Jacob's Well - Spring/Summer 1999

Spring/Summer 99

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THE END IS WHERE WE START FROM

by Fr. John Shimchick

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

(T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Section V, Four Quartets) As we approach the end of this century and millennium, what can we as Orthodox Christians learn from the past that might serve as the starting point for our engagement with the future?

Can we identify useful decisions and patterns of behavior? Can we acknowledge our mistakes? Have there been certain witnesses to the reality of the Christian Faith whose lives are worth examining? What does it mean to be an Orthodox Christian at this moment in history? These are some of the themes we wish to explore throughout the issues of Jacob’s Well produced during this year.

Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky, in editorials written for The Orthodox Church newspaper, in his commencement address at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and in a recent interview we are pleased to present, suggests that the current time provides many opportunities for Orthodox responses and involvement. Fr. Alexander Garklavs writes about the critical dimensions of nationalism. Fr. Michael Meerson explores issues experienced by the new immigrants coming to America, particularly those in the latest Russian “wave.”

Matushka Deborah Belonick studies the subject of “women’s issues” in the context of Orthodox Tradition and traditionalism.

We will begin two new series of articles. Fr. Michael Plekon will examine images of holiness found throughout the twentieth century. The first installment features the first translation of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s remarkable account of the “Three Metropolitans” who served a formative role in his experience of the Church. While his descriptions of Metropolitans Evlogy and Vladimir of Paris will no doubt be of interest, his presentation of Metropolitan Leonty is of particular value as we consider those who gave their lives on behalf of our Church in America. Fr. Schmemann observed that Metropolitan Leonty was “firmly upholding the whole Metropolia [the name of the OCA before autocephaly] under his prayerful gaze.” The second series, written by Fr. Joseph Woodill, will develop an Orthodox understanding of “Ethics.”

We will review Diocesan and parish events: the 85th anniversary of St. John the Baptist Church, Spring Valley, NJ; a project of Holy Trinity Church, Yonkers, NY which will benefit Russian orphans; the wonderful restoration of iconography taking place at St. Vladimir’s Church, Trenton, NJ; parish retreats, and activities for youth and choirs. Fr. Stephen Siniari offers a new article in his series, “Good and Faithful Servant.”

Finally, we are happy to announce the launching of our new Diocesan Webpage: www.JacWell.org Besides making available articles from current and back issues of Jacob’s Well, this site will allow us to present and regularly update a calendar of Diocesan Life. Information on how to do that will be available on the webpage.❖

C O N T E N T S Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-18 Parish News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19-25 Special Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26-31 Icons & Iconographers . . . . . . . . . . 32-33 Liturgical Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Media Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Good & Faithful Servant . . . . . . . . . . . 36 PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF HIS EMINENCE, THE MOST REV. PETER ARCHBISHOP OF

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THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE PRESENT MOMENT FOR ORTHODOXY: An Interview with Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky [This interview between Fr. Leonid and Fr. John Shimchick (JW) took place on June 25, 1999.]

JW: Your editorials in The Orthodox Church over the past year and your commencement address at St. Vladimir’s Seminary have featured positive words in describing the possibilities for Orthodoxy at this time in history. You have spoken about the opportunities for an Orthodox “response,” “contribution,” “civic responsibility,” and “engagement with culture.” It would seem that this century has probably been the first in which there has, in fact, been any significant Orthodox engagement with Western culture. Would you, first of all, comment on what you would see as some of the patterns and lessons we can learn from the Orthodox engagement with Western culture to this point and what might be some of the possibilities for the future.

are crises facing us that are spiritual, liturgical, canonical, and these crises have a specific dimension in the so called, “diaspora” context. When we try to be fully faithful to the Orthodox inheritance, obviously there are two ways to go: One is very inwardlooking and, in a sense, entering into a ghetto voluntarily.

Another is to engage the civilization of the West and do it in a living way. We have both of those responses occurring right now.

Fr Leonid: When we speak of Orthodox engagement with the West in this century being more significant we probably mean, the “diaspora.” I think that there is a longer-range perspective.

For example, in some real ways obviously the Church of Russia before the Communist Revolution of 1917 was, in a fashion, engaged in an encounter with Western culture. And I think this encounter has even been recognized by the West. For example, no one would speak about world literature without speaking about Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. So there has been in that sense a profound encounter which was aborted in the framework of the Communist Revolution, the persecution of the Church, the marginalization of Christianity in Russia. And then the encounter of Russia with Communism was, in a certain sense, an encounter with the West, since the ideology of Marxism is rooted in Western development - that’s very complicated, but bears consideration.

Fr. Leonid: My presentation at the Commencement was, I think, reaching toward an answer to that question. It seems to me that today’s Western civilization is very prone to thinking of itself as a world and universal civilization. And therefore, whatever it thinks, whatever it does, whatever it writes, whatever values it has are seen as universal, by definition. In reality, of course, even if we look at its Christian dimension, the West very often in practical terms is simply ignorant of Eastern Christianity. So there is a presumption that the West is equivalent to universality, but in reality that universality is very much attenuated, it’s a very partial and selective thing.

What is new in the so-called “diaspora” is that Orthodox churches and communities are living as minorities in Western contexts. Therefore we have been drawn into the encounter with the West willy-nilly, simply as a matter-of-fact. But the responses to this fact are different. Some of the responses are self-isolating, with Orthodox communities withdrawing into themselves.

Ethnic and sometimes religious identity takes on the character of self-preservation, and the necessary encounter with the West is neglected or forgotten. Other elements of the encounter have been expressed, manifested, and illustrated by such theologians and writers as Frs. Schmemann and Meyendorff and others. In Western Europe and America our encounter with the West is a direct encounter, a daily and unavoidable conversation and debate. It is, I believe, an imperative of our mission not to fear this encounter and debate. Our encounter with the West should be a source of missionary energy and intellectual vigor for us.

Now I think the jury is still out what will we be able to accomplish along this line. Fr. Schmemann wrote his articles on the various crises in Orthodoxy back in the 1960’s. Clearly there

JW: Are there certain things that we as Orthodox have to offer at this time in history? Are there things that we have to say that are not being heard, that are not being expressed by anyone else?

What we have to offer in the context of world Christianity is an insistence on the wholeness of the Tradition, the integrity of the Christian Tradition in history - meaning both East and West.

In my presentation at St. Vladimir’s, I also pointed out that we Orthodox have our own demons - religious and ethnic tribalisms - which drive us into our own particularisms, undermining our witness to Catholicity. To put it another way: America and the West are very much prone to the arrogance of power right now. I do think that we also are prone to a kind of triumphalism as Orthodox. We need, spiritually, to be very aware of that temptation because arrogance and triumphalism are not the way of the Gospel. The integrity of the Tradition is meaningless if the integrity of the Gospel is not fully kept.

Yet, in today’s Orthodox debates, any word of caution about triumphalism is heard by many as advocacy of relativism, as advocacy of “branch” theories of ecclesiology, as betrayal of the Orthodox Tradition. But this is certainly not what I have in mind. Clearly, there is a way of witnessing to the fullness, the integrity, the Catholicity of the Orthodox Church and not at all falling into relativism and other reductionisms or into arrogance.

Our witness can be given in a way that has evangelical integrity.

To be Orthodox is to be rooted in the Gospel - which means to have charity and generosity, affirming whatever is right wherever

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you find it, affirming Christ - wherever Christ is encountered.

JW: I’m wondering why, despite your own efforts and those of the Serbian bishops and others who have made efforts to speak with our government, there still has been an unwillingness to seek out or hear Orthodox views, to be sensitive to Orthodox contexts, specifically now as they relate to the Balkans but in other areas as well?

Fr. Leonid: I do think, as I mentioned earlier, that the Western intellectual climate has a notion of the West as being universal, liberal, inclusive, and ecumenical. This West is, in fact, very selective, not hearing other voices very well. But we as Orthodox tend to project ourselves more along the lines of our tribalisms, than along the lines of Catholicity - which really is the core of our witness. The difficulty is both on the side of the West and on the side of Orthodoxy. Now, the West is, of course, in possession of power - cultural, economic, military, political, and media power - and therefore there is a very distinct potential for the arrogance of power, the blindness and deafness of power. The Christian East is imbedded in societies which relative to the West are weak and, in many ways, powerless. Therefore the responses that we make as Orthodox tend to be defensive - aggressive verbally, but, in effect, executing a kind of defensive strategy. I do think that there is work to be done on both sides of this division of Christian East and Christian West to understand both current and deep-rooted civilizational patterns and to act with responsibility towards the core of the Christian Tradition.

Recently at a Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical setting I gave a presentation which borrowed from what I said at the Seminary. One Catholic lay scholar was surprised that I was raising civilizational issues and pointed out that the Pope, for example, has spoken strongly about the Christian East and Christian West as being part of one Europe and has stressed the role on a European scale of Saints Cyril and Methodius. This is true, the Pope has done that. But the point I made in response is that while the Pope has said these things, Western Europe and the West have not heard him. Certainly the record is clear, the Pope of Rome has tried to address this tension and divide. He has attempted to bring into Western European consciousness the fact that Christianity in Europe is of two parts and that there is a Christianity of the East which has made substantial impact on European history, culture, and civilization. Has the West heard this? I don’t think so. In my response to the Catholic scholar I observed that Catholics have not heard or absorbed the Pope’s message. And therefore the issues remain.

I think both Western Christians and Orthodox Christians in the various societies are influenced by non-theological factors and by specific patterns of information, media, and cultural perspective which influence how Orthodox Christians and Western Christians see each other. There are stereotypes and caricatures of the West prevalent in Orthodox societies in the East, and there are stereotypes and caricatures of Orthodoxy prevalent in the West.

Sometimes, simple lack of information affects self-perception and

perception of the “other.” The Wall Street Journal recently published a long article on the Serbian Orthodox Church, “From the Ruins of Kosovo.” At the end, the article describes a twenty-two year old monk travelling through Kosovo with Bishop Artemije.

“Throughout a five-hour journey, the fresh-faced monk sat silently as the convoy passed charred Albanian homes, shattered shops and wall daubed with abusive Serbian graffiti. At the final stop, a church in Urosevac, he whispered a horrified apology. ‘I’m so ashamed,’ he told a foreigner. ‘I’m so ashamed of everything that has been done in the name of Serbia and the Serbs.’”

JW: Do you think that there has been enough of a repudiation of these horrors and atrocities by the Serb forces?

Fr. Leonid: In Yugoslavia the media did not cover the atrocities, therefore people simple didn’t know. What they knew was that the Serbs were at risk. They were not wrong. Did they know about atrocities? I don’t think they knew, they couldn’t know.

Therefore this monk’s journey was revealing: once he has seen, he is horrified. Had someone told him before this journey about atrocities, he probably would have said that it was not possible.

So when the charge is made that the Serbs have been silent in Serbia, yes, there has not been enough reaction. But I have to say that in the Serbian context the one figure who has always spoken about the suffering of Serbs and Albanians has been Patriarch Pavle.

I was in Belgrade twice during the bombing, once at the beginning of May with the group that was brought together by Jesse Jackson and once at the end of May when Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and two Europeans and I went. We met with Patriarch Pavle and President Milosevic on both occasions.

Milosovic denounced what he called the propaganda images of

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CNN when he spoke with Jackson and the rest of us. I responded by saying that CNN has definitely given us a constant flow of images of expelled people, refugees, stories of Albanians fleeing from Kosovo. Granted, we do not get stories of KLA atrocities and these certainly also occur. But then I told him that he should not be under any illusion; religious communities in America do not rely only on media images. Most religious communities have humanitarian agencies in the Balkans, many religious representatives from the United States have gone to the region and have actually met the people we are talking about. Therefore, quite aside from the media, it is clear to us that there are terrible things happening in Kosovo. I told him also that Serbian friends have observed that Yugoslav television never shows the Albanian tragedy in Kosovo.

The Patriarch of the Serbian Church has clearly denounced all atrocities. Patriarch Pavle made a universal appeal for an end to all violence. My experience is that the people in Yugoslavia have generally not known about the kinds of things done in their name and therefore could not be expected to rise up in revulsion.

It seems to me that as these things become more and more known, surely the response will exactly be like that of the monk in The Wall Street Journal story. Now, of course, there are atrocities taking place in Kosovo against Serbs, and the sad cycle of violence and suffering continues.

The Serbian Orthodox voices for peace have often not been given a lot, if any, visibility in Western media. Some people know about Fr. Sava and the Decani monastery, but all in all not very much attention has been given in the mass media to Decani monastery and to the fact that the monks there have given shelter to and have embraced Albanians seeking help and refuge. Bishop Artemije has, over the last two or three years, criticized the regime of Milosovic as being undemocratic and, therefore, an obstacle to any solution of the Kosovo crisis.

What is necessary, of course, is to acknowledge in revulsion the terrible crimes committed systematically by some Serb forces against Albanians. But definitely not to allow the identification of all Serbs with paramilitary criminals. I think morally there is another problem. The goal of defending people who are vulnerable and being assaulted in an ethnic conflict is a worthy goal - it was stated by the US and NATO as a universal cause. However what happened is that the actual action we took as NATO seems to have catalyzed the atrocities, unleashed them. It doesn’t mean at all that the government or that the paramilitary thugs are or have been innocent. Of course, they are not innocent. The evil was there and it was tangible. But the bombing clearly unleashed great violence in Kosovo. And the humanitarian disaster became absolutely massive as an accompaniment to the bombing. I am troubled by that. We cannot as a society claim moral purity here.

It seems to me that we as an American society bear some moral responsibility in terms of decisions taken by our government and other governments - decisions unleashing huge atrocities even as we were attempting to prevent atrocities. So we cannot claim moral purity or righteousness.

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JW: There has been a great deal of controversy among the Orthodox worldwide and especially here in America about our involvement in the ecumenical movement and discussions.

Would you say given your experiences, particularly over the past few months, that it is not only appropriate but even “essential” for the Orthodox to be involved at least on certain levels?

Fr. Leonid: I have found it interesting that most people who have contacted me over the past months have done so because they welcome my participation in the mission to Belgrade led by Jesse Jackson and Joan Campbell of the National Council of Churches. It is our presence at the “ecumenical table” which enables our credible participation at times of crisis. So how can we not be at the table? We need to be there to make our voice heard and our views known. And how can we bear witness to the fullness of the Tradition, speaking in even missionary and theological terms, if our stance will be fundamentally a stance that leads to invisibility. I don’t think that can possibly work.

To be at the “ecumenical table” must not mean silence on issues where we are painfully divided, where we as Orthodox may be in a painful and challenging conflict with the views of others.

Of course, we not only need to, but we do state and articulate what our critiques are of some developments in the Christian world, within Christian bodies, and within ecumenism. There are negative things that are occurring and we have the right and the responsibility to criticize and to challenge. Now, having said that we also then are in a situation where others have some need to challenge us as well, and they are not always wrong. There are issues that are painfully important to us, where we empirically fall short of our theological vision. So when we speak of the Orthodoxy and the Catholicity of the Church, when we speak about unity which we see as unity simply in the One Church and we do so correctly - this is our commitment, our vision, our Tradition. But empirically other Christians see us as divided within the Orthodox context, sundered along ethnic and jurisdictional lines. When they see that we indeed confess one and the same faith, adhere to one and the same Tradition, and yet do not have the capacity, it seems, to bring the Orthodox Church in America together into one body - when people challenge us on that, they are right! The insistence and demand we make ecumenically about what is the nature of unity is the correct demand, the correct challenge. The sadness is that within our own life we have not brought energy into structuring our own Church in a way that fully manifests the very thing we believe in most. And maybe we need to be challenged, otherwise perhaps we would be prone to a complacency and not see as sharply as we need to some of the internal contradictions within our own life.

JW: Finally, as we get ready to approach our next All American Council, would there be one wish that you would have for Orthodoxy in America as we approach the Millennium?

Fr. Leonid: I’m going to make a humble wish, a very humble one, but I think that it could be dramatic in its effect. We do have some dynamic realities within American Orthodoxy which

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are very much alive, but which need more understanding and support from hierarchs, parish clergy, and laity in order to build a more engaged and more missionary-minded Orthodox presence into the next century.

International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC)) and the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) represent a kind of miracle of ministry. Churches jurisdictionally divided have nevertheless come together to authorize and encourage something which is working, operating, and moving forward. More energy, more commitment, more involvement from the whole Church with regard to IOCC and OCMS would literally move mountains. The movement towards ecclesial unity, the overcoming of jurisdictional divisions, would be advanced because the strength of the work of IOCC in humanitarian terms and of OCMC in missionary terms would be such that the witness of the Orthodox Church would be persuasive and credible.

And promoting credible Orthodox witness in America is the fundamental commitment of the Orthodox Church in America.

[Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky is the Assistant to the Chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America for Inter-Church Relations and Ecumenical Witness, Editor of The Orthodox Church newspaper, and pastor of Our Lady of Kazan Church, Sea Cliff, NY.]

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His “Commencement Address to St. Vladimir’s Seminary Theological Graduates,” delivered on May 22, 1999, is available at: http://www.svots.edu/Events/Commencement/1999Keynote-FrLeonid.html Several of his Editorials written this year for The Orthodox Church specifically relate to issues discussed in this interview: “A Moment of Ecumenical Challenge — and Opportunity” (January, 1999) http://oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/EcumenicalChallenge.html “Witness to the Gospel in the Face of Evil, Hatred, and Violence” (March-April, 1999) http://oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/Witness-in-the-Faceof-Evil.html “Relating our Public Witness to Spiritual and Moral Vision” (May, 1999) http://www.oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/Relating-PublicWitness-to-Vision.html❖

LIVING ICONS: TEACHERS OF OUR PAST AND OUR FUTURE

by Fr. Michael Plekon Cultural wonders such as icons and liturgical music and now regularly, events in Eastern Europe, remind the West of the Eastern Orthodox Church, her beauty and mystery. With the fall of state socialism, churches and monasteries are being reopened and there is a renewal of all forms of religious expression. Orthodox liturgy, with its powerful, other-worldly sense of God’s transcendence is transmitted by recordings, captured by books and exhibitions of iconography. Orthodox clergy and laity have become a presence in international ecumenical bodies and even in efforts toward conflict resolution. Perhaps because all these are part of the “household of faith” for us in the Orthodox Church, we take them for granted. Yet as we stand on the threshold of a new century and millennium, we more than ever need to see and listen to those who have gone before, those whose lives are living icons of the Kingdom of God, of Our Lord and the Gospel.

Since the beginning of this century and after the Russian revolution, a procession of singular Orthodox Christian men and women have come to live and work in the West. Among them have been poets and musicians, philosophers and historians, theologians and great spiritual teachers, among others. Not since Nicolas Zernov’s study, the Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century, published over three decades ago, has there been any effort to examine their presence in the West, their distinctive contributions, and in that time further important figures have appeared.

It is central of our faith and worship that we always see ourselves as part of a community, the “communion of saints” we confess in the Creed, both at Baptism and at every Liturgy. Though not yet formally recognized, “glorified” by the Church, these men and women lived the life of Christ in our time. They are not only our historical contemporaries, but our brothers and sisters in faith. As we move to the next century and millennium, we can learn from them how to ourselves, in our own lives, become “living icons” of Christ.

We begin with three leaders of the Church, three metropolitans, Evlogy and Vladimir of the Russian Church in Paris, and Leonty, as described by our own Fr. Alexander Schmemann, of blessed memory. While all three were significant in understanding the formation of Fr. Alexander, Evlogy had his own special place in the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church and the ministry of Leonty here in America filled more than half of the century.❖

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THREE METROPOLITANS

By Fr Alexander Schmemann Translated by Fr. Alvian Smirensky “We thank Thee for all things, both known and unknown, and the visible and invisible blessings upon us.”

-1When I arrived in America in June 1951 to teach at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary (having been invited by Vladyka Leonty’s predecessor, Metropolitan Theophil), I already had the experience of having been close to two Parisian MetropolitanExarchs, Evlogy and Vladimir. Thus Vladyka Leonty was to be my third Hierarch and, as a matter of course, at first I compared him with my Parisian Hierarchs. And now, when all three are no longer with us, whenever I am celebrating the Divine Liturgy, I unite their names in a joint commemoration, knowing that each one of them, in different ways, revealed to me that very essence of the episcopacy, that most difficult and awesome service in the household of God’s Church. This was something which could not be expressed or defined by any dogmatic descriptions. Since they are so closely linked in my memory, thanksgiving and prayer, I will begin these brief and fragmentary recollections about Metropolitan Leonty with even briefer remarks about those who preceded him in my ecclesiastical life.

-2-

over us but nonetheless each one of us felt that we belonged to him, that we were needed and even indispensable participants in his life and service in their most important expressions. This was that physical, almost familial closeness. To this day I remember how each one of his riasas felt, the warmth of his smallish hand over which, so many times, I placed the cuff. The weight of his corpulent body when we assisted him in rising from a full prostration. But it is because that closeness was always at the altar, because everything in it was related to that sacred and mystical beauty of the Divine Services, it changed more and more into that love and that joy which for me, defines to this day the essential nature of the Church. I could not, I firmly believe, have achieved this experience through later and sad exposures to the pedestrian and consistorial sides of Church life. It is through Metropolitan Evlogy and my service to him that I began to perceive the basic foundation of the Orthodox experience: its grandeur, its boundless loftiness, the remoteness, the awesomeness of everything Divine and at the same time, its immediacy with its joy and radiance.

Those solemn arrivals, the vesting, the reverences, that constant consciousness of knowing oneself to be at someone’s service, never once, not for a single second, ever I was close to Metropolitan questioning his entitlement to that Evlogy, if one can say, “physically.” service. For it is through him and us, From the age of twelve I was an acolyte, the swarms of acolytes and subdeacons, crozier bearer, ripidion bearer and subdeathat somehow the power and beauty of con. I was destined to vest him for the last God’s Kingdom is revealed. All this, for me, time during that sad evening of his passing, in Metropolitan Evlogy is forever linked with Metropolitan Evlogy. He August 1946. I think that only those who had the unites within himself the indefinable and the incomexperience of serving at the altar and particularly in a prehensible as well as all the grandeur and that Divine founlarge and well-appointed Cathedral, with its large staff and dation of the Episcopacy and through that, of the Church and at numerous clerics, with its behind-the scenes details of solemn serthe same time their nature in their immediacy and love. He had vices, could know how all this creates a special connection with a no need to remind himself or anyone else of the majesty of his Hierarch. There is nothing “administrative” here, nor is there any office because that majesty being self-evident to him, became self“Church business.” We, his “Metropolitan’s Staff” only saw him evident for all those who encountered him. He did not need to in the Church and then, on Christmas and Easter, in his private defend his authority because it calmly and again in a self-evident quarters where he received what he called his “guard” and where way flowed from him. He did not need to look for an artificial we were overwhelmed in his kindness, delightful humor and hosfamiliarity with people because the majesty and the authority in pitality. On the one hand he held no “administrative” authority I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y C A R O L M O R R I S

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him were indeed the majesty and the authority of love.

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ious brands. It was noticeable how disturbed he was with any kind of insincerity, from an affected “spiritual” style, from precisely that pseudo-spirituality which frequently flourishes where there is no real spirituality. It is because he already chose “the better part” his relations with the world and with people were simple, almost joyful and clear. In one of my last meetings with him, when I came from America, he questioned me in some detail about the kinds of mushrooms that grow there and almost nothing about the Church life there. And yet, when I relayed the greetings from Metropolitan Leonty he, with that familiar and characteristic expression as if with a glance towards the heavens, crossed himself and quickly said: “Tell Vladyka that I always pray for him.” One could not doubt that this wasn’t just ordinary churchly rhetoric but a real and a profound truth, that he truly and always prays for him and only in this way, after all, did he understand “Church business.” As for the mushrooms, it was obvious that this was for him, a symbol of something familiar and close, something Divine, through which he could discern in his own heart what to him was that distant, great, unfamiliar “America.” This was his way of understanding it.

My Churchly “childhood” and that almost unparalleled understanding of the Church as paradise which was linked with that childhood, ended with Metropolitan Evlogy’s death. I was one of the first priests to be ordained by Metropolitan Vladimir after his selection as Exarch, in the Fall of 1946. These were difficult years, marked by jurisdictional arguments and all kinds of discords. One constantly had to choose, to defend, to vindicate. And here we were given a Bishop whose methods were radically different from those of the “Evlogian” times.

The quality one felt, most of all, in our new First Hierarch, was his detachment. I became close to him as editor of the Church Herald and saw him frequently.

The most surprising thing was his indifference to that which we call “Church business,” to the externally administrative matters of Church life. It would have been inconceivable to imagine for example, that Metropolitan Evlogy would assign to someone else the drafting of a letter or of an epistle to his flock. Vladyka Vladimir would hardly pay attention to what was Actually, Metropolitan suggested to him as the text. Having Vladimir came to light during Divine entrusted someone with the assignment Services. I am convinced that those who he wouldn’t be concerned with how his had at least one opportunity to serve with trust was carried out. “Thank you. God him at the Altar would never be able to forget Metropolitan Vladimir bless you. Excellent, excellent. Just what is it. The word “to serve” is somehow inadequate needed.” He was hospitable, gentle, attentive, here if by it one understands a carrying out of preresponsive. But, when one was in personal contact with scribed rites and gestures which have been carried out milhim there was a feeling that he was not quite here, that his inner lions of times. All this he did precisely and accurately but somegaze was for some time directed at something else. In contrast to how one never felt that these were routine. One was left with the the recent multiplicity in the Church of “maximalists” who would impression that all this was an unearthly lightness, an uninterfrighten us with the impending doom and “apostasies,” Vladyka rupted ascent, a spiritual radiance. Looking at his face, with its Vladimir never frightened anyone with anything, never called upward gaze and illuminated with an inner light, one could see anyone to any kind of “maximalism” and never would denounce that he was talking with someone very close to him. If in anyone. But he would literally and simply proclaim, with his Metropolitan Evlogy the Church was projected as a family, as the appearance and with all his being, “Don’t you see? Here it is, ‘the “flock,” in Metropolitan Vladimir it was offered to its source and better part’, the only thing which is important, desirable, interpurpose, to the “day without evening” of God’s Kingdom. esting and necessary.” He wasn’t comfortable with talk about “spiritual topics” so beloved by other lovers of “things spiritual.”

-4He did not like edifying sermonizing, criticism, and any kind of With all this behind me I arrived in America and reported to pseudo-spiritual “intimacies.” Once, when he was being driven my new First Hierarch. He had been elected Metropolitan just a back from some Church event, he became engrossed, with a year before my arrival and thus his thirteen years of service as childlike curiosity, about the production of cognac, wanting to Metropolitan took place before my eyes. But I am convinced that know how it was made and what was the difference between varmy first impression, correctly gave the sense of direction for the

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future. This was a summer weekday, shortly after the feast of the Trinity. When I arrived at the Cathedral there was a Liturgy at the side chapel. The Church was nearly empty and there were three singers on the kliros: a deacon, a psaltis and the Metropolitan. He was all in white, white riasa, white klobuk, with white hair and beard, very tall, standing straight as an arrow. He was singing the hymn to the Theotokos for Pentecost in his high, clear tenor. I can still hear that voice singing its arrangement by Turchaninov: “Rejoice O Queen! Glory of all mothers and virgins. . .” He remains in my memory just as he appeared to me on that day. This was not the angelic, incarnate spirituality of Metropolitan Vladimir, this was not the authoritative “fatherhood” of Metropolitan Evlogy. This was one more example and expression of the Church - perhaps at first, as a haven and consolation, as an aid in the challenge of patience, as a support in that voyage along “the sea of life, surging with the storm of temptation. . .”

Later I learned how many personal, familial and official difficulties were Vladyka Leonty’s lot, how many trials he had to experience in his life, and why in truth, the Church for him was his first source of consolation and help for bearing the cross of life.

One could feel all this, at that Liturgy in the empty Church, during that mystical feast which sanctified the mundane, even for a brief moment, “where there is neither sickness nor sorrow, nor sighing...”

-5Vladyka Leonty did not lead anyone, he did not build anything, as did Metropolitan Evlogy who, during the difficult years of the emigration created an exemplary diocese which was, so to speak, built upon him and which soon after his death began to move into its slow decline. Nor was he an ascetic or a mystic living in the vision of the Spirit, delighting in his conversation with God as Metropolitan Vladimir, He was very much down to earth, very simple, very much “day-to-day.” He stood in his place, which he did not seek and which he accepted as one more cross to bear with endless patience. He stood and blessed everyone and everything with his large, bony, warm hands, never waiting for great results, rejoicing in small things and was not saddened too much with failures. His somewhat sad but just a bit mischievous smile would say: “Why are you worried? God will do everything if it is necessary, and it doesn’t really depend on us too much.” He never insisted on anything, he never imposed anything. If he was invited somewhere, he would go. If he was not invited, he didn’t go nor did he ever look for invitations. If he went somewhere he would always bring a present: some small packet, a book or simply, a check. Money flowed through his hands and didn’t stick to them.

We can now recall, with shame for our Church, that he would help out poorly paid priests, widows and other clerics, from his own pocket.

In those times of petty self-aggrandizements and questionable “careers” he was humbly conscious that he was called to the white klobuk by the Revolution, the destruction and the instability of Church life and because of this he never pridefully extolled him-

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self. I have never met a person who was so unaffected by the temptation for power, with so little ability to “relish” the signs of homage which surrounded him. He felt that his task was first of all to “preserve and pass on.” He truly never thought about himself but only of the Church which God intrusted to him by placing him in the Metropolitan’s office. Someone must occupy that place and so, he stood there and persevered. He looked upon preservation almost in a quantitative sense: that nothing be destroyed, that if possible, everyone must be saved - both the weak and the strong, the good and the bad and the lost. The Lord will judge and sort things out: our task is to guard, to preserve, to bless, and to pray. Any sense of anger, righteous indignation and wrath was somehow atrophied in him. If something outrageous occurred, he was not outraged. He would sigh, cross himself and stop the discussion about it as not beneficial. If someone tried to fool him he would attempt not to notice. Yet he took childlike delight in anything positive. In contrast to many others he was overjoyed at the arrival of numerous clerics from Europe after the war: “Our regiment has been augmented - we will be stronger.”

He rejoiced with every new temple as a master rejoices with any increase in capital. As for losses - defections to other “jurisdictions,” ingratitude and even deaths - what is there to say, no household can live without losses. As many of the older priests, having seen everything in their lives, he was a minimalist towards others, but not towards himself. He neither expected nor demanded anything from them, nor did he judge or condemn: everything is God’s secret, only He sees and knows everything, he commanded us not to judge but to be patient and to love. All this was incomprehensible for the young and the impassioned and they would grumble about his tolerance, his responses to obvious distortions, his refusal to choose between the correct and the guilty, his failure to apply the “letter of the law”: “Vladyka, but this is against the Ustav, contrary to the Canons!” But he calmly stood on his own, firmly upholding the whole Metropolia under his prayerful gaze, without any illusions and constantly prayed to the Almighty that He would hold back “the ranks of those moving against us.” He did this with joy - as on that Summer morning in an empty Church where he was completely absorbed by Turchaninov’s “Rejoice O Queen. . .”

“Always a wise man, sometimes a dreamer.” In the depth of his soul he did live like a dreamer. One on one, in his study or over a cup of tea, when one could stop talking about mundane Church matters at least for a while, he would let himself bask in his dreams, sometimes utopian ones. He had his own special view of the world, his own themes. He wrote poems, maybe not very good ones, but at heart he was truly a poet. A poet is first of all, someone who sees the world “in a different way,” someone who has his own secret theme. Vladyka Leonty had such themes - he did not thrust them on anyone but always lived by them. Because of this, in spite of the endlessly difficult and in many respects tragic life, he never sank to the commonplace, never let it absorb him but lived and soared above it. Even though his poems were at times both naive and trite, it is worth noting in wonder that in the aridness of life he did not dissipate the ardor of his soul and, until

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his last days, looked upon God’s world with gratitude, with joy and tenderness, always trying to transform it according to his own secret melody.

-6I am sitting with him upstairs, on Second Street. We are drinking tea, discussing one thing or another. I rise to receive his blessing and be on my way. “What can I present you with?” “Vladyka, why talk about presents? This is neither Christmas nor Easter!” “No, I must give you something, please wait a bit. . .” He rises and goes into his bedroom, he brings out a somewhat old but a good leather attache case. “Here, you have to travel a lot, take it.” I lovingly treasure that case, with its gold initials, “M.L.” -7He would respond personally, in his minuscule script, to every greeting whether official or personal. He would enclose a check, to the Seminary or for “wine for the Seminary chapel.” He had this remarkable concern “over a little.” But it is only through such concern “over a little” that real, vital and unspoken love is projected. At the end of the Liturgy, as his vestments are being removed, he reaches into his pocket and brings out three silver fifty cent pieces. “Here, these are for your children.” - “Vladyka, my children are already grown, ready to be married off,” I try to protest. “Well, this will also come in handy for them.”

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ers and defenders of Russian Orthodoxy.

- 10 Great Lent, 1964. The special solemn service for all those persecuted for the Orthodox faith just ended at New York’s Greek Cathedral. At the end of the service Metropolitan Leonty approaches Archbishop Iakovos to thank him on behalf of the Metropolia. Something extraordinary takes place: the Greek Hierarch, in all his majesty, bows before the Elder in white, kisses his hand and says, “You have a great soul.”

- 11 As I end these brief notes, I remembered Metropolitan Leonty’s special love for the Prophet Ezekiel. Opening his book in the Bible at random, my eyes rested on this text: “He said to me: Mortal, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart and hear with your ears; then go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them. Say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God’; whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

(Ezekiel III:10-11) This article first appeared in, The Life and Works of Metropolitan Leonty, NY, 1969, pp. 227-234 (in Russian).❖

-8I once received a post card from Vladyka: “I am flying over Texas. I am reading Fr. Bulgakov’s Peter and John. I am praying for those who live in Texas.” This is him, in that little post card. It would have been interesting to find out how many people in that airplane are praying for those over whom they are flying.

-9I cannot overlook his special love for the theological school and especially for Church education. How he radiated, how he rejoiced when he blessed the Seminary’s new house in Crestwood.

Not a week would go by when he wouldn’t send books for the Seminary library or some kind of a proposal for the “Academic Corporation.” He taught Pastoral Theology for a number of years and when he could no longer come out himself, he would summon the whole class to the Cathedral. When he “Theologized” this was not some routine stereotype, quenching the spirit for the sake of the letter. He always wanted to complete his work on the Prophet Ezekiel and “submit it to the Seminary.” He regretted that his infirmities prevented him from teaching ancient Hebrew. Each time he received a copy of the Seminary’s “Quarterly” he would send back a note with thanks along with his subscription. He thus subscribed no less than four times a year. Himself a graduate of the Kiev Theological Academy he valued academic traditions and embodied them in himself. He defended the broad academic and intellectual horizons of the former Russian Church and respected creativity and the spiritual freedom of “the children of God” in contrast to that obscurantism so favored by those self-styled bear-

Metropolitan Leonty

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KEEPING TRADITION, DISCERNING TRADITIONALISM

By Deborah Malacky Belonick Because I am a female graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological seminary, people often ask me questions about “women’s issues” in regard to church order and custom. They range from the meaning of St. Paul’s passages regarding women to whether the Orthodox Church ought to revive the order of deaconesses. On the surface these questions focus on women’s ministry in the Church and a woman’s spiritual image. However, each singular query leads to a deeper, broader question that extends to any other concern the Church at-large faces. It is the question of how we as Orthodox Christians approach dilemmas and make decisions.

To answer this question, let us turn our attention to the New Testament, to the book of the Acts of the Apostles, which records the first Church council (Acts 15). Participants of this meeting debated whether or not Gentiles coming into the Church had to be circumcised according to the Law of Moses and how much of the Law Gentiles had to keep and bear. Obviously, that first meeting held a specific concern to male Gentiles; for although the Judaic Law held an aura of piety and holiness, circumcision certainly could not have been a pleasant prospect! Be that as it may, this first council also has much to teach us on the contemporary subject of how to approach women’s ministry in the Church. Let’s look at some of the aspects of that meeting which set the tone for future ecclesiastical proceedings.

First - we open a dilemma up for discussion. We are the Orthodox Church. We are the place of truth and knowledge and wisdom and healing. The Church never shirked a philosophical, cultural or religious debate. When the Apostle Paul and his coworker Barnabas were confronted with men from Judea who taught the brethren that, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” Scripture points out that Paul and Barnabas “had no small discussion and debate with them” (Acts 15:1-2). They didn’t excommunicate them and split into two sects. They didn’t drop the subject. It is to my chagrin and horror that there is a tendency now within the Church to be isolationist, to be counter-cultural to the point of being alien, to be despairing, to be fearful, and to be Pharisaic. I have heard some Orthodox Christians plead, “Don’t discuss women’s ministry in the Church; don’t attempt to clarify our views on the feminist movement; don’t even whisper that you want to discuss why the Orthodox Church maintains an all-male priesthood.” These remarks may come from bitter experience in former denominations, a fearful inner spirit, or lack of trust in God. The Church never had this attitude. She never “shushed” her children or shunned debate. “God has not given us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control” (2Tim 1:7).

People have seen demons wreck chaos in Christian denominations which seemed to start off innocently with the substitu-

tion of modern English for the King James Bible and ended up with lesbian priests. This domino effect so impressed them, they think the same will happen if we change “Thou” to “You” in the Orthodox church. But it will not. It will not, because we Orthodox Christians are not operating from a faulty theology and ecclesiasticism as are Christian denominations. Liberationist and Feminist theology in those churches was simply a continuum of what defective male theology, christology and sotierology had begun. When Jurgen Moltmann, a Lutheran theologian, wrote that sometimes the Father proceeded from the Spirit and the Son, and sometimes the Son proceeded from the Father and the Spirit, and sometimes the Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son, he set the stage for feminist theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson to “...conceive of the trinitarian persons in different patterns of relation...the three interweave each other in various patterns... of giving over and receiving back, being obedient and being 1 glorified.....” Moltmann’s theology gave Johnson license to then name the Holy Trinity as Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia and to suggest that the Trinitarian relations can be considered as analogous to the relationships of friend, sister, mother, and grandmother.2 But we Orthodox do not have Moltmann. We have Ss. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Damascus and Gregory of Palamas. If we do not delve into our own theology and address the depths of the meaning of person, the significance of gender, the charismata of the Holy Spirit working in the Body of Christ, and the ministerial and sacramental orders of the Church, we will be forced simply to react to either fundamentalist or liberal Western interpretations of those matters. If we do not debate and clarify, we will be driven to sectarianism, isolationism, rigidity. We will become a preservationist society of laws and customs, rather than people who cast fire upon the earth (Lk 12:49). We will be reduced to being keepers of traditionalism, rather than being bearers of the Tradition. We will starve ourselves and rob the world of reality, of what a Church looks like when women and men fed by the Holy Spirit acquire the likeness of God. Second - we bring the question to the Church hierarchy.

Scripture points out that “...Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question” (Acts 15:2). Professor John Romanides observes: “The basis of the apostolic tradition and succession was...the transmission of the tradition of healing, illumination and deification. The parish Council and provincial Council were organized to unite the true therapists, to exclude from the clergy the false prophets who pretended to have charismatic gifts, and to protect the flock from heretics.”3 We are not Congregationalists and isolated parishes whose theology sprouts from grassroots. A peevish contemporary phenomenon is individual Orthodox Christians, laity or clergy or monastic, severing

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themselves from any hierarchical tie and publishing material ex cathedra.

However, neither are we Papists. Note that the meeting in the Book of Acts ended with a decision that “... it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas...[with a message from] the brethren, both the apostles and the elders, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia....” (Acts 15:22-23).

The spiritual priesthood, or royal priesthood, is operative in the laity, according to Ss. John Chrysostom and Gregory of Sinai, and must not be ignored. Both women and men can be “true clergy,” serving an ongoing Liturgy in their hearts and being instruments of healing to all.4 Laity often provided inspiration from the Holy Spirit. St. Euphemia’s (†304) relics were used to discern the truth at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.5 St. Irene was the empress who called the Seventh Ecumenical Council in AD 787 to restore the proper place of icons in the Church.

This communication between hierarchy and laity is a link which must not be severed. In the early Church, the male deacons served as “the ear and mouth” of the bishop, an indispensable bond between hierarchy and laity.6 Since the first Church council, we have relied on the formula: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us...,” (Acts 15:28) meaning the assembly of the Church, hierarchy and laity together.

Third - we seek the evidence of the Holy Spirit and realize that God’s law of love and fulfillment supersedes laws and regulations.

The assembly kept silence while Barnabas and Paul “...related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles” (Acts 15:12). Simon Peter acknowledged that God had given the Gentiles the Holy Spirit without their keeping the Law of Moses, and asked, “...why do you make a trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10).

As Orthodox Christians we realize the canons are given to us, not to restrict us, but to guide us as disciplinary decrees regulating our institutional life. There are many ways in which they have been reinterpreted and sometimes misinterpreted throughout the centuries.7 As an example, take St. Olympias [A.D. 361 to A.D. 408] , a contemporary of St. John Chrysostom, who was ordained as a woman deacon before age 35 [A.D. 397].8 The age of admission to this ministry had been fixed by Tertullian at sixty years (De Vel. Virg. Cap. ix), and only changed to age forty by Canon IX of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451.9 It is clear that St. Olympia, perhaps because of her outstanding piety, was granted entry into the rank of deaconesses outside the traditional custom of the Church. Further, consider Canon XIV of the Quinisext Council in A.D. 692 which sets the minimum ages for ordination of a priest at thirty, of a deacon at twenty-five, and of

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a deaconess at forty.10 Many bishops today would be guilty of breaking this canon. However, as Orthodox, we practice economia,11 recognizing the freedom of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Fourth - we search the Scriptures. At this first council the Apostle James clarified the issue at hand by quoting from the books of Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. In interpreting Scripture we must be exact, above reproach, dependent on research and education, and prayerfully persevering.12 We cannot take a liberal or fundamentalist Western approach to passages. For example, let us examine the passage from Tim3:8-10 concerning the order of deacons: Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for gain; they must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then if they prove themselves blameless let them serve as deacons.

The women likewise must be serious, no slanderers, but temperate, faithful in all things. [emphasis mine] Do we know that many Greek scholars translate the word “women” in this passage, (sometimes rendered in English as “wives”) not as women but as women who are deacons or women deacons?13 Do we care? This passage and the passages concerning the submission of women and their silence in Church often are interpreted literally and glibly, without reference to the Greek text, the context in which the passage was written, the intent of the author, or clues of its meaning from lives of saints within the history of the Church.

In his homily on this text, even St. John Chrysostom noted: “Even so must the women be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.” Some have thought that this is said of women generally, but it is not so, for why should he introduce anything about women to interfere with his subject? He is speaking of those who hold the rank of Deaconesses (Homily XI on Timothy). [emphasis mine] Fifth, we rely on the witness and teaching of our holy Fathers and Mothers. At the first meeting regarding circumcision, the Apostle James relied on the teachings and writings of Moses (Acts15:21).

Just as with the canons and Scripture, however, one has to read the saints with a discerning mind. One has to an active listener, a hesychast, at least on the path to holiness, and one has to read more than one line or one page. On the subject of women, for example, the Fathers of the Church contradict themselves and each other at times. St. John Chrysostom commented on a passage from I Tim 2:15 as follows: St. Paul wishes the man to have preeminence in every way...For the women taught the man once and made him guilty of disobedience, and wrought our ruin. (Homily IX on I Timothy)

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In other places St. John gives high praise to women, as an example in his homily on the Myrrhbearers on Resurrection morning:

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Christians who regard the Jewish ceremonial law as still binding after Baptism.

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They had followed Him ministering to Him, and were present even through the time of the dangers...And these first see Jesus [at His resurrection]; and the sex that was most condemned [at the Fall], first enjoys the sight of the blessings, and most shows its courage ...Do you see their affection (philostorgian)? Do you see their magnanimity (megopsychian) in sharing their goods, even unto death?

Let us men imitate the women; let us not forsake Jesus in temptation.14 (Homily LXXXVIII on St. Matthew) CONCLUSION

The Church of the Ancient Councils, by Archbp. Peter L’Huillier (Crestwood, New York: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996). In this work His Eminence Archbishop Peter “...explains the sometimes ambiguous terminology of the original texts...explores the historical circumstances which gave rise to these canons in the first place...and he also indicates some of the ways in which they have been reinterpreted (and sometimes misinterpreted) in later centuries.” IX. 8

The Handmaiden, St. Olympia: Deaconess and Friend, by Collette D. Jonopoulos (Vol. II No.3/Summer, 1997) 28.

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Orthodoxy is not the preservation of rules and customs.

Orthodoxy is a belief in and personal relationship with the Triune God and a resulting approach to life on earth. Our ancestors approached difficult issues armed with listening hearts, discerning minds, applicability of ancient prophecies to present conditions, flexibility, and love. In any issue arising from within or without the Church body, may we have the grace and courage to do the same as we heed the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Matushka Deborah Malacky Belonick is a 1979 graduate of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. She is a clergy wife and mother of two sons.

This talk was originally given as part of a panel in Columbus, Ohio at St. Gregory of Nyssa Orthodox Church (OCA) on November 6, 1998.❖ FOOTNOTES 1

SHE WHO IS, by Elizabeth A. Johnson (New York: Crossroad, 1996) 195.

2

SHE WHO IS 243.

3

Romanaioi I Romioi Pateres tis Eklisias. Vol. 1, 28-29, in Greek.

4

Orthodox Psychotherapy, by Archim. Hierotheos S. Vlachos (Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery , 1994) 8891.

5

Tradition reports that the Fathers of the Church opened the tomb of St. Euphemia and placed in her uncorrupt hands two scrolls which outlined disparate positions concerning the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. They left the bier, and when they returned in the morning, the scroll proclaiming that Jesus Christ is perfect God and perfect Humanity in one Person was found in the hands of the saint, while the other lay at her feet.

6

Didascalia Apostolorum, 2,28,6. The Didascalia was written in Northern Syria in the first half of the third century; the author appears to be a physician converted from Judaism who is against

The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church: Their Canons and Dogmatic Decrees, by Henry R. Percival, M.A., D.D. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. and Henry Wace, D.D. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995) 41, 279.

10

Ibid, 372.

11

”According to Orthodox Canon Law, the term economia denotes a timely and logically defensible deviation from a canonically established rule for the sake of bringing salvation either within or outside the Church. But this deviation does not extend to the point where it could violate the dogmatic boundaries of the rule in question...economia should be decided upon only by the canonically instituted authority of the Church.” A Dictionary of Greek Orthodoxy, by Rev. Nicon D. Patrinacos (New York: Greek Archdiocese of North and South America Department of Religious Education, 1984) 131.

12

St. John of Damascene, in his work On Heresies lists as the 97th heretical group the Parermeneutae (‘Misinterpreters’) who “...suffer from a certain lack of education and judgment” in their interpretations of Scripture. St. John of Damascus trs. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press) 151.

13

The Ministry of Women in the Early Church, by Roger Gryson (Collegeville, MI: The Liturgical Press) 3-4,8. A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, by J.N.D. Kelly, D.D. (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers) 83-84.

14

Excerpted from Women and Men in the Early Church: the Full Views of St. John Chrysostom, David C. Ford (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press) 1996.❖

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ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY AND NATIONALITY

by Fr. Alexander Garklavs The Lord will judge between the nations, and decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2.4) This is a difficult topic! It is exceedingly complex and unpleasantly sensitive.

It is also extremely relevant. Religion and nationality can form a combustible mixture. There is a serious need for all Christians, and Orthodox Christians in particular, to consider this problem in an intelligent and spiritual manner.

The recent political developments in Eastern Europe, where religious and ethnic prejudices have erupted into bloody conflicts are of grave concern to all goodwilled people. The tragic events in Yugoslavia are horrible manifestations of inhuman evil and destructive political ambitions, in which all participating parties are guilty. In addition, for Orthodox Christians the Kosovo conflict brings out deep and conflicting emotions. Somewhat indifferent to the injustice going on in Kosovo before the bombing, we Orthodox became acutely concerned when NATO began its immoral military intervention.

The bombings in Yugoslavia escalated the violence against the Kosovars, killed innocent people and only increased the animosity between the opposing sides. We sympathize with our Serbian Orthodox kinsmen and mourn the loss of life and destruction of their country. We have no less sympathy for the sufferings of the Albanian Kosovars. It is only right and just to express mutual compassion.

Curiously, in so doing an inner, anxious feeling arises. Are Orthodox Christian attitudes somehow responsible for the atrocities committed in Kosovo? Is there something in our way of thinking that made this conflict inevitable? These are not just theoretical questions. In fact, the

questions became accusations from some commentators. What is our response?

The problem of religion and nationality, as it relates to other religions and nationalities, is universal (for example, Israel, Northern Ireland, etc.) It is a complicated dilemma for Orthodox Christians because religion, culture, social and political life have been so intertwined in native Orthodox nations. There are many examples of how Orthodoxy and nationality have come together. We venerate a number of patriot-saints, who have been canonized because of their military valor and nationalistic victories. In the history of Russia and the Balkans, the Orthodox Church was directly involved in wars of liberation and territorial security. We are familiar with the classic slogans such as “Czar, People, Orthodoxy,” or “Holy Russia,” or “the sacred ground of Kossovo,” etc. There is a sense in native Orthodox lands that the nation and the Orthodox Church are one and the same.

However, Orthodox Tradition also has an opposite view, that Christianity and nationality are distinct areas. We venerate saints who were pacifists or non-violent passion-bearers. We believe that Jesus Christ came to save the entire world and we pray that this may be accomplished.

We encourage and promote missionary activity, which, when successful, implants an Orthodox witness in a nation that could even be at war with the Orthodox land (for example, Japan during the Russo-Japanese war). While the Church’s role has contributed to nationalistic pride, the alliance of religion and state has also had shortcomings. We know all to well how a “Holy Russia” or “the sacred ground of Kossovo” become, almost overnight, a “Militantly Atheistic Russia” or a “living hell of Kosovo.” There have always been strong sentiments in Orthodox Christianity that decry the Church’s role in national and political concerns.

This apparent dichotomy, in fact, represents the wide range of Christian tradition. Without getting into the particular differences implied in “nationality” (a cultural community, an ethnic group, a political state, a geographic territory, etc.), we would like to briefly look at the history of the current attitudes of Orthodox Christians in regard to the idea of nationality (as a particular people in a country or countries).

The concept of nationality, as a people comprising a nation, that is a sovereign state with a common cultural and linguistic base, and with recognizable territorial borders, has existed for only several hundred years. In the Old Testament, the idea of nationality was connected to a particular tribal or ethnic group, which may or may not possess a particular home land.

The idea of the Jews as people “chosen by God” certainly meant nationality.

Furthermore, it was an idea that had a divine sanction, which gave nationality a sense of moral authority and psychological power.

However, that a nationality would possess its own land was far from self-evident. Throughout the history of the Old Testament the Jews would achieve territorial independence only briefly. Their nationality was always subject to other, stronger and hence politically superior nationalities. By the time of the Incarnation of Our Lord, the Jews were as “nationalistic” as any people on earth, meaning that they had a common culture, history, language, etc. Yet they possessed no autonomous homeland and were in an adversarial relationship with their Roman overlords. Their attitude to nationality could be summarized as this: God had set the Jews apart for a special purpose, they had a distinct sense of their nationality which is to be tenaciously preserved and, at the same time, they were often in opposition to the political-geographic nation in which they lived.

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We find a different approach in the New Testament. Jesus Christ, in the few instances where he revealed any political thinking, indicated support for the existing political state (“give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” - Mt. 22:21). The apostles would basically restate this ideology (“Fear God. Honor the emperor” - 1Pet. 2.17).

At that same time, Jesus and His followers proclaimed the transitory nature of the earthly empires and emphasized another, permanent homeland, the Kingdom of God. “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13.14). As it developed in the early Church, the idea of nationality was important but relative. One’s nationality, culture, language, history, are to be observed and honored, but they are surpassed in value and importance by spiritual concerns. “They are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2.17). There are absolutely no nationalistic restrictions in Christianity, there is “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ (Gal. 3.28). The apostles took their preaching “to the ends of the earth” not excluding any nationality, and the Church continues to do the same.

Orthodox dogmas and teachings, have consistently proclaimed the New Testament vision. This is part of our faith: we are to be courteous, decent, honest, law-abiding citizens of the land in which we live, unless the laws of that land directly contradict or threaten our existence as Orthodox Christians, and in which case, we are to take appropriate, non-violent, non-destructive measures to try to correct such laws, or give up our lives if necessary.

At the same time, we believe that all lands, countries and nationalities are temporary and perishable realities which are subsumed by the reality of the Kingdom of God, of which we have a preview in the catholic and ecumenical (supra-national and universal) Church, and of which we become eternal members through the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

However, a different attitude also appeared in Christian tradition. The “new

Israel” adopts some of the thinking of the “old Israel” and the notions of “holy nation” and “holy nationality” begin to coincide with the “Kingdom of God.” Christians, mindful of their heavenly and spiritual objectives, nevertheless become concerned about “holy” places, divinelyappointed rulers, a Christian empire, etc.

These attitudes come into existence with the imperial recognition of Christianity in the fourth century, grew during the Middle Ages, and became an unquestionable part of Christianity. So we see the emergence of a variety of “holy” nationalities with their respective territories and the resulting conflicts with other such entities (for example, the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Crusades, the holy defense of Russia from the Teutonic knights and the Tatars, the religious war of the Reformation, the holy wars of liberation in the Balkans in the nineteenth centuries, etc.). What is important for us today is to realize that the development of this religious-political thinking takes place with participation and even input of the Christian Church, both East and West.

The sacredness of place, land, rulers, people, political ideologies comes to exercise a dominating influence in the course of the growth of nations. The Orthodox Church, no less than the Western Churches, becomes identified with given nations in a symbiotic, quasi-mystical union (recall the “two-headed eagle”). We could say that the religious-nationalistic element has been a more powerful political force during this past millennium than economic or social inequality.

There is a truth in this that we need to recognize, even if some of the historical events have been questionable or unfortunate. Nationality, culture, language, customs, etc., are all valuable components of humanity. A spiritual dimension exists in these components. Nationality consists of shared patterns of behavior including those connected to religious belief, all of which constitute a human community. A person’s spirituality and psychology necessarily are formed and nurtured within such communities. One’s religious life cannot exist outside of such structures and

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that is why the Church instinctively allied itself with political systems, culture and ethnic customs. The concepts of “Godloving people,” or a “divinely-consecrated emperor,” or a “holy fatherland” are noble expression of the highest order. A spiritually sound and healthy relationship between a person and his nationality is a necessary condition of a good and normal life. As the philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev said, “One cannot love mankind unless one loves his nationality first.”

Troubles arose when these noble qualities masked greed, ambition, lust and even madness. Because Christianity and nationality became so closely connected, clever and corrupt leaders could manipulate people to undertake dubious projects under the guise of high-sounding moral principles. An amoral, agnostic, vain but talented politician can always drum up support for a cause by appealing to “God, shed-blood of ancestors, holy motherland or fatherland.” Young men who go to battle and die because “God is on our side” would be less enthusiastic if they were also told that “God is on the other side” as well. How truly tragic then that decent Serbian Orthodox soldiers, God-fearing Kosovars, and loyal American airmen all prayed to God, for the same thing, as they encountered each other in the conflict.

We cannot deny that among Orthodox Christian people there are strong nationalistic feelings. Often this nationalism is a blind worm-hole leading to folly, fanaticism or destruction.

Orthodox Christians, like Christians in general, need to remember the Gospelinspired attitudes of the early Church regarding kingdoms of this world and the “Kingdom not of this world”; there is simply no other pattern for a life that is honest, good and pure. But the real problem is not nationalism or lack of it (this latter can also be a demonic delusion, as we saw among the artificial Communist regimes).

The problem is that the die-hard nationalists are simply not Orthodox Christians, or they are so in name only. No sincere Orthodox Christian, who prays daily, reads the Bible, participates in the

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Sacraments of the Church, learns about the Church and the spiritual tradition, would ever dream of committing genocide, murder, cruelty or injustice. The curse of nominalism, that is being something half-heartedly or in name only, has made it possible for “Orthodox” people to appear to be endorsing and committing horrible acts.

When considered in a true Christian sense, a nationality can never be offensive to another nationality. Rather, a Christian nation appreciates and learns from other nationalities. The Orthodox Church possesses an inherent capacity for adapting customs of a particular nationality into the texture of its religious life. This is, in fact, a profound example of social impartiality.

The Church is always open to engage a surrounding nationality and assimilate whatever is beneficial spiritually.

Today, as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place, the openness should extend to non-Christian nationalities as well. With Christ in our hearts and goodwill on our minds, there is nothing to fear in encountering non-Christians and finding positive aspects in their cultures.

“Christ, in his humble condescension, is hidden throughout all mankind”

(Metropolitan Georges [Khodre]). All Christians are to manifest that receptive nature; it is a mark of spiritual maturity. If the passing millennium was an era of religious-nationalistic hostility, could we possibly hope that the next one will be a time for nationalities to come to a respectful appreciation for each other? What an incredible witness it would be if Orthodox nationalities would assert the Gospelbased, charitable and prudent attitudes towards other members of the human race!

The present crisis in Yugoslavia is not due to anything that is properly speaking Orthodox Christianity. It is due, in part, to sinful actions of some people who pretend that they are Orthodox. It has been inspiring to see that the Serbian Orthodox Church’s opposition to their regime’s policies have finally been publicized. For Orthodox Christians throughout the world, prayer and charitable help are the order of the day. The cessation of the bombing only means that the difficult work of reconciliation and rebuilding has begun, and it will take years. Our constant hope must be that charity, patience and wisdom will prevail and that all involved will find the common ground of peace.

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The crisis in Yugoslavia should also alert us to the dangers of careless and illwilled manipulation of religion and nationality. Orthodox nations have been susceptible to these dangerous movements in the past. The end result of such movements has always been destructive for people and harmful for the Church. For the Orthodox Church in America ethnic plurality has become rather common, but we need to be conscious of the essential principle at state. Nationality and culture cannot be dismissed or ignored. They need to be accepted in the context of Christian values. “The Church can express herself only in those cultures which accept Christ as the ultimate criterion of what is just and good. It rejects divisiveness and tribal warfare” (Fr. John Meyendorff).

As long as the world remains there will be nationalities. The Church too will exist until the end of time. Orthodox Christianity can provide humanity with that most important of keys, an understanding about the way of the spirit in the life of man. Religion and nationality, when existing in a mutually productive relationship, are the foundation of humanity’s fulfilling and meaningful existence.❖

New Jersey Deanery Pre-Lenten Gathering

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SURFING THE WAVES OF IMMIGRATION

by Fr. Michael A. Meerson A new wave of immigrants from former Communist countries is coming to the US, and many of them identify themselves as Orthodox Christians. We as the Orthodox Church in America have our pastoral obligation toward them. As an American church that numbers more than two hundred years on American soil but still has Slavs and their descendants as its main body of the faithful, the OCA seems to be the perfect place for new Orthodox immigrants. But who are they?

In this brief article I will try to picture their profile, based on my own pastoral experience of serving in the same OCA parish for 21 years. In 1999 our Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in Manhattan celebrates its 75th anniversary, and throughout its history it has ministered to Russian immigrants. Fifteen years ago three generations of Russians worshiped in this parish together.

Some were old people who remembered the Russian Revolution, fought in the Civil War, emigrated, and then spend most of their lives in exile, as they called it, in Europe and the US. For them this parish remained the only spot in New York City that reminded them of their old Russia with the Tsar, the state supported Orthodoxy, and pale shadows of their privileges in what they still imagined as a stable empire. Some were the representatives of the so-called Second Wave of Emigration. They survived the Communist and militantly atheistic Russia of the ‘20s and ‘30s, the Second World War, Stalin’s Gulag and Hitler’s war prisoner camps. Of course, they were content with America as a haven of security and freedom, a big contrast to everything that they had managed to escape and survive. Yet in their religious life, they retained the self-awareness of a closed ethnic community; they did not feel compelled to witness their faith to or amidst Americans.

Few went to the OCA. Mainly, they were attracted to the Russian Church Abroad (the Synod) which appealed to them because of its ethnocentrism and militant anti-Soviet political stance.

The so called Third Wave came by way of the Jewish emigration. It brought to the American shore a totally secularized generation without a shade of religious upbringing. But in its midst there were some Orthodox Christians who were inspired by the idealism of the Russian underground religious revival of the ‘70s and ‘80s, with its vision of a free, missionary and dynamic Orthodox church, the closest approximation to which they found in the OCA. Now, there is what one might call the Fourth Wave which has flooded the US after the collapse of the Communist block. This wave differs from all previous waves in that these immigrants do not experience any irreversible separation from their motherland.

Most of them are educated, and many are professionals who have found good paying jobs in the US. They also emerge from a society with the uninhibited communication of the Internet age. On some level, their “americanization” had begun long before they came here. At least superficially, the post-Communist Russia has

adopted the American way of life with its promise of personal happiness, independence and self-reliability. In reality, many “new Russians,” like other immigrants to the US, are coming here to escape the economic disaster and political disintegration in their own countries, or as minorities whose rights are curtailed.

Immigration to the US allows them to realize the “American” promise that remains unfulfilled in their home countries. But the door back home stays open. New immigrants can and do return to their native countries. As soon as they are settled in the US and achieve some financial stability, they go back to their homelands for vacations taking their children back to their grandparents and friends. If they “make it” in America, they often return home as American business representatives and partners in joint ventures, or they move in with American firms that do business with their home countries.

Because of this cultural mobility, new immigrants, in many cases, do not shy away from the use of English in the church. They do not see liturgy in English as the betrayal of their deepest religious identity; they may even welcome it as a sign of deeper integration into American life. Their willingness to be swiftly assimilated does not imply, however, that they abandon their own cultural and ethnic background. On the contrary, since the fall of the red border, Russian cultural life has flourished in the US as it had never before. Numerous Russian papers, channels on TV and Radio, food and bookstores, and restaurants witness that Russians have become a successful ethnic community in the US. No longer a community of political emigres, it is now connected with the Russian metropolis and is appreciated by it. Recent events and receptions in the Russian Embassy in Washington —the largest of them dedicated to Pushkin’s bicentennial—where various generations of immigrants have mingled and cooperated with the Embassy staff, diplomats, visitors, and businessmen from Russia have given one the impression that Russia’s establishment now openly values the Russian emigre community in the US, seeking further cooperation with it.

In spite of the growing sense of Russian Orthodox identity, this community, however, does not have a church of its own; it is not represented religiously. To be sure, Russian immigrants are of diverse background. A large part of the Russian-speaking community has a Jewish background and draws its support from the American Jewish Community, although many former Soviet Jews do not necessarily identify with it religiously.

The growing majority of Russian immigrants who do identify themselves with Russian Orthodoxy find themselves divided among three church jurisdictions. Yet none of these three gives this Fourth Wave community enough support. Many immigrants first turn to the Synod, the church they heard about still in their home-country as the “Free Russian Church Abroad.” They find there familiar features: parishioners speak Russian; the services are

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in Slavonic; there is traditional spirituality, ethnic food and Russian Sunday schools for their children. But soon they begin to feel uncomfortable. Eventually they encounter an outdated political philosophy, a heavily mythologized representation of their home country, and the sectarian attitude that separates the Synod and themselves from their mother church and from other Orthodox churches. They also encounter a religious narrowness and cultural backwardness or indifference. These are expressed in fear and hatred toward anything which is not “Russian Orthodox” according to the Synodal Church’s definition —often arbitrary— and in its total insensitivity, both deliberate and involuntary, to the secular background in which these new comers were raised.

The Synodal Church also expects them to conform to a rather idiosyncratic, heavily mythologized pattern of cultural behavior that is at best alien to them, and at worst connotes to them the coy and vulgar exoticism of an emigre made-up Russia. In short, Russian immigrants may enter the Synodal Church, and even enjoy it for a while. Eventually, however, they often find it too narrow and restrictive for their spiritual growth and too antiAmerican for their practical goals. Further, the separation between these goals and their spiritual lives often —quite naturally—tears them apart. In and of itself, this separation is dualistic and cannot therefore produce a healthy spiritual climate.

The churches of the Moscow Patriarchate are few. Also, despite some signs of reform, they still function in the old country way. They cannot help immigrants much in their struggle for survival on American soil.

The OCA is eventually the most relevant choice, and yet new Russian immigrants know little about it. When they visit an OCA church, the only familiar features are icons. The rest - the pews, the English language, and American flag - remind them of all other American churches, foreign and uninviting. This impression can and must be corrected. Like all people, these Russians will feel at home, if they will feel welcome. Some presence of Russian language, books and pamphlets, bilingual prayer and liturgy books, some church ushers who would speak Russian and welcome them, some advertised programs for newly arrived immigrants - like English lessons, for example - can make a dramatic difference. Some expression of concern about, and understanding of, immigrants’ problems and fears, as well as right counseling, can turn an alien into a friend. As a rule, those who are invited and feel welcome, eventually find out that OCA is the right place for them. That happened to me, as well as to many others.

Twenty five years ago Fr. Alexander Schmemann made me feel at home at St. Vladimir’s seminary, and since then the OCA has been my ecclesiastical home in all respects. I am convinced that the OCA can become home for this coming wave of Russian Orthodox immigrants. Orthodox and American at the same time, remaining faithful to the Russian spiritual and liturgical tradition and Slavic customs, the OCA nonetheless addresses the American secular society, trying to preach, teach, and worship in the language of this society. This helps “the Forth Wave” to unify and correlate their daily life with their faith, when they are both in

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Russia and abroad. Since English has now become the common language of contemporary civilization, it is extensively used in Russia today. Admittedly, the OCA may not necessarily condone the contemporary culture of consumerism; it also criticizes its values when they become blatantly anti-Christian, and even pagan.

Yet our Church does not fear this culture, knowing how to speak its language and being fully aware of the importance of being in the world yet not of the world. This awareness is particularly necessary today - as necessary for the “Fourth Wave Russians” as it is for Orthodox Americans. After all, this awareness presents the only way to avoid double standards, to correlate the terms of one’s daily life with one’s spiritual life in the Church. In short, OCA is a free church; and its institutions and structure reflect this freedom.

It is therefore our imperative pastoral task to help these new comers to recognize this freedom and learn how to live with it.

The immigrants of the Fourth Wave are not spoiled or overdemanding, but they come from a different background. They often have no basic rights in this society. They find themselves in a disadvantaged position, and they naturally expect that the church they join will help them. In order to help them, one does not necessarily need to be fluent in Russian, though it definitely helps, but one has to understand the bitter lot of being “an alien.”

One needs to have a pastoral - i.e., to be patient and forgiving attitude and a charitable disposition. These two traits are what the Gospel requires of us anyway. These are enough to host these people in our congregations and to eventually transform them into full-fledged communicants and stewards of our Orthodox church in America.❖

DIOCESAN WEBPAGE Check out our new site at: jacwell.org Our webpage will highlight our current issue of Jacob’s Well, as well as an archive of past issues and articles.

A particular feature will be a Diocesan Calendar which will be updated regularly. Information can be sent to: calendar@jacwell.org Subscription questions to: subscription@jacwell.org Article submissions: editor@jacwell.org

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NOTED JOURNALIST SPEAKS OF GREAT CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE ORTHODOX FAITH

by Lisa C. DeLuca Presbytera Frederica Mathewes-Green, nationally-known author, public radio commentator and Orthodox convert spoke at The Orthodox Church of St. John the Theologian’s annual retreat this past March. Sixty Orthodox, non-Orthodox and several Protestant clergymen filled the little OCA mission church in Shirley, Long Island, New York to hear two talks by Mrs. Mathewes-Green. The first was the moving and at times aweinspiring account of Mrs. Mathewes-Green’s religious journey and her family’s conversion to the Orthodox from the Episcopal faith six years ago. In her second talk, titled Sharing Your Faith in a Postmodern Age, Mrs. Mathewes-Green pinpointed the unique opportunities Orthodox Christians now have to make a positive impact on today’s world.

While this mindset presents obstacles for a faith which Father Jonathan describes as the “diametrical opposite of postmodernist relativism,” Mrs. Mathewes-Green pointed out that, ironically, “It gives us the first opportunity we’ve had in hundreds of years to be open about sharing the faith because now it’s legitimate to talk about spirituality.”

Mrs. Mathewes-Green explained that in the prior “modern” age, the belief in absolutes went too far because people looked to science and logic to explain everything. That which could not be scientifically proven, she said, - including the existence of God was dismissed as a “childish fairy tale.” She said the religious were seen as at best, wishful thinkers and at worst, under-educated, weak and immature.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green began by humbly volunteering that she is not an expert on the Orthodox faith. She said, “It does surprise me sometimes why people want to hear from me... because I’m still so new to [Orthodoxy.]” She likened her role to that of a new baby in a household, seeing things for the first time. “We converts in the church are babies, we don’t have wisdom...perhaps that’s our role...to help you see with fresh eyes how wonderful this is - how beautiful this is.”

Nationally known author and columnist Presbytera Frederica Mathewes-Green (in

Today’s culture’s distaste for the idea of absolute truth, Mrs. Mathewes-Green explained, has brought with it a reluctance to dismiss other people’s experiences as invalid. There is also a growing interest in things invisible and incomprehensible. Eastern religions and mysticism are particularly popular today, she said, two factors which make Orthodoxy appealing to many of today’s seekers.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green has personally experienced this increased interest in spirituality in general and Orthodoxy in particular in her professional life. She noted that in the past, secular bookstores would not carry her books on topics like abortion if they had the word “God” in them unless they were placed in the devotional section. “Now, it’s completely reversed,” she stated. “There is suddenly increased interest in religion...in the mainstream. [Authors] can actually talk about Jesus in public and get away with it. This wasn’t true 8 years ago.”

front with black sweater) spoke at St. John the Theologian’s annual retreat. She is pictured here with members of the church’s Sisterhood that sponsored the retreat.

Father Jonathan Ivanoff, rector of St. John’s adds, “Mrs. MathewesGreen is a journalist and commentator accomplished in her own right, who made a purposeful choice to become Orthodox. It is important for us to learn why Americans like her choose Orthodoxy. It gives us insight into the culture and the void there that the Orthodox faith fills.”

Mrs. Mathewes-Green discussed current American culture and the opportunities and challenges it poses for spreading the Orthodox faith. She explained that the “postmodernist” thinking which permeates today’s culture is characterized by a loathing to accept the existence of absolute truth, absolute morality, or even absolute reality. “It’s a scary time,” she stated.

Radio producers are also aware of this trend. Mrs. MathewesGreen explained, “After I’d been writing commentary for National Public Radio for a couple of years [on a number of different topics] they asked me to [now write exclusively] about my faith.”

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These factors today present the faithful with a tremendous opportunity stated Ms. Mathewes-Green, because the result is that more seekers than ever before are finding their way to the doorstep of the neighborhood Orthodox church. But Mrs. Mathewes-Green warned that while postmodern Catechumens may show a great enthusiasm for the faith on the surface, underneath the veneer a self-centered theology may be present. The challenge facing the Church, she said, will be to temper the desire for growth and deny Chrismation to those who are not ready because such theological mistakes, she said, can undermine a parish.

Specifically, Mrs. Mathewes-Green noted that postmodern Catechumens who are loathe to believe in absolutes may hold that “Jesus is just one path to God among many,” and that “Any faith is as good as any other faith.” In addition, they are not likely to subscribe to the idea of sin or that the faith should make demands on them.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green believes this self-centered approach to religion “has been greatly facilitated by the nearly universal experience of watching television.” Television advertising, she said, reinforces in a person’s mind his “role as an inert consumer, one who doesn’t produce anything and doesn’t act, but rather acquires things which promise to please or to fulfill [him.] It’s a dispiriting and enervating role resulting in quiet depression and futility.”

“With postmodernism the individual consumer is all there is and his pleasure is all that matters,” Mrs. Mathewes-Green stated.

This mind-set is widely acknowledged, in fact many in the Charismatic movement, she reported, are catering to this weakness by providing “seeker-friendly” religion which fills the “customer’s” desire to be pleased and entertained. Some ministries have gone so far as to serve coffee and donuts during worship and have turned services into staged entertainment.

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is a lot of insecurity out there. Our ability to be unwavering in the truth but to deliver the solid foundation of Orthodoxy with patience and love is truly our strength. Patience and love are key.”

Mrs. Mathewes-Green pointed out, “Remember in the early church that people who came in converting from paganism went through a process of Catechesis that lasted for years. [Today’s] newcomers may well be coming from a pagan culture and it may take them years to fully [embrace the faith.]”

Mrs. Mathewes-Green pointed out that in addition to the Priest, the lay person is called to play a significant role in spreading the faith. “We’re supposed to tell our friends and neighbors about this,” she said. She provides empowering biblical rationale, from 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is within you;” and from Acts 1:8, “You shall be my witnesses.” A witness, she explained as in a courtroom, does not draw conclusions for other people’s lives but rather reports on what he or she has seen.

Witnesses tell their personal stories.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green believes that today’s culture presents the faithful with an excellent opportunity to fulfill their roles as witnesses, because the postmodernist is particularly receptive to personal stories. For better or for worse, she said, people seem to rely primarily on personal stories to make decisions.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green encouraged those in attendance to think about the story of their own faith, about a time when Jesus made a difference in their lives. Anticipating some people’s selfconscious doubts about what an ordinary person has to offer, she explained that the more ordinary your story is, the more people will be able to relate to it.

Self-centered attitudes on the part of postmodern Catechumens and their resulting theological mistakes may be surprisingly difficult to detect, Mrs. Mathewes-Green warned.

Today’s Catechumens might enthusiastically engage in demanding spiritual disciplines like fasting, enjoy mysticism, and contribute generously of their time and money. They may use the same language as the Priest in discussing the faith, she said, though underneath they may mean different things.

But, she said, your story must be passionate and alive if it is to be believed. “Is your faith on fire?” she asked. If it is not, she said, it will not “catch.” If the fire is burning low reconnect, she advised, through the prescribed Orthodox spiritual disciplines and increased prayer, faith and almsgiving. She encouraged the crowd, “Christianity is not just a philosophy or a theory, it’s worked out in individual lives. Jesus died to bring us back into union with God and that’s the whole purpose of your life...getting closer to God, restoring that union. If you don’t accept that goal you’re rejecting this gift.”

The burden for determining this, Mrs. Mathewes-Green stated, falls squarely on the shoulders of the parish Priest. Mrs. Mathewes-Green believes the Priest must ask pointed questions like, “Tell me what you think it means when the church says that we are sinners, and that Jesus’ death saves us?” to determine whether the Catechumen is ready for Chrismation.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green does not recommend that lay people cater to the self-centeredness inherent in the postmodern thought process of those who may be listening to their stories. She encouraged, “Do not trim the edges of your faith to make it more palatable. That would fill the church with Christian babies, not Christian soldiers.”

Father Jonathan agrees that the role of the Parish Priest is key.

“We must teach uncompromisingly the apostolic teachings of our church but with love and patience.” He believes that in this world of uncertainty, “People are searching for unchanging institutions but there is a great fear of being judged and of being wrong. There

Mrs. Mathewes-Green’s talk struck a chord with the audience and left people feeling hopeful, feeling strong in their faith, and feeling challenged, as Orthodox Christians to fulfill their mission in the world.

Father Jonathan affirms that the Orthodox faith has some-

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thing crucial to offer people today. He stated, “The Orthodox faith has 2,000 years of history confronting heresy and triumphing over it. I believe we, as Orthodox, must engage in the public discourse and offer the teachings of our church in response to the errors in thinking which lead to sin and suffering in our world today.”

He also added, “We are grateful to Mrs. MathewesGreen for sharing her ideas with our parish and for using her gifts and talents to address issues relevant to all Orthodox Christians.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green is a syndicated columnist and can be heard on National Public Radio. She is the author of several books including Facing East, which is the story of her conversion to the Orthodox faith. Her new book published by Putnam books, At the Corner of East and Now, will be in bookstores September 13, 1999. Ms. MathewesGreen’s husband, Father Gregory Mathewes-Green pastors Holy Cross Orthodox Mission in Baltimore.❖

The church school children from SS Peter and Paul Church, Bayonne, NJ in conjunction with the Bayonne Chapter of the Fellowship of Orthodox Christians in American (FOCA) collected funds to supply 15,000 Christmas stockings for children in Russia.

LENTEN AND PASCHAL EFFORTS AT ST. GREGORY PALAMAS CHURCH

by Camille Waser The church school children of St. Gregory Palamas Orthodox Church, Flemington, NJ assembled their own Holy Icon stands in preparation for the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The church school assembled the miniature icon stands as a Lenten project. then the children held a procession around the church, holding icons of their patron saints.

The individual icon stand kits were prepared by Mr. Ed Bendekgey, a member of an Antiochian parish in Akron, Ohio.

Mr. Bendekgey applied his gift of carpentry as a ministry to others by pre-cutting and pre-making the wooden pieces to the icon stand kit.

The children also gathered on Pascha Sunday to celebrate the Paschal Vespers Service. The children had an opportunity to hear members of the parish chant the Holy Gospel reading in numerous languages including English,French, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and Greek.

Afterwards the parish children celebrated with the traditional Easter egg hunt.

Each family contributed some decorated eggs and the Youth Group members hid the eggs immediately following the service.

Not even the dreary weather impeded the excitement and anticipation for the egg hunt which was felt by all. As the children gathered around Fr. David Brum for the photo, they all smiled “Pascha” for the camera. Fr. David reminded our little ones it was “Pascha”, not “Pasta”! The kids got it right the second time!”❖

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ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH OF SPRING VALLEY, NY CELEBRATES 85TH ANNIVERSARY On Sunday, May 16, 1999 the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist (OCA), Spring Valley, New York observed its 85th anniversary. The parish was first organized on April 30, 1914 by 42 people with the blessing of Most Rev. Archbishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of North America. On June 1, 1914 the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated by Rev. Benjamin Basalyga (later, Archbishop of Pittsburgh) on the site of the future church, located at the intersection of Church and West Streets in Spring Valley, New York. A year later, on July 5, 1915 the new church was consecrated by Fr. Benjamin, who remained in the charge of the parish until 1916. Fr. Benjamin and the next three priests who followed him did not actually reside at the parish rectory, but rather commuted from St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City in order to celebrate Sunday Liturgy. Hence, it was not until 1923 that the parish finally obtained its first resident priest, Rev. Joseph Havriliak. Fr. Joseph was transferred to SS. Peter & Paul Cathedral in Passaic, New Jersey in 1926 and was succeeded by Rev. Gregory Stefchak, who served the parish until 1931.

In 1933, after being without a resident pastor for almost two years, Rev. John Havriliak (Fr. Joseph’s brother) became pastor, and remained for forty years! During Fr. John’s pastorate, the Sisterhood of St. Ann was organized in 1935, the mortgage was fully amortized in 1943, an FROC chapter was founded in 1950, the church was enlarged to its present size in 1951, the Parish Choir was organized in 1953 (previously the entire congregation sang the Liturgy in Carpatho- Russian plainchant), a new iconostasis designed by Roman Verhovskoy was installed in 1955, and a new altar table containing the relics of St. Barbara was installed and consecrated in 1957, with Archbishop Benjamin of Pittsburgh officiating at the consecration. During its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, when the parish reached its peak in membership of 150 adults and about 60 children, the Parish Choir reached a level of proficiency to record a total of six albums in Church music and Russian folk music. After Fr. John Havriliak retired in 1973, the parish was served by Rev. Michael Dudas (1973-76), Very Rev. Joseph Kreshik (1976-88), Rev. Yakov Ryklin (1988-91), Rev. Alexander Tandilashvili (1991-97), and Rev. Sophrony Royer (since 1997). The parish is approximately the same size today as when it was first founded in 1914, but the membership is much more ethnically diverse, including people of Albanian, Belorussian, Carpatho-Russian, Czech, Danish, Georgian, Greek, Russian, Slovak, and Ukrainian ancestry.

Sunday Liturgy is celebrated mostly in English (with minimal Slavonic) and, as of May 1999, according to the Revised Julian calendar.

The anniversary celebration commenced with the celebration of Pontifical Divine Liturgy at 10:00 am. His Eminence, Most Rev. Archbishop Peter of New York & New Jersey officiated, with the parish’s rector, Rev. Sophrony Royer, and Deacon Boris Slootsky assisting. St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Choir, under the direction of Mr. John Paluch, sang the Liturgy

responses, and the parish’s choir director, Mr. Ludwig A. Djaparidze, was tonsured to the rank of reader by Archbishop Peter.

After church services, a Grand Banquet was held at The Mansion in Pearl River, New York, attended by 125 people.

Among the guests was Rev. Alexander Tandilashvili, a former pastor of the parish.

During his introduction of the clergy and guests, Fr. Sophrony noted that in addition to Spring Valley parishRev. Sophrony Royer ioners that there were people present from the Pearl River, Yonkers, Wappingers Falls, Saddle Brook, Clifton, Newark, Randolph, Passaic (Patriarchal), and Bergenfield (Antiochian) parishes.

In his address at the banquet, Archbishop Peter lauded the past achievements of the founders of the parish, noting the great difficulty of organizing a new parish during the First World War. But he also stressed the importance of looking forward to the future—of all the gook work in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ that can still be done. The parish starosta, Mr. William A. Arthur, then spoke a few words of welcome to the archbishop and all of the assembled clergy and people. In his own address, Fr. Sophrony outlined the history of parish, the hard work of its founders and leaders, the accomplishments of its pastors, and noted how the parish has always welcomed new people into the parish (for example, about 20% of the current membership is originally from New York City) and that it must continue to welcome all who come with open arms and the love of Christ. Overall, the common consensus of everybody was that the 85th anniversary celebration was a resounding success!❖

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UPPER NEW YORK STATE CHAPTERS HOST THE 73RD NATIONAL FOCA CONVENTION The 73rd National FOCA Convention will take place in Albany, New York, this year from September 2-6. The Upper New York State chapters of the Fellowship of Orthodox Christians in America (formerly the FROC) will be the hosts. It has been a long time - since 1936 - that this District has hosted a national convention. These chapters include Auburn, Binghamton, Cohoes, Endicott, Herkimer, Syracuse, and Watervliet.

Headquarters will be at the Albany Marriott Hotel.

The theme of this year’s convention is “A Treasure in Every Direction.” Emphasis is on the natural beauty of upstate New York and the innumerable opportunities the area offers for extending a late summer vacation to enjoy places like the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the Finger Lakes, and nearby New England.

The convention planning committee has been hard at work, under the direction of John Tarasevich of Endicott, delegating responsibilities among the chapters for planning social events and

obtaining entertainment, determining costs and ticket prices, arranging optional tour packages, preparing a program book, etc.

Planned activities include a social gathering with down-home entertainment on Thursday, a polka dance on Friday night, a dinner cruise on the Hudson on Saturday, a banquet and ball on Sunday, and optional tours to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and to the Hyde Park mansions and a winery.

Junior members will also have a full plate of activities during this time, some with the Senior members and some on their own.

All members of the FOCA should plan to reserve hotel rooms early because of the popularity of the nearby Saratoga Race Track on a holiday weekend. Information will be mailed to members and will also appear in issues of the Orthodox Christian Journal.

For people with Internet access, check out the UNYS web site at: www.tier.net/foca_unysd for more detailed information about the Convention.❖

Jessica Melnik and Georgia Papapetras, members of the Cohoes Junior “R” Club are pictured with Fr. Daniel Pavelchak at St. Nicholas Church’s prelenten festivity (Maslenitsa).

HOLY TRINITY CHOIR of Randolph, NJ is offering a CD and cassette tape of liturgical music which it has recorded. It would be wonderful for giftgiving, shutins, kids away at school, meditation, listening in the car! Contact: Holy Trinity Choir, PO Box 630, Ironia, NJ 07845, phone 973-366-9110.

WINTER RETREAT AT ST. ANDREW’S CAMP “You certainly know how to provide a Siberian experience!” said Fr. Alexy Karlgut as he arrived at St. Andrew’s Camp for the annual Presidents Day Weekend Retreat. Forty hearty souls braved one of Central New York’s winter storms in order to attend.

The “Good Shepherd” was the theme and the focus of all scripture readings, skits, and the icons that were made. Cabin fever was avoided by such activities as playing football in the snow, watching videos, experiencing sunsets by the lake, and rollerskating.

This retreat is open to children, ten years and older, and is held every year on Presidents Weekend. More information can be obtained by contacting: Fr. John Chupeck 133 Stolp Ave. Syracuse, NY 13207 315-474-7049❖

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CHURCH BLESSED FOR ITS GENEROSITY

by Ken Ritter William Bocik looked around the gray-haired congregation yesterday at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church, Yonkers, NY and reflected on the generosity that helped to raise $15,000 in two weeks to feed hungry Russian children.

“These are humble people,” said Bocik, a church trustee.

Just then, the pastor, Very Rev. Yaroslav Sudick, introduced the Very Rev. Robert S. Kondratick, who is chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America. “We use your church as an example of what it’s like to care for others,” Fr. Robert told the congregants. He personally delivered the money raised by the church to orphanages in Mosow, St. Petersburg and Siberia.

Presenting a ceremonial cross on behalf of Patriarch Aleksy II of the Russian Orthodox Church, Fr. Kondratick said, “Every time you use this cross, know it is he who is blessing you.”

Humily, hard work, reverence and faith have long been the coin of the realm at Holy Trinity, a century-old church in Yonkers-Hollow section that celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

Spring/Summer’99

CAN YOU GIVE US A HOME? We represent hundreds of orphans presently living in Russian orphanages who are in need of loving parents and a secure home. We would like, if possible, to be brought up in the Orthodox faith, the faith of our ancestors.

We do have some physical problems, but for most of us, by jut being in a normal home atmosphere, we will grow out of them.

If you are interested in learning more about us, please contact the Orthodox Christian Adoption Referral Service at (516) 9220550, Ext. 126.

We hope you will call.❖

For decades, the church served Slavic immigrants who worked at the nearby Otis Elevator Co, and Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet Co. And who prayed on Sundays beneath the distinctive patina-green copper dome.

“These people came here without anything and built all of this with work,” said Fr. Sudick.

The parish continues to be involved in raising funds for Russian orphanages. Its most current project involves the sale of three piece Russian nesting dolls - 1 pair for $5.00. Churches are welcome to place a bulk order by contacting: Holy Trinity Orphan Fund Trinity Plaza 46 Seymour St. Yonkers, NY 10701 914-965-6815 [This article was reprinted from The Journal News, 4/22/99, p.1B, with additional material added.]❖

Holy Trinity Church, Yonkers, NY On October17, Holy Trinity Church, Yonkers, NY will mark the beginning of its 100th Anniversary Year celebration with a Vespers service beginning at 4:00, followed by a banquet. Call: 914-965-6815 for more information.❖

CONCERT TO BENEFIT RUSSIAN ORPHANS The New York City Deanery will sponsor a concert by the Desoff Choir of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s setting of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The concert will take place this Fall in New York City - the site and date are still to be determined.

Proceeds will benefit the Russian orphans. For more information, call Fr. Yaroslav Sudick (914-965-6815). ❖

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YOUTH RETREAT HELD AT WAYNE, NJ How is it that we live our lives, trying to be faithful to the Gospel, and so often it seems as though our efforts accomplish so little? And even worse, why is it that when we are able to live as faithful Orthodox Christians it always seems to bring some sort of conflict with those around us? Can’t we accomplish anything? Isn’t there any justice?

These were the issues discussed at the Lenten Youth Retreat on March 27 at Holy Resurrection Church in Wayne, NJ which was led by Sergius Halvorsen. More than twenty teenagers from several Orthodox churches in Northern New Jersey spent the day studying the Gospel of Mark, asking hard questions about power, betrayal and failure; and Jesus Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death. The group also watched the movie The Mission, a film that vividly portrays the conflict between the power of this world and the truth of the Gospel. There were several lively discussions and opportunities for fellowship during the long day which offered much food for body and soul.❖

LITURGICAL INSTITUTE OF MUSIC & PASTORAL PRACTICE

by Robert Flanagan The annual summer Liturgical Institute of Music and Pastoral Practice was held at St Vladimir’s Seminary from June 20-25, 1999. The theme for this year’s gathering was “Contemplative Prayer and Corporate Worship.” Speakers included His Grace, Bishop Paul of Tracheia, Fr Sergei Glagolev, Fr George Timko of Buffalo New York, Fr Thomas Hopko, dean of the seminary, and seminary faculty members Dr Albert Rossi, Dr John Behr, David Drillock, andFr Paul Lazor.

On Thursday morning the feast of the Nativity of the Holy Forerunner John the Baptizer was celebrated with a hierarchical Divine Liturgy served by His Beatitude Metropolitan Theodosius and Bishop Paul and some of the priests attending the Institute.

The eve of the feast was marked by a celebration of the Vigil.

Over 100 people, both clergy and lay, attended the Institute from all over the United States.

Practical music and pastoral practice were the two tracks of the institute. The pastoral practice track was highlighted by talks given by Professor Behr on the history of prayer in the Fathers of the Church, Bishop Paul on interior prayer, by Fr George on the prayer of the heart, and by Dr Rossi on the Jesus Prayer. Frs.

Hopko, Lazor and Glagolev gave responses on practical issues arising from the topic.

One of the major themes in the pastoral section had to do with fear as it arises in the practice of interior prayer. Fr Hopko pointed out that the command most often read in the Bible is “Fear not!,” from Moses speaking to the Israelites to the Archangel Gabriel’s words to the Theotokos. Based on this, and Jesus command to not be anxious, participants were encouraged to trust God in the matter of inner prayer.

Several participants reinforced the necessity of keeping the Gospel central to all we do as Christians, including our lives of inner prayer. The music track concentrated on the eight Byzantine tones, choir conducting, and liturgical reading.

As a new feature this year, six high school students from around the country were selected to attend the Institute at no cost.

In addition to the schedule available to all, they were taken on several field trips including the OCA chancery office in Syosset and a shelter for unwed mothers-to-be.

This experiment was considered successful and the opportunity will be offered to a larger group next year, funds permitting.❖

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WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

By John Perkins There is a serious defect in our modern mentality that makes being a Christian very difficult. This is the inflated or grandiose condition of our attitudes. As in St. Paul’s own day, people are “inflating themselves to a false importance by their worldly outlook.” (Jerusalem, Col. 2:18) To put this tendency in Orthodox terms, we are aspiring to a false or arrogant deification. Modern man has tried to become God without God. All around us we see the work of this demonic spirit, which urges us to replace God by our own selfesteem and our striving for personal success!

Our modern mentality, our worldliness, which is like a collective epidemic in our culture, and which is captivated by this demonic influence, has the following characteristics: 1. It is vital that we “feel good” about ourselves. We must be high, lighthearted, energetic and free spirited. We should have self-esteem, glance at ourselves in the mirror and shout, “You’re fantastic!”

2. The notion of progress is of utmost importance. We must constantly be getting better jobs, bigger houses, faster cars, richer bank accounts, and more powerful and affluent friends. Or for some it is a matter of making a big splash intellectually or artistically. Others strive for “developing their human potential,” through regimens of spiritual introspection that will make them superior - more “in the know,” or more “laid back.”

3. We feel we are entitled to all that we need, enjoy and desire.

We have a right to most things, especially to happiness. If we don’t have enough money for a big vacation or to get the renovated kitchen we want, or the hi-end stereo we need, someone else is to blame. It’s “unfair.” We have been deprived!

4. We assume that performance is the best measure of a person’s value. This is measured invariably in a context of competition or in successfully satisfying another person’s felt needs. Any failure - in climbing the corporate power ladder, in sexual capacity, in proving how much people need us, how brilliant or creative we are - is cause for despair, because it shows our ineptitude. Then we are flooded by worthlessness and shame.

The demonic spirit is shrewd and devious. It takes hold largely below the level of consciousness, in a dark and hidden realm of the soul. We only see the relative effects or the symptoms of this spiritual disease. The chief signs are feelings of personal insignificance: “I’m nobody!;” gross ineptitude: “I can’t do anything right!;” shame of failure: “I’m just a flop!;” amorphous guilt: “It’s all because of me!;” and a celebrity-like despondency: “I’m the vilest worm of them all, so there’s no hope!” These symptoms, when they do appear from time to time - of course we keep them a jealously guarded secret - must not be mistakened for genuine

humility. Rather, they are merely the flip side of our hidden cravings for power and glory.

Too often our religion is both a sentiment and a subject matter that does not plunge down into that unconscious basement of our personalities where the real spiritual affliction exists and where transformation should occur. In short, the actual realm of spiritual events, where we are possessed by evil, and where we would wish to struggle and try to repent and be transformed by the power of the Spirit, is largely unconscious in us. This limitation makes our religion virtually irrelevant! We use our faith merely to treat external symptoms. The hidden disease itself remains untouched.

In our present world, this inflated and self-centered mentality is considered both normal and healthy! We’re like alcoholics in a warm and cozy bar. Here there’s no problem. Here we’re just like everybody else. Just as grain alcohol has been substituted for the divine Spirit, so our superficial compulsion to worldly success has replaced our deep aspiration for Heaven! Our self-esteem now serves as a phony substitute for our value in the eyes of God, and our neurotic pangs of inferiority serve us ill as a sham version of humility.

Here we should remember that humility does not mean self-denigration. Humility comes from humus, meaning earth or ground. Human comes from the same word. Humility means to have one’s feet on the ground, and thus to be in touch with basic reality as an ordinary mortal human being. Humility means to keep a low profile and not play God to ourselves or to other people. But few of us are humble in this sense. We are, in our various ways up in the air, trying to be something high and big, successful and important. We have come to identify with God in a pathological way, as if this were our right and our prerogative. But we pay the price with depression, anxiety, amorphous guilt, shame and disillusionment. Again, we must not mistake this low selfesteem for humility, for these gnawing feelings are invariably symptoms of our hidden grandiosity. They are the negative manifestation of our covert inflation - appearing as a prideful and egoistic inferiority.

It is said that what goes up must come down.

Listen to the following dream of an Orthodox man who was feeling depression, lack of competence, anger and resentment.

Let us call him Mark. Because of lack of success, Mark actually felt that God had abandoned him, and this made him rage against the Almighty! Remember as you hear this dream that it is a message from the basement of the soul, and was revealing to Mark what was happening at a strictly unconscious level of his mentality. This dream requires no analysis. As an old rabbi once exclaimed, “The dream itself is its own interpretation.”

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Here is Mark’s dream: It is night and I am free-falling from thirty or forty thousand feet in the sky toward the middle of the open ocean. I am frightened to death and the thought flashes across my mind, “This is IT! I’ll never survive from such a height. I’m a goner!” There is simply no recourse, no out!

After an interminable descent I hit the water at incredible speed. But surprisingly I am not hurt, and the water is warm and calm. It is night and the sky is full of brilliant stars. I tread water and swim around a bit. I am OK! I can hardly believe it! But then I realize the precariousness of my situation. I am in the middle of the open ocean, thousands and thousands of miles from any land. There is no sign of ship traffic anywhere around me and I have no means of communication. I am all alone with no one to help. There is nothing to do but tread water and stay afloat as long as I have the strength. What will ever happen to me? Will I die here alone in the ocean? There seems to be not the slightest hope of rescue. With no practical hope here alone in the open ocean, my thoughts begin to turn toward God. I have no choice now. I realize that I am dependent solely upon the Almighty and nothing else!

In normal, conscious life, Mark had no idea how high up he was psychologically speaking, and how little genuine humility he possessed. In outer life Mark felt himself to be low down and worth nothing. But this was a false lowliness. Because he was unwittingly so high up - at thirty or forty thousand feet, as it were, Mark’s unconscious mind was at a level of grandiose self-importance. This inflated sense was the hidden and unacknowledged standard that had infected Mark’s expectations. No wonder then, that Mark’s ordinary and mundane existence seemed so paltry by comparison. Reasonable successes and the value of personal relationships meant nothing to him, for Mark expected a “sky is the limit” level of performance. Thus he lived in continual dissatisfaction, self-denigration and constant depression. On the surface Mark felt so low down, but underneath he was really so very high up!

His dream showed Mark that what he really needed was precisely a big depression, literally to have his attitude lowered vastly from many thousands of feet high in the sky way down to sea level - in other words to ordinary reality. Humility was thrust upon Mark. He had no choice in the matter. This message and guidance came to Mark from out of the unconscious mind - from the hidden part of his soul. Fortunately Mark recalled his dream, and took it seriously. Mark’s dream convinced him, as no moralistic lecture could, that his only alternative was throw himself on the mercy of God because there was no other source of help.

Mark took his dream as a “just so” story, a guiding message expressed in symbolic yet frighteningly accurate language about his true situation.

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One might say that God had thrown Mark out of a false and grandiose heaven, but then preserved him in true, down to earth humility!

Within a few days of his dream, Mark’s attitude changed abruptly. He became much more realistic, and began to value and appreciate his abilities and small successes in far more down-toearth fashion. The gnawing depression and frustration evaporated, and Mark began to sense the hand of God in his life. He felt much better, but in a quiet and more trustful way. He realized how much he had to be thankful for. Down to basic reality, Mark began to feel the exaltation of God, and he was filled with many new rich possibilities for living. He was inspired again! Mark took far less for granted. And, as if in the solitary and dark wilderness of the sea, he rejected the temptation any longer to strive for highflown success and celebrity-like performance. Only then was his relationship to God restored, and he felt happy just to be alive.

Such dream guidance was specific to this particular individual named Mark. But somewhere in all our lives, in at least a corner of our souls, we all stand in need of such a correction of our high and mighty mentality. Such a dream lurks some place, at some level, in all of us.

For many of us, before we can even begin to think of climbing the ladder of spiritual ascent, we must fall far, far down below the level of the very first rung, and lay our heads on a stone like Jacob. And that may be our hardest job, for it requires that we give up big accomplishment and self-esteem as our inalienable rights, lose everything and crash, before we can be available to God. It is precisely the down and out people in the surrounding world and deep inside our own selves that come closest to God! Mark’s terrible ordeal teaches us that humility - the lowering to the level of ordinary and fundamental existence - must not be allowed to infect us in demonically distorted form as paralyzing shame, but must be accomplished deeply within the inner man where humility is indeed relevant, where the mind sinks down into the heart, where we are utterly vulnerable and inferior to God Himself. For it is only here and then that we may come to realize that what goes up must indeed come down again, and that those familiar verses from the Song of Mary are painfully true for each and every one of us, yet contain the promise of our redemption: He hath shown strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.

John Perkins is a member of Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow Orthodox Mission, Rocky Hill (Princeton) NJ.❖

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REFLECTIONS: A New Beginning

By Jacqueline Mullen Niederberger Just before Pascha, the parish family was told our rented, South Jersey church building was sold and we, once again, would have to pack up and leave, and start somewhere else by the end of April. We would have no priest to celebrate Pascha and so, dispirited nomads, we scattered to various churches. Some of us sped 80 miles to Philadelphia, through a dark, sleeping, spring night, to be part of a church celebrating the Great Feast.

We arrived early, we thought. The icon of the Mother of God above the front doors beckoned, bidding us hurry into the place of worship. The chill of the evening ushered us into the narthex where we sought physical and spiritual warmth. Crowds pressed us against the back wall of the church where we stood in silence, holding our candles.

The Royal Doors opened at midnight. Light flooded the scene. The voice of the priest could be heard. Candles were lit, and the people processed outside around the church. Back inside, straining for the familiar English words of the ancient Liturgy, it became difficult to hear because of the man whispered, excited, foreign languages swirling through the air. Was I somehow transported back to 1900 Europe, instead of awaiting the 21st centur y in America? If one was used to the reverent holiness of the service, concentration was broken by the colorful congregants all around. Eyes and ears could not help but seek them out.

At the intoning of the words, “In the fear of God and with faith, draw near,” the melange surged forward, one, two, young, old, men, women, children, moving ahead of one another in a ragged line, gesturing, whispering, pushing toward “something mysterious” at the front of the church. It was impossible not to be moved by this colorful march of humanity toward the chalice, seeing the need that was so evident.

These masses have come from foreign shores as our parents and grandparents before them had come. At the end of the life they had known, a new one was beginning. The only way for them to go home again was to leave. They came for the same reasons others before had come: freedom, financial, physical, spiritual, relief from oppression and condemnation of their ethnic backgrounds, escape from the law, hundreds of other reasons, but above all - “freedom.” How difficult is assimilation into a foreign culture. Just as the great exodus at the turn of this century left all behind and started anew, so these now who come will struggle to learn English, struggle for employment, and struggle with American customs and behaviors. The brotherhood of family, friends, and Orthodoxy is a bond, the glue that will bind them together, as they reach for the year 2000.

What a tremendous challenge and opportunity the parish priest and his parishioners have in the coming years to teach, exhort, instruct, nurture and love, with patience, the many immigrants whom God has placed in churches across America, especially as more come in the light of the present world situation.

Will we embrace them, fed, cloth and stand with them? Will they, in turn, enhance the fabric of American life, add to her work ethic, strengthen cultures, live and grow in peace and harmony?

We don’t know all the answers, but one thing we do know.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which gives Light to every man, coming into the world He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1:6-12).

The Light has been given to us to pass on. Are you ready to take up the challenge in the new millennium or shall we look the other way? The decision is ours.

(UPDATE: Up to the time this article was written the Mission of St. John Chrysostom, Clermont, NJ was being served on a part time basis

by Fr. Sergius Kuharsky. The sale of the church building described above has since, for the time being, again fallen through and so the community continues to meet at its former location. Fr. Andrew Missiras is now regularly serving the Divine Liturgy on Sunday mornings at 10:00; Lay Vespers are served on Saturday evenings at 7:00. For more information, call Bill Dingman at 609-3985020.)❖

UPCOMING CHOIR WORKSHOPS led by Professor David Drillock October 23: Sing Praises to the Lord: Dormition of the Holy Virgin Church, Binghamton, NY (coordinator Michael Soroka: 607-797-7211) November 6: The Fundamentals of Orthodox Liturgical Music: SS Peter and Paul Church, Manville, NJ (coordinator - Matushka Daria Parsells: 908-685-1452)

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Letting Go/You Too Have a Story

by Diana Pasca I will not speak ill of you You too have a story On scraped knee

Gethsemane

Tribute

penitent and repetitive

by Dianna Vagianos Miller

by Lynne Smith

I will not speak ill of you You too have a story

Once a Messiah’s

I kneel here in church, offering my prayers on a

tears fell

A moody Sunday morning

in streams

With this hole in my heart

and watered

Candles, incense, choir sounds blend into my

a garden.

Remembrances of weddings, christenings, holidays And final farewells filling the solitary pews

Now I find

But you left me

With long ago continuity of old country traditions.

That harbors all the pain And the lies I will not speak ill of you You too have a story

a place of peaceful release worries cascade

I am today’s senior, that’s for sure. A widow.

A grandmother as was she.

And yet I love the ignored The pained, the unheard

in torrents

My heart listens to our creed in her beloved

With the deepest love

and burdens

Russian... I am eleven again and I hear her

For those souls unblossomed

are lifted

Voice and feel her hand in mine, firm, strong,

Are left to be picked off the tree

mysteriously

Enduring of so many yesterdays.

Overripe

“And I believe... The life of the world to come...”

You who bludgeoned my story

Of whose Kingdom there shall be no end.”

You too have a story

in my Gethsemane.

I lie in His peace

You are ignored

as the soil

My heart sings as the choir continues...

of my spirit

And I believe...

bears fruit

“He shall come again with glory to judge

from the seeds

The living and the dead.”

that were watered centuries ago

“You’re so like your mother,” my Scotsman Husband often mused.

in a garden in a holy land.

Amen, indeed.

You are pained Unheard Unspoken soul Waiting to unfold in a different place Come place your wrinkles in my hand I will not speak ill of you You too have a story

Parish Affiliations: Dianna Vagianos Miller - Holy Transfiguration Church / Pearl River, NY; Lynne Smith - Holy Trinity Church / Yonkers, NY; Diana Pasca - Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross / Medford, NJ.❖

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ETHICS, WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

by Father Joseph Woodill Reading the paper, listening to the evening news, watching TV, or overhearing my children and their friends often leaves me bewildered. Moral confusion seems everywhere. Wisdom seems illusive and words escape me. If ever there were a subject in which we dare not be “functionally illiterate,” it must surely be ethics.

Nevertheless, teaching ethics is perhaps the last really universal task assumed by a teacher: I remind students that not all of those who study for success will be successful, nor will those who study to be rich be rich. All will, however, be required to live and to die.

Ethics, as I teach it, is the science of living and dying well.

This series of articles is intended to introduce ethics.

Orthodox ought to make the effort to grasp the history, language, and problems of ethics. We need all of this just to talk to one another and to understand what others are talking about. I am convinced that in each generation we must reengage the Tradition to make it our own. It is our turn to assemble an “icon” out of the stuff of America, and part of that icon must be a moral response to our age. My contribution to this work is to outline some of the history, methods, and language of ethics so that we might become better equipped to engage the important questions of our times.

CLASSICAL ETHICS

The introduction will have three parts: In this the first essay, I try to present an overview of ethics from ancient times to the present. After that general introduction, there will be an essay to describe bioethics-especially as bioethics differs from the sort of medical ethics practiced as little as thirty years ago. A third article will suggest what contemporary Orthodox ethics might look like and how Orthodox might go about doing ethics these days.

TEACHING ETHICS, TODAY For years I have taught college-level courses in ethics to undergraduates, to nurses and other health-care professionals, and, of late, to seminarians. The most difficult step has always been to convince students that ethics can be done at all! For many ethics is a matter of “what I am comfortable with.” Such students—encouraged at every turn to be informed consumers, whose wants and feelings are paramount—feel that ethics, like everything else, is about choices. You get really clear about how you feel, and when you are comfortable with this, everything that must be considered has been considered. If I suggest that Hitler was very comfortable and clear about gas chambers, the student is offended. I call this the “playing with the net down” approach to ethics: decide what counts as in for you and others must honor your choice. Other more sophisticated students are sure that ethics is only a matter of perspective and irony. Again, ethics is a matter of taste: you like some things and I like others. At the other end of the scale are those who expect a course in ethics to make one moral. I once taught at a school where the nursing faculty assured the philosophy faculty that every student nurse must take one course in ethics because a nurse may be required to work with little supervision, making life or death decisions. Neither department head was happy when I suggested that it was crazy to expect a student nurse to take Woodill’s ethics course and thus be prepared to make life or death decisions. Would you allow someone at your car with only an introductory course in auto mechanics?

In the fourth century before Christ, Aristotle-easily the most famous student of Plato-observed (in Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics) that ethics (ethike) rightly derives from the word for character (ethos). For much of the history of ethics-to include all of classical Christian thought-ethics had to do with the sort of person you were becoming. Aristotle understood ethics to be a practical science that involved determining the proper goal of living and then gaining the skills that would allow one to move toward life’s purpose. The word for such skill was, as we translate it, virtue. Arete is the Greek word for excellence or skill and came into English as virtue-to this day the excellence of a real man is called virility. Plato, Aristotle’s famous teacher, also taught that a moral or just person was a matter of character. To be a just person (or a just community-which is necessary insofar as the human habitat is the community) involved ordering or arranging oneself so that all of a person’s aspects or parts contributed to the highest end or good of life. Plato taught that the just person had learned that appetites, passions, and intellect ought to be so put together as to work together for the good. To become the sort of person (or community) that ordered its affairs according to desires or passions was to be profoundly disordered or immoral.

MODERN ETHICS The ethics described above has little to do with ethics as it has been done recently. By “recently” I mean since the birth of science. Newton is, perhaps, the great exemplar for science. He discovered the principle or law of gravity. We can make sense of why I fall to the earth and the earth never falls up to me by employing the principle that all objects are related by their mass in inverse proportion. Classical science has this shape: first you ask about subject matter (for example, cosmologists study the universe), then you find the universal truths about your particular subject.

Ethics would soon assume the same shape: its subject matter was normative claims-a norm is what ought to be—, and the ethicist also sought for universal principles. The “Newton” of ethics was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant insisted that ethics was a rational enterprise. There were to be found categorical or universal truths in ethics to guide us. If we violate these principles, we are immoral. Kant supplies a number of benchmarks to determine if one is following a universal law of ethics. He thinks, for example, that to tell a lie is immoral. If this were not true, then we could not make sense of truth telling or lying! The test is to see if the principle, rule, or maxim guiding you can either be made universal or, which is to say the same thing, reversed and applied

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to someone acting opposite you. If your rule is to lie for gain, can this be reversed? No. For lying to make sense and be profitable to the liar, others must obey the rule “don’t lie.” If you think about it, both the one who tells lies and the one who speaks the truth assume that there is a rule to tell the truth. This sort of ethics is often called deontology, from the Greek word for duty. Such an ethic examines a particular act and decides if it is in our duty to do it or not by finding a guiding principle.

Deontological or principlist ethics takes many forms. The American Declaration of Independence has this form. It examines its object (all men) and finds universal principles (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) that can be applied to determine if an act is moral or not. For example if you put me in jail because you don’t like my looks, my lawyer will soon ask a judge to determine if this act is just or not. The judge will apply the principle of liberty to the case and conclude that I must be released-this is better known as a writ of habeas corpus, an inquiry into the justice of holding someone. This strategy for doing ethics is everywhere present: even church members insist on rights established as duespaying members. How often have you heard “I have a right!” used to explain the morality of an act?

If one strategy for doing ethics is to look at the act in question and ask what principle, rule, or right might guide us, another way is called consequentialism. Here we look at the consequences of an act and ask if they are good or bad. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is usually thought to be the “father” of a sort of consequentialist ethics we call “utilitarianism.” This is also an attempt to be scientific. Bentham observed in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation that “nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” One can measure pleasure and pain. So if an act brings more pleasure than pain for the most people, it is good.

One should be able-at least in theory, according to Bentham-to devise a calculus for ethics. Today the way of measuring or calculating for such a utilitarian ethics is called a poll. Consider how important polls were, recently, in determining the morality of the President’s behavior.

So ethics began about becoming a certain sort of person, but became mostly about giving convincing reasons for actions. We appeal either to rights or to consequences. Arguments for or against having handguns, for example, are based either on a right or on measuring consequences. It isn’t unusual in clinical ethics to claim both that a patient has a right to a certain treatment and, yet, to observe that as a consequence of that treatment the patient would experience more pain and little benefit. So at times both sorts of ethics are used.

THE POSTMODERN SCENE One more turn must be mentioned. Until very recently courses in ethics-following the shape of most ethics textbooksbegan by giving a history of ethics, followed by impediments to doing ethics, followed by explaining deontological and consequentialist (teleological) strategies, and finished by giving the stu-

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dents problems (quandaries) in ethics to be solved by the methods studied. All of this is typical of modern science. Except for the subject matter, ethics was studied not unlike science. But “modernity” has come under attack. Recently a number of authors have written from what is called a “Postmodern” turn. These authors (Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, to name but a few) have questioned the givens of modernity: Are there any universal principles or narratives? Are universal claims in the name of ethics but a way to control and subjugate others? Does ethics classically conceived ever really allow there to be an “other” or are all “others” forced to become like us? As a result of these attacks on modernity, college ethics teachers are wary of making any universal claims. It is not uncommon to find, recently, ethics texts that resemble a collection of stories or narratives that the student is asked to explore.

Increasingly, ethics is viewed as the bias of a particular constituency. This is evident when we think about the Supreme Court: we expect the “justice” dispensed to match the court’s political composition.

Already one Orthodox bioethicist has taken the position that there can be no rich universally acceptable account of what is moral, any social ethic must be limited to what little can be agreed on by those who can no longer agree on much. In this view ethics has already been irreparably balkanized. “Portrayals of reality are cultural products,” writes the Orthodox bioethicist H. Tristram Engelhardt. “Since there are numerous understandings of medical reality, those who so wish should be at liberty to act on their own moral and metaphysical visions in the company of consenting collaborators” (See The Foundations of Bioethics, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 226-227). Engelhardt ends with the observation: “We are returned to where we began, to multiple interpretations of the good, to the dissociation of the grounds that motivate moral action from the justifications of morality, to our secular moral lack of final guidance, to the moral fragmentation that characterizes postmodernity, and which the modern philosophical project has not been able to heal” (p. 421).

Engelhardt’s contention that contemporary ethics is fragmented seems a correct—if unsatisfying—conclusion to my essay.

Although I do not agree with his solution, it does seem that ethics having begun in the conviction that life has a meaning that can be lived, and then having become confident that human reason could answer all questions, seems now bent on insuring that there be no place to stand. What is not yet clear is if ethics so described is a labyrinth to be escaped or the human condition to be accepted. ( Fr. Joseph is the pastor of St. John Church in Alpha, NJ. He earned his doctorate in ethics at Fordham University, and has taught both theological and philosophical ethics in colleges and seminaries. He is the author of The Fellowship of Life: Virtue Ethics and Orthodox Christianity (Georgetown University Press, 1998).❖

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I co ns & I c o n o g r a p h e r s

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ICONOGRAPHIC RESTORATION AT ST. VLADIMIR’S CHURCH, TRENTON, NJ After forty-five years, the extensive and elaborate iconography executed by Pimen Sofronov in St. Vladimir’s Church became darkened from the smoke of candles and incense. Also, with the passage of time, the paint began to deteriorate and flake. How to restore and preserve this treasure of iconography became a worrisome task. It was difficult to find specialists who knew the technique of restoring old icons and frescoes.

Fortunately, the parish learned of Sergei Gavrish and his wife, Nadezhda, who were doing restoration work in two Orthodox churches in Philadelphia. They were invited to work on the icons in St. Vladimir’s.

After making a study and analysis of Sofronov’s iconography, the Gavrishes, who were trained in the science of icon and art restoration at several schools in Russia, agreed to undertake the task. They have been working almost one and a half years on the project.

The process has required slow and meticulous labor.

Parishioners have been amazed to see how much blackness had to be removed, and how much new paint of all colors was needed to renew the damaged iconography. As the renovation project nears completion, the church has taken on a new look and a cleaner appearance.

St. Vladimir’s parish is grateful that God has sent these talented artists who have been beautified our church. Their services should be sought by churches in need of iconographic restoration.

They can be reached at 215-745-0178.

A special service of blessing and thanksgiving is planned for Sunday October 18, 1999. Orthodox people will be invited to see our renewed church and participate in the liturgical services.❖

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PIMEN SOFRONOV Mr. Sofronov was born in 1899 in a small village in northwest Russia. At the age of 11, he was taken to a Master Icon painter where he began his apprenticeship. He labored much to learn the details of true icon painting and with his inherited God-given talent he quickly grasped the technique of his Master and devoted himself completely to his work as an iconographer.

Because of the political changes in Russia, Mr. Sofronov moved to the Balkans where he continued his work. He was invited to Yugoslavia where he was commissioned to renovate and restore some of the old paintings in the Serbian Orthodox churches. He also painted frescoes in new churches and remained in Yugoslavia until he was asked to come to western Europe to paint for the Orthodox communities.

While in France, he was in charge of a school for icon painters. Many well known icongraphers were graduates of his program. Shortly before World War II, he was asked to go to the Vatican where he was commissioned to paint icons and murals for a Byzantine chapel. There he worked for about seven years in and around the Vatican.

With few trained iconographers available in the United States at that time, Mr. Sofronov was encouraged to emigrate. His first major project was SS Peter and Paul Church in Syracuse, NY. He next was invited in 1954 to work in St. Vladimir’s Church in Trenton. For two years he worked day and night, painting first the iconostasis and then all the walls and ceilings.

Eventually most of the church was covered with iconography, creating a heavenly atmosphere.

In addition to Trenton and Syracuse, Mr. Sofronov completed two other parishes: Three Saints Church , Ansonia, Connecticut and Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn, NY. He was known to train students in the Philadelphia area and upon his death was buried in southern New Jersey.❖

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L i t u r gi c a l Mu s i c

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CHOIR WORKSHOP IN JERSEY CITY, NJ

by Fr. James Silver SS Peter and Paul parish in Jersey City hosted the New Jersey Deanery’s most recent workshop for choir directors and singers on Saturday 20 February 1999.

Nearly fifty liturgical singers met at 9:00 that morning for coffee and catch-up with old friends and acquaintances from several of the Deanery’s two dozen parishes, but the workshop got under way almost on time, anyway. Fr. Joseph Lickwar, host pastor, blessed the opening of the meeting with a prayer and introduced SS Peter and Paul’s choir director, Alexei V. Shipovalnikov, who conducted the workshop.

tude for certain pieces, and to select those which would work well with those who were there for the warm up, rather than be surprised by having less than a full crew at the Great Entrance. This was not to say that no one could arrive late, if that was unavoidable, but that the director could at least know who he had to work with from the beginning. The Professor made many other comments during and between the musical selections and answered questions from the floor.

Drawing on his extensive education in and rich experience of Russian liturgical singing, Professor Shipovalnikov led the group in singing several selections from the vast repertory of Russian religious music, both in English and in Church Slavonic. Several participants surprised themselves at their ability to read some of this music in the language for which it had been written, and a few others just hummed along when they got lost in the Cyrillic alphabet, but everyone enjoyed the experience.

Most of the pieces sung during the workshop were composed within the last hundred years, and many of them are very recent works. One exception was the First Kathisma (‘Blessed Is the Man’), sung in a modern arrangement of an ancient chant from the Caves Lavra at Kiev. Although that selection was consciously adapted in recent years as a representative of an ancient chant still in use, Professor Shipovalnikov presented the group with an opportunity to study the work of several 19th- and 20th-century composers, observing how each of them worked a chant motif into a piece, sometimes in one voice, sometimes shifting it so that each voice got to express it by turns.

While examining the nuts and bolts of Russian liturgical composition based on chant, the Professor also pointed out the basic simplicity of this technique, observing that even the pieces which appear most complicated are actually constructed of repetitions and recombinations of the basic chant theme. He suggested that choir directors be prudent in their choice of material, and recommended that they present nothing to their singers which could not be performed just as well by four as by forty.

In other observations about the problems and possibilities of liturgical singing, Professor Shipovalnikov described some of his own preferred techniques, especially regarding preparation for singing the services. In addition to their spiritual preparation, which goes without saying, choirs need physical preparation — they need to warm up before the service begins. In his own experience, he found it helpful to require that singers be present at least an hour before a service in order to warm up by singing scales and other vocal exercises, and also to firm up whatever weak spots might have appeared at the last rehearsal. Gathering the singers an hour before services also allowed him to gauge the choir’s apti-

The day was divided by a delicious lunch served by Matushka Shirley Lickwar and Tatiana Shipovalnikova (‘Mrs Professor’), and the second half of the program continued much the same as the morning, but with more time for questions.

One rather obvious but often overlooked technique of choral directing emerged among the questions and answers. In response to a participant’s concern about clergymen who can’t seem to get their pitch from the choir, Professor Shipovalnikov suggested that — rather than adhere to a strict scale — it would be more efficient and much easier for everyone if the director would simply accept the clergyman’s natural pitch as part of a relative chord, rather than do battle with him by repitching each response a tone and a half away.

In the last year or so, an interparochial choir with singers from everywhere in the New Jersey Deanery has met for rehearsals and given two recitals of liturgical music under Professor Shipovalnikov’s direction. During the workshop he announced that, when it can be arranged, a Russian choir which he organized under similar circumstances will come to the United States, and it is hoped that the Deanery Choir will be able to reciprocate by accepting an invitation to perform in Russia.

The Deanery has convened these workshops twice a year in the recent past, and there are plans to schedule them at similar intervals in the future, since there has been such favorable response to them.❖

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7TH HEAVEN: A REVIEW

by Fr. Angelo Artemas Answer: Charlie’s Angel’s, The Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and 7th Heaven. Question: What are television shows produced by Aaron Spelling? That’s right! Although racy show king Aaron Spelling was told by television industry insiders that “it will never sell (March 6-12, 1999 TV Guide), “7th Heaven is not only a hit, but also this season’s fastest rising show in Nielsen ratings. For the struggling WB Network, 7th Heaven (Monday nights at 8 P.M./ET) draws higher ratings than the sexually inundated Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Felicity.

In the TV-14 and TV-MA world of television dramas, 7th Heaven stands out as a show for the entire family. Sort of like a cross between the 70s Family (also produced by Spelling) and The Brady Bunch, 7th Heaven mixes real-life drama with light-hearted family moments. Episodes have featured drug-abuse, teen pregnancy, alcohol related auto accidents, domestic abuse, death of grandparents; as well as sibling rivalry, time-outs, household mishaps, parish misunderstandings and obtaining a puppy (which is aptly named “Happy”). The show is less about a Protestant minister’s work and more about a family struggling to impact values in a relatively difficult culture.

The Camden family includes a minister dad, a stay-at-home mom, a hormone and anxiety driven son Matt (19 years old), athletic and boy-crazy Mary (17 years old), too mature for her own good Lucy (15 years old) and twin newborn boys. This family formula combines to offer a sentimental show about love, trust and faith. The parents routinely annoy, nag, interrogate and discipline their children, all while showing love and care. The pri-

marily teenage audience may actually find this type of parenting novel and refreshing in the face of latchkeys and unrestricted permissiveness. “What’s wrong with teaching kids to tell the truth and honor their parents?” says Brady Bunch’s Florence Henderson, an outspoken fan of the show. Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just unusual for the television world of bumbling dads like Homer, Al and Hank, and teenagers mothering and fathering each other.

While Brady Bunch was simply too hokey even for the 70s, 7th Heaven is not so much contrived, as it is guilty of wrapping up serious issues in 48 minutes. Some episodes have shown Matt, Mary or Lucy engaged in open-mouthed kissing, which may be inappropriate and uncomfortable for younger viewers. Reverend and Mrs. Camden’s attempts to sneak intimate moments for themselves are quite refreshing in a television world where only teenagers and young adults can be hot for each other.

A particularly poignant episode (March 15, 1999) included a story line in which Mary uses her sister Lucy to achieve an end.

The maternally intrusive Mrs. Camden discovers the action and explains to Mary the following: “Your actions may be like a pebble splashing into a pond. While there is only one splash, there are many ripples, and the people that you affect are the ripples.”

Wow, actions affect others? What a break-through idea for television. 7th Heaven competently demonstrates that families, extended families and even parishes not only hold a significant place on television, but also a key and desirable role in real life. [reprinted from Orthodox Christian Education Commission News, Vol. 19, No. 4, May 25, 1999] ❖

THE INSTITUTE FOR ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES An international Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge University in England will open this October, after more than two years of planning under the direction of a panOrthodox board headed by Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia and Bishop Basil (Osborne) of Sergievo. The project’s development has been co-ordinated by Fr. John Jillions. The Institute recently became a member of the Cambridge Theological Federation, a consortium of theological schools. As a result, Orthodox students and visiting faculty from around the world will have access to the wide range of academic resources and degrees offered in Cambridge.

Dr. Richard Higginson, President of the Cambridge Theological Federation said in a statement to the press that “This is a most exciting development. The church in the West has been

largely ignorant of the Orthodox church for far too long, and has much to learn from the deep spiritual and theological resources which it brings... At present, different responses to the war in the Balkans have exacerbated some inter-church tensions between East and West. This makes what is happening here in Cambridge all the more timely.”

Fr. John Breck, former Professor of New Testament at St. Vladimir’s Seminary will be a visiting lecturer, joining a number of distinguished scholars who will be teaching during the Institute’s first year. For further information contact: The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ, United Kingdom. Phone: 44-1223-741 037. Email jaj23@cam.ac.uk.❖

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GOOD & FAITHFUL SERVANT The Loving Thing To Do She was stunning; movement, face, physique. Eleven boys were in the reception area waiting for their morning assignments when she came in.

The worker from the other agency handed her case-file to a ResidentCounselor. He opened it and perused her history.

The kid was already working the room.

A sunny morning just got brighter. Not one young man didn’t have a smile on his face. Her fan-club had grown by eleven.

The agency worker said goodbye, and good luck, and walked out the door. Before opening the final section of her chart, the medical section, the Counselor looked up and saw young men, some he’d known, two, three, four years, acting as young men sometimes do, when they’re seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, making fools of themselves, laughing, talking loud, trying to impress a healthy, robust-looking young woman... (He looked at her chart) ...who was HIV positive... (He wanted to cry out)...No! (Breech her confidentiality?) ...Tell them! (Leave them unprotected?)

The bottom half of a yellow legal-pad page, stapled, ragged, torn edge, to her chart, signed, in her own handwriting: “I intend to take down with me as many boys as I can...”

The poor kid... Surely, been fooled and fooled a lot, by older, predatory men. (His heart broke) Only a baby. Just fourteen.

Now... You love some of these boys, like your own kids. And God has placed this young girl, also, in your care. What do you do?

Sometimes we’re confronted with situ-

JACOB’S WELL Diocese of New York/New Jersey 24 Colmar Road Cherry Hill, NJ 08002

by Fr. Stephen Siniari

ations that leave us asking, “What is the loving, Christ-like thing to do?” Some rush forward with answers. But those who’ve been around the block once or twice aren’t quite so quick to reply. Each situation may have its own special nuance, its own subtle sub-set of qualities that resist the ouchless application of “flesh-colored” band-aids that have yet to find a finger or a flesh-tone to which they effectively conform.

Life isn’t simple. Each new moral crisis pollinates the air with hybrid attitudes and ideas germinated in pathologies and psychologies, anthropologies and sterile theologies that never take root or grow into anything substantive. What was true and efficacious yesterday... The once definitive pages of our policy and procedure manuals are tested, torn-out, scribbled over, and frayed around the edge ‘til the ResidentCounselor cries out, “What’s the point?

Where are we going with all this?”

In Christ’s Holy Church, we have a goal, a calling. It’s called Theosis. In a nutshell, it means, strive to grow daily in Christ, to become more like Jesus. “Be ye perfect,” He said.

Some religious groups may wrestle with, “which Jesus” or, “The definition of perfect? Nobody’s perfect.”

For the Orthodox, the Faith “delivered once for all to the saints,” does not change.

Only arrogance believes it can “synchronize” the Timeless with the “fashion of this world which passeth away.” For the Orthodox believer, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and unto ages of ages.” And if we really try to obey His call to be perfect - We find that He alone is our perfection - And that only in Him can we hope for growth in perfection - If in our

weakness we are willing to serve Him and our neighbor- As He said to Saint Paul, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

All along our common pilgrimage to Theosis, we make choices. We make decisions regarding our own weaknesses or the imperfections of others. Again and again we ask ourselves, “What is the loving thing to do, for another, or for myself?” In the Church we are free to discover living, flexible guidelines of love: Our Baptismal calling in the communion of love with God and neighbor.

Our Confessor who guides us again and again in the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Responsive awareness of our need to pray for self-knowledge and repentance.

Active participation in the forgiveness and forgiving that are life in Jesus Christ.

Our freedom in Christ’s Church to fail and get up again “seventy times seven.”

“The event which constitutes the Church is the dynamic act of taking man up, in his failure, and “grafting” that failure into the communion of saints; it is the freedom of love, the “absurdity” of love which rejects every rationalistic criterion for participation in the life of communion.” (C. Yannaras) So, the loving thing to do? Pray. Find a way to advance, by your decision, others and yourself, further along the path to Theosis. Keep in mind that forgiveness is not a license to continue to do wrong, go backwards, or engage in unhealthy behavior.

Forgiveness is room to grow in a positive, healthy direction, like a plant toward the sunlight, like a soul toward Jesus Christ.❖