Category: Teaching

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Orthodox Christian life is liturgy.

An Orthodox Christian is responsible for saving the world. We do this by joining our lives to the life of the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ. We are part of the body of Christ who is always saving the world.

In order to save the world, Orthodox Christians provide their community with life-giving worship. We provide a holy space, liturgical services and a community life. We keep a flame burning at the end of the candle.

We hire a priest. We bear the expenses of owning the building. We offer our time and our work. We cultivate the life of Jesus in our hearts and homes through prayer, fasting, giving and learning. All of this brings about worship here in our city. That will save the world. We listen to the words of St. Saraphim of Sarov (a Russian monk who lived in the 1800’s) who said, “acquire the spirit of peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.”

We call our worship and our work liturgy. The word liturgy is Greek, and means the “work of the people” or the “work on behalf of the people.” In ancient Greece, a leading citizen of a city who was the head of a large family would be called upon to fund a new public amenity. This was a “liturgy.” Or perhaps he was obligated to pay for one week’s cycle of sacrifices to the gods on behalf of the city in order to ensure the gods’ protection. That was also a “liturgy.” It was his duty as a citizen of means to provide that which benefited the whole city.

We, of course, believe in one God. Our God who saves us in order to enable us to become worshippers in spirit and in truth. Our God invites us to his Liturgy. When Jesus died, he was offering his life and his death as a liturgy. When Orthodox Christians meet together to pray to our God, we are adding our lives to the Divine Liturgy.

Today, when we use the word liturgy, we are usually talking about the Sunday service that culminates in communion. Technically, funerals and weddings are also liturgies, but normally we mean the eucharist. We offer bread and wine as a sacrifice to God along with all the work we do to make the liturgy happen. In return, Jesus gives us that which he sacrificed: his body and blood. Every time we add our offerings to the timeless offering of Christ, this benefits everyone in the whole world, especially the people who receive the communion directly.

In Liturgy we offer God:

Our minds
When we encounter each new situation in life, we encounter it with our minds. So our minds must be healed from the corruption of sin. By praying the words of the Church we start to think like the Church. By reading the Bible we start to think like the Bible. We start to think like Jesus. We act more like Jesus. We live like Jesus and we die like Jesus. By reading the lives of the saints, we start to have the attitude of the saints. A life of prayer and worship moulds our minds and makes us holy, so that our actions in every new situation may be holy.

Our time
We attend church as often as possible. Church is the gas station where we fill up our tank. You do not know when you may be called upon, as a fellow sojourner in the next seat. Perhaps you will be the one whose kindness and listening are needed. Perhaps you have the words that need to be spoken in that moment. You might make all the difference just by being there and being available. But you are not available if you are not there.

Our money
No one pays the church’s bills except us the members. Giving to God is an act of great faith, and it helps the giver to become bold in prayer.

Our conscience
We offer our conscience to God. We ask for forgiveness constantly. We confess our sins (to a priest) as often as possible. We find hope in learning more about our own shortcomings because then we can cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit which heals us and changes our attitudes and our habits. As a result, we cause others less pain and sorrow.

Our hearts
By investing our energy in prayer, confession, worship and work, we grow to be emotionally invested in the Kingdom of God. We begin to long for other people to find the same hope. We feel this longing deeply. We become like family with the other people in the church. In the Divine Liturgy, the priest says, “let us lift up our hearts.” And we answer, “we lift them up unto the Lord.”

The one who loves is taking a great risk. We take the risk of being grieved when those we love are hurt. That is the cost of loving in a corrupted world. Jesus paid the cost of his infinite love for us who are dying, by entering the grave with us. He calls us to the same work. We weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

We offer our heart’s hope. The more we come to church, the more we find that we have become dependent the Divine Liturgy for our peace of mind and wellbeing. We deliberately foster a dependence on God. God becomes our only hope. And many of the things we used to hope in are of no use to us now. We are no longer trying to love two masters (Matthew 6:25), but love the one master who said, “abide in me.” (John 15:4)

Orthodox Christian life is a gift of love which we give to God. We pray, “thine own of thine own we offer unto thee in behalf of all and for all.” We do this not because God needs it from us, but because this is the only way truly to be alive. Life that is truly human, fulfilling, healthy and joyful is the life of a person who offers this sacrifice to God together with the rest of the church.

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Easy Forgiveness

“Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus ), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.

He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”

“No,” they answered.

He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.

Then he said to him, “Follow me!” (John 21:1–25)

Who are the sheep? Jesus says this figuratively to mean us. We are a group of people who need a leader like a flock of sheep have a shepherd. The word bishop means overseer, the one who watches over sheep. Pastor simply means shepherd. This image was used in Ancient Israel to refer to the relationship between a king and his subjects. Jesus is calling Peter to lead the Christian community.

What is this leadership that Jesus is calling Peter to? Is Peter the leader we need? And when we discuss Peter, we must remember that he was the leader of the apostles. What we say of him as a leader we are also saying of all the apostles.

What kind of person was it that Jesus was calling to leadership? Peter is the man who walked on the water, but began to sink because of his lack of faith. Peter is the man who swore he would die with Jesus. But when Jesus was about to die, Peter ran away and swore an oath that he did not know Jesus. Peter swore that he wanted nothing to do with Jesus. Three times. All the apostles except for one abandoned Jesus. These are the ones who will feed Jesus’ sheep!

When we sin, we harm ourselves and we harm others. When we sin it is easier and easier to do it again. When we sin, we lose our boldness in prayer. We lose sight of our high calling. We lose faith in the hope of growing into the stature of Christ; the noble and honourable stature of a child of God. We stop believing that is possible when we sin because sin is the opposite of that nobility.

When we have been weakened by this sin, any suffering or hardship or disappointment we endure will be perceived as a much heavier and oppressive torment than it really is. When our feelings are hurt, we are more likely to despair and think of a relationship as broken beyond repair. When we failures in our work or have setbacks in life, we are more likely to despair and see ourselves as irredeemable. We think, “I am the problem.” This is what happens when we are weakened by sin

And our despondency is contagious! We resent those who have the hope that shows itself in innocence, in obedience, the hope that manifests itself as guilelessness. We see such people as childish. We begin to resent those who have the hope that we so desperately wish we had. Sin makes us bitter. Bitterness makes us cold-hearted. Cold-heartedness kills our relationships and that makes us lonely and isolated.

The Christian life is like a marathon. It is hard enough to run a marathon, but when we sin it is like putting on a heavy backpack while we are running. It is like putting a sharp pebble in our shoe. How much harder is it then not to quit?

What if we had someone who could show us how to not end up with that extra burden? When we have failed, and hurt others, and humiliated ourselves, and shown how selfish and arrogant we are, when we have harmed our relationships, what if we had someone who could lead us back? What if we had someone who would give us the strength to withstand despair and despondency? What if there was someone who has done this before?

That is the ministry of a pastor. That is the apostolic ministry of the Church; of the priest and the bishop. That is the ministry of the Holy Fathers, That is the ministry of a confessor. That is the ministry of Christ, as it is practiced by the body of Christ.

When Jesus appointed Peter and the other apostles as shepherds for his flock, he gave them the gift of repentance. Jesus gave Peter the fearsome experience of being confronted with his failures; confronted by the living God, the judge of the universe. St. Isaac the Syrian says, “The suffering that grips the heart as a result from sinning against love is sharper than all other tortures.” The Creator of the world asked Peter, “Do you love me?” three times, to correspond to the three times that Peter denied him. Peter was invited to do the opposite of what he had done wrong. He failed to confess his love for Jesus when Jesus was about to die, now Peter confessed his love three times. Peter swore he would die with Jesus but ran away, Jesus promised to give Peter a new opportunity to share in his death.

Notice that Jesus did not say to Peter, “Ok, now that you have confessed me three times: now I forgive you.” Jesus had already forgiven Peter. Jesus did not have this conversation with Peter because it was necessary before forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the whole story of our salvation. Forgiveness is the beginning of salvation, not the end. Anyone who wants to make forgiveness the only thing that happens in the story of salvation is robbing us of our shepherd.

There are two things in the Orthodox Church does that I have never seen anywhere else. One is that we speak so much about remission of sins. We are always talking about how we are sinners. We say, “Have mercy on me the sinner” every day. We are constantly talking about repentance. I have never been anywhere that does that as much as we do.

The other thing we do that no one does quite as much is to offer detailed guidance about askesis: fasting, obedience, confession, prostrations. No one seems to have as many services as we do, especially during lent. Hours and hours of long services.

And I have never seen as many services in any other church that focus so much on calling out for help: “Help us, Jesus, to stop sinning. Save us, O Theotokos, for we are sinners. Because salvation is not reduced to forgiveness, it makes all the sense in the world to ask the Theotokos to save us by her prayers. “Help us, O blessed Theotokos, we are lost; we are perishing in our passions and in our sins. I do not know any other church that does that to the same extent. Is that because we think it is really hard to be forgiven? Do we do all that extra work because while other people think forgiveness is difficult, we think it is not only difficult but almost impossible? Is that Orthodoxy? Do we need to convince Jesus?

On the contrary, we do not teach the heresy of the angry God who must be placated. Our understanding is that forgiveness is easy. St. Isaac the Syrian says, “Just as a grain of sand will not balance in the scales against a great weight of gold, such too is the case with God’s justice when it is weighed against His compassion. When compared with God’s mind, the sins of all flesh are like a handful of sand thrown in the sea.”

Saint Isaac the Syrian says that if all that God needed to do was to forgive us, then Jesus did not need to die on the cross. He says, “The entire purpose of our Lord’s death was not to redeem us from sins, or for any other reason, but solely in order that the world might become aware of the love which God has for creation. Had all this astounding affair taken place solely for the purpose of the forgiveness of sin, it would have been sufficient to redeem us by some other means.”

Forgiving us is easy. Jesus died on the cross in order to show us how to leave the way of sin and become holy. He died on the cross so that when he fills us with his Holy Spirit there is a content to the life that the Holy Spirit leads us towards. He died on the cross so that if we die with him, we will trample down death as he did.

All of the apostolic Church’s pastoral guidance is a comfort to us because we need a guide to show us where to go. It is the light yoke, the nobility and dignity of Christ which is given to us. Being led on the right path is the continuation into the fullness of salvation. Calling ourselves sinners is not oppressive when we know that we have a trustworthy guide Our mothers and our fathers in Christ have all been through this same journey of repentance and ascetical struggle. The extreme focus on repentance is the antidote to despondency! Despondency is not from knowing that you are a sinner but from not facing it, not having anything to run to, being left on your own.

The apostolic ministry of the Church gives us the opportunity to be guided and taught. It gives us the opportunity to do the opposite of the sins that are weighing us down: rebellion, militant ignorance, rejection of communion with God. The Church offers us the nativity fast. The chance to do the opposite of our thoughtlessness, to do the opposite of our selfishness. The Church offers us repentance as a way back to the nobility that God created us for. It is best for each person to go to confession once during Advent. The Church is the community of sinners who have found a way to follow Jesus again, and have returned to the true path. Will we accept that opportunity?

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Does God answer prayers?

Orthodox Christian icon of Jesus praying in Gethsemane.

Praying is the most natural and fundamental activity of human life. By praying, I mean the most basic definition of prayer: asking. The word pray originally meant simply to ask.

When I was in seminary, we did a ministry in the local jail. You have never seen a more religious group of people than those who have made very bad decisions and ended up in jail. They each have a well-worn bible, full of notes and underlining. They had all day to read them. Many of these people would have laughed at you before they went to jail for talking about God and prayer. But here they are, gathering in the chapel for a bible study with a bunch of Orthodox seminarians in black cassocks.

Or there is another example of how people just default to prayer: a very close friend of mine who used to be a Christian, but who does not identify as a Christian anymore, still calls me up sometimes when there is a crisis and asks me to pray. She can’t ask God but she can ask me to ask God. Something at least.

Many of the people in jail who are asking God to get them off the hook, or asking God for a lighter sentence, will not get what they are asking for. Many of the relatives of patients in the hospital who pray for their relatives to recover will in fact see their relatives die.

Some people will be healed. Some people will keep their job. Some people will keep their house. It may appear to be a kind of lottery; the “God jackpot.” We might ask, “Are you going to pick the right number or say the right prayer?”

People make all kinds of promises to God when they are in dire straits. They make a deal with God. This is where we get the saying “I swear to God.” That is a kind of verbal exclamation point that means, “I really mean it! I swear.” We promise or swear to God that we will stop drinking if God just lets us out of jail. Or we will start going to church if only God heals our friend or if only I find a new job.

I am not saying that this is a ridiculous thing to do. I know of people who have made that kind of oath, and they did receive what they asked for. Subsequently, they also did turn their life around like they promised. But God did not help them because they promised God something. God helped them find determination by allowing them to face adversity. God gave them the circumstances that led them to repent, and then God paved the way for them to serve him with this new-found determination. It wasn’t actually a “deal,” but sometimes it does work out in a way that makes it look like we convinced God. Actually God convinces us.

Most of the time, however, when we swear such oaths, we are trying to give ourselves hope. What we are really saying is, “I cannot hope that God will help me and I do not really see how it will work out – it probably won’t work out … but maybe if I promise God something then I can hope in the deal that I can make with God. Even if I do not have faith in God, I have faith in my ability to convince God.” What kind of faith is that, really?

Calling out to God is a good and natural thing to do. Whatever you want to ask of God, ask! Do not feel guilty for asking. Keep asking. Miracles do happen (actually you don’t even need to ask for miracles because they happen all the time without you knowing it, but it doesn’t hurt to ask for them).

But prayer is not a lottery. Saying that you should ask God is not the same as saying, “You might win the jackpot, so buy a ticket. You never know, you might win.” That is not why the Church tells us to keep praying and asking. The Church gives us words to pray so that we learn how to pray, not so that we can maximize the chances of God doing what we want.

The fathers tell us that God has revealed himself to us even before Jesus came and healed the sick, even before God parted the Red Sea. Nature itself teaches us enough about God that we should know about God with certainty. This is called natural revelation. If we do not know that God exists, that is because we are not willing to look.

And the fathers tell us moreover that the way events come together in life is itself a revelation of God. We just “happen” to meet a person who helps us, or we just “happen” to find something out at the right time. God is there, in those events. The Christian faith gives us the glasses to see those providential events as providential. But what is more, the Christian faith gives us the glasses to see our disappointments as opportunities to pray the prayer that will always be answered, “God, give me the serenity and the peace to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

We can see (especially after the fact) that God has put a person in our life, or an event, and this was an intervention for our sake. We also see how a challenge that God did not just clear out of our path, or a loss, or a crisis was something that caused us to mature. It was something that equipped us to have more empathy with other people who have gone through similar things. God gives us the opportunity to trust that He will always be with us. And he shows us afterwards that he always was with us. Having gone through a crisis gives you boldness to trust God on behalf of others as well. It also gives us the boldness to trust God when we are choosing between doing what is right and wrong. Perhaps we need boldness to endure the cost of doing right: our experiences of adversity in the past help us to trust God in those moments.

God is there in times when it seems obvious that our prayers were answered. And God is there in the times when it does not look like our prayers were answered. How do we know that God is there even when we do not get what we hoped for? What is it that we get instead? Let’s read these passages from the Bible to see. The first passage is from the Epistle of St. James:

“Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

Why is St. James talking about grumbling against each other? Because if you think that bad things happen only when people are trying to hurt you, you start to have many enemies. First you see God as your enemy (or at least an unsympathetic father), and then you even start to distrust people as well. St. James continues:

Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.

That means that when you pray, just ask. It is better not to make promises. Just say “yes, I would like this to happen.” Or “no, I would not like that to happen.”

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

James 5:7-16

St. James knew that people died of sicknesses. He does not mean that you are guaranteed to get a miracle as long as you have enough faith, or as long as you use the right holy oil (but we still anoint people with oil). He says, “ask for healing …” and then St. James goes on to talk about

confession of sins, repentance from sins, and being a righteous person who prays.

In ancient times, the service of anointing with oil was the equivalent, or the ancestor of our current-day rite of confession and absolution. When I pray for someone who is sick in the hospital, I ask for forgiveness of their sins. And when someone has confessed, I pray for them to be healed. They are intimately connected.

Jesus prays in Gethsemane Orthodox icon

The most important prayer is, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Pray with Jesus as Jesus prayers, “not my will but your will.” Pray with Jesus, and you will become like Jesus. That is the most important miracle you can have.

Let’s read another passage:

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of our spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:20-28

We do not know what we should pray for. We ask God to help us to pray for His will to be done. We ask God to help us to trust him. Help us to do right. We ask for the strength to keep trusting Him and to keep loving the people around us. We ask God for inner peace in all circumstances.

In another passage, St. Paul writes:

“Brothers, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing and emptied himself by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:5-11

God giving Jesus the “name that is above all names” is not a reward in exchange for Jesus’ death. It means that God has shown us that the greatest glory that a person can have, the best person we can be, is when we give everything we have for the love and service of other people. We empty ourselves like Jesus. We humble ourselves like Jesus. We obey God like Jesus.

For example, when we start a family, we give all of our effort to nurturing our family faithfully. We are dedicated to being the best husband or wife we can be, with God’s help. We are faithful to being the best father or mother we can be. We work hard in order to provide not only for our families, but for our whole communities.

Maybe we find a job where we make an obvious impact on the lives of people. But even if it is not obvious that our work impacts people, we still make many sacrifices. We prioritize our church services, our prayers. We sacrifice time by working for the church or welcoming people into our home. When we prioritize these things, that means we will have less time for other things. But this is how we are our truest selves: by dedicating ourselves to what is the most important, which is to show the love of God to everyone we can.

You do not know when the moment will come that you will be able to make a huge difference in someone else’s life. The people who have made the biggest difference in my life probably had no idea at the time. Small kindness at God’s appointed hour will save the world. But when you have fostered character, virtue, the fruits of the Spirit, when you have been willing to give, or because you were honest when other people would not have been, because you have shown yourself to be trustworthy: moments will come when your small service and your small faithfulness will make a world of difference. Ask God to make you that person who comes along at the right time for someone else, that is one of the greatest joys in the world. But you don’t know when it will be. So prepare yourself with prayer, and make yourself a servant now.

When we say that God gave His Son the name that is above all names, that means that you are your truest self when your life is directed towards serving others, praying for others, helping others. That is the greatest hope you can have. That is the answer to all our prayers: God’s calling to us. If you are trying to “find yourself” or trying to figure out what God wants you to do in your life, this is the answer. Pray. Work. Love. Rejoice.