Monthly Archives: December 2012

These two fought bravely.

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Two important people in my life died on this day. I didn’t know either of them personally, but both have contributed hugely to the presence of true and living Orthodox faith in America, that Church in which I’ve found the fullness of Him Who fills all in all. Every year that we come to this date finds me more thankful.

Saint Herman of Alaska, whose feast we commemorate today, arrived in Alaska in 1794 and died there in 1837. On the occasion of his canonization in 1969 Bishop Dimitri spoke:

The Church on earth lives in a loving fellowship with the saints who have already run their race, who have fought the good fight, and have received their crowns (2 Timothy 4:7) (James 1:12). This is what the Apostle means when he says that we are compassed about or surrounded by the witness-martyrs or saints. We are assured both of their presence and their interest in us. In fact, they are concerned about the whole world and its salvation, for “there is joy in heaven over the repentance of one sinner” (Luke 15:7).

Father Schmemann was born in 1921 into a family of Russian emigres, and came to the United States in 1951 to join the faculty of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where two of my own parish priests sat under his teaching. He reposed in the Lord in 1983. Not only has my life been enriched broadly by his contributions to the whole of Orthodoxy in America, but by my reading directly what he wrote, especially For the Life of the World, and his journals.

I’m so thankful, too, that I can commune with that cloud of witnesses in church this morning. So as to not be late, I’ll just finish by copying here what I posted last year on this happy day. And it is another cold one!

It seems fitting that we commemorate St. Herman of Alaska on this date, when winter is making itself felt. I’ve written before here and here about Father Herman, how he spurned the cold, befriended the animals, and interceded between the Aleuts and the powerful people who would exploit them.

His is a good example in the Advent season, of how to keep our hearts and activities focused on the Kingdom of God in the face of distractions. And if we have a church service to attend where we can share in the Life of Christ together with Saint Herman and all the Cloud of Witnesses, we are very blessed!

I just learned (and am adding this paragraph to my original post) that today is also the anniversary of the repose of Father Alexander Schmemann, another shining star in our church family. This note about both men leads to further inspiration from and about Fr. Alexander, who rests firmly in the tradition of Saint Herman. I’m ever so thankful to have this coinciding of the celebration of two of my favorites.

Athanasius – Designs have been foiled.

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Christ Pantocrator – Gould

Here Athanasius himself writes of a phenomenon I don’t know anything about, “what happens when great king enters a large city.” But the example from ancient times, in On the Incarnation, is so eloquently given that its light shines right through any culture barrier and reveals a truth of the Incarnation in a new and bright aspect.

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us and put an end to death.

Athanasius – God in sensible things

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A young woman we know is trying to love people in San Francisco for the sake of Christ. In a recent prayer letter she wrote:

The hardest part of doing ministry in San Francisco is the cost of living factor. My rent is $1975 for my two bedroom apartment, which many in the city will tell you is a good deal. Because of the high cost of living most pastors and missionaries don’t live here. The problem is that you can’t relate to the people and become effective at reaching the city for Christ if you don’t really live among them.

San Francisco downtown

People think that if they just have some fancy strategy they will see people come to Christ. These programs become like the welfare system; people just learn how to work the system, and there are so many that the homeless get to pick what they want at different meals.

They get used to sitting and allowing the word of God to come in one ear and out the other…rarely do you see any lives change. The old fashioned way of living among the people is gone from many Christians’ concept of what a missionary does. The majority of pastors live outside the city because it is cheaper. They then drive into the city where they have a reserved parking place and never spend time out in the community.

But this woman meets people on the bus and the playground, and they get to know and trust her as their lives interweave with hers. The words of her letter came back to me as I was reading On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius:

The Saviour of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human-minded as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world they found themselves taught the truth….For this reason was He both born and manifested as Man, for this he died and rose, in order that, eclipsing by His works all other human deeds, He might recall men from all the paths of error to Know the Father. As He says Himself, “I came to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Christ heals the lepers.

Athanasius – the heart sings

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I must have read C.S. Lewis’s introduction to St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation twice before in an attempt on the whole book, without getting much beyond it, but on this third try I have kept going. It seemed a fitting little paperback to read during Advent.

In the introduction we have an instance of Lewis’s exhorting us to read more of the Old Books, like this one from the 4th century, though we are timid: “The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.”

And Lewis also writes here about devotional vs. doctrinal works, On the Incarnation being one of the latter, that he finds the doctrinal books often “more helpful in devotion” than the expressly devotional ones. I can relate to his description of people who “find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

Actually I don’t know about the pipe in the teeth, but I always have a pencil in my hand as I lie in bed with my book of theology or literature or whatever. And I marked some passages from St. Athanasius to share in this season when we focus on God With Us.

You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to his own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.