Interview with Archimandrite Zacharias

One of the things I look forward to every week is the next interview to be heard on the Illumined Heart radio program.  It’s great to hear catechetical programs and academic lectures, but there’s nothing like some good dialogue between interesting people.  It’s great to get to know the Orthodox world, and how it dialogues with others (there’s a really interesting interview with a Jewish rabbi). This week however is a real treat – Archpriest Josiah Trenham and Archimandrite Zacharias Zakarou. 

He is the spiritual son of Elder Sophrony Sakharov (and thus the spiritual grandson of Saint Silouan), the author of some wonderful books, and I have it on good authority that he has been blessed with the gift of clairvoyance.  I was blessed to hear him preach at my parish in February.

Our Preservation by the Cross

This is the eve of the Sunday of the Cross. Tonight at Vespers we watched as Archbishop DMITRI carried the cross from the altar to the icon stand in the center of the Church. The congregation, following the lead of the bellowing deacons, sang the toparion repeatedly: “Oh Lord save Your people and bless Your inheritance, Grant victory to Orthodox Christians over their enemies, and by virtue of Your Cross preserve Your habitation.”

Why the Cross, and why now?  As the Archbishop reminded us, we venerate the Cross in the center of the Great Fast because it reminds us what all of this is about.  It isn’t about restriction, it isn’t about comfort, and it isn’t even about growing.  It is about living, but the kind of living that only takes place when we participate with Christ to the point of sharing in His crucifixion.  My Lenten troubles and my ascetic feats are nothing compared to death on a cross, and even this is nothing without participation with Christ. 

The fact is that we can easily avoid our cross, and we can easily avoid Christ.  It looks good, reasonable, and healthy.  After all, avoiding our crosses so often look like avoiding death.  We need to be close enough to Christ, and be under enough obedience to see how we can follow him to our death, knowing that we have the same power in us that rose Christ from the dead. 

In our historical perspective we often only see the crucifixion in light of the resurrection, but before we can get there we need to see – in its stark reality – the cross.

After tonight’s service we drove home past several phenomenal architectural church buildings.  One of them had a rather typical sign on its electronic marquee: “come grow with us”.  To a certain extant, this message is opposed to the Cross.  As Christians we could be easily saying: “come die with us”.  We are after all the Church of the martyrs.

Fr. Joseph Huneycutt suggests that the only appropriate Christian bumper sticker is the cry of St. John the Baptist, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Any religion can get on board with the resurrection, but the crucifixion –  which even Plato saw to be the unavoidable consequence of a Divine Incarnation – is something that is distinctively Christian.  As the troparion says, is “by virtue of Your Cross” that preserves the Kingdom of God.  It is not a humanistic fixation of growth, it is not news of a get-out-of-jail-free grace, but the incredible story of a real man who is fully God climbing on a tree to die and trample down Death. 

Hard to swallow?  Yeah, it is for me too.

Nourishing the Senses

We frequently think of nourishing our body with what we intake, and often think about nourishing our minds by what we contemplate.  A deeper thought is how we nourish our whole beings through the intake of the Holy Mysteries.  Our senses apply both to the realm of concepts and thinking and the realm of the physical.  By this I mean that the senses are obviously “means by which we understand and interact with the physical world” and simultaneously “part of us; not dissociated with the rational and conceptual activities that belong to us”.  It is this unity of the “raw” sensual nature of these faculties and the ability to have concepts, thoughts, and reasoning about conceptual and imaginative things that allow us to perform everyday functions like: thinking about the world, interacting with the world, imagining, and remembering.

So the senses does not exclusively belong to the realm of “the mind” or the realm of “the physical world”. 

This is not Christian

While sporadically working on a post about why it is reasonable to come to the Church to find Christ, I read Rod Dreher’s blog on this sorry excuse for a Christian community. Note that the web address is “coolplace.ca”.  This way is the path to damnation.  No serious Christian should tolerate this idolatrous masquerade that is separating people from Christ and putting them in delusion.

I have to disagree with Dreher on one point however; Dreher doesn’t believe that this should be taken very seriously.   To quote:

How on earth do people persuade themselves of such patent nonsense? The only Christianity truly failing in the world today is the kind of rationalist Christianity favored by liberal Western Christians, whose churches are dying. In fact, Pentecostalism, which is explicitly anti-rational is sweeping the world. No need to feel threatened by the Rev. Gretta and her Spong-y gang. There is no there there. She’s just playing church 

I would agree with him if West Hill United “Church” was an isolated event.  Sadly it is not.  Protestantism evolves with every generation, and it has already begun to morph into more subtle forms of this monstrosity.  This in turn has left thoughtful Protestants with a choice – and it was this pushed me towards Orthodoxy – do I succumb to “popular monotheism” or find a tradition that is stable?  Is it about community or Christ?  How did these two options become so distanced?  If Protestants wanted to stop losing their young’uns to Orthodoxy and Rome, they would immediately spend their time dealing with the Emergent church.

 I think that + BASIL was right to say that this is the insidious heresy of our generation.  Lord have mercy.

The Feast of St. Gregory of Palamas

This second Sunday of Great Lent is the Sunday of St. Gregory of Palamas, Wonderworker of Thessalonica, champion of Orthodox theology, and one of the saints dearest to me.  “For God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing.” 

O light of Orthodoxy, teacher of the Church, its confirmation,

O ideal of monks and invincible champion of theologians,

O wonder working Gregory, glory of Thessalonica and preacher of grace,

always intercede before the Lord that our souls may be saved.

A Note about Shrines

Today I went to the Alamo.  I had been there back in August, but this time it was with my family in law over spring break; when the weather was nice and the lines were long.  There are places in the US with such a profound and iconic presence in the American identity – but they are few: Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Independence Hall.  This is rather unique to the US; that where we live doesn’t usually have a meaningful heritage.

I think that this is a problem, and my visit to Washington D.C. a couple years back bears evidence to it.  It is a strange thing for Americans to suddenly be in the presence of a historic place like the Lincoln Memorial, or Vietnam Memorial.  We are used to seeing it on a postcard or movie, and when we it the presence of the place itself we find that we don’t know how to act. 

Feast Day of St. Nicolai of Zhicha

Frequent readers of this blog (aka Trenna) know that I really love St. Nicolai Velimirovic, who rasied an army, survived Dachau, preached the gospel, and wrote poetry.  Today, March 18th, is his feast day.  Memory eternal!

Orthodox Unity in SoCal

Today I received an email from my spiritual father in Southern California with a link to this.  Apparently the con-celebration in Dallas wasn’t the only demonstration of American Orthodox unity.  God be praised!

Sunday of Orthodoxy

Today, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, we celebrate the triumph of Orthodoxy. Lent, and this Sunday in particular, is a time for pan-orthodox celebrations. In the heartland of America three of the most recognizable bishops from the three largest jurisdictions made a statement; we are the unified and real Body of Christ. Archbishop DMITRI hosted Metropolitan ISAIAH and Bishop BASIL at his Dallas Cathedral. Kelly and I were both amazed at how wonderful and meaningful the con-celebration was.

His Grace BASIL gave the homily. It doesn’t take much to see that the cheerful Bishop has a humble heart that loves everyone, yet his homily centered around the cost that we must pay to defend Truth. “A Truth that is not a theology, not a philosophy, not an opinion. A Truth that is the person of Jesus Christ, God and Man.” Purely and ferociously he spoke against the great American heresy, that on the surface is ecclesialogical, but at root Christological. “We know where the Church is,” he said, “it is what is being fed and enlivened by the blood of Christ; just as my body is being enlivened by the blood the beats from my heart. We may not know where the Spirit blows, but the Church is circumscribed.” The truth of the incarnate Christ is not dissociated from the truth of His mystical Body, the Church. And truth is something that we must defend, even to the point of being sawn asunder (as the epistle reading from Hebrews reminds us). A Roman Catholic convert told me that he had spent a decade in a pew not far from here waiting to hear such a sermon.

After we were enlivened by Christ through the Eucharist, I was able to get Bishop BASIL’s blessing and tell him I was the nephew of one of his dear priests. When he heard this he gave me a kiss and a monstrous hug, and we chatted for a while. The long and short of it is that Kelly and I have now re-committed to making a trip up to Wichita.

The parish hall was filled with food (plain though it was), conversation, and abundant joy!

The Church Ecumenical and Familial

This Sunday is an important one for American Orthodoxy, as is especially apparent here in Dallas.  The Divine Liturgy will be con-celebrated at St. Seraphim OCA Cathedral by His Eminence Archbishop DMITRI (OCA), His Grace Bishop BASIL (Antiochian), and His Beatitude Metropolitan ISAIAH (GOARCH).  On this Sunday of Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy in America will have a conspicuous show of unity between the three largest American jurisdictions.  Glory to God! 

On a given Sunday the cathedral is at least comfortably filled by its 200 plus parishioners, so it is safe to say that when three of the most beloved and influential hiearches on this continent enter together on Sunday morning that there will be standing room only.  But then again we’re Orthodox, and there’s no pews anyway.  If it’s anything like the crowd that amassed for Archimandrite Zacharius than the cathedral will turn into a liturgy with mosh-pit styled comfortability.