The Working Out of God’s Love

The Working Out of God’s Love

by archpriest John Shimchick

Able to visit Father Steven Belonick and his wife, Deborah, at their home in Stratford, Connecticut. Father Steven was an old friend and a veteran of our diocese: He served for two decades in Pearl River and Binghamton, New York—the period when he and Deborah helped launch Jacob’s Well—and then for another 13 years at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. At the time of our summer visit, he was nearing the end of his long bout with leukemia. We talked for several hours that day about his life, family, ministry, and sickness. “When I was young and trying to figure out what to do with my life,” he recalled, “I said to God: ‘Either abandon or love me.’”

He knew, all the way up to his time in hospice, that God had never abandoned him. Yet, the working out of this love had required him to trust God in ways that forced him to face a number of risks along the way. For Father Steven, these meant confronting important life and career decisions that might have disappointed the expectations of his family or culture. They meant entrusting his ministry and his immediate family’s wellbeing to the administrative decisions of the Church. And at the end, he had to trust God to take care of his wife, children, and grandchildren. Both of his sons’ wives were pregnant at the time of his death. Convinced of God’s love, he was able to say: “In the end, I did not lose a thing.”

Father Steven accepted the challenge that faces everyone desiring a relationship with another person: If I trust you, do my best to love you, and open myself to you and potentially let you hurt or leave me, what will you do? What will I do?

This question, and its answer, runs through the Scriptures and every Divine Liturgy:

◗ In You, O Lord, I put my trust; let me never be put to shame. (Psalm 71:1)

◗ Uphold me according to Your word, that I may live; and do not let me be ashamed of my hope. (Psalm 119:116)

◗ “Do not forsake us who hope in you” (Divine Liturgy, Prayer after the First Antiphon)

The answer to these questions can be heard in the conversation between Jesus and two disciples on the way to Emmaus following His Resurrection. Not immediately recognizing Him, Luke and Cleopas explained to their unknown travelling companion their dismay in the events that led to the death of Jesus:

“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). Jesus responded to them, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself ” (24:25–27). Then while staying overnight and joining them for supper, “He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the scriptures?’ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem and they found the eleven… [and] they told what happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread” (24:30–35).

Recently, my parish in Medford, New Jersey, completed a multi-year iconographic project. We began its design by asking: What image would best represent what we, as an Orthodox Christian community, have to offer ourselves and our guests? The conclusion was: the story of what happened on the disciples’ to Emmaus—where a model for trust in Jesus was revealed in the breaking of the bread. The working out of these themes is featured in the beautiful effort of iconographer Seraphim O’Keefe.

On the Road to Emmaus

Iconographer Seraphim O'Keefe paints above the main entrance of Holy Cross Church in Medford, New Jersey.

This icon, of course, provides a visual summary of the movement that takes place within every Divine Liturgy—communion with God’s Word and with his Body and Blood. The Liturgy is the continual affirmation of God’s love and His pledge to never let those who trust in him be put to shame. Luke, Cleopas, and Father Steven Belonick understood this and told others. We are encouraged as well at the end of the Liturgy to “depart in peace” and to share that same message with those we encounter—or at least to live in such a way that bears witness to that message.

In each of us, this witness begins with the desire to encounter Jesus somewhere along the way in our own lives. It continues when we desire to develop and integrate this relationship within the risks of community life. When we individually partake of Holy Communion, we ask that God would “unite all of us to one another who become partakers of the one bread and cup in the communion of the Holy Spirit” (Prayer after the Consecration, Liturgy of Saint Basil). Being united with God and others allows us to be members of a different kind of community, one that can still experience difficulties but is empowered by God through his Word, Body, and Blood with the means for healing and reconciliation.

Believing that God will not put us to shame is one thing, but what happens when that trust is challenged or is broken within community life? What can be done? Can it be restored?

If difficulties have emerged out of anger or misunderstanding, and if there is good will on both sides, then healing is always possible. One must begin in prayer by interceding for the person(s) involved. It’s often said that while we do not always know how intercessory prayer to God works in someone else’s life, he can at least work in changing our own hearts. Then there is Christ’s recommended approach to conflict resolution: Begin by speaking to the person privately; if that fails, then try again with one or more witnesses. The last resort is to “tell it to the church” (Mt 15:17). If nothing else, we always approach one another at the beginning of Great Lent and sincerely apologize at the Vespers of Forgiveness.

Trust, hope, risks, and peace—as witnessed to in the life of Father Steven Belonick, the story of Luke and Cleopas, and within the dynamics of community life—can be the means for a life-long encounter with God’s love.

The V. Rev. John Shimchick is the rector of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in Medford, New Jersey, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Jacob's Well.