A talk given at a conference sponsored by the Northern California Brotherhood of Orthodox Clergy and held at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Sacramento, California, October 21, 2006.
The
theme of today's conference, "Preaching the Gospel of Christ in the
Modern World," is relevant to everyone here, not only to those who are
called to preach sermons from the ambo. Each of us is called to preach
the Gospel, first of all by bearing witness to it through our lives, and
secondly by making it available to others. This morning I will talk
about why we should preach the Gospel, about the prerequisites
for preaching the Gospel, and finally about how to bear witness to it in
our lives.
The Gospel, of course, is the sum of the message of
the Christian Faith, and especially the good news that Christ has saved
mankind from the eternal consequences of sin, that He has overcome the
central problem of the world — death, both bodily and spiritual — by
means of His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection.
In approaching the subject of preaching the Gospel, the first question that arises is: Why should we be preaching the Gospel of Christ in our modern world?
Why,
indeed, when the Protestants seem to be doing it much better? They have
evangelistic programs, crusades that fill stadiums, mega-churches,
television channels, Christian bookstores, a Christian music industry,
and all the money they could want. We Orthodox in America
are small by comparison. Why can't we just concentrate on our beautiful
services and our social functions, and let the evangelicals preach to
the unchurched?
The answer to this question is that the
Protestants, and the Roman Catholics as well, do not preach the whole,
complete, and unadulterated Gospel of Christ. Only the Orthodox Church
can do that, because the Orthodox Church is the true Church that Christ
founded, and that has continued up to today in a continuous, unbroken
line of Holy Apostolic Tradition. This is the Church against which, as
Christ promised, the gates of hell shall not prevail (cf. Matt. 16:18).
Right before His Crucifixion, Christ told His disciples that the Holy
Spirit would come and lead them into all Truth. That promise was indeed
fulfilled after Christ's Resurrection. But it did not cease to be
fulfilled after His Apostles reposed. Christ has continued to fulfill
that promise through two millennia of upheaval and tribulation; He
continues doing so even now, and He will continue until His Second
Coming. During our Church's history, heretical emperors, priests,
bishops, and even patriarchs threatened to destroy the purity of the
Orthodox Faith, but through the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church
was preserved in Truth, and the heresies were overcome.
The non-Orthodox Christian churches have preserved some of
the Truth of the original Christian Faith. But whatever they have that
is true — whether it be the Holy Scriptures, the dogma of the Holy
Trinity, or the dogma of Christ's Incarnation — they have received from
the original, Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church, whether they
acknowledge this or not. But, again, they possess only some of the
Truth, and the rest they have distorted because they are separated from
the true Church that Christ founded. Only the Orthodox Church is the
repository of the pristine Gospel and the undistorted image of Christ.
This, then,
is why we Orthodox Christians are called to preach the Gospel of
Christ. We have something to give that no one outside the Church can
give. Since the Christian Faith is the true Faith, and the Orthodox
Faith is the true form of that true Faith, we alone can give the
fullness of Truth to the searching humanity of our days. It would be
selfish of us to keep it to ourselves. Yes, we should care about our
beautiful church services, which are the center of our life as the
worshipping Body of Christ; and, yes, we should have our social
functions, since we need to have fellowship with other members of
Christ's Body. But, together with this, we are called to share our
Faith, to offer it to those who have not yet been given the great
gift of being part of Christ's true Church. This is a tremendous
responsibility, and it's time the Orthodox Christians in this country
stepped up to it. Of course, much has been done and is being done. Just
in the last twenty-five years since I first discovered Orthodoxy, I've
seen a tremendous growth in the Orthodox mission in this country. But we
can do a lot more, and that's what we'll be looking at and discussing
today.
Back in the early 1960s, when the co-founder of our St. Herman Brotherhood, Fr. Seraphim (then Eugene) Rose, was working in the brotherhood's Orthodox bookstore in San Francisco, his ruling bishop, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, walked in, as he often did. Fr. Seraphim asked St. John
a question he had been pondering: "Nearly all the peoples of the earth
have had the Gospel preached to them. Does this mean that it's the end
of the world, as the Scriptures say?"[1]
"No," replied St. John. "The Gospel of Christ must be preached in all tongues throughout the world in an Orthodox context. Only then will the end come."[2]
This is an awesome thing to contemplate. St. John,
who in other instances demonstrated that he had the gift of prophecy,
is telling us that we cannot leave it up to Protestants and Roman
Catholics to enlighten the world with the Gospel. That task ultimately
belongs to us Orthodox Christians. It's not enough, for example, that
three thousand Chinese are becoming Christian every day, according to
the latest statistics. Yes, they are becoming Protestants and Roman
Catholics, and that's good as far as it goes, but they are not becoming
Orthodox Christians. Ultimately, it will be up to us to preach the
Gospel to them in the Orthodox context.
Fr. Seraphim once noted that, "When Archbishop John[3]
first came to Paris from Shanghai [in the early 1950s], instead of
giving a merely polite and formal greeting to his new flock in church
the first time he saw them, he gave them real spiritual meat: The
meaning of the Russian exile [he said] is to preach the Gospel over the
whole earth, which must happen before the end of the world; and that
means not just any Gospel, any kind of 'Christianity,' but Orthodoxy."[4]
What St. John
said about the Russian exiles can be applied equally well to the
diaspora of all the other Orthodox nationalities: Bulgarian, Georgian,
Greek, Lebanese, Palestinian, Romanian, Serbian, Syrian, Ukrainian, etc.
Speaking
of prophecy, here is one from a Greek saint of our times (not yet
canonized): Elder Paisios of Mount Athos. Before his repose in 1994, he
was asked by one of his spiritual sons: "Elder, today there are so many
people— billions who don't know Christ and so few of them who do know
Him. What will happen?"
Elder Paisios answered: "Things will
happen which will shake the nations. It will not be the Second Coming,
but it will be a Divine intervention. People will be searching for
someone to speak to about
Christ. They will pull you by the hand: 'Come here, sit down and tell me about Christ.'[5]
We
don't have to look into the future for this. Already, even now, people
are starving spiritually. How can we give them what they need?
2. PREREQUISITES FOR PREACHING THE GOSPEL
I
would now like to outline three things which we should have in place in
order to preach the Gospel of Christ in the modern world: First, we
must know the Orthodox Gospel of Christ; second, we must live the Gospel; and, third, we must know the modern world, in order to know what we're dealing with.
1.
So, to begin with, we must know the Gospel in the Orthodox context.
This means that, not only should we know the Divinely inspired Holy
Scriptures, but we should know how the Church, which gave us the
Scriptures, has interpreted the Scriptures through the guidance of the
Holy Spirit. We can know this through the writings of the Holy Fathers
of the Church who have written extensive commentaries on the Scriptures,
especially the book of Genesis and the entire New Testament. Almost all
of these commentaries are now easily available in English. They are not
hard to understand, even though some of them, like the commentaries of
St. John Chrysostom, were written sixteen hundred years ago.
There
is no question in our confused times that cannot be answered by a
careful, pious, and reverent reading of the Holy Fathers, who give us to
understand the true meaning of Holy Scripture and to know the substance
of our Orthodox Faith. We must go to the Fathers in order to become
their disciples, laying aside our own "wisdom" which we have acquired
from the modern secular world." When we find the consensus of the
Fathers on any given issue, we find the teaching which has prevailed and
has been upheld in the Church. Thus, we find the mind of the Church,
which is the mind of Christ, since Christ is the Head of His Church.
Of
course, we should read Orthodox books by some contemporary authors
also, because they distill the teaching of the Fathers and bring it to
bear on modern concerns. But to get a well-rounded view of the Patristic
teaching, and to know which modern authors reflect more of the
Patristic mind, we should not neglect to go to the writings of the
Fathers directly.
The Lives of Saints and righteous ones of
earlier times and of our own times are also essential reading, as are
the spiritual counsels of these same saints and righteous ones. These
writings give us a blueprint for our own Christian life, both
instructing and inspiring us to live our lives in Christ, in communion with Him, and on the path to unending union with Him.
St.
John Chrysostom once said: "The Christian who is not reading spiritual
books cannot save his soul." Commenting on this statement, Fr. Seraphim
Rose said: "We must be constantly filling ourselves with the word of
God, the Holy Scriptures, and other Orthodox literature, so that, as St.
Seraphim [of Sarov] says, we will be literally 'swimming in the law of
the Lord.' The science of how to please God and save our souls will
become a deep part of ourselves that can't be taken away from us.
"The
process of Orthodox education begins with infancy, with the simplest
Bible stories and Lives of Saints related by one's parents, and it
should not cease this side of the grave. If anyone learning an earthly
profession devotes all his energy to studying and gaining practice in
it, how much more should Christians be studying and preparing for
eternal life, the Kingdom of Heaven which is ours for a short struggle
in this life."[6]
2. This brings us to the second prerequisite for preaching the Gospel in the modern world, and that is, we must live the Gospel.
Again,
to quote from Fr. Seraphim: "There exists a false opinion, which
unfortunately is all too widespread today, that it is enough to have an
Orthodoxy that is limited to the church building and formal 'Orthodox'
activities, such as praying at certain times and making the sign of the
Cross; in everything else, so this opinion goes, one can be like anyone
else; participating in the life and culture of our times without any
problem, as long as we don't commit sin.
"Anyone who has come to
realize how deep Orthodoxy is, and how full is the commitment which is
required of the serious Orthodox Christian, and likewise what
totalitarian demands the contemporary world makes on us, will easily see
how wrong this opinion is. One is Orthodox all the time, everyday, in every situation
of life, or one is not really Orthodox at all. Our Orthodoxy is
revealed not just in our strictly religious views, but in everything we
do and say. Most of us are very unaware of the Christian, religious
responsibility we have for the seemingly secular part of our lives. The person with a truly Orthodox worldview lives every part of his life as Orthodox."[7]
As
we go deeper into the Orthodox Christian life, with daily prayer, daily
reading of spiritual books, regular attendance of Church services, and
regular confession and reception of Holy Communion, we will see our
entire lives transformed in this way. When we come before Christ every
day and speak to Him with love and longing, we will find our
relationship with Him deepen, so that He will live in us more fully.
When we daily reestablish our connection with Jesus Christ in this way,
it will become natural for us to follow His commandments throughout the
day, in every aspect of our lives. Then His commandments — even the
hardest ones, like loving those who spitefully use us (cf. Matt. 5:44) —
will not seem burdensome to us.
Through our life of Grace in the Church, we are to be continually transformed into the likeness of
God, which is the likeness of Christ. We are to be united with God ever
more fully by acquiring and assimilating His Grace, His Uncreated
Energy.
For the Orthodox Church, salvation includes the forgiveness of sins and justification before God (cf. Eph. 1:7; Rom. 5:16,
18), but it is also more than these. It means to abide in Christ the
God-man and have Him abiding in us (cf. John 15:4), to participate in
the life of God Himself, to become partakers of the Divine Nature (II
Peter 1:4) both in the present life and in eternity. In the language of
Orthodox Patristic theology, to be saved ultimately means to be
deified. As the Romanian Orthodox writer Fr. Dumitru Staniloae explains:
"Deification is the passing of man from created things to the
Uncreated, to the level of the Divine Energies — Man assimilates more
and more of the Divine Energies, without this assimilation ever ending,
since he will never assimilate their Source itself, that is, the Divine
Essence, and become God by Essence, or another Christ. In the measure in
which man increases his capacity to become a subject of ever richer
Divine Energies, these Energies from the Divine Essence are revealed to
him in a greater proportion."[8]
In
a similar vein, we can say that being Orthodox includes having the
right beliefs, the right doctrines, the right worship, and the right
interpretation of Scripture, but it is more than these. Being Orthodox
means being in the Church. We should not only know this
intellectually; we should feel it in the depths of our being. By the
Grace of God, although we are sinful and unworthy, we are part of
Christ's Body; we are members of His one and only true Church. As such,
we believe in the Church.
In order to communicate this
belief in the Church to those outside the Church, we must experience
what it means to be in the Church. In other words, we must experience,
gradually and a step at a time, what it means to be transformed into the
likeness of Christ, to live in Christ and have Him live in us, to
participate in His life, to be deified.
It is significant that, of
all the Christian confessions, only the Orthodox Faith understands
Grace to be the Uncreated Energy of God, in which God Himself is fully
present. In the Orthodox Church, Grace is known to be God Himself. In
the non-Orthodox confessions, on the other hand, the grace that is
communicated is considered to be a created phenomenon. In Roman Catholic
theology, it is said that grace cannot exist apart from the soul, and
that it is only a "quality" of the soul.[9]
When
in the Orthodox Church we say that we are to be filled with Grace, that
we are to acquire the Grace of the Holy Spirit, this means to be
literally filled with God Himself. Only in the Orthodox Church do we
know and confess that it is possible for a Christian to be deified in
the sense of becoming god through His Grace— that is, not God by Nature
and preeternal begetting, as only Christ was and is, but a god by Grace
and adoption. This is what the Apostle John meant when he wrote in his
Gospel: As many as received Him [Christ], to them He gave the power to become sons of God, even to those who believe on His name(John 1:12).
Yes,
it is significant that only the Orthodox Church has this understanding
of Grace and deification. But it is significant not just in the sense
that only the Orthodox Church has the right views on these subjects.
Most of all, it is important to consider why the Orthodox Church
alone has the right understanding. Of course, one could say that it is
because, as I've already mentioned, only the Orthodox Church is the true
Church which Christ has preserved from error and heresy for two
thousand years. But I would say that it is more than this. Does not the
Orthodox Church alone have the right understanding of Grace and
deification because she alone makes possible this full participation in
the life of God, this union with God, this deification? To be sure,
those outside the Church can experience God's Grace. In fact, some Holy
Fathers, such as St. Maximus the Confessor,[10]
teach that nothing could exist for an instant without God's Grace. But
full participation in God's Energies, as much as is possible for human
nature, is only available in the Orthodox Church.
As I mentioned
at the beginning of this talk, the Gospel of Christ is, most
essentially, the good news that the central problem of the world —
death, both bodily and spiritual — has been overcome by Jesus Christ.
Through His Incarnation, His Death on the Cross, and His Resurrection,
Christ has brought Life to the world; He has made it possible for man to
live eternally with Him in His Kingdom — not only in soul, but also in
body after the General Resurrection. Any Christian confession that has
retained the basic teachings of Christianity will affirm this. But only
in the Orthodox Church do we find the complete understanding and
experience of this salvation that Christ has brought to the world, this Life that He has brought to the world (cf. John 11:25), this Living Water that He has promised to His followers (cf. John 7:38). This Life that Christ gives is the Life of God Himself — it is God
Himself— and that is why the Saints and righteous ones of the Orthodox
Church are known to be literally filled with God, to be deified by Him.
And, in the General Resurrection, it will not only be the soul of man
that will be deified; the body will be deified as well. Therefore, the
Orthodox Holy Fathers have summed up the Gospel of Christ with a phrase
that might seem surprising to Christians outside the Orthodox Church.
"God became man," they say, "so that man can become god."
These
considerations can help us to appreciate more fully why we, as Orthodox
Christians, have a responsibility to preach the Gospel of Christ to
those around us. We have the right teaching; we know — or should know —
what it means to be in the Church and believe in the Church; and we have
all the means that Christ has made available to mankind to be saved—
saved, that is, in the maximalist sense of being transformed, even
deified, in order to be made fit for the everlasting Kingdom of Heaven.
Of
course, we do not have to be fully deified — that is, fully and
perfectly penetrated by God's Energies — in order to preach the Gospel.
All of us who have been baptized and chrismated Orthodox have already
been deified to some extent, since we receive the Uncreated Energy of
God united to our souls at Baptism; and all of us who receive Holy
Communion experience a kind of deification. St. Symeon the New
Theologian, who was deified in the full and strict sense of the word,
affirmed that all those who partake of the Holy Mysteries "with
sincerity of heart are quickened and deified” [11]
— that is, deified in the broader sense. We are to grow toward a more
full deification, a more full participation in God throughout our whole
lives. As we grow in this way, we will have more and more Grace to give
to others when we preach the Gospel of Christ.
3. Now we come to the third prerequisite for preaching the Gospel in the modern world, and that is to know the modern world, or, more specifically, the modern Western society in which we find ourselves. Compared to the countries of Western Europe,
our American society has retained a considerable Christian sector, but
that sector is becoming smaller and smaller. Recent polls have found
that every year, there are two million fewer Christians in America.
At the same time, there are two million workpeople who say, "I'm not
religious; I'm spiritual." In other words, they are abandoning churches
and are opting for a spirituality of their own devising: personalized
spirituality.
Fr. Seraphim Rose identified the sickness of the
modern world as "nihilism": the abandonment of belief in absolute Truth,
which is grounded in faith in God. As Fr. Seraphim taught, the
philosophy of the modern age can be summed up in the following phrase:
"God is dead, therefore man becomes God and everything is possible."[12]
We
have to be aware of the effects of this underlying nihilistic
philosophy on the life around us, and on ourselves. Although many people
give lip service to God, they live as though He doesn't exist. And we
ourselves, sadly, if we will only admit it, also behave sometimes as if
God doesn't exist, being also under the influence of the spirit of the
times.
If there is no God to Whom we are answerable and Who gives
meaning and purpose to our lives, then our lives are all about "me":
what I want, my personal gratification, my personal fulfillment, my
"quality of life." According to this view, there is no absolute or
objective meaning to life; there is only a relative or subjective
meaning: what it means to me, how it suits me. This idea is very strong
in our society; we breathe it in with the contemporary air, so to speak.
In
preparing this talk, I was reading over the talks that Fr. Seraphim
gave at our monastery nearly twenty-five years ago, which I have already
been quoting from. Back then, he was saying that the current generation
has been described as the "me" generation. Many of us here are from
that generation. But what of the generations that have come after the
"me" generation? They have been called "generation X" and "generation
Y." These generations have also grown up in a society characterized by a
gradual loss of belief in absolute Truth and by a concurrent absorption
in self-gratification. At the same time, noticeably more than the "me"
generation, they have felt the angst of this empty philosophy of life.
As society moves further away from God, we are supplied with more
sophisticated ways of distracting us from the pain that comes from being
separated from God, and more medications to numb that pain. Generation Y
has more access to entertainments than any other generation in history,
but at the same time, with its use of antidepressants, it has been
called the most medicated generation in human history.
In the
meantime, to fill in the vacuum caused by the abandonment of Christian
Faith, numerous forms of false spirituality have been on the rise for
decades. Today, the fastest growing religion in the United States,
in terms of percentage, is witchcraft. This is not unrelated to the
fact that numerous movies, television shows, books, and games present
young people with the idea that witchcraft is "cool" and "fun." Members
of Pagan and Wiccan groups say that, whenever a popular book, movie or
TV show comes out with this theme, they get a surge of phone calls from
young people.
This is only the latest sign of the times. There are
many other such signs, from the growth of Eastern religions to the UFO
subculture, to the pseudo-Christian experiences seen at such gatherings
as the "Toronto Blessing."
And, while all of this
pseudo-spirituality is being put into the air, there is a concerted
effort to obliterate what is left of traditional Christian society in
contemporary America. Not a year goes by without several cover stories in such major national magazines as Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report, which
attempt to undermine Christian faith under the guise of "objective"
reporting. Not only is the reality of the Biblical account of creation
and the global Flood rejected, but the historicity of the Prophet Moses
is dismissed, the historicity of the Gospels are called into question,
and the lives of Christ and His Apostles are reinterpreted according to
heretical Gnostic notions which were condemned by the Church many
centuries ago. The aim of these articles — and of much else of what we
see and hear in the media nowadays — is to denature Christianity.
In order to fit in with the nihilistic, secularistic, self-worshipping
spirit of the times, Christianity must be reinterpreted so as to abandon
any claims to absolute Truth, and to abandon faith in Christ as the Only Begotten
Son of God. Instead, Christ is made out to be some kind of New Age guru
who leads each of us to the realization that each one of us is God: not
god by Grace as in the Orthodox understanding, but God by Nature in the
New Age, Gnostic understanding. To a self-worshipping society for which
absolute Truth has been replaced by "me," nothing less than this false
form of self-deification is satisfactory. It is precisely with this idea
that Lucifer tempted Adam and Eve: Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods (Gen. 3:5).
As
we Orthodox Christians reach out to the modern world, we need to take
into account this barrage of propaganda that is thrust on people in our
society, that makes them forget God, give up on Christ as traditional
Christianity understands Him, and live for themselves, live for this
world only, live for today. It so happens that we Orthodox Christians
have answers to all the misguided attempts to deny the historicity of
the Old and New Testaments, and to turn Christianity into something that
it is not. Books and articles have been written by Orthodox theological
writers, historians, and scientists to defend the historical
interpretation of Holy Scripture that is found in the writings of the
Holy Fathers. Some of these only exist in Russian, Greek, or Serbian,
but some are in English, and others will be translated. It can be
helpful for us to avail ourselves of these materials in order to defend
our Faith, but we must also realize that, ultimately, it is not
arguments that persuade people to come to the Orthodox Church, but
something that moves their hearts. And, to move hearts, we must first of
all have our own hearts turned to God.
With all the so-called
spirituality available to people today, which they can find literally at
their fingertips on the internet, people's souls are empty. They are
desperately in need of the fullness of Christ's Uncreated Grace, which
only the Orthodox Church can give.
3. BEARING WITNESS ТО THE GOSPEL
Now
that we have looked at three prerequisites to preaching the Gospel in
the modern world — knowing the Gospel, living the Gospel, and knowing
the modern world — we can now go on to discuss how to preach the Gospel.
In
preaching the Gospel, we should not take the in-your-face approach that
is occasionally found among Protestants. Sometimes Protestants will
place pressure on people to convert. Perhaps this stems, at least in
part, from the Calvinist doctrine that denies free will — even though
most Protestant churches have rejected the strict interpretation of that
doctrine. In any case, the Orthodox approach in preaching the Gospel
is, contrary to Calvinism, to honor a person's free will just as
God honors it. Our task is simply to bear witness to the Truth, and to
make it available to others. Each person must make his own choice,
without any coercion, as to whether or not to become a member of the
Orthodox Church.
What does it mean to bear witness to our Faith?
In one of the talks he gave toward the end of his life, Fr. Seraphim
Rose said: "Once we are learning of the Orthodox Faith, we must be
ready, as the Apostle Peter teaches, to give an account of it to those
who may ask (cf. I Peter 3:15). Nowadays there is no one who is not
asked at some time about his Faith. We must make our Faith something
deep, conscious, and serious, so that we ourselves know why we are
Orthodox — and this will already be an answer to those outside the
Faith.
"And further, in our times of searching, we should be on
the watch for those who are searching. We should be prepared to find
them in the most unexpected places. We should be evangelical? — and this does not mean just sticking Bible verses into one's conversation or asking everyone, 'Are you saved?' It means living by the Gospel, even with all our weaknesses and falls — living the Orthodox Faith. Many
outsiders, just seeing that we try to lead a life different from the
pagan and semi-pagan society around us, can become interested in the
Faith just by this."[13]
To
illustrate this last point, I will relate a few stories. In the early
history of our brotherhood, some Orthodox pilgrims were on their way
home from our monastery, when they stopped at a restaurant in Williams, California.
Before the meal, they crossed themselves and prayed aloud. Some people
at an adjacent table asked them what Faith they belonged to. They struck
up a friendship with the Orthodox pilgrims, and went on to become
Orthodox Christians themselves.
Just by doing such a simple things
as making the sign of the Cross and praying, one can change the lives
of those who are looking for something authentic in Christianity.
Here
is another story which provides an even better example of what Fr.
Seraphim said about "outsiders" becoming interested in the Orthodox
Faith just by seeing us live that Faith. About five years ago, a young
mother in Santa Rosa, California
was in a toy store with her two-year-old son. As she was walking around
looking at things, she saw a woman older than herself, modestly
dressed, who had come to the store with her teenaged son. The young
mother noticed that there was something different about this woman and
her son. They were calm, peaceful, not distracted; but it was their
relationship that impressed her most of all. The older mother and her
teenaged son obviously had a close relationship; the boy showed respect
and consideration for his mother, and she was kind and loving to him.
The younger woman thought to herself: That's the kind of relationship I
want with my son when he gets older. So she went up to the other woman
and asked her, "Do you go to a church?" It so happened that the older
woman was the wife of a priest, and her church was in Santa Rosa.
She talked with the younger woman, told her about her church, and told
her that there was an Orthodox bookstore just a few blocks away. The
young woman went directly to the bookstore, which serves as an outreach
center for the Orthodox Faith, and talked with the man who runs the
store. She then started attending the church with her husband and son,
and in time they all became Orthodox. They still attend the church
regularly, and now have another boy in the family.
In discussing
what it means to bear witness to our Faith, we should emphasize that, in
all situations, we must act and speak with love. Christ told His
disciples: By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another (John
13:35). We have the fullness of Truth, yes, but this Truth must be
spoken and given in love, lest it be corrupted in the very manner in
which it is presented. People will look for God in us, and if they see
no love there, they will not recognize the presence of God, even if we
know all the Orthodox dogmas and can recite Scripture verses and the
Nicene Creed by heart.
Fr. Seraphim stressed this in one of his
talks. He said: "Being filled with the Gospel teaching and trying to
live by it, we should have love and compassion for the miserable
humanity of our days. Probably never have people been more unhappy than
the people of our days, even with all the outward conveniences and
gadgets our society provides us with. People are suffering and dying for
the lack of God — and we can help give God to them. The love of many
has truly grown cold in our days — but let us not be cold. As long as
Christ sends us His Grace and warms our hearts, we do not need to be
cold. If we are cold and indifferent; if our response to the need for a
Christian answer to those who are miserable is only: 'Who cares? Let
someone else do it; I don't feel like it' (and I have heard Orthodox
people say those very things!) — then we are the salt that has lost its
savor and is good for nothing but to be thrown out (cf. Matt. 5:13)."'
May
these words warm our hearts, so that we will go forth and bear witness
to the Orthodox Gospel with love — a love that flows from our
relationship with Jesus Christ, and from the Grace He bestows on us in
His Church.
[2] Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works (Platina, Calif.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), p. 314.
[3] I.e., St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. He was glorified as a saint in 1994 by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
[4] Letter of Fr. Seraphim to Fr. Neketas Palassis, St. Thomas Sunday, April 23/May 6, 1973. Quoted in Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, p. 314.
[5] Athanasios Rakovalis, Talks with Father Paisios (Thessaloniki, 2000), p. 137. 2Cf. Fr. Seraphim Rose, "The Holy Fathers of Orthodox Spirituality I," The Orthodox Word, no. 58 (1974), p. 195.
[6] Fr. Seraphim Rose, "The Search for Orthodoxy" (a talk given at the 1981 St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage), The Orthodox Word, no. 226 (2002), pp. 252-53.
[7] Fr. Seraphim Rose, "Living the Orthodox Worldview" (a talk given at the 1982 St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage), The Orthodox Word, no. 105 (1982), pp. 169-70.
[8] Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality (South Canaan, Penna.: St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 2002), p. 373.
[9] The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition, vol. 6, p. 705.
[10] See St. Maximus the Confessor, "Four Hundred Texts on Love" 3:27, in The Philokalia, vol. 2 (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 87.
[11] Preparatory Prayers for Holy Communion.
[12] Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, p. 396. Fr. Seraphim took this phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche and from the character Kirillov in Fyodor Dostovevsky's The Possessed.
[13] Fr. Seraphim Rose, "The Search for Orthodoxy," p. 253.
Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen)
Orthodox Word, No. 250, 2006
06 / 09 / 2007
