Wishing you a Merry Christmas.

This past summer my friend Irene recommended a book to me entitled, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios by Dionysios Farasiotis. It is the story of a young man on a spiritual journey who made the mistake that so many make of assuming that all spiritual traditions are equal. He wanted to experience them all and as a result found himself in some very spiritually dangerous places. Eventually he came to his senses with the help of Elder Paisios, a monk of Mount Athos. The opening lines of the book have been echoing in my mind all day.

I once asked Father Paisios about something I found quite perplexing: “Elder, why have all these miracles happened to me?”

“Because,” he replied, “starting from when you were a child, you didn’t get the help you needed. And not only that–you were actually being pushed towards evil. So you deserved some divine help, and God gave it to you all at once.” And, saying this, he gave me a fatherly pat on the cheek.

We all need some divine help from time to time. In fact, we all need it each day. It is good to know that God will even use a two-by-four to the head when necessary. This interchange between the young man and Elder Paisios is a reminder to me today of the importance of shamelessly asking for God’s help whenever I need it, and relying on the fact that he will provide it even when I lack the sense to ask.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

(2 Corinthians 12:10)

Have you ever felt that you were not worthy to use the name Christian when describing yourself? Have you ever struggled with that one particular weakness that just seems to get the better of you, no matter how hard you try to overcome it? Do you find yourself in what seems to be a losing battle when it comes to living a life of holiness? If so, give thanks. You can count yourself among many other holy men and women who have gone before you.

Recently I have been reflecting on the life of the patron saint of our parish, St. Thomas. In addition to the privilege of serving as the pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, I have recently been given the opportunity to spend more time with the faithful of St. Thomas the Apostle Ukrainian Catholic Mission. One of the prayers that is sung each Sunday by the faithful there is the Troparion of St. Thomas the Apostle which includes this line:

By your lack of faith, you proclaimed the certainty of Christ’s resurrection.

Really? Is that how it works? Can God use lack of faith to proclaim certainty? Apparently so. At least that’s how things happened with St. Thomas.

I always imagine St. Thomas as a stubborn man, a man who once having made up his mind about something was not swayed very easily by the crowd, or even by his closest friends. He was confident in his own judgments and not afraid to speak out when he thought it necessary. The word I most associate with St. Thomas is courage. He was not afraid to take an unpopular stand and he was not afraid to put his life on the line for the things that were important. We see this clearly in the 11th chapter of John’s gospel. When all the other apostles are afraid of what might happen if Jesus returns to Judea at the death of Lazarus, it is St. Thomas who says, “Let us go to die with Him!” (John 11:16)

Perhaps the most amazing act of courage recorded about St. Thomas in the Bible is his encounter with Jesus following the resurrection. For someone with such a lack of faith, he showed great courage and faith when he had to eat his own words at the invitation of  Jesus to test the wounds in His hands and feet, by placing his hands in His side. Sometimes I think we miss the humility it must have taken for St. Thomas to be invited to do this. It was only a few days before that he dramatically denied Christ’s resurrection in the presence of his friends. Now he was being asked to follow through on a lost bet, so to speak, in front of those same friends. But true to form he was able to set aside his own pride by not worrying about what they might think in that particular moment. “My Lord and my God!”, he exclaimed, giving us one of the most powerful statements of faith in the history of Christianity.

Christ can transform our weakness into strength if we let Him. He can take our failures and make them a powerful witness to others. The only thing He needs from us is trust, to continue responding to Him with faith. If we can just have the courage to place ourselves before Him exactly as we are, warts and all, He can transform us into something much greater than we could ever imagine. Remember that story Jesus once told about the mustard seed? He wasn’t kidding about that. Give God a chance to work with your weaknesses and I can assure you that you will not be disappointed and neither will He.

These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14)

Yesterday I had the privilege of concelebrating the divine liturgy with Fr. Richard Armstrong at St. Thomas Ukrainian Catholic Mission (both my parish and theirs refer to one another as “the other St. Thomas”). One of the things that I had never noticed before yesterday’s celebration was the prayers said by the celebrant that accompany the preparation rites. These rites are celebrated at a table to the side of the altar and they consist of the preparation of the bread and wine that will be consecrated as well as many prayers for both the living and the dead.

The rite centers around the placing of pieces of bread upon the discus, each piece representing a person. The first piece represents Christ and as such has the letters ICXC NIKA which stand for Jesus Christ Victorious. The second piece of bread represents Mary the Theotokos. The prayers for Christians past and present continue as more pieces of bread are placed upon the discus beginning with the prophets, the apostles and continuing down to both the living and deceased of the local community. As I watched and listened to this rite it was amazing to make the connection that what is being placed upon the altar is not simply bread, but the very lives of all the faithful of our Christian history.

When I mentioned this to Fr. Richard, he noted that it is also noteworthy that those pieces of bread (which represent us) are all plunged into the chalice and are drenched in the Blood of Christ. What an amazing reminder that we are all washed clean of our sins by the blood of the Lamb. This happens continuously and the Eucharist is our weekly reminder of this fact. As we continue our journey of Lent, let us be continually reminded of the communion we share, both with one another and the saints, and the great victory Christ has won for us over the power of sin.

My friend Lindsey, with whom I have been having lively conversations recently on the Twitter (conversations that involve @annaclimacus, @3liSays, @NoWealthButLife, and myself there take place VERY rapidly!) recently posted her thoughts on the challenges facing the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches with regards to restoring communion in a post entitled, The Challenges of 140 Characters.

She begins by lamenting the fact that there is often confusion about what each side understands with regards to the other’s beliefs.

And here we have the challenges of 140 characters.  See, these friends of mine are all devout Roman Catholics.  We generally see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues.  But as an Orthodox Christian, I consider there to be some rather significant theological differences between the two communions.  Unfortunately these differing views can lead to confusion as the official words from the Roman Catholic side differ from the official words from the Orthodox side.

On this point, Lindsey and I are in agreement. While I would consider the Orthodox Churches to be sound in their theology and in their Sacramental practices, I know that there are significant theological differences between us. One of the challenges facing the present day Catholic Church, in my opinion, is the fact that so many of the faithful have not been adequately catechized and as a result it is easy to miss even the not all that subtle differences in belief among Christians. I often hear someone say something along the lines of, “It doesn’t really matter which church you go to, we all basically believe the same thing.” It is ironic to note that it is often these same people who also lament family members who have left the Church.

The two biggest theological differences that are often noted between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches are the change made by Catholics to the Creed and our claims regarding the authority of the Pope as Patriarch of Rome.

The addition of the filioque to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed has been a source of strife between the two Churches since the addition at the local Council of Toledo in 489 and the later addition within the Roman rite in 1014. Orthodox Christians would insist that the Holy Spirit proceeds solely from the Father as he is the source of everything, even though the other two members of the Trinity have been around with Him since eternity. One obstacle to communion that I would note is my own observation that within the Catholic Church there is widespread ignorance of this change. It just isn’t an issue for your average churchgoer. My own thoughts are that we can come to a resolution on this one, especially since recent Popes when gathered with Orthodox Patriarchs have prayed the Creed with the filioque omitted.

The disagreement over the authority of the Pope is a bit more difficult, but I believe that there has also been progress on this front, due in no small part to the Pontificate of John Paul II. His 1995 encyclical, Ut unum sint, eloquently expresses penitence on his part for how Papal primacy has been abused in the past and asks humbly for the help of his brother bishops in searching for the proper exercise of this important ministry of unity entrusted to the successor of Peter.

Lindsey’s main point, however, was the fact that she has encountered many Roman Catholic priests who believe there is no obstacle to communion since Orthodox Christians believe in the real presence and have valid sacraments. The only cases where I have seen Orthodox Christians communing in the Catholic Church is in the case where it is impossible for them to attend an Orthodox liturgy because of lack of proximity of a church. Her point about communion being more than a simple belief in Christ’s physical presence in the form of bread and wine is an excellent one. I often relate to non-Catholics who believe we are being exclusionary by refusing to invite them to receive communion that we in fact as Catholics never refuse to invite others to communion. We want all people to be in communion with the Church and that requires a process of preparation that normally lasts at least a year and culminates in the reception of the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of initiation into the Church that requires a commitment larger than a casual visit to a particular parish.

I would like to respectfully ask Lindsey and perhaps other Orthodox readers of this blog to comment upon an area that seems problematic to me as a non-Orthodox believer. Lindsey writes,

Moreover, the heart, mind and will of the Orthodox Church can never be expressed fully and exclusively in one person, one parish, or even one principality.  The Greek Orthodox Church does not have a monopoly on being the Church, nor does the Russian Orthodox Church have a monopoly on being the Church, nor does the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople have a monopoly on being the Church.  Yet, this statement cannot be understood as an absolute because we do have models of being the Church.  In particular, the monastic communities (especially in highly regarded places such as Mt Athos) provide a universal model of what it means to be the Church.  If I had to try to summarize my current thinking, to be the Church reflects life wholly immersed in Christ, where every fiber of the community’s being has been transformed through the ascetic disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving in such a way that exudes the Love and Truth of Christ.

I understand that no one person, not even the Pope, can adequately represent the entire mind of the Church. The long history of saints from the time of the Apostles through present times make that impossible. It seems to me, however,  that the lack of a central unifying authority that can undermine communion. In the United States, in particular, it is not uncommon in the Orthodox Church to have five or six bishops of various jurisdictions within the same city. I understand that this would not take away from the fact that the Christians in these Churches are in communion with each other, but it seems to communicate at least a diminished form of communion. There are also many within Orthodoxy who while rejecting the primacy of Rome, place an almost psuedo-primacy in the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Others appear to give the same kind of respect of primacy to the Patriarch of Moscow. I have also witnessed Greeks who used differences in jurisdiction to justify dismissing converts to the Antiochian Church or the OCA as not being authentically Orthodox. My point here is not to throw stones. We Catholics have plenty of disunity that expresses itself in other forms, but I wonder what is the solution to the visible disunity symbolized by multiple overlapping jurisdictions in the United States?

I also agree with Lindsey that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the best tools for restoring unity among Christians. Pope John Paul II often spoke of these tools as well as the centrality of the Cross. Ultimately, it will be through Christians living as Christians that wounds are healed and divisions overcome. One way that I hope will bring me to a better understanding of and a closer communion with Orthodox Christians is my upcoming participation in the St. Stephen’s Course in Orthodox Theology that is sponsored by the Antiochian Archdiocese. It is my continued hope that through continued prayer and dialogue we may one day again be one.

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Once again you are invited to join me in promoting the Sabbath by taking a break from your normal blogging. Please share an older post from your blog that is near and dear to your heart. Make sure to leave your name and the URL of your post below and share a comment if you so desire. I look forward to reading your recycled posts!

Once again you are invited to join me in promoting the Sabbath by taking a break from your normal blogging. Please share an older post from your blog that is near and dear to your heart. Make sure to leave your name and the URL of your post below and share a comment if you so desire. I look forward to reading your recycled posts!