Apr
14th
Thu
14th
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
HAPPY CIVIL NEW YEAR!
In an American film from the 1990s, a prostitute ‘servicing’ veterans of the Vietnam War (1955-1975) is overjoyed at a noisy, tawdry party on New Year’s Eve. She says: ‘Don’t you just love New Year’s Eve? Everybody gets to start all over again. Everyone gets a second chance’. For those old enough - and young enough - to bear the scars of the traumatic ‘Sixties-‘Seventies, the words ring true. Every generation has its psychological wound, from which it needs to recover: the Blitz and the Holocaust, the war in Vietnam, the unbridled greed that has dominated the consumerist West since the ‘Eighties and now possesses the post-Marxist East. When the law of life becomes ‘each man for himself’, it is time to start all over again.
The Holy Orthodox Church, the only constant in the flux of history, celebrated her New Year in September. As we watch an orphaned, secular society celebrate its New Year on the eve of 1 January, we should weep for those who have no hope. We should mourn the blind eyes that see nothing ahead. But we should have the courage to say to them ’Christ is born!’ in the winter of the world’s old age. ‘Christ is risen!’ from the sepulchre of the world’s death. The Orthodox Church is not a nostalgic old lady, rocking in a chair and dreaming of lost loves. She is a virgin, ever new and young, waiting for her Bridegroom. The lesson of both ecclesiastical and civil New Year is the same: the snows of winter must melt, if the buds of spring are to appear.
THE GLORIOUS APPEARANCE OF GOD
In the early Church, Christmas was not the much-loved, much-advertised festival that it is today. St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra in Lycia, had not yet donned the red-and-white snow suit of an elf. Macy’s, Gimbel’s, M & S, John Lewis and Debenham’s had not yet usurped the place of the Three Magi, bringing profits to themselves rather than to Christ. The greatest feast of the winter was called THEO - PHANIA, the manifestation of God. It celebrated the baptism of God the Son in the Jordan, when God the Father’s voice rang out identifying him to those who had ears and God the Holy Spirit appeared overhead in the form of a dove. The West came to call the feast merely an Epiphany, an ‘appearance’, forgetting who was appearing to men. In a single instant, for the only time in history, all Three Persons of the Life-Giving Trinity showed who they are.
On the eve of Theophany, only a few years ago, the angels carried our beloved Father Michael to con-celebrate at the Holy Liturgy in the Kingdom. We have prayed for him ever since and shall do so perpetually. Since his day, our community has become more and more diverse, most recently drawing people with origins in Iran, Poland, Russia, Romania, Jamaica, and St. Vincent. This is the mark of an authentically Christian parish. So, when we celebrate the Theophany on January the 8th, we shall not only bless the waters and pray for Father Michael on the memorial of his falling-asleep but receive our friend Aaron Barwell as our brother in Christ. For almost a year, Aaron has been a model par excellence of quiet, humble, faithful service to the Church, arriving promptly and taking part in our life as a community.
Please come to church on 8 January, bringing three gifts: empty bottles to take holy water to your homes, grateful memories of Father Michael that become prayers for his soul, and joyful prayers for Aaron as he enters the Body of the Church of Christ. These are our gifts on Theophany. As Saint Irenaeos of Lyons says, ‘The glory of God is a man fully alive’.
A MAN OF SMALL STATURE
Toward the end of January, we already look to our springtime journey. Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for spring: while we let the fire of God melt the snow of sin, we also look for the green growth that will appear at Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection. The earliest sign is a little tax collector named Zacchaeus. Shorter even than I (at 5 foot 6 inches, I am the same height as Winston Churchill!), Zacchaeus cannot see Jesus over the heads of the crowds thronging him. He climbs into a sycamore tree. When Jesus sees him, he says ‘Come down, I’m going to have dinner at your house!’ The words are all that it takes to move the corrupt, small-minded money-grubber to donate half his income to the poor and repay everyone that he has defrauded four-fold.
Repentance is big, not small. It flows from a heart that is generous, not mean. Let us give to the Church, the Body of Christ, not merely take away. This includes our Bring-and-Share meals on Sundays. Let us not rely on only a few to bring food - let all bring something. Some serve in the holy altar, some sing in the choir, and some, who bring food to share, give glory to God exactly as Zacchaeus did when he divided his wealth with the poor. Repentance is about giving, not giving up.
Repentance is not misery. It is joy. In a fallen life, it is the greatest joy. A man of small stature becomes ten feet tall that day. Like the one out of ten lepers who thanks Christ, he becomes larger in spirit than he ever dreamed was possible. The Church is a perpetual New Year’s Eve: ‘everyone gets a second chance’.
MEN OF TALL STATURE
A few short men are born very tall - tall in spirit, tall in mind. This first month of the civil calendar, we celebrate men of exceptional understanding. Some, like Basil the Great (the 1st), Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria (the 18th), Maximos the Confessor (the 21st), Gregory the Theologian (the 25th), and John Chrysostom (the 27th), were not only well-educated but bold, daring, and deeply insightful, able to plumb the mysteries that we all celebrate when we come to the Divine Liturgy and other services. This handful of bishops and priests includes many of the greatest minds of the Church. Others, like Seraphim of Sarov (2 January), were not learned in a worldly sense but had eyes to see most clearly into the pain and joy of the human heart. This is the foremost trait of an ascetic saint.
The Orthodox Church does not boast in worldly learning which, like beauty or wealth, is at best a tool in the hands of someone who uses it wisely. To use it foolishly, imperils the soul. Rather, the Church boasts in healing a sick and dying world through the Cross and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Fasting, prayer, and study are not ends in themselves but medicines from the cabinet to heal spiritual ills and restore spiritual health.
THE LITTLE DOGS
Many worldly-minded people in our age of sleepwalkers complain that ‘the Church’, whatever they imagine that it is, disregards the gifts of women. Only someone who does not know the Mother of God and the saints imagines it so. What world faith ever dared to proclaim that a teenage girl who said ‘Yes’ to a voice is more glorious than the highest ranks of angels? If our Most Holy Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, is the means by which the Almighty became a human being, every woman in some degree partakes of her grace. A man is a real man in the degree that he respects women. So did God in the flesh respect or disrespect them?
The Canaanite woman whose daughter was possessed is a case in point. In modern terms, she is a Palestinian. She knows that a Jew, such as Jesus the Son of David, regards her with disdain. He tests her faith, reminding her that he was sent to the house of Israel, not the indigenous people of the land. Is this not typical ‘patriarchy’, as feminists charge? He even implies that she is a dog, yelping for the children’s bread. She gets the joke: even the little dogs, she says, eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Jesus proclaims: ‘Woman, great is your faith!’ Without seeing or touching the woman’s daughter, he heals her from that instant. Her mother’s faith is greater than most men’s.
The ‘little dog’ of a Canaanite woman symbolises us - unclean Gentiles. Unless you were brought up in the Jewish faith and born of a Jewish mother, you are a newcomer to the household of God. The original People of God saw you as unclean, idolatrous, brutal, bloodthirsty, and blasphemous. The Law of Moses prescribed rules of diet and conduct simply in order to ensure that the People of God did not come near you or you them. When God himself became a man, all that changed. If you have faith, as strong and humble as the People of God were meant to have, you become one of them. Incorporated by water and the Holy Spirit, including the oil of chrism, into Christ Jesus, you shed everything that once kept you apart.
But, like the Canaanite woman, you must be humble enough to change. In this New Year, let each of us have one resolution: let us be humble enough to let God change us, restore in us who we really are. Let us not dwell in the past but go forward into the future. When the winds of winter have died, the spring will come.
Yours faithfully in Christ,
Fr. Alexander.
