A Call to Prayer

Prayer is intensified by fasting, not fasting by prayer…

“First increase your prayer, not by quantity but by consistency; pray with regularity and then you may strive for ceaseless rememberance of God. Strive to pray with warmth of heart, if it seems false–as if empty structures are being born from your lips in the form of words–pause and ask for help! Prayer is an act of communion with God and no mere formality.”

“Pray adopting the words of our holy forebears, as an act of trust, and ask of the Holy Spirit to activate those very words within you. Only by the activity of the Holy Spirit can we come to know the meaning of our prayers in speaking and chanting them. Oh, how difficult it is for someone so weak as me to pray with mindfulness–so immature is my action but so God-given is my desire!”

Faith/Works

Here’s one of my more recent writings, a little reflection upon the relationship between faith and works in the Epistle of St. James.

——————————————————————————————–

Faith precedes works, is proven by works, and is increased by works.  What is meant by this word “works”?  The Greek term “ergon” has the simple literal meaning of “work” as in the plain English usage–a task or job, or the means by which a task for job is carried out.  As with most words their purpose is to serve a function within a context–the context of a sentence or a thought.  The meaning of a word is often determined by the context of its usage.

In the case of the epistle of St. James, 2:14-26, the word is used in relation to the other principal term “faith” (Gr. pistis).  Based on the usage by St. James we find that the two are not rightly understood unless seen as in a relationship of mutuality, complimentarity.  This is gathered from such statements as “..faith, if it has no works, is dead” (v. 17), and “…as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (v. 22).  The righteous Patriarch and friend-of-God Abraham is given as the example of one in whom both faith and works were embodied, “..and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Now faith comes when one concedes to the fact of the limitation of his own knowledge while realizing there is much more to reality than his personal perception and/or experience of it.  For the Christian this means placing our hope in the incomprehensible yet self-revealing God Who has made Himself known to us as three persons in one essence–a relational-ontological unity.  This also mens, then, that God is the source of all knowledge, and that “knowledge” (Gr. gnosis) is a quality of relationship rather than a quantity (as in the phrase:  ”he knows a lot.”  

Faith, I believe, is hope in the potential–the God-given capacity–of human people to know God.  A relational knowledge of God is not static, it is not a state-of-mind (even of the active mind), it transforms the whole of one’s being, forms the thought of man by the Holy Spirit, and informs the actions of the one who is being transformed.

We cannot say “my faith is sufficient,” as if faith is merely an internal disposition.  In Christ we begin to regain the “birthright of beauty” [St. Athanasius] that had been sold by our first-parents.  What was beautiful about our first-parents was not an inherent beauty-of-self that made them greatly attractive, but the purity of their love and innocent knowledge of God.

All action of man prior to the Transgression was not an artificial attempt at expressing inner disposition, but was as much a part of his being as his thoughts.  So now we, by the gift of faith, gradually move toward living in the knowledge of God–which is rendered spurious if done as only inwardly (by “faith”) or only outwardly (by “works”).  The statement of St. James “…faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (v. 17b), is one regarding the essential unity of the human person.  Just as the God in Whose image we have been created is a relational unity in Whom there is no division between outward and inward, so we who are being re-made must not hold in ourselves a dead faith (a faith that belongs to the mind alone), but must allow for the enlivening of our entire being by enacting our faith.

Look to the stars…

Look to the stars and consider Christ…

Here is a poem that my wife wrote for the Nativity that I am just sharing now, it is relevant even now;  Christ is with us!

 

In the winter of humanity

When man was in his darkest hour and our own pride had failed us

You came.

A tiny radiant star in the arms of your mother

with glory shooting out into the darkness

Whose beams shone forth and pierced the rotted hollows of despair

A glimmer of what was to come

wrapped in the body of a sleeping babe

With blue veins and ivory nails

And eyes that reflected the awesome mysteries of Heaven  ….sparkling like two fresh stars 

There, in the solemn veil of the midnight hour, our great redemption came

Into the care of the meek and dutiful

whose faith revived our fallen joy

and set the clock against the bonds of death

So that all the world heaved a hopeful sigh

And made the mightiest of kings give pause and follow

To see that glorious salvation shining outward on the earth

Like shimmering slivers of starlight

That settled bright upon the faces of the lost.

[written by Kara Vollman, 2008]

 

—————————————————————————————————-

For those interested, here’s a link to a recently posted article by Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen titled, “Creativity and Tradition”:  http://www.oca.org/jonah-2009-0202.html

(my lack of savvy prohibits me from posting an active link)

We Are “Atheists”

“We confess that we are atheists, so far as gods* of this sort are concerned, but not with repsect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him, and the Son (who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like Him), and the prophetic Spirit, we worhip and adore, knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to every one who wished to learn, as we have been taught.”
–St. Justin Martyr, The First Apology

* lit. “daimonia,” the word commonly used among the Greeks for their many gods, used by Christians in reference to evil spirits.

Preparation

Be prepared, O Bethlehem of my soul, to receive Christ!

“Stillness is the mother of prayer.”

–attributed to St. John of Damascus

Abba Isaac

“I do not desire to count milestones, but to enter the bridal-chamber.”

–attributed to St. Isaac the Syrian

Acquisitive Beings

Our lack of faith leads to instability–we are absent of sense of permanence, in a ultimate way–and our response is to allow the crude structure of immediacy–temporality and impulse–to serve as our temporary dwelling, a foundationless structure.  

The superficial frame around us will quicken our death, though it may lead to self-preservation that lengthens this experience of it, for we are always in the process of acquisition; we acquire in ignorance, we acquire in faith, we acquire in willfulness; we are always acquiring, uncontrollably.  

We do not have power over whether or not we will be acquisitive beings–for at our very essence is the taproot that receives God’s life-giving–but we may begin to control and limit much of what we receive.  Our natural dependence upon God has metamorphosed into an appetitive faculty, a governing sense of want a need, and we consume–ideas, food, experience, objects, the lives of others (and one-another).

Might we purify our acquisitiveness?  Sanctify it?  Let our goal be simple:  to strive to receive all as from God, free from impulse, thankfully, unselfishly, with love.  An honest examination will cause us to question whether we want to allow many harmful visitors to enter our souls through the doors of our appetite.

“If you desire to grow in your relationship with God, fall on your knees in repentance, then stand up and get to work. We have much to do.”

–Bishop Joseph (Al-Zehlaoui; Antiochian Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles and the West)