OrthoAnalytika

Homily on 2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1. And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.  Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Our Faith: Orthodox Christianity Prayer as a Mystery and Medicine for Pride Questions for consideration: what happens when we pray?  What is the purpose of prayer?  How does pride (noetic effect of the fall!) affect our prayer?  Background. Pride divides us from one another and from God.  It makes honest communication and healthy relationships with even people who love us and whom we love difficult (much less everyone else).  How can you communicate and have relationship with someone we “see” so poorly? The absurd puppet show in our mind (with us as the star and hero or victim…). Unless we are willing do some serious work, God is just another puppet in that show. “Work?!  We aren’t saved by works?!”  Becoming “perfect as God as perfect” is more than being forgiven, redeemed, and saved. How do we get to know our family and friends?  How can we get to know God? How SHOULD we communicate (and commune) with our family?  How SHOULD we communicate with God?  Wouldn’t it be great if there was an instruction manual for prayer? An Apology for Prayer… and for using a Prayer Book Prayer is one of the best ways to develop and maintain our relationship with God. “Reading” these prayers (is reading the right term? It’s not like reading a novel!) does that for us. Prayer is the way we thank God for blessings and ask for His help. These prayers do that well and in the proper way. We CAN use our own words, but these were the words of saints preserved and passed down (and tested and confirmed) through many, many generations (note that they are often labeled according to the saint). These can serve as models even for when we use “our own words.” These prayers teach us how to pray! “And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father…” St. Luke 10:1-2a). “Rote” prayer trains our minds (and this also speaks to REPITITION!). Train the reasoning brain. Teaches us words, phrases, and approaches that pattern our thoughts and responses. It also crowds out immature and self-centered approaches to prayer. Train the passions. For the next ten to fifteen minutes, I am going to focus on THESE things and nothing else. This is a controlled arena; a weight room; a rifle range. Humility must be earned.  This helps us deal with the problem of pride! Train the nous. Humility, awe, and thankfulness; these are the only rational responses to being a human in the presence of God. More on this in a future class. Back to repetition. Why is this not “vain repetitions” (St. Matthew 8:6)?  What keeps us praying as the Publican and not the Pharisee?    Submission.  Love (we MUST have love; that’s complicated). Requires repetition of scales arpeggios, and practice pieces to 1) learn how the musical world is structured and 2) how to attune your senses and your actions to it; first self-consciously but over time more automatically. Without this, there is only what one hears… to the extent one’s “ear” is good, one might begin to intuit some patterns… but what about the voice? What about performing? What about composing? This is the way it is with us and our moral actions. We will intuit some patterns from the world; this will forming our own “conscience” (DON’T “trust your feelings, Luke!”) and affect our ability to know and communicate (remember: the fallen world makes the problem of pride worse). Repetition builds up a reliable pattern. It establishes a healthy order. It builds a wall around our minds to provide a safe place for us to interact with ideas and challenges. We need that sense of order and reliability. Final point for tonight.  We begin prayers; “In the Name…”  This is scriptural, but what does it mean?  We are God’s imagers.  We re-present Him.  We act in His name.  Done with confident humility.  Here’s a mind-bender: the Logos prayed to the Father (a witness of them being “One” as we should be one)! Next week:  Asceticism as training for perfection.   

Homily on St. Luke 7:11-16.  "At that time, Jesus went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!""

Adult Education, Class Two: Pride Our Broken Moral Psychology (and how to heal it… and the world) Some Scripture to get us started: Proverbs 16:18.  Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Romans 12:3.  For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 1 Corinthians 13:4.  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Galatians 6:1-3. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Philippians 2:3.  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, James 4:6   But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” James 4:10. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. ### Pride: A Noetic Effect of the Fall. What effect do we have on others? Is it like St. Peter’s? Do we walk in the midst of broken people bringing them healing? Do others, recognizing the potency of our peace, go out of their way just to be in our shadow? Have we achieved any degree of the kind of purity and goodness – the kind of peaceful spirit – that will, as St. Seraphim of Sarov intimates, lead to the salvation of thousands? I have to be honest with you, even when that honesty might be troubling: when it comes to everything that is important on this earth, when it comes to the things that really matter in our daily lives, in the life of our families, this parish and this community, and in the entire course of cosmic history, there are only two types of people in this world: Those who are part of the problem Those who are part of the solution Saint Peter was part of the solution (healing of Aeneas; raising of Dorcas; his shadow!). That wasn’t always the case. There was a time when he was more affected by his own pride and the expectations of others than a commitment to do what was good and right; but by the time the events described in Acts 5 & 9 roll around, he wasn’t just occasionally doing what was good and right (as he had before), he had become good and right. So good that Christ and the Holy Spirit worked amazing miracles through him. Don’t we want to be part of what Peter had? To bring hope to the hopeless, healing to the hurt, and life to the dead? If so, then we must give our lives to Christ. We must open our hearts to the Holy Spirit. We must train our feelings, our minds, and our wills to want only those things that are holy and good. All other things will pollute us and make unsuitable for salvation – much less for the salvation of the creatures and creation around us. The polluted person is not part of the solution. Pollution is the thing we need to end. The polluted person is part of the problem. Pollution comes in many forms (here I speak not of factories and cars and the like, but of the soul); and the great difficulty of living in this world is that it celebrates impurity, makes it seem normal, even good. We have to keep ourselves pure. We have to keep our families pure. We especially have to keep our parish pure. The Church is where people come to be healed. But what good is a hospital that is full of germs? Whose doctors and nurses and orderlies have not washed their hands? The Church is where people come to be cleansed, but what kind of cleansing comes when the parish water has been fouled? The Church is the palace of the Prince of Peace, where people come to calm their souls and bring an end to divisions, but what kind of peace can we offer if we war among ourselves? It is so easy to become part of the problem. Our pride is set up for it. The brilliance of our minds works overtime justifying our selfish motivations and excusing our bad behavior. Our minds are the best PR guys we could ever get, the kind of salesman that could sell snow to eskimos. The kind of guy that every elected official wants around to explain why his policies and actions are the very best. The problem is that our minds use this skill to convince us that we are saints, that our every motivation is noble, and our every action was required by the situation at hand. Psychologists and neuroscientists have found that this is the default setting for our moral “decision making”: we instinctively do things, then our minds kick in to explain why we do (or rather, should do!) them. Very few moral decisions are the result of choice or discernment – no matter what the PR guy in our head tells us. This is bad because our instincts are often flawed. They must be trained. This requires humility and effort. It’s a lot easier to just let the cheerleader in our brains tell us how great we already are. But if we take the easy way, we will be part of the problem and we will make it harder for those who are actually trying to help (the ones who, unlike us, are not part of the problem) to do their job. This can even happen in our parishes. The description of the power of St. Peter’s shadow came right after the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira, the two who threatened to contaminate the Apostolic Church with their selfishness. The indicator of the problem in their hearts was that they gave some money to the church, but held more back (unnecessarily). Today’s reading comes right after Simon Magus tried to buy the Holy Spirit so that he could do the same kind of wonders that the apostles did. Can you imagine the way the PR people in their heads spun their motivations and actions? Ananias and Sapphira probably considered themselves so generous! I am sure they had all kinds of sweet-sounding justifications for not supporting the ministry of the Church with all their time, talents and treasures. Don’t we all? And yet the truth condemned them and they died in their sin. Simon Magus’s mind may have told him that he only wanted this power to help others; that he would use it to ease people’s pain. Don’t we all? And yet the truth condemned him. His error was so great that he is one of the greatest arch-villians in the history of salvation. He even has an entire category of sin – Simony – named after him. We have good intentions.  We want to be part of the solution. We want to do good. That is why we are here. But we cannot trust our instincts – even if we call them beautiful names like “my conscious” or “my heart” or “my feelings” (we cannot trust your instincts!) – to guide us. Nor can we trust our brains to discern what is right. Our instincts will point us in the wrong direction and our minds will convince us we are exactly where we should be and right around the corner from where we are going. The PR guy in our brains will tell us how good we are and provide all kinds of infallible evidence to support this claim. But we are not good. There is only one that is good, and that is Christ. We must trust Him (not ourselves). We have to let go of our instincts and justifications and start over. Let the Holy Spirit – found so powerfully not in our feelings but actually manifested in the teachings of the Church – strengthen and guide us. This is important. You are here today, and that is a good beginning. But it is not enough. Through humility, let the Lord’s peace and power replace your pride. Through your prayer rule and study, let the wisdom of God retrain your mind to be an advocate for truth rather than a cheerleader for sin (and not just a way to learn new words to write your own hagiography), and then, let the peace and power that passes all understanding transform your life, and from there to transform this world. If we do this, then we will become – as St. Peter was - a part of the solution.

Homily: Why We Need to Love God to Really Love Our NeighborGospel Lesson:  St. Matthew 22:35-46 (The Great Commandment)  Great lesson from The Teacher: “what is the most important thing ever?” Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind! CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: To love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good. The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself. The kind of person who fulfills these two commandments experiences all the commandments.  Simonetti, M. (Ed.). (2002). Matthew 14-28 (pp. 157–158). InterVarsity Press. Why is it so important? What can’t we just skip to the second one, as the non-believers do? Isn’t it enough just to love?  No. We have to be intentionally connected to the SOURCE of love. It’s like how our homes need to be connected to the generators through the power grid. We might be able to create enough energy “off-grid” to power some things some of the time, but in order for it to be consistent, we need to be on the grid, and that grid needs to be connected to the generators.  Without that, our “love” of your neighbor is going to be based on how we are feeling, and that is a terrible way to love. We can see how well this works just by looking around. Everyone can be nice and sacrificial and patient when it feels right; but who is willing to do it when it is hard and unpleasant?  Loving God with complete openness, humility, and awe allows His love to strengthen us; it also grants the ability to see God in our neighbor – even our enemy – so that when we are serving them we are also serving Him and thus remain “hooked up to the grid”, so to speak.  There is another point worth making because our context hides it from us: this openness, humility, and awe – this love of God with the whole heart, soul, and mind – needs to be done in community. It is made to be done within the Church. The Church is not just for us; it is the place where the conduit of love connecting us with God and one another is the purest and strongest.  It is where we learn through experience how to have that source in us and connecting us; one pure love uniting, healing, empowering, and guiding us together.  Of course we can create connections without God, playing with institutions and laws and the distribution of power in hopes of finding an optimal solution [and we’ve done a pretty good job of that in our country because we have tried to create a system where the drive to take care of the self and the family requires one to find ways to serve the needs of others and where the earnest desire to serve others is rewarded with the ability to care for oneself and one’s family]… but even so, this can only go so far.  Without the connection to God and the ability to see the image of God in all our neighbors, we are still governed and limited by our own power and our own feelings and motivations. Without reliable access to the source of Goodness, Patience, Love, and Courage, even our system will either break down into an anarchy of competing feelings or calcify into a totalitarianism where one group’s idea of love – rooted in fallen ideologies and tribal egoism – will create a hell on earth. It is not enough to be connected to one another and to try to “be nice.” Let me give one more example before I conclude. Many of us are connected to zillions of neighbors through social media. And when it works well, it is wonderful. But have you noticed how often it sours? How, even those we love and know to be good post things that create pain and division? Even groups that are explicitly Christian can dissolve into hellish pits of division, hurt feelings, and wickedness. We’ve all seen it, it isn’t good, and there has to be a better way. There is, and what we are called to do, that thing we called “Orthodox Christianity” is it. Being nice is not enough. Being “Christian” is not enough. That niceness and that “Christianity” need to be continually reinforced by the grace of God. This is only done through love, and this love is meant to be cultivated, experienced, and shared within the Church and from the Church to the world. The fullness of that Church is meant to be found here in this, our parish home. If we open our hearts and our community to God through sincere worship and immersion in the sacraments; if we open our hearts to and serve one another and the hurting neighbors in our community; the conduit of love will be opened to maximum throttle and the grace of God will light us up and turn us into a beacon of hope and security to the world. May our light so shine among men that they will see our good deeds and be drawn to worship the God who is in heaven.

Our Faith: Orthodox ChristianityThe Mysteries Questions for consideration: does God just work through ideas and the heart, or does He work in the physical world, too?  How about mankind?  Is there such a thing as a blessing?  A curse?  How do they work? Background. God is un-created.  He made this world as an expression of His Love.  He made man in His image to be the steward of creation.  Creation was designed to respond to our touch and to our care (as a reflection of how it responds to His touch and care). We failed in our first calling as good stewards.  We were cast out of the Paradise where blessings were meant to compound eternally.  But creation still responds to our touch and to our care.   Alas, we have become a curse to the earth; “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you,  and you will eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3: 5-7)” Christ is the “New Adam” (Romans 5); He has restored humanity’s ability to be the good steward of creation.  Note that this is accomplished by those who unite themselves to Him in His Holy Church. Mysteries (not as in “strange”, but as in the way the ineffable God is made known and accessible.  Baptism.  The theology of Theophany (the Baptism of Christ); “The Jordan turned back!”  The Psalms are full of language about how God has tamed nature.  Our baptisms are not just symbolic of an inward change.  The water is blessed, the old man dies through immersion and is brought up a new man in Christ.  Because it is a real change, it is meaningful for a baby to be baptized.  Moreover, this allows the child to grow up in Christ and not just waiting for Him. Chrismation.  The seal of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; 1 John 2:20).  The physicality is through the oil, which was prepared by the Patriarch on Holy Thursday.  The anointing with chrism makes us a “christ”, an anointed one!   Communion.  The Body and Blood of Christ.  This is the central Mystery of the Christian Church.  Instituted by Christ Himself, the Gospel and Epistle references make is clear that it has always been the central rite of believers and more than just a symbol or remembrance.  The physicality here is obvious. Confession.  The “Second Baptism”, with tears in the place of water (God accepts even “a portion of a tear”).  We are all sinners and there can be no salvation without repentance.  Confession was done in the midst of the Church; now the priest stands in for all the people.  The “seal of confession.”  It is more than counseling and more than the repentance the believer does on his knees at home (St. James 5:16; St. John 20:23). Holy Unction.  The healing ministry of the Church in its most iconic form (St. Mark 6:13; St. James 5:14). Marriage.  This is one of the greatest icons of the Church: the union of two live in love through Christ (St. John 2:1-11; Ephesians 5:32). Ordination.  The laying on of hands (1 TImothy 5:22).  Bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, readers, taper bearers. “Minor” Mysteries Funerals.  Prayer.  Silence.  Loving touch.  Listening ear.   An Apology for Orthodoxy:  It is radically Incarnational.  It takes God’s call for us to be stewards - and annointed ones - seriously.  It also takes our own incarnation (psycho-somaticism) seriously.  It also takes our pride seriously. Thoughts?  Questions?   Next week:  Orthodoxy as the medicine for pride.   

Homily on the first Sunday of Luke (5:1-11).  The Gospel is on Christ calling the disciples to become "fishers of men."  This account at the beginning of Christ's earthly ministry bookends with a similar one that occurs after His Resurrection.  Fr. Anthony reminds us in this homily that we live in the joy of that second account (even when our nets seem empty).  Keep fishing!

This is a recording of the talk I gave for the “Ukrainian Historical Encounters Series”  special event "Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the Organized Ukrainian American Community" on 21 September 2019 at the Princeton Club of New York.  I represented the UOC-USA on the panel on "The Ukrainian American Community and Religious Life".  The moderator was Dr. Andrew Sorokowski [Religious Information Service of Ukraine].  The other presenters were the o. Ivan Kasczak (The Ukrainian Catholic Church) and Rev. Mykhailo Cherenkov (Ukrainian Evangelic Community).

Every time we do this, it is different.  This time, the focus is on the spiritual peace and harmony offered through the Divine Liturgy.  Sorry about the audio quality; enjoy the show!

Homily on St. John 3:13-17. "The Lord said... as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up ... " What's that all about? Snakes and salvation. Enjoy the show!