I want my house to be full.

“I want my house to be full,” says the host of the banquet (Luke 14:23). I hear that. I want our house to be full.

Most people these days call the buildings in which we gather to worship God “churches.” Many people of our particular Church, particularly in the old countries, actually call them “temples,” not “churches.” The Church is the people of God gathered together to worship God. The temple is the place of sacrifice to the Lord. But in the ancient church, it’s interesting to note, the building in which we gather would have been called neither a church nor a temple.

The church, as I say, is the people of God gathered together to worship God, and not the building in which we worship him. As for the temple, there was only ever one building that was a temple – the temple that the Lord commanded be built in Jerusalem. That temple has not been replaced by these buildings in which we worship God, it has been fulfilled by our bodies. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). We now worship God in spirit and in truth. Our bodies are for worshipping God. The Lord dwells in our bodies through the holy mysteries of the Church. Through the Eucharist especially, he comes to dwell inside of us – in our hearts. When we receive communion, our heart becomes the tabernacle of the Lord in the temple of the Lord.

So, if these buildings would have been called neither church nor temple, what would they have been called? –  houses (οἶκοι). Christians first gathered in houses. This term is retained in our liturgy. Every time you hear the deacon praying “for this holy church and for all who enter it with faith, reverence, and the fear of God,” the original Greek word translated as “church” actually is οἶκος – house. The house of the Church. The house of the people of God gathered together to worship the Lord. And, I want the house to be full. The Lord talks about a house today and he says he wants it to be full.

By way of filling it, are we doing what Jesus tells us to do? Are we bringing in the poor and needy to share in our banquet? Or, do we think it’s for us but not for them? As we go about our lives, are we cajoling all we meet to join us and fill the house?

I want the house to be full. Don’t you? And I don’t care about it being full of money or full of people with money. I want it to be full of God’s people. All people. People in need. Also, the blind, the crippled, the lame, and the poor, says Jesus Christ himself (Luke 14:21). Are we doing everything we can to invite them? And to make our houses accessible to them – to the Church, which is the people, so that they can join us in the worship of almighty God? Are we offering to give them a ride? Are there people who want to come but can’t?

What could be more important than filling the house of the Lord with many to share in in his banquet? It doesn’t matter how much that costs. Let’s do all we’re able to toward that end.

The banquet in Jesus parable to us today is, of course, the heavenly banquet. But if it’s less clear, it’s also the banquet we celebrate at every Divine Liturgy. The Eucharistic banquet in which we participate is the heavenly banquet. There is no difference. It is the same banquet. The one that goes on in our houses is the same one going on in heaven. There’s a reason we call the liturgy Divine. It is an act of God. God is present there.

If you listen to the prayers of the Divine Liturgy, you’ll see that God himself has broken into our ordinary time and our ordinary life. He abolishes our earthly anxieties, if we let him. In the house of the Church, we occupy the time when the Lord has already come. The second coming is an accomplished act. It’s not only something we’re waiting for the future. The future is now. The past is now. We are present in Bethlehem at the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in a stable in a cave in Bethlehem. We’re present also at his baptism in the River Jordan. And we’re present at the foot of his cross. And by his tomb. We’re present as he rises up out of the tomb. We’re present as he ascends again to the right hand of his Father in heaven. We’re present as the Holy Spirit descends upon us with his apostles. Here. Now. Today. We’re present as he comes again in glory. The Divine Liturgy is the heavenly banquet. It is not a rehearsal. It is not a drill. It is the one and only heavenly banquet.

So, do you ever make excuses as to why you cannot come? Let’s listen to Jesus’ parable about such excuses (Luke 14:16-21). He’s not buying it.

The ideal for us for Sundays and Great Feasts is to come and pray Vespers, Matins, and Divine Liturgy. “Evening, morning, and at noon, I will pray,” says the Psalmist (55:17). But we understand that circumstances make this difficult for most of us and impossible for some of us. So, if you can’t come to one, come to another. If you can’t come Sunday morning, come to Vespers Saturday evening. Participate to the extent you’re able. God sees the heart. He knows how legitimate your excuses are. Unlike us, he is a host who really knows those he has invited.

He knows also whether we doing what we can to bring others to the Lord. This is his command to us, remember. According to some research,[1] 82% of the unchurched say they would consider attending church if they were invited. At the same time, only 2% of people who go to church have invited a friend in the last year. As a result, seven out of ten unchurched people have lived their entire lives without ever having been invited to church by a friend.

The host in today’s parable instructs that we not only invite people to this banquet, but that we compel them to come in (Luke 14:23).  Let’s invite and go beyond inviting. Let’s offer somebody a ride. Or, let’s offer to meet them at the church and show them around or walk in with them and sit with them. Make them comfortable. Answer their questions.

I also learned that not very many people come to church because they saw or heard an advertisement. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t advertise. Even if only one person comes as a result, it’s worth spending quite a lot of money on advertising for the sake of that one person. We should advertise. But still it remains the case, that not a lot of people come to church because they saw an advertisement.

Also, perhaps more surprisingly to some, not a lot of people come to church because the pastor of that church invites them. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t invite people. I should, I can, and I do. And it’s worth it. If only one person comes out of a thousand I invite, it’s worth inviting the thousand for the sake of the one. But still it’s the case that not a lot of people come to church because they’re invited by the pastor.

You know why most people actually come and join the church? It’s because they’re invited by a friend. This makes sense. Even Peter only came and saw Jesus because his brother invited him. Nathanael only came and saw Jesus because his friend Philip invited him (John 1:40-51).

What works is inviting our family and our friends again and again – people who know that we love them. That’s the key that makes all the difference in evangelization – love. If our house isn’t built out of love, then what is it built out of? If it’s built of something other than love, then we should certainly stop calling it a church.

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[1] Thom S. Rainer, The Unchurched Next Door

Listing Minimums and Missing the Point

The people pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God (Luke 5:1). So much so, that he felt the need to get into a boat – Simon Peter's boat, as it so happens – and to put out a little from the land so that he could sit and teach the people from the boat (5:3). In their urgent desire to hear the word of God, which comes uniquely from Jesus Christ, who is himself the word of God, they were even making things a bit uncomfortable for him, such that he had to improvise from a boat a sort of makeshift ambo from which to preach. We can understand, maybe, their great insistence on hearing the word from him who is the word.

But are we so eager to hear the word of God? If Jesus were in town, would we press upon him to hear the word of God? As it so happens, Jesus is in town. He is in our churches every day. He is proclaimed in the gospel and present in the Eucharist. He is in our hearts and minds and bodies. He is alive in us and in this world. But are we even aware from moment to moment of his living presence among us? Or, do we live as if he is away in some far off place? Are we pressing upon him? When the gospel is proclaimed in the church, do we give it all of our attention? Or, do we let our minds wander off?

In Catholic churches, it is common to observe an overwhelming preference for the pews in the back. Often, we are far from pressing upon him to hear his word! It looks more like we’re trying to keep our distance. Zeal and eagerness to participate more fully are often in short supply. An attitude of minimum obligations prevails. That is, we ask not how much we can do to grow closer to God in his holy Church but rather what's the least we must to do in order to still call ourselves practicing Catholics.  They've even drawn up lists of these minimal obligations. For example, in order to be a practicing Catholic, they say we must at least keep these precepts of the Church[1]:

1.      We must attend Divine Liturgy (or at least some Divine service) every Sunday.[2]

2.      We must confess our sins at least once a year.

3.      We must receive Holy Communion at least once a year during the Paschal season.

4.      We must also keep holy the so-called "holy days of obligation."

5.      We must observe the Fasts of our Church.

6.      We must provide for the material needs of the Church according to our ability.

Alright, fair enough, these are good things for us to do. I suppose you’ll get no argument from me about that. And I suppose I'll even go along with the observation that if a person isn't even interested in trying to do these things, it would really be a stretch to call them a practicing Catholic. However, the attitude that seeks the minimum so ardently that it needs to have all this spelled out has probably already missed the point.

Where is our fire and our love for the Lord and his word?

The Byzantine tradition offers a maximalist approach to the spiritual life rather than this minimalist approach. Our full tradition of liturgical prayer, fasting, spiritual discipline, and charitable work, which is constantly proposed to each of us by our tradition, is likely more than any one of us is even capable of, at least on our own. Of course, one of the reasons we are a Church and not a conglomeration of individuals with private pipelines to Jesus is that each member of the body of Christ has his or her own gifts. And together, we can do the work of Christ and live the Life of Christ more fully than we can alone.

And what is that work? Among other things, it is to preach to word of God both in words and, above all, by our love for our neighbors. Love of neighbor is our best and most effective tool of evangelism. It will bring people to the Lord and to the Church more effectively than persuasive arguments – not that there isn’t a time and a place for that as well. But we must always speak the truth in love. If we speak some truth, but not in love, it’s not really the word of God we’re proclaiming, for God is love.

This word of God we are to preach is like the nets, says St. Augustine, that Peter lowers into the deep for a catch.[3] It brings in so many fish that two boats are filled to the point of sinking (Luke 5:7).  Our evangelism should be so effective.

I want to see that in our churches. Let us go and cast our nets, which are the word of God, into the waters of our cities and our towns. What’s that you say? You tried that already and it didn’t work? You toiled all night and took nothing (Luke 5:5)?  Nevertheless, go out into the deep and cast again. It is the word of God you are casting and it can haul them in so that our churches are filled to bursting.  

First, of course, before we can become more effective evangelists, we must deepen our own love and obedience to the word by whatever means necessary. We won’t convince others if we’re not convinced ourselves – if we don’t take this seriously ourselves and strive with whatever strength we have toward God. It’s true that union with God can only be achieved by God’s own grace and not by our effort, but this is not meant to encourage laziness on our part. When it comes to the spiritual life and growing closer to Jesus Christ, instead of asking, “What's the least I need to do?” or, “What fulfills my minimum obligation?” let’s learn to start asking, “What more can I do? Am I doing everything I can to press upon Jesus to hear the word of God so that I can live it and preach it to the world?”

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[1] CCC 2042

[2] CCEO, canon 881 §1

[3] Augustine, Sermon 248.2.

Photini

Jesus shines his light into the life of the Samaritan woman.

He comes to the well of their mutual father Jacob in the middle of the day - at the sixth hour, that is, at the height of noon - when the sun is at its highest in the sky and the day is at its hottest and brightest point. Given these conditions, it's no wonder that Jesus was weary at this time and that he sat down beside the well to rest (John 4:6).

That's no wonder, but here is a wonder: a woman comes to draw water from the well at the sixth hour. A sane woman would come to the well early in the morning, during the cool of the day, to draw the day's water. These are desert conditions, don't forget. Many have suggested that this Samaritan woman chooses this time to come to the well, in all this heat and brightness, because of a darkness in her life. That is, she comes at noon because no one else comes at noon. We can understand that a woman who had gone through five husbands and was now living with a man not her husband was perhaps outcast among the women of her community.  We don't really know this, but it may be that a woman so popular with the men was rather unpopular with the women. And so she wants to avoid them. Small wonder. That's understandable.

To escape the judgments, criticisms, and harassment of the other women, she comes to the well at the least popular time, when it's at its hottest and brightest and most physically uncomfortable. Better to be physically uncomfortable than to endure the judgmental looks of others - you know that's true. Better the staring eye of the noonday sun than the scornful eye of an enemy. 

So to keep herself in the dark, she comes to the well in the light and finds sitting there by the well the one who is light himself, weary from his journey and asking her for water.

They speak of water and eternal life, of Samaritans and Jews, and of worship. Jesus reveals to her the true worship, which is worship in spirit and truth. And he tells her everything she'd ever done, as she puts it (John 4:39). He shines his light into her life.

Trying to hide, she finds herself exposed - but not exposed by her judgmental rivals - rather, exposed to the light by her merciful and loving Lord.

Sin festers in the dark and dies in the light. We are healed from sin, which is really a disease, by exposing into the light. This is why confession is a sacrament of healing. When we sin, it's as though we've been bitten by a poisonous creature and our choice is to leave the poison in the wound to do its work killing us or to draw the poison out into the light where it can do us no harm.

 Truly, Jesus is the physician of our souls and bodies. And today,  he heals the Samaritan woman by drawing the poison of her secret sin out into the light. She doesn't quite confess it, though what she says is true when she says, 'I have no husband" (4:17). Nonetheless, when Jesus exposes the true meaning of her words to her she recognizes and admits the truth of them by confessing that Jesus is a prophet (4:19) - that is, that his words are the words of God and are the truth.

Hearing all that Jesus says and recognizing that he speaks the word of God, she leaves behind her water jar and hastens back to the very community she had been avoiding to tell them all that the long-expected Christ is sitting by their father's well. How can she, an outcast, go among those who have despised her to preach the gospel? But that is what she does. Like the apostles who leave their nets when they are called by Jesus, she leaves behind her water jar to go and preach the gospel to the whole city.[i] She is called by our tradition equal-to-the-apostles.

She is no longer afraid of what other people think of her. Christ frees her from her fear of others' judgment. I'm quite sure he doesn't free her from others' judgment. When this outcast woman of poor reputation comes into the city proclaiming that she has encountered the Christ, I'm sure she received more than one stink eye and suspicious glare. "Why should we trust a woman like you?" I expect many thought or even said. But she is freed from her fear of that judgment. She leaves that fear behind with her water jar at the well, because she has been freed from the darkness in her life by the light of the world, and no worldly power can stop the power of her God-given conviction. And so through her, many come to believe. She brings many into the light – to Christ – because Jesus is the light. She is like the first evangelist, bringing people to Christ even before he dies and rises from the dead.

By tradition, we know that she was baptized and brought her five sisters and her two sons into the faith and they all continued to evangelize. After the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, she and her family traveled to Carthage to preach the gospel there until they, too, were martyred.

And we also know the name she received in her baptism: Photini, the enlightened one, for she received the light of Christ and let it shine before all with neither fear nor shame again until the end of her life.

In some ways, Photini is the quintessential baptismal name. Some of the fathers of the Church regarded all the mysteries of initiation into the Church and into the body of Christ – baptism, chrismation, and eucharist - to be a single mystery, which they name illumination or enlightenment. The one thus received is, therefore, Photini and Photini becomes for us all an image of our baptism. Like Photini, we are all subject to death in our sins when Christ encounters us at the well, or at the font of our baptism, through which he shines his light into our darkness and illumines us. May we all, like Photini, having been filled with grace through the holy mysteries, live out our whole lives with evangelical fervor. Like her, let us proclaim to everyone we meet without fear of what they might think of us, the good news of Christ’s coming into the world and saving us from sin and death by his death and resurrection.

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[i] Chrysostom: "As the apostles left their nets on being called, so she leaves her water jar to do the work of an evangelist by calling not one or two people, as Andrew and Philip did, but a whole city" (Homilies on the Gospel of John 34.1).

A Paralytic Church?

Our Church is dwindling – that is, our particular Church here in the United States: the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church sui iuris of Pittsburgh. We’re about one third the size we were in 1990.* There are also signs of diminishment in the Catholic Church in the United States as a whole.† And, indeed, in all of Christianity in the United States as a whole.† We're shrinking. Have you seen the numbers?

So, what can we do? Well, we can lie down and wait for death. That’s one option. Or, we can rise, take up our mat, and walk (John 5:8). In some ways, our Church is like the paralytic man lying by the sheep pool, who had been ill for thirty-eight years (John 5:2-5).

Incidentally, that is a long time to be sick, don’t you think? That is my whole life – I turn thirty-eight this year. That helps gives me a sense of how long this man had waited for healing – my whole life.

In some ways, as a Church that’s been dwindling for about that long, we can identify with this paralytic man. Maybe we feel powerless as we sit here and watch our limbs wither. “What can we do about it?” we wonder. Sometimes we blame others and shift the responsibility, saying, "I have no one to put me into the pool when it is stirred up” (John 5:7).

Meanwhile, we sit by the sheep pool of healing. And we watch others get healed. After communism fell, our own Churches in Eastern Europe experienced enormous growth. Our seminaries there are bursting at the seams compared to here. And for another example, the Church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds. We’re talking more than five thousand percent growth over the last century.‡

Meanwhile, we shrink. We say with the paralytic, “While I am going [to the pool to be healed], another steps down before me" (John 5:7). We sit paralyzed by the pool and wonder who will put us into the water so that we too can be healed.

Well, Jesus is asking us, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). Do we? Or, are we too comfortable as we are? Are we even aware that we stand in need of such healing? Or, are we so focused on our own problems, our own lives, our own parish, that we have no regard for the diminishment of our larger particular Church? Or even for the diminishment of Christianity as a whole across this nation?

Of course, we want to be healed, we say. Heal us, Lord Jesus! Descend upon us, O holy and life-creating Spirit, and give us new life and growth!

This is all well and good, but be advised, this healing and new life and growth may require breaking some of our own personal rules and dearly-held expectations (which are not to be confused with the commands of God).

For example, it was forbidden among the Jews to carry certain loads in certain ways on the Sabbath (John 5:10). This was a dearly-held custom or human tradition – part of the Mishnah around the Torah – but not the Torah itself. 

It is worth recalling that Torah nowhere explicitly forbids carrying an item from one place to another on the Sabbath. Torah forbids work on the Sabbath. But what is work? Later Mishnah strives to answer this question. Mishnah developed to serve as “a fence around Torah”– to make it so that if a pious Jew follows Mishnah, he cannot come even close to breaking Torah. These are human laws built around Torah and not Torah itself. They’re good inasmuch as they bring the people closer to the Lord. But, Jesus above all has the authority to supersede Mishnah because he himself is the word of God before all ages and is himself the source of Torah.

So it is meaningful when Jesus, the Word of God, says to the man on the Sabbath, “Rise, pick up your mat, and walk” (John 5:8). And he doesn't just say, “Rise and walk.” The command to go against Mishnah – to pick up his mat – is a necessary part of the healing. It demonstrates the totality of his healing. He carries that which had carried him.§

If we as a Church are going to grow in numbers and find new life – if we are going to rise and walk like the paralyzed man – it is going to come with some violation of our own expectations. We’re also going to have to pick up our mat.  God, as it so happens, is not obligated to fulfill our expectations. We are going to have to let certain things go – including things that we hold dear – maybe even things we falsely regard as central to our faith, our mission, or our identity.

Really, these things are idols. Any good thing can become an idol in our heart once we allow it to distract us from God rather than bringing us to God. Our teeth are good for chewing the bread of life. They are good things. But if one of them begins to decay irreversibly, at a certain point, it causes nothing but pain and becomes a hindrance and distraction rather than a help. At this point, the thing to do is extract it.

I know better than to start giving examples. And I know that there are idols in my own heart that need to topple, too. So, let's each of us in our own hearts consider what our own idols may be, which are distracting us from the divinely mandated purpose of evangelizing this nation and growing this Church.

None of us can do everything, of course. But each and every one of us can do something rather than nothing. Maybe some of us are already doing all we can, but let none of us be complacent. Let each of us prayerfully consider what we are doing to help the Lord bring healing and growth to this Church. Let each of us listen in our own hearts to the Spirit’s inspiration guiding us to new life for this Church. Through us, if we will let go of our own will and seek the kingdom of God instead of our own agendas, the Lord will restore the Church’s withered limbs so that she may begin to walk strongly in this nation.

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* Eastern Catholic Statistics

† Rapid Decline of Christianity in the U.S.A. 

‡ Why the Church is growing in Africa 

§ Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 171.1

Preach

Wisdom! Be attentive! We must pay close attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Heb 2:1). We will not escape the just retribution of the Lord if we neglect the great salvation he declares to us (Heb 2:3).

Our salvation in our incarnate Lord and God Jesus Christ is preached to us. The Lord declares our salvation and those who hear him, attest to that salvation (Heb 2:3). This proclamation of salvation is necessary for our salvation. Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, "I do not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not try to save others."

We know our salvation because it has been shared with us. Those who knew Jesus, and witnessed his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection proclaim it to the world. And those who believe proclaim it to the next generation and so on and on until the present. This is tradition – that which is handed down to us from Jesus Christ through his apostles and their successors in unbroken continuity to us here today. This is the gospel to which God bears witness by signs and wonders and various miracles (Heb 2:4) such as the healing of the paralytic in today's gospel (Mark 2:10-12).

Sixth-century mosaic

A purpose of all of these healings and miracles is to point to our new life in Christ – the everlasting life in Christ – that is, the resurrected and glorified life through death that awaits all of us who believe and live faithfully.

If we really hear and really believe the gospel, then we don't stop with hearing. We can't. Because it is the gospel that we must go and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). We are to evangelize.

My, how we Catholics often loathe the thought sharing the gospel with our neighbors. Of admitting to people how in love we are with Jesus Christ. But if we don't share, they won't know.

We tend to cling to an old model of church growth through fertility – of passive proselytism by propagation if you will. We don't mind sharing our faith with our children, but we're terrified of sharing it with a neighbor who might disagree with us about it. I think our accommodation of our surrounding culture has become too deeply ingrained at this point.

We must learn again how to evangelize. How to preach the gospel to the world – to every creature – to the whole cosmos (Mark 16:15). It doesn't involve casting our pearls before swine (Matt 7:6), but it also doesn't involve hiding a light under a bushel basket (Matt 5:15). There is mystagogy only for the initiated, there is catechesis for the uninitiated, and there is evangelism for everybody. To all, we preach Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1:23).

The Philokalia or the writings of St. Gregory Palamas in defense of hesychasm probably don’t make a good opening salvo in our proclamation of the gospel to the world. These are pearls before the world’s swine. These are treasures that aid in living the life in Christ after we have answered his call and entered into his holy mysteries.  

But our light shining before all – which comes from living this mystery – is our love for one another, for God, and for all. This is a word for all: Christ, and him crucified – that our God so loves us that he comes among us in every way but sin.

Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). If we never hear this word we never have an opportunity to believe it. So we must preach the gospel at all times, and use words constantly – not with wise-sounding words, but with the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:17-18). 

The words of the gospel are good. They need to be heard. And so they need to be preached – with words – but also with the example of life lived in Christ. The gospel is worth talking about, and it’s even more worth living. Without this, we can actually do a disservice to the gospel we preach. Our hypocrisy can be a bad witness.

I used to be a bumper sticker guy. As an artist and a designer, I still have a significant interest in bumper stickers as a means of social communication. So, I used to want to put bumper stickers on my car that express my Christian faith, and my own perspective on Christian faith. So I designed one that said, “Is the pope Orthodox?” – playing on the expression “Is the pope Catholic?” And I designed another one that said “Liturgy is Life,” playing off those old “Basketball is life” or “Football is life” stickers that I used to see. Anyway, I've always hesitated to actually put Christian bumper stickers on my car because I'm such a bad driver. I mean, I'm all over the road, and I have a lead foot, and I crash into things a lot. I probably shouldn't have a license. I feared, you understand, being a bad witness. It's one thing to share with people how much I love liturgical worship, it's another thing to share it with them while I'm cutting them off in traffic, which is a selfish and unchristian thing to do. Lord, have mercy. 

Let us share the gospel with words and with our way of life – and even with how we drive. Evangelism is all-encompassing and cannot be reduced to any technique.

But what is the gospel really – the εὐαγγέλιον – the good news?

Jesus gives a foretaste of the good news today in his healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:10-12). And he has been healing many people. As soon as Jesus begins his ministry, he immediately begins driving out unclean spirits (Mark 1:22-26, 34), lifting up those who lay fevered (Mark 1:29-31), cleansing lepers (Mark 1:40-42), and healing many with various diseases (Mark 1:34).

“What is the point of all of this?” some have objected. All these people that Jesus heals will only get sick again anyway and someday die. There is a seeming inescapable finality and inevitability about death. Well, these healings are signs pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel is that the coming healing is not temporary, but everlasting.

Imagine for a moment that you know a doctor who has a diet plan that is the cure for cancer. I'm talking about a cure. Cancer killed both my parents. And it’s killing people right now in its many and varied forms. So it is our enemy and we rightly seek to destroy it. Well, what if you knew a doctor who has the cure? Would you say, I need to tell everybody about this doctor, but only use words when necessary? No, I hope you would tell everyone by every means available to you. I hope you wouldn't hesitate and worry, what people might think of you if you fail to keep this cancer-curing diet yourself at times. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet, whether you keep it or not. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet using spoken and written words and images and videos and Facebook and social media and everything available to you and yes keep the diet yourself, but even when you fail in some of this, don't neglect the rest.

Well, the gospel is like this. I really do know a guy who has the cure for cancer. In fact, though my parents are already dead from cancer, he can still cure them. Not only can he, but he has cured them. He has risen them from the dead in the eschaton which is present, as well as future. And I can only see it with eyes of faith, but I can see it. I've been given eyes to see. I'm going to tell you about him. And I'm going to use words, which are at all times necessary.

There is one holiness

For All Saints Sunday 

Matthew 10:32-33,37-38; 19:27-30

Icon of All Saints
16-20 c.

Paul addresses most of his epistles to the saints of this or that city. And, I hope, if he were writing to us, he would say the same and would address the saints among us.

Although, when he addresses the Galatians, he does not call them saints. His letter is written to rebuke them because they have been turning to a different gospel, a perversion of the gospel of Christ.

So, if Paul were writing to our church, would he call us saints? Or, would he, as he did addressing the Galatians, leave that part out? Are we following the gospel of Jesus Christ that Paul preaches? Or are we accepting a different gospel, receiving a different spirit, or preaching another Jesus (cf. 2 Cor 11:4)?

Some in Galatia were holding up circumcision and the works of the old law over and against faith working through love in Christ, the love which in truth fulfills the whole law (cf. Gal 5:6,14). This excessive regard for externals I don’t think is the typical error of our age, but we are inclined toward other errors.

Sometimes, we excessively internalize our faith. We regard it as a private matter, not something to be discussed in public. We are sometimes cowards and we sometimes fail to acknowledge Christ before others. Today, Christ tells us that if we acknowledge him before others, he will acknowledge us before his Father. That is, he will make us his saints. Likewise, if we deny him, he will deny us before his Father (Matt 10:32-33).

If we love Jesus, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). Among other things, He commands us to acknowledge him before others (Matt 10:32). He commands us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15). And he commands us to baptize every nation in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19).

If we keep these commandments, Christ will acknowledge us before his Father (Matt 10:32). He will remember us forever. And so we will live forever in him, our resurrected Lord. In Christ, we will know the Father, which is eternal life (John 17:3). This is holiness indeed: oneness with God. This is what it is to be a saint.  

This word “saint” is interesting. If we look at the Greek, ἅγιος, it’s the same as the word for holy. Sometimes Greek has many words for which we have only one, as in the case of “love,” but sometimes, it goes the other way and they have one word, for which we have many. And this is the case with the word ἅγιος, which means holy, which means saint, which means sanctuary (e.g Heb 8:2). At times, even Jesus is simply called the Holy – ὁ ἅγιος (e.g. Mark 1:24). This is worth keeping in mind when we think about the saints. Saint and Holy are utterly synonymous. There is no difference at all in the mind of the fathers, or in the mind of Paul. There are not two holinesses, but one holiness. If someone or something is holy, it can only be because they are partakers of the one holiness.

The single greatest teaching of the second Vatican council, in my opinion, is that there is a universal call to holiness. This is not a new teaching. Not by any stretch.  This was already the teaching revealed by the Lord God through Moses in the wilderness of Sinai 3,310 years ago – or so. The Lord our God says in all ages, “be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44-45).

There’s a tall order. The holiness of the Lord our God cannot be overstated. Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, the God of hosts. Three times holy is he. In Hebrew, this is a superlative. He is the holiest one and the source of all holiness, in whom is any holiness that is.

Yet, as the Lord, he is God of hosts, that is, as Fr. Stephen Freeman puts it, God of a huge crowd. He is in and with and surrounded by his saints. “Orthodox worship and prayer,” Fr. Stephen writes, “is simply crowded. Though we worship only the Triune God, we nevertheless do so in company with a ‘great cloud of witnesses.’” God, who alone is holy, has chosen not to be alone in his holiness, but to surround himself with those he has made holy, those he has made one with himself by his grace.

In the Divine Liturgy, after the consecration, the priest holds the holy lamb and says, “Holy gifts to holy people.” Does this mean you have to be a saint in order to come forward to receive Holy Communion? Yes, it does! There is no difference between “saint” and “holy.”

Then how do we become saints? None of us is sinless – but among the saints are sinners, every degree of sinner, and every kind of sinner – just like us. So when I say, yes, we have to be holy before we come forward, we have to be saints before we receive the holy things which are for the holy ones, I am speaking of a miracle of God’s mercy and grace with which we cooperate through prayer and humility and confession of our sins. We do not make ourselves saints, the Lord makes us saints.

Every saint he makes is unique. We honor them all. We need them all. Just as in one body, every member is different, yet every member needs the others for the whole body to thrive (cf. Rom 12:4-5). Every person that God makes, God wants and needs for his purposes. We are wanted and needed by God. We should seek God’s purpose for our own lives. As Fr. Thomas Hopko points out, if we are condemned or damned it will not be because we are not the Theotokos, or we are not John the Baptist, or we are not Isaac the Syrian. It will be because we are not truly ourselves. It is for not being who God created us to be that we could be damned. The ultimate authority on who we should be and what we should do is our author and creator.

He reveals a lot of this to us through the Church, so don’t think this means that we can go it alone. Because God gave us the Church to guide us into holiness, that is, into the person that God made each of us to be. Going it alone was never his vision for any human being. We are communal creatures. We are a community of persons, in the image of God, who is a community of persons. The Church is that community - that coming together as one with God and one another.

Abba Dorotheos of Gaza has a beautiful image of a wheel, in which the center – the axis – is God, and each of us are somewhere along the spokes of the wheel. You see, the closer we get to God, the closer we get to each other. Also, the further we get from God, the further we get from each other.

For this reason, it makes no sense to receive communion – to enter into communion with God – if we have animosity toward our brother or sister (Matt 5:23-24). There is no communion with God without communion with one another. First of all, we must “be reconciled with everyone and have no animosity toward anyone.” This is the first rubric in the Liturgikon.

Before we dare to approach with the fear of God and with faith, we pray that the holy mysteries be for our healing and not for our condemnation. We pray that the Lord make us worthy to receive. And we pray for mercy. This prayer – this Kyrie eleison – is our path to holiness. Holiness never comes from relying on the self, but rather on the one to whom we pray. To rely on the Lord, who alone is holy and who alone can make us holy.

So, when the priest holds the Eucharist in his hands and says, “Holy gifts to holy people” what can we say? We can only say, “One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father.” All holiness that is comes from the holy one.

The holy one, Jesus Christ, teaches us how to be holy in today’s gospel. We must confess Christ before others, we must love him more than all others, even more than our fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. And we must take up our cross and follow him (Matt 10:37-38). These are Jesus’ own words. This is his prescription for holiness.

When we are baptized into Christ, we are clothed with Christ and we begin to become one with him. We must thereafter imitate him, especially in his self-sacrificial love, to remain and grow toward ever greater union with the holy one, Jesus Christ, who is one in essence with the Father who is holy.  

From Evangelism to Ethnic Enclaves: Early Eastern Christian Immigration to America

The Russian Orthodox missionaries worked among the Alaskan Natives, converting many thousands to the true faith by their sincere efforts to inculturate the gospel. They came to Alaska with evangelical intent. Even Fr. Juvenaly’s great detractor, Nicholas Rezanov, acknowledges this: “the monk Juvenaly went there immediately to propagate the faith.”

Unfortunately, later Eastern Christian immigrants did not always maintain this evangelical impulse to present the faith in terms comprehensible to other cultures. A difference of intention motivated subsequent immigrant communities of Eastern Christians. They came not to evangelize but primarily to escape economic hardships. Their priests also came with no particular intention to evangelize, but rather to serve their own people while they temporarily sojourned in a foreign land, already peopled with others of Western European descent. The Eastern Churches in America, perhaps also unjustly suffering from feelings of cultural inferiority, began to isolate themselves ethnically. 

Culture and Ethnicity in the Church in the United States

Más Mural
photo by Ruby Sinreich, 2005

  Many of the tensions experienced within the Church in the United States have ethnic roots. The various ethnicities of the immigrants who make up this “immigrant church,” as Jay Dolan calls the Catholic Church in the U.S. in his book The American Catholic Experience, deeply inform attitudes and beliefs about church disciplines (125). There is often disagreement in this land – about what really is a Christian, how a Christian really ought to live, or what a Christian really ought to believe – that has more to do with ethnic and cultural backgrounds than with anything that Christ taught or exemplified. Nonetheless, the Church exists in a world of manifold cultures and ethnicities. If the Church intends to preach the gospel to all creation and to make disciples of all nations, as Jesus taught, she must seek ways of communicating this good news to each nation in culturally comprehensible terms (cf. Mark 16:15; Matt 28:19). In other words, the gospel must be in some sense inculturated. This is a deep problem in the U.S., where there is no one culture or ethnicity. In this nation, various inculturations of the same gospel compete. There is value in preserving these various heritages in all their diversity, rather than compelling all to assimilate to the dominant one, as long as people do not confuse cultural or ethnic expressions of Christian faith with the Christian faith itself – as long as Christians can learn to recognize Christ in cultures and ethnicities other than their own.
     
        The issue of ethnicity has particularly affected Eastern Christians in America. Partly because the migration to America from Eastern Europe and the Middle East began in significant numbers later than that from Western Europe in the history of immigration to this land, there was – from the moment of their arrival – pressure upon the minority ethnic communities of Eastern Christians in America to assimilate to the dominant culture of the larger Church in America. This was particularly true for Eastern Catholics who, in addition to receiving pressure from the wider American culture to assimilate, also received pressure from the Catholic Church in the U.S., which was overwhelmingly Roman and primarily of Irish and German ethnicities. Certain strong historical forces motivated many American Catholics to desire assimilation and to try to compel newcomers to assimilate.

        It is helpful to consider the background of the Catholics who sought a culturally monolithic presentation of Catholic faith. Dolan describes the background of the immigrants who would make up the majority of the Church in America. They came from a certain experience of the Church in Europe. “Catholics could be found in many countries of Europe and throughout the Middle East. But, within each nation, Catholicism was culturally quite homogenous, with the native culture clearly the dominant force in the church” (Dolan 127). Having come from such unified and ethnically homogenous churches in Europe, perhaps it is not surprising that many Catholics wanted the Church in the U.S. to be similar. Consequently, many Roman Catholic bishops here did not know what to do with Eastern Catholics, who brought with them alien liturgical practices and church disciplines, which included, most problematically, the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

        One of the most contentious issues for Eastern Catholics in America, both historically and in the present, is married priesthood. This issue well demonstrates how a cultural particularity can become so deeply entwined in the popular imagination with the nature of the Church that disagreement is considered tantamount to heresy. Western Catholics do not permit the ordination of married men to the priesthood. They have not permitted it for many centuries. This church discipline is a product of culture, not of divine revelation or of early church tradition. Eastern Catholics, coming from a different culture, have a different discipline and do permit this practice. In the U.S., after both Western and Eastern Catholics had immigrated here in large numbers, there was cultural diversity. On this and many other matters, there were two contrary disciplines existing side by side. There were multiple inculturations of the gospel living as neighbors in one land. They did not always coexist harmoniously.

Alexis Toth

        Foremost among those who considered it essential for Byzantine Catholics to assimilate and adopt the ecclesiastical customs predominant in America was Bishop John Ireland. Ireland was a liberal who sought a thoroughly and uniformly Americanized Church. Toward this end, he particularly sought the latinization of the Ruthenians, particularly on the issue of married priests. Demonstrating how deeply went his culturally informed ideology, Ireland reportedly said to Alexis Toth on December 19, 1889, after learning that Toth had been married, “I do not consider that you or this bishop of yours [who ordained Toth] are Catholic.” If this quotation accurately represents Ireland’s beliefs, it would seem that to disagree with Ireland about this cultural practice was, in his estimation, to be non-Catholic. For Catholics of this ilk, the Church was inextricable from culture. Ireland’s perspective, as is well known, inspired Toth to lead thousands of Eastern Catholics into Orthodoxy.


        Prejudices against other cultures and ethnicities led to divisions within the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Ethnic groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tended to isolate themselves into immigrant neighborhoods. They worshiped with one another, drank with one another, and lived with one another. They brought their European cultures with them and reestablished them as best they could in what Dolan calls, “cultural ghettos” (201). Because of cultural and ethnic prejudices, immigrant communities often isolated themselves and strongly resisted any kind of assimilation. “Prejudice among Catholic immigrant groups was widespread and led to overt discrimination and even open conflict in the parish” (Dolan 201).
The strong identification of the Church with a particular ethnic culture was by no means limited to Irish bishops and their attempt to impose Roman Catholic ideas upon Easterners. There were ethnic divisions between various predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic groups. Additionally, among and between Eastern Christians, ethnicity was a major source of division.

Eastern Orthodox Church of Holy Trinity
New Orleans, LA

        It was not like this from the beginning. There was a degree of cooperation among Eastern Orthodox Christians of various ethnicities when they first began to establish parishes in the U.S.. They were so few that their shared ecclesiastical and liturgical heritage was enough to keep them together despite their ethnic differences. Indicative of this, in December of 1867, in San Francisco, a group of Orthodox Christians established the “Greek-Russian-Slavonic Church and Philanthropic Society.” The name of this organization alone indicates the early cooperation among various ethnic groups. For another example, the earliest Orthodox parish in Louisiana, Holy Trinity Church, founded by Greeks in 1864, served both Greeks and Russians. It served the Liturgy in Greek and Slavonic and conducted parish business in English.

        This partnership between different ethnicities was uneasy from the very beginning, however, and as soon as they were numerous enough to function independently, the Greeks found it necessary to establish a separate diocese for the Greek Orthodox in 1921, disregarding the theoretical Orthodox adherence to the idea that one place ought to have one bishop. One might glean from this that they regarded their ethnic identity as Greeks as being at least as important, if not more so, than their identity as Orthodox Christians. Certainly, they found it necessary to create a jurisdictional division in America drawn on ethnic lines.

        Many have called American society a “melting pot.” While there is certainly interplay between cultures and ethnicities in America, they have not melted together as much as been tossed together. America is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie. There is no one blended-together American culture to which all Christians can assimilate – or to which the Church can inculturate the gospel message. Cultural and ethnic heritages have been preserved and passed down. American is a nation of multiple cultures. To make a disciple of this nation, then, the Church here must present the gospel in more than one way. Therefore, the preservation of diversity within the American Church is necessary. It is a good thing – a strength and not a weakness of the Church in the U.S.– that here the gospel is presented and lived out with different theological emphases and church disciplines by different communities. Perhaps here the Church is uniquely suited to “breathe with her two lungs” (Ut Unum Sint 54).

        However, while it is a fact that these different expressions of the faith grew out of different cultures, it is not clear to what extent they should continue to be associated with certain ethnicities. Some continue to believe that ethnicity is an important element of, not just cultural, but also ecclesial identity. To this very day, there are members of the Byzantine Catholic Church in America who believe that a married man ethnically connected to an Eastern Catholic Church is more suitable for ordination to the priesthood than is a married man of another ethnicity. This is not tenable. When a person grows up in a pluralist society like that of the U.S., it is likely and good that he or she will be aware of other cultures and ethnicities and will interact with them. Children of this nation become children of many nations. This should be promoted, not discouraged. The cultural isolation common among early immigrants should not perpetually persist in the United States. Interaction and dialogue between Eastern and Western Christians without seeking homogenization is good thing.

        In order to assist in the evangelization of the people of the U.S., Eastern Catholic Churches should also practice inculturation here to the extent that such would not compromise any essential element of the faith or tradition of the Church. There are legitimate differences that should be preserved – such as the tradition of a married priesthood, but there are also areas in which it is good to adapt – such as by the use of English in the Liturgy.

        Regarding language, His Beatitude Sviatoslav, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, stated after his recent elevation,

Patriarch Sviatoslav

We as a church descended from the mission of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius – great translators of the Scripture and liturgy – have an extraordinary mission to continue this translation so we may pray properly and profoundly in English, in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Ukrainian…. The question of inculturation is very important (Shevchuk).  

Language is one aspect of American culture that has indeed become rather homogenous. Gone, for the most part, are the “polyglot, cosmopolitan parishes of the early nineteenth century” (Dolan 197). It is important to preach the gospel in a language the people understand, and at the moment in the United States that is overwhelmingly English. This is changing to include ever more Spanish, of course, and the Church must respond to this as well.

        The Eastern Churches in the U.S. should welcome all people of whatever ethnicity or language and respond to their needs as well as it is able. The Church has changed throughout her millennia of history to respond to the needs of people in various places and times and to communicate the salvation, freedom, and eternal life available in Jesus Christ to every culture and ethnicity she contacts. Each particular Church should be the Church fully and should cooperate to evangelize the nation.