you really must be confidant about the question as to whether God would have become incarnate if there had been no sin, if Adam had not failed and fallen.

Would Jesus have been born anyways? The answer is yes, because the complete issue -- even before the failure of sin -- was always for full communion with the divine, as this is the perfection of Creation. In this sense, Time is but the necessary condition of that Trinitarian work of perfection, when creation is brought into full union with the Creator. Death is now transformed -- in the greatest Artistry of all time and space -- by the Newborn King, and beautifully becomes the moment when Time is fully liberated and rises, in song, into an unfettered canon of Being.

Is it not amazing that the salvation of the universe begins in the sentimental embrace of mother and child? If fellowship (and communion and salvation) is the theme of the Nativity, surely the tone is tenderness. 

Our Trinitarian God, infinite in might and terrifying in knowledge, is meek in an infinite relationship of complete self-donation. And our Incarnate God, the Divine Second Person, brings this sameTrinitarian meekness into our humanity, into this world of Creation.

Tender is the Might.

I am happy, joyous in wonder, and content in radiant peace, because my Queen is an ever-young beautiful girl, who is the first and greatest Christian, and she lives in a mystical festivity of Light.

And my Lord is my joy, the Angel of Counsel, and the Prince of Peace:

Our Saviour, the Dayspring from the East, has visited us from on high, and we who were in darkness and shadow have found the truth: for the Lord is born of the Virgin! (Matins Expostilarion of the Nativity)

Love for all time, in the holy earth of the Dayspring:

Christos Roždajetsja!

Fr Jonathan

time and resolution

It is probably a lot safer to make jokes about New Year’s Resolutions than to make them. Here are a few:

“My New Year’s resolution is to get better at pretending to know the words to Auld Lang Syne.”

“If you make a New Year’s resolution to eat a healthy diet, and you keep it, you might not actually live longer, but it will seem longer.”

Mark Twain poked fun at many things, and one of those things was the idea of making resolutions in the first place: “New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks and friendly calls for humbug resolutions.”

The comedian Joey Adams, in the same vein, offers this sentiment: “May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.”

This is the time of year when all sorts of resolutions are made.

I suggest you don’t.

Why? In general, Scripture and Tradition take a dim view of the custom of making resolutions. “Come now,” says St James in his Epistle, “you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain’; whereas you do not know about tomorrow” (James 4.13-14).

Time is only God’s business, and the future is something that we cannot predict, much less control. Making resolutions or vows or swearing oaths all have one thing in common, and that is an attempt to wrestle the future into something less scary and more manageable.

Corporations (and governments) are in the business of making resolutions. They write up mission statements and budgets in an attempt to forecast success and to minimize risk. They speak the language of MBO – “management by objectives.”

Sometimes this works. Other times, it does not. There are bankrupt companies that possessed intelligent business plans. And there are wildly successful business ventures that did not have a budget at all.

More often than not, it is not the resolution that made the difference between success and failure in business. It was just plain, simple luck.

Of course, in the Church there is no such thing as luck. Remember the frightening story of Ananias and Sapphira, in the very early days of the Church after Pentecost (in Acts 5.1-11)? This married couple tried to appear generous when they really weren’t. When the truth came out and their hypocrisy was exposed, the couple was so overwhelmed with the guilt of their dishonesty that they literally fell over dead.

It is entirely possible that the Ananias and Sapphira made a public vow of donation to the community “where all things were held in common” (Acts 4.32). It was a showy “resolution,” in a manner of speaking, that probably got a great deal of notice.

As things turned out (as they usually do), Ananias and Sapphira did not fulfill their “best laid plans.” The consequence they suffered did not come so much from their failure to give a certain amount of money. It came mainly from their having made a vow in the first place: “While it remained unsold,” St Peter said, “did it not remain your own?” (Acts 5.4).

The Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ, is a culture of peace and gift-giving, not an institution of obligation. The obligatory sacrificial system of sin offerings required the making of vows and the swearing of oaths. This entire sense of "obligation" was necessary under the rubric of the "Law" (especially in its negative, mortifying sense).

But the Crucifixion made all these sin offerings, obligations and oaths obsolete, because every Old Testament offering was valuable only in the sense that each sacrifice pointed to and participated in the one sin offering that actually meant anything -- the single, freewill and sinless offering of the High Priest Who offered Himself on the Cross: “Yours of Your Own, in behalf of all, and for all.”

No more swearing or resolving or making oaths, then, after the Cross. There is only freewill thank-offering in the Orthodox lifestyle. After all, that is precisely what “eucharist” means. 

There is an opposition: thanksgiving, or swearing. That is all.

Therefore, “Do not swear at all,” the Lord said. That is, do not make vows or resolutions out of obligation (or guilt), for public display and applause, trying to double-down on a promise with a certainty about time that you never can possess. Instead, “let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5.34,37).

Speak simply, with meekness. Be immediate. Live in the here and now. Do not hold love at arm’s length and push off the needs of your life and the lives of those around you into a supposedly manageable future.

Rabbi Hillel lived and taught in Babylon in the century before the birth of Christ. He is famous for posing wise sayings that have to do with “immediacy,” as opposed to the delay of swearing and resolution: “If not here, then where? If not now, then when? If not you, then who?” 

When you see something that needs done, then do it. When you see someone that needs love, then love. When you perceive that you are inside the love of the Trinity, which should be always, then pray.

The Good Samaritan (who understood Hillel quite well) and the Virgin Mary practiced meekness instead of making resolutions. They each one accepted time as a gift, in every moment, instead of trying to corral the future into a program or budget. They opened up their hearts enough to recognize God’s beauty in every moment (“heaven and earth are full of Your glory”), instead of wishing that things were different and stoking up their anger about the past. They turned their face to Christ and breathed His peace.

And because of that, the Good Samaritan was able to recognize the man who needed unction, and a lift on the donkey to the Inn of Healing.

And because of that, the Virgin Theotokos leads a Church that is not afraid of the future, but waits in humble joy in the Upper Room, “where we sit with Christ Jesus in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2.6).

We are God’s workmanship (Ephesians 2.10), not our own.

So …

… accept time as a gift (and not a curse). Make less resolutions. As someone once said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Do prayer. Do love. 

You, that is. In the here and now.