Searching, Finding and Being Found

Searching, Finding, and Being Foundby Fr. John Shimchick

“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (St. Paul to the Athenians at the Areopagus: Acts 17:23)

Often while shopping I am startled by the sense that besides whatever it is I think I’m looking for, there is something that is trying to get my attention, trying to find me. Rarely is it completely unimaginable, rather it is usually an object that expresses or puts into words what I’ve already in some way known or wanted. G.K. Chesterton imagined “an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.” He describes how he was such a person, and his book, Orthodoxy, “recounts [his] elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.” A plaque in an antique store confirmed as well that: “We travel the world over in search of what we need and return home to find it” (George Moore).

Within this issue, we are exploring the insight of James Emery White, in The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, that “the most significant shift of missional paradigms has taken place in our day: we have moved from an Acts 2 missional context to an Acts 17 missional context.” Within Acts 2, the Apostle Peter was speaking to those who at least believed in a monotheistic God, had an understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures, and anticipated a coming Messiah. St. Paul, as recounted in Acts 17, observed at the Areopagus in Athens a “spiritual marketplace, where truth was relative, worldviews and gods scattered around the landscape.” The people, in their own way, were so open in their pursuit of religious experience that they even had an altar for “the unknown god.”

How does Jesus Christ as manifested within the life of the Church satisfy the deepest needs and desires of those who don’t recognize, think they need Him, or realize that He is actually looking for them? Archbishop Michael explains that the Church reveals this through a series of encounters. Deacon Evan Freeman shows how Jesus Christ is presented and can be known within a church’s iconographic plan. Brother Christopher, Prior of New Skete, explores the valuable formation of a holistic community life. Nicholas Samaras

examines how the poetic search for the right words can bring us into a relationship with the Word itself. An Anaphora for Those Who are Searching tries to lift up the common experience of what T.S. Eliot called the “permanent things” – the reality of a love that is formational, the brokenness of life that is complicated and painful, but finally also capable of being healed and renewed.

We recognize the 60th Anniversary of the marriage and joint ministry of Fr. Sergius and Faith Kuharsky and the designation of the Order of Saint Romanos Award to Maestro Aleksei Shipovalnikov. We celebrate the opening of the Mother of God Church in Princeton, the 100th Anniversary of SS. Peter and Paul Church in Manville, NJ, and are encouraged by the revitalization of St. Innocent’s Mission in Oneonta, NY. We feature several youth and parish activities. Deacon Alexander Smida, from Annunciation Church, Brick, NJ, describes his community’s efforts – following the theme of last year’s AAC – to “expand the mission in the Jersey Shore area.” We present both the historical examination of Fr. John Jillions into the life of our Church at the time of the Russian Revolution as noted within The Russian Orthodox American Messenger, edited by Fr. Leonid Turkevich, and Matushka Tamara Skvir’s reflection of Fr. Turkevich, her grandfather, who in 1950 was elected as Metropolitan Leonty. As we move to a new financial model for funding the OCA and our Diocese, we feature an article by Matushka Mary Buletza Breton, our Diocesan Treasurer.

“The greatest thing that happens between God and the human soul,” according to Kallistos Kataphygiotis, “is to love and to be loved.” Perhaps these are what the search and the experience of home are all about for each person wherever they are on the journey of faith – rediscovering the possibilities of loving and being loved, of knowing and being known, of searching and being found. Reduced to its basics and essentials, these indeed are everything that Jesus Christ – for many still the “unknown God” – offers to us and to all who are searching. v