Category Archives: church

Sunshine Bounty

agriculture, church, food and cooking, friends, winter

Our neighbor Elizabeth stopped Mr. Glad and me as we were walking past her house and gave us these lemons that she had just picked.

Citrus fruits are like a long-term investment that God makes on our behalf, pouring light and heat into the fruits over several months, then rain for another while, as we work and play through Spring and Summer and Fall.

Then comes the time of year when light is weak and slant. We need extra vitamin C in our diets, and some color in our field of vision. Well, aren’t we lucky. The activity in the account we probably weren’t thinking about bears a dividend of sunshine.

Theophany Worship and Doctrine

church, feasts, quotes, Theophany, water

Today the Orthodox Church celebrates Theophany, about which I have posted a time or two in the past. This year I found a blog by a young woman in Greece who has posted a rich mix of photos, videos and accounts describing the celebration of this feast around the world, and its meaning for us.

It all well illustrates the message of this short quote from the newsletter of my parish:

WORSHIP AND DOCTRINE:

“In the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, doctrine and worship are inseparable. Worship is, in a certain sense, doctrinal testimony, reference to the events of Revelation. Thus, ‘dogmas are not abstract ideas in and for themselves but revealed and saving truths and realities intended to bring mankind into communion with God.’ One could say without hesitation that, according to Orthodox understanding, the fullness of theological thought is found in the worship of the Church.

This is why the term Orthodoxy is understood by many not as ‘right opinion,’ but as ‘right doxology,’ [that is,] ‘right worship.’”

—Archimandrite Zacharias, Ecclesial Being, pg. 88.

Those movies of people diving into icy waters make me consider in a more bracing way the scriptural exhortation to “present your bodies a living sacrifice….”

Some friends of ours celebrated Theophany at our Northern California beach last year, where the current brings chilly water from Alaska, giving the children who dove for that cross a bit of the experience of their fellow Orthodox in colder climates.

To all who celebrate in worship and truth, a most blessed feast!

Mosaic from Ss. Constantine and Helen Orthodox Church
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Saint Seraphim of Sarov

church, quotes, saints,
January 2nd is the feast of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the patron saint of my parish. It is the day he reposed (died) in the Lord in 1833. It’s lovely how our celebration of his bright life comes right in the middle between Nativity and Theophany festivities, and in the dead of winter. Some pictures of Father Seraphim show him in a snowy forest, and many sayings of and about him talk about the warmth of prayer and of the Holy Spirit.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere we need all the heat we can get right about now. Most of us have been extra elated and/or exhausted by our holidays, leaving us vulnerable to emotional ups and downs. I know that in the last couple of years, the doldrums of January got a hold on me, but this year I intend to fortify myself and resist the downward pull by various means. When the earth is dark and cold it’s clear how earthly, not heavenly, is my own self. But the Light of the World has come, and with some effort I hope to rest more constantly in the sphere of His brilliance.

I’ve been hunting around the Internet for more quotes from St. Seraphim to add to my treasures, and found on this blog a list of “Ten Counsels of St. Seraphim,” of which the quotes on Despondency seem to the point:

Just as the Lord cares for our salvation, so the devil, the killer of men, strives to lead man to despondency.

When despondency seizes us, let us not give in to it. Rather, fortified and protected by the light of faith, let us with great courage say to the spirit of evil: “What are you to us, you who are cut off from God, a fugitive from Heaven, and a slave of evil? You dare not do anything to us: Christ, the Son of God, has dominion over us and over all. Leave us, you thing of bane. We are made steadfast by the uprightness of His Cross. Serpent, we trample on your head.”

Father Seraphim spent many years alone in the forest, learning to pray and acquiring the Holy Spirit, after which he returned to the monastery where he spent many more years counseling and healing the crowds who lined up to see him every day. He “gave them the Lord” as I’ve heard people put it.
Communion bread

One meeting and conversation that Father Seraphim had with his friend N.A. Motovilov tells us quite a bit about him and is quoted at length here. Father Seraphim talked much about our need to “acquire the Holy Spirit Who acts within us and establishes in us the Kingdom of God.”

That is certainly what I need. Even now, after much excitement and little sleep just in the last few days, I feel that earthy heaviness mocking my faith. But with God’s help, and by the prayers of Saint Seraphim and all the saints, I hope to get the blood moving in my lazy soul, trample more often on that ugly head, and keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reach Springtime.

 

St. Basil the Great

church, quotes, saints

Today we celebrate, among other events, the life of St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cappadocia in the 4th century. These passages from his writings form a fitting exhortation for this season:

Man was made after the image and likeness of God; but sin marred the beauty of the image by dragging the soul down to passionate desires. Now God, who made man, is the true life. Therefore, when man lost his likeness to God, he lost his participation in the true life; separated and estranged from God as he is, it is impossible for him to enjoy the blessedness of the divine life.

Let us return, then, to the grace [which was ours] in the beginning and from which we have alienated ourselves by sin, and let us again adorn ourselves with the beauty of God’s image, being made like our Creator through the quieting of our passions. He who, to the best of his ability, copies within himself the tranquility of the divine nature attains to a likeness with the very soul of God; and, being made like God in this manner, he also achieves in full a semblance to the divine life and abides continually in unending blessedness.

 ….

He Himself has bound the strong man and plundered His goods – that is, us, who had been abased in every manner of evil – and made us into vessels fit for the Master’s use, the use of our free will being made ready for any good work. Thus through Him we have our approach to the Father, Who has transferred us from the dominion of darkness to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

In consideration of all this, I wish you a bright and happy New Year!