2 posts tagged “christ”
…”Why do we not voluntarily abandon what must be destroyed when this life comes to an end, so that we might gain the kingdom of Heaven? Let Christians care for nothing that they cannot take away with them. We ought rather to seek after that which will lead us to Heaven; namely wisdom, chastity, justice, virtue, an ever watchful mind, care for the poor, firm faith in Christ, a mind that can control anger, hospitality. Striving after these things, we shall prepare for ourselves a dwelling in the land of the peaceful, as it says in the Gospel.”
My journey into Orthodoxy has been really good so far. For about two months now I've been attending services regularly, going on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes Saturdays for Vespers, then on Sundays to what they call "Divine Liturgy." I guess part of their reason for such an auspicious title is due to the heavenly air you're drawn into during the liturgy. I think the story goes that when the original Russians to convert to Orthodoxy first attended the Divine Liturgy, he exclaimed afterwards that he couldn't tell during the service whether he was in heaven or still on earth. I think that's the whole ethos behind Orthodox worship: trying to foster an environment in which God and man truly meet. I surprise even myself in how much attend the services. Somehow I sense they nourish me in a way that I've long not apprehended in Church.
I had a long conversation the other day with a friend who is very concerned about my leaning toward Orthodoxy. I think some of the language of the "One Church" Orthodoxy often espouses really turned him off. He found it arrogant, and unrepresentative of the Whole Church, that which encompasses the Catholics, Orthodox, and various Protestant groups. Are we not all Christians; do we not all possess the Holy Spirit? The conversation reminded me of another I had with a friend some months ago when thoughts of Orthodoxy were first hatching in my brain. I remember she wondered why I wasn't simply content to seek after a Church experience that was more "ecumenical". Since I've started the process of becoming Orthodox, I've heard this very word used a lot, but in a different context. Could it be that Protestants and Orthodox approach ecumenicity from different paradigms? That is, they each have their own history and demons to address? Protestants today seem to be still trying to live down the incontrovertible contradiction to the prayer of Christ for his followers to be one (John 17), as he and Father God are one, i.e. for the Bride to stand undivided and fully in communion. Yet there are thousands of various Protestant branches of Christianity in the United States alone, with a history of splits hardly reminiscent of Christ's prayer. So when my friend suggested that I be concerned with something more ecumenical than the Orthodox Church, perhaps she was speaking from an understanding of Christianity as split, broken and greatly injured by all the pompous talk of Christian orthodoxy among Protestant groups in past centuries, which even led to war and anything but Christ-like behavior. For most of my Christian life, I've thought of the Church in a similar fashion, and have sought a community that humbly acknowledges its lack of monopoly on Truth, which accepts other communions as valid and capable of bringing to the table something of Christ. For too long have Protestant groups suffered to eat the bitter fruit of intolerance, arrogance, and condemnation, as if one were right and all others wrong and worthy of hellfire. Now, we see the mainlines, evangelicals, and "emergents" standing against these demons of the past by accepting, and as best they can, embracing other Christian communions, striving to emphasize they've no monopoly on truth -- that they're just as ignorant as everyone else. For a long time, this was encouraging to me, and still is to some degree, but I've come to think that by their very insistence on remaining separate from each other (for how could they tangibly merge?), it's hard not to suspect that they still hold something over others, even in spite of themselves. Hence, what ensues is the imprecise nature of worship, of doctrine, of orthopraxy, as they are so many options, the catcall of 21st century, I suppose. The freedom to drift.
I think Orthodoxy looks understands "ecumenical" entirely differently. While they acknowledge Protestants and Roman Catholics as Christians, as having the deposit of the Holy Spirit, they nevertheless are very concerned about the fractured state of the Church, and their answer for it is not simply to accept all as equally valid, but rather to have a continual renewal and return to our Christian roots, founded expressly in the Bible, the primitive Church, and the ecumenical councils of the first millennium after Christ. It was in this period that the Church truly was one, and Orthodoxy strives to remain as close to the source as possible. Hence, they understand the word "ecumenical" as foundational, via the seven ecumenical councils that established all the vital doctrines we Christians as a whole still affirm, though admittedly with less and less conviction as some branches of the faith grow lose touch with their roots. Tragically, the second millennium saw the Great Schism between the Church east and west, then the Protestant Reformation, which turned from earnest reform to a ballistic splintering, the break of Anglicanism from traditional Catholicism, and then of course in the last century a veritable captivity of the mind of the Church by what is Modern (i.e. contemporary) and now, post-Modern, in all its nebulous grandeur. In the face of all this, "ecumenical", say the Orthodox, cannot mean merely embracing and validating all the thousands of shards the Church now represents, but seeking silence before God, first of all, and as humbly as possible (in a world that reviles any claim on truth) exhort all believers -- Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestants alike -- to return to our Christian roots, in which life truly meant God, and Church was truly the undivided Body of Christ, as Christ is member to the undivided Godhead. I think I'm coming to believe, as the Orthodox Church teaches, that the faith has been most beautifully and faithfully preserved in Orthodoxy, and that within her bounds the impediments imposed upon the Christ's body, and all of us as members of the body, can and will surely be broken down and swept away as the kingdom of God resumes creation.
