Fasting, praying, Church more than once a week, “take up your cross,” SACRIFICE…Do I have to be a monk?? I have been asked that question on a number of different occasions. With all of the prescriptions given to us to do, it seems sometimes that the Church is asking us all to be monks. After all, monks and nuns are the ones who devote their lives to prayer, who fast all of the time, who don’t have to worry about money or families. Those of us out here in the world have “real” responsibilities and don’t have the time or the energy to focus on all of that. At least that is what we think. Of course, Christ does not ask all of us to be monks or nuns. The life in the monastery is a very unique calling that is blessed and necessary, but not for everyone. Just as all of us are not called to be mathematicians or rocket scientists, not everyone is called to be a monk.

However, that does not mean that everyone isn’t called to some sort of ascesis. That word, most often used exclusively for the monastic life, simply means self-denial, something that Christ tells all of us to do. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” ANY MAN. While not called to be a monk or a nun, those of us who are attempting to follow Christ are called to serve the Lord through ascesis. What does that look like?

One of the greatest monks in history, St. John Climacus, wrote a 30-step treatise called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. This book was written specifically for those who were monks and laid out step by step the way to the Kingdom of God. Though he wrote it in the 7th century, it is still read today during Great Lent in many of the monasteries in the Orthodox world. In this work, St. John doesn’t just address the monks, however. He was presented with this same question over 1500 years ago: “Do I have to be a monk?” He responded by saying:

“Some people living carelessly in the world have asked me: ‘We have wives and are beset with social cares, and how can we lead the solitary life?’ I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; do not steal from anyone; do not lie to anyone; do not be arrogant towards anyone; do not hate anyone; do not be absent from the divine services; be compassionate to the needy; do not offend anyone; do not wreck another man’s domestic happiness, and be content with what your own wives can give you. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

Notice that St. John doesn’t start off by mentioning what we should avoid and not do, but what we should actually do. “Do all the good you can” is very different from “avoid doing bad.” If the answer was to avoid doing bad, we would be better suited to stay in our homes and be alone as much as we can; or, if we are outside our homes, to focus on the task that we are doing and not pay attention to anyone else that is around us. St. John is encouraging all of us to pay attention to the moment that we are in and look for the good that we can do. How often do we drive down the road talking on the phone or listening to the radio and mindlessly make our way to our destination? In my case, too often. In attempting to “do all the good you can,” try instead to pay attention to where you are going, your surroundings. You might notice an opportunity to do good. That goes for anywhere we find ourselves, in whatever company. St. John does not want us not to lie, or speak evil of anyone, or hate anyone by not being around other people. His encouragement is to live in the world, doing your work, going about your business around all of the people that you see and to do good, be compassionate, and be content in your life. Not avoidance, but acceptance and transforming a situation.

How can we possibly have the strength to fulfill all of that? St. John answers that as well. “Do not be absent from the divine services.” All of that ascetical discipline is not meant to be something that we just do in separation from the life of the Church. Quite the opposite. None of that type of discipline is really possible or helpful without a constant connection to Christ and His Church. In our attempt to do good we will often be pushed away. In our effort to avoid offending anyone and seeking out the good we may be hurt and feel lost. The answer is in Christ.  Through the divine services, all of the different ones throughout the year, we are encouraged by the witness of the lives of the saints. We are enriched by the Word of God through the Scriptures. Most importantly, we are filled with the Divine Grace of God through the participation in the Mysteries. All of this helps to fulfill the discipline and ascesisthat St. John was talking about. It might seem impossible, but with Christ all things are possible.

One thousand five hundred years later and I think St. John’s words still hit the nail on the head. Not all of us are called to the discipline of the monastery. All of us, however, are called to the discipline that St. John lays out. So where and when do we start? Right here! Right now!

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Fr. Philip Rogers (SVOTS ’07) has served Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, LA since graduating from SVOTS.  Along with parish work, he serves as the camp director for Camp St. Thekla, the summer camp for the Antiochian Archdiocese in the Southeast.  His wife Kathryn works in the emergency room at their local hospital and serves as their parish choir director.

This article was originally published December 8, 2011.

The extraordinary thing about the image of Saint Nicholas in the Church is that he is not known for anything extraordinary. He was not a theologian and never wrote a word, yet he is famous in memory of the believers as a zealot for orthodoxy, allegedly accosting the heretic Arius at the first ecumenical council in Nicaea for denying the divinity of God’s Son. He was not an ascetic and did no outstanding feats of fasting and vigils, yet he is praised for his possession of the “fruit of the Holy Spirit…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5: 22-23). He was not a mystic in our present meaning of the term but he lived daily with the Lord and was godly in all of his words and deeds. He was not a prophet in the technical sense, yet he proclaimed the Word of God, exposed the sins of the wicked, defended the rights of the oppressed and afflicted, and battled against every form of injustice with supernatural compassion and mercy. In a word, he was a good pastor, father, and bishop to his flock, known especially for his love and care for the poor. Most simply put, he was a divinely good person.

We use that term “goodness” so lightly in our time. How easily we say of someone, “He is a good man” or “She is a good woman.” How lightly we say, “They are good people.” A teen-age girl takes an overdose of drugs and the neighbors tell the reporters, “But she was always such a good girl, and her parents are such nice people!” A young man commits some terrible crime, and the same rhetoric flows: “But he was always such a good boy, and his family is so nice.” A man dies on the golf course after a life distinguished by many years of profit-taking and martini-drinking, and the reaction is the same: “He was a good man, yeah, a real nice guy.” What do “good” and “nice” really mean in such cases? What do they describe? What do they express?

In Saint Luke’s gospel it tells us that one day a “ruler” came up to Jesus and asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do  to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus answered him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone” (Lk 18:18; see also Mk 10:18). In Saint Matthew’s version it says that Jesus answered the man by saying, “Why do you ask Me about what is good? One there is who is good” (Mt 19:17). However we choose to interpret Christ’s words, at least one point is clear. Jesus reacts to the facile, perhaps even sarcastic, use of the term “good” by referring to its proper source. There is only One who is good, and that is God Himself. If you want to speak of goodness, then you must realize what–and Whom–you are talking about!

Like God, and like Jesus, Saint Nicholas was genuinely good. Real goodness is possible. For, to quote the Lord again, “with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). A human being, even a rich human being who believes in God, can be genuinely good with God’s own goodness. “For truly I say to you,” says the Lord, “if you have faith as a grain of mustard see…nothing will be impossible for you” (Mt 17:20-21).

The Messiah has come so that human beings can live lives which are, strictly speaking, humanly impossible. He has come so that people can be really good. One of the greatest and most beloved examples among believers that this is true is the holy bishop of Myra about whom almost nothing else is known, or needs to be known, except that he was good. For this reason alone he remains, even in his secularized form, the very spirit of Christmas.

Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St. Vladimir’s Seminary

I was raised in a parish in the Romanian Episcopate (OCA), a child of first generation Americans of Romanian parentage. I sang in the choir from early on (my father was the choir director until he became a deacon), taught music at our Vatra summer camp from the time I was 16 years old, majored in music in college and grad school, pursued a career in opera for a bit, and settled down for 14 years in the Detroit area. I was Music Director at the Romanian OCA Cathedral during that time, and very involved in starting a pan-Orthodox music ministry and mixed choir there. I’ve worked (for pay) in all three of the major archdioceses in America (Antiochian, Greek, OCA). Some of you may know me from my involvement with PSALM and my role in PSALM’s first national conference in Cicero, IL in 2006. I am currently in a full-time position at St. Athanasius Antiochian parish in Santa Barbara/Goleta, CA. This is one of the parishes of former Evangelical Protestants who converted en masse to Orthodoxy and came into the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1987.

My personal mission these days with regards to my role as a church musician — what drives me, keeps me going?

• Helping the American Church find the form of musical expression that is going to be most appropriate for our language and culture. The verdict is still out. I think we have a long way to go. I use the best of all of the Orthodox traditions of music, and I use LOTS of music composed by American Orthodox composers, as in: composed FOR English and IN English by someone who speaks English really well! It really does work best, in the same way that opera sings best in the language for which it was written.
• Helping facilitate worship that is prayerful, engaging and purposeful, that has the power to enlighten and “convert” all of us over and over again.

How do I do that? Perhaps that’s a topic for another blog entry!

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Valerie Yova is the Parish Administrator and Music Director at St. Athanasius Orthodox Church in Goleta, CA.

This article was originally published December 1, 2011

While the canon of the feast of the Nativity begins to be sung on the festival of the entrance of the Virgin Mary into the temple, the first prefeast hymns of Christmas are sung on the feast of “the all-praised and first-called apostle Andrew.”

In the gospel according to St John, Philip calls his friend Nathanael to “come and see” Jesus, but it is Jesus Himself who invites Andrew to “come and see” where He dwells and to spend the day with Him…

Come and see! This is the abiding invitation of the Church in her liturgical services. Come with faith and you will be numbered with those to whom “it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 13:11)…

Come and see! You will witness the mystery of Christ’s birth from the Virgin, His manifestation at the Jordan in His baptism by John, His victory over the devil in the desert, His proclamation of good news to the poor, His announcement of liberty to the oppressed, His declaration of the acceptable year of the Lord’s grace. You will witness His accomplishment of the signs of His messiahship: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb talk. You will see the winds cease and the seas calmed. You will behold the table spread “in the wilderness” in the feeding of the multitudes (Ps 78:19). You will witness the casting out of demons. And, most glorious of all, you will see the dead being raised by the word of His power. You will know indeed that “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Mt 12:28), and you will testify truly that “something greater than Jonah” and “something greater than Solomon is here” (Mt 12:41-42). You will see what “many prophets and righteous men longed to see…and did not see it, and to hear…and did not hear it” (Mt 13:17). And ultimately you will see the Son of God Himself being lifted upon the Cross in order to give His broken body as food for His people, and His shed blood as their drink, that their hunger and thirst for peace and joy and righteousness, and indeed for life itself, might be forever satisfied.

Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann was the Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary from 1962 until his death in 1983. Hundreds of SVOTS alumni were trained under his keen mind, warm humor, and guiding principle: “A seminarian should know only three paths: to the classroom, to the library, and to the chapel.” Father Alexander celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the last time on Thanksgiving Day, 1983. This is the homily he delivered on that day:

Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.

Thank You, O Lord, for having accepted this Eucharist, which we offered to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and which filled our hearts with the joy, peace and righteousness of the Holy Spirit.

Thank You, O Lord, for having revealed Yourself unto us and given us the foretaste of Your Kingdom.

Thank You, O Lord, for having united us to one another in serving You and Your Holy Church.

Thank You, O Lord, for having helped us to overcome all difficulties, tensions, passions, temptations and restored peace, mutual love and joy in sharing the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Thank You, O Lord, for the sufferings You bestowed upon us, for they are purifying us from selfishness and reminding us of the “one thing needed;” Your eternal Kingdom.

Thank You, O Lord, for having given us this country where we are free to worship You.

Thank You, O Lord, for this school, where the name of God is proclaimed.

Thank You, O Lord, for our families: husbands, wives and, especially, children who teach us how to celebrate Your holy Name in joy, movement and holy noise.

Thank You, O Lord, for everyone and everything.

Great are You, O Lord, and marvelous are Your deeds, and no word is sufficient to celebrate Your miracles.

Lord, it is good to be here! Amen.

Originally published in The Orthodox Church, Vol. 20, No. 2, February 1984, p. 1:1.

During the first days of the Christmas fast the Church celebrates the feast of the entrance of the child Mary into the Jerusalem temple… The spiritual story tells how, coming into the temple, the child Mary is led into the Holy of Holies by the priest Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, there to be nourished by angels in preparation for her virginal conception of the Son of God…

In the festival of the entrance of Mary into the temple we have seen how Christ’s mother is continuously hymned as the “living temple of the holy glory of Christ our God.” She is praised as the “living ark which contained the Word which cannot be contained.” She is glorified as “the temple that is to hold God,” consecrated by the Spirit to be the “dwelling place of the Almighty.” She enters the Holy of Holies to become herself the “animated Holy of Holies,” the one in whom Christ is formed, thereby making her, and everyone who is one with her in faith, the “abode of heaven.”

…As we go the way of the Winter Pascha the choice placed before us is clear. We can follow the “narrow way” that leads to life, or we can go on the “broad way” that leads to destruction (Mt 7:13-14). We can, like Mary, cleave to the Lord and become His dwelling place in the Spirit. Or we can through immorality and sin choose the death of the nothingness which we are unless the Lord Himself lives within us. “But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him” (1 Cor 6:17)…

The feast of the entrance of Mary into the temple marks the first specific liturgical announcement of the birth of Christ. On this festival, for the first time in the season, the canon of the Nativity of Christ is sung at the festal vigil.

Christ is born; glorify Him!
Christ comes from heaven; go to meet Him!

Excerpt from The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko (SVOTS ’63), St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.

St. Paul encourages us in Eph. 4 to not behave like the rest of the world! As Christians we follow a higher standard. He tells us not to get lost in useless thoughts; futile thoughts he calls them. Because God gave us free will, we have total freedom of thought. We can think about anything imaginable. Our mind is continually generating thoughts, some good and some bad. Some thoughts are focused on meaningful things and some are of no value to us. Thoughts can build upon one another, grow and generate into rationalizations. Worthless thinking often leads us to sinful thoughts.

Fr. Thomas Keating in his book on meditation refers to this continuous motion of thoughts running around in our mind as “the monkey mind.” Picture a cage with monkeys jumping around and screeching. They rush at you, then away from you and then at you again, always chattering and making a ruckus. That is often the state of our mind, an endless commotion. Our minds have almost unlimited creativity and freedom. But if we do not harness the great power of our mind it can cause a mess. We talk with someone while thinking about something else more important to us. We listen with interest to a Psalm, and suddenly drift off to other thoughts. We injure our relationships when we do this!

St. Paul refers to still darker thoughts in this Epistle. This futility of our mind draws us to the edge; and we risk stepping off and into a darkness of sin.

When we are interested, however, we do focus our thoughts. An exciting movie holds our attention. A good novel can grip our interest. When our interest is not captured though, it often takes great energy and discipline for us to pay attention to a person speaking to us. We allow our mind to wander because we get lazy.

But God can work miracles through the great power of the mind. Our weapon of defense against a lazy, undisciplined mind is prayer. During Lent we pray the Prayer of St. Ephraim – “take from me the spirit of sloth.” We fight against the lazy, idle mind with “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” We fill our mind with “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great goodness. Blot out my transgressions.” Our motivation is enlivened by the power of the Holy Spirit when we fill our mind with the name of Jesus.

St. Paul tells us to “renew the spirit of our mind.” We meditate on Christ. We fill our mind with ‘Christ-thoughts’ and ignore the futile thoughts. We enter into this relationship with Christ, and give the Holy Spirit full reign to direct and focus our thoughts. We are confident of God’s grace for us through His work on the Cross, our symbol of his abundant love for us. In the community of our local church, we are continually encouraged to renew our relationship with Christ. Through the motivation and power of the Holy Spirit we strive for righteousness.

Each time we stop our mind from offending, Christ is victorious in us. We saturate our thinking with Jesus. The more active our relationship is with Jesus Christ, the less our struggle is with futile thinking. The monkey mind is quieted. From the mental chaos – emerges peace and order, and incredible beauty, like a procession of the saints, with Christ at the center. We are able to focus on loving Christ and others. We are becoming a new person: “created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.”

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Deacon Seraphim Joa is a third-year M. Div. student at St. Vladimir’s Seminary from Rockville Centre, NY.  He and his wife, Julie, have a married son and two grandchildren. After retiring from an engineering firm in New York City late in 2006, Dn. Seraphim began thinking about studying to become a deacon.  All advice pointed him to St. Vladimir’s Seminary as the best way to achieve that goal.  He continues now hoping to help in the Church as he is led by the Holy Spirit.

This article was originally published November 17, 2011.

"Orthodoxy does not need more professors, but confessors.” -Metropolitan Nicholas of Amissos

St. John the Compassionate Mission was founded in 1986 among the poor and the marginalized of downtown Toronto and is an apostolate of the Carpatho-Russian diocese. The Mission has had, and has, a variety of different programs responding to needs as they arose. “Around” the Mission has grown the thriving parish of St. Silouan. The Mission seeks to be where Orthodoxy becomes Orthopraxy.

At its heart St. John’s seeks to make real the teaching of the Fathers, especially St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom, on how the Church should be present to the “world.” The life of the Mission thus has four essential elements: diakonia (service), community, liturgy, and study, and each is lived out in a regular daily and weekly rhythm.

The Poor our Masters (St. John the Compassionate) – A Deacon’s View, Dn. Pawel Mucha

Five years ago I left Europe to be an intern for one year at St. John the Compassionate Mission in Toronto. Nine months later I was ordained as a subdeacon. The subdiaconate at the Mission was real in both liturgy and daily diakonia, and was also fulltime. At times, it was too “real” and too “fulltime!” My ordination to the diaconate came last year.

Among the many “obediences” of the diaconate has been setting up and running the Mission’s intern program – the Lived Theology School. Despite 20 years teaching experience I was to discover that the real teacher was not me, but mission life and the poor themselves. Knowledge in and of itself is not enough; it needs to find a reality.

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Fr. Roberto Ubertino and Dn. Pawel Mucha minister to the poor, socially excluded, and handicapped in downtown Toronto. More information on the history and vision of the Mission can be found here, as well as on the Mission’s website.

This article was originally published November 11, 2011.

Matthew the Poor (1919-2006), also known as Matta El-Maskeen, was a Coptic Orthodox monk who lived in the desert 50 miles southwest of Cairo. This excerpt is from The Communion of Love, a collection of his writings that reveal the essence of the Christian life in simple yet profound images.

If we look back at the early days of the Church, we are astonished at its power, especially that of the newly-founded Churches. In spite of the fact that the people were simple and ignorant of the bible – for manuscripts were only rarely possessed by individuals – and in spite of the newness of their faith in Christ and the deep influence of their old pagan customs, their spiritual life and their demonstrations of faith, love, and zeal were fine examples of a powerful life lived according to the precepts of the Gospel, a model for practical understanding of the meaning of eternal life, the Kingdom of God, living by faith, dying to the world, faithfulness to Christ, expectation of His second coming, and faith in the resurrection. Even up to the present time, we still draw on their faith and tradition, and understand only with difficulty the letters that were written to them, which they understood easily and lived out.

The secret of all this is that they lived by what they heard. Every commandment fell on faithful hearts prepared to act sincerely. All the words of Christ entered deeply into the fabric of daily life. The Gospel was translated into work and life.

Those simple people understood the Gospel. They understood that it was a life to be lived, not principles to be discussed, and they refused to understand it on a purely academic level. Up to this day, faithful followers of Christ still draw life for themselves from the living spring of the understanding of those early Christians…

When they heard “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” they sold everything and laid their money at the feet of the apostles.

When they heard “Blessed are those who mourn now,” they despised all suffering and weariness in the service of the Lord

When they heard “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” they bore the cruelest humiliations and insults and attacks.

When they heard “Watch and pray,” they met in the catacombs to watch and pray all night.

When they heard “Love your enemies,” history recorded no resistance put up by the Christians, whether positive or negative, against their persecutors. And they bowed their necks to the sword in humility and obedience to honor the words of Christ.

This was for them the meaning of reading the Gospel and understanding it. There was born in them a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God, and this is why the Holy Spirit was at His most active in working with them. He would give power to the word, strengthen their hearts, support them in weakness, lead them in the darkness, comfort them in distress, and accompany them along the way till they gave up their spirit into the hand of its Creator with great glory.

Excerpt from The Communion of Love by Matthew the Poor, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984, p. 24-26.

At various times and circumstances in my life I’ve struggled with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of order.

I’m a pretty well-ordered person, outwardly, but inside I often feel like I’m in danger of failure . . . and I find myself trying to address that by doing more or “accomplishing” more.  I “get disciplined” and do some extra planning, and try to follow through better.  This goes on for some time, with varying degrees of success.  But I easily abandon my best-laid plans of “orderly doing” with the slightest excuse or simply evolve into something else, another mode of operation.  All this is probably a very common problem, the psychology or spirituality of which is pretty basic and well understood–by others!

Prayer and silence is something I want to do, but have a hard time sticking with it, as do many people.  My latest attempt at surrendering my own will to God is to start praying at a particular time of day, and always keep that time of prayer.  I have a prayer rule that is my own, but whether I complete it all or only parts is not as important as starting at the same time every day.  This is my “one thing” that is a test of my own willingness to surrender my will to God.  And even this small thing has proven extremely hard to do . . . a sign of exactly how out-of-control and unwilling I am to surrender anything to God.  I think the person that can really follow through with this “small” thing has really achieved something pretty awesome, and by God’s grace has acquired some humility.

It occurs to me that the Liturgy of the Church (meaning any service) begins at a particular time and in most churches does not begin late.  This is one of many examples of how the Church does for us what we may not be able to sustain on our own.  Collectively, we keep each other to the ascetic rule, so to speak–the rule of beginning prayer at a particular time, always, every day (every day the Liturgy is said).  Of course starting on time, always at a particular time, doesn’t seem ascetic because we’re all used to it . . . we have to operate that way to be courteous to others and so that our communal life will have order and peace.  But this is also a gift to us for our salvation and continued growth–being a part of the community, and accountable to others, becomes our external motivation, a help, a support, a means to get to prayer on time.  Of course, we even fall down at this and come to church late sometimes.  But . . . prayers begin without us!  This can be a hard reality, and a warning, that others are taking up their place in the Kingdom of God whether we are there to partake or not.  I’m thankful for this “point” of surrender which does not wholly depend on me.

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Fr. Paul Coats (SVOTS ’08) serves a new OCA mission station in Rock Hill, SC.  He also works as an engineer for a national trade association.  His wife Gerianne is currently directing community youth theater while home-schooling their daughter Helen, who helps lead the singing at the mission.

This article was originally published November 3, 2011.