Blessed is the Kingdom

My own spiritual reading has recently returned to a book I first read several years ago written by Father Alexander Schmemann. For The Life Of The World continues to challenge me to delve deeper into my understanding of the Sacraments. Reflecting upon Father Schmemann’s words both brings into focus the ways in which I can recognize God’s kingdom already present in the world and helps me to see the areas where I can and should change my own life in order to bring about His kingdom.

As I have learned more about this priest, I have come across a short reflection given at his death where he is quoted as saying,”When I die, you can write my in memoriam in one brief paragraph. You just have to say that my whole worldview, my whole life, could be summed up in one little sentence: two ‘nos,’ one ‘yes,’ and eschatology – two ‘nos,’ one ‘yes,’ and the Kingdom to come.” What are these two “nos” and one “yes”? No to secularism, no to religion, but yes to the Kingdom of God.

“No to secularism” seems easy enough to understand. It is saying no to the world, for the sake of the world itself. We as Christians know that God has created the world to be a gift and as Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”. It seems to me that most sins are simply a distortion of those things meant to lead us closer to our creator. Many times we take divine gifts and turn them in on themselves rather than receiving them for what they really are, roadmaps to God. Saying “no” to secularism, means recognizing God’s presence in all of creation.

“No to religion” may at first appear to be a strange thing for a priest to say, but stick with me on this one. When I first picked up For The Life Of The World and began reading, it was this very notion that struck a chord with me. In his book Father Schmemann writes,

Christianity, however, is in a profound sense the end of all religion….Nowhere in the New Testament, in fact, is Christianity presented as a cult or as a religion. Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God and man. But Christ who is both God and man has broken down the wall between man and God. He has inaugurated a new life, not a new religion.

Does this mean that we are to give up the disciplines of the Church, all those “unnecessary” rules that our tradition asks of us? Nothing could be further from the truth. What it means is that we must not become addicted to religion. We must not let religion become our god. It seems that too many people today subscribe to a belief that we can somehow make a contract with God, a strange sort of quid pro quo that seeks to control God, rather than enter into a relationship with Him. Saying “no” to religion means we have to encounter God face to face on His terms, trusting that He loves us and always has our best interests at heart.

“Yes to the Kingdom of God” can be more difficult to live than it first appears. Saying “yes” to the Kingdom of God means first saying “yes” to the cross. It means an emptying of self, so that one can be filled by God. It means approaching the Lord through the life of the sacraments within a faith community. Saying “yes” to living out our faith within the Church means we must accept suffering, but in doing so we will find the way to a joyful life. We will discover the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Tags: Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Incarnation, Kingdom of God, religion, Sacraments, secularism

This entry was posted by Fr. Christian Mathis on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.