Category Archives: church

The most cruel master of all.

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“A spiritual life without canon, without custom, without tradition, without rules, is the ultimate democratic freedom. But it unleashes the tyranny of the individual imagination. For with no mediating tradition, the modern believer is subject only to his own whim. The effect is to have no Lord but the God of his own imagination. Even his appeal to Scripture is without effect – for it is his own interpretation that has mastery over the word of God. If we will have no hierarchy, we will not have Christ as Lord. We cannot invent our own model of the universe and demand that God conform.

“It is a great spiritual accomplishment to not be ‘conformed to this world.’ The ideas and assumptions of modern consumer democracies permeate almost every aspect of our culture. They become an unavoidable part of our inner landscape. Only by examining such assumptions in the light of the larger Christian tradition can we hope to remain faithful to Christ in the truth. Those who insist on the absence of spiritual authority, or demand that nothing mediate grace will discover that their lives serve the most cruel master of all – the spirit of the age.”

-Father Stephen Freeman, in this article.

Candles and clear skies.

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On this feast of many names, including Candlemas, Divine Liturgy was early, and the air bracing. When we came outside afterward we didn’t want to stand on the shady porch to chat, but moved quickly into the sunshine. I walked through the church gardens back to my car, and took a picture of the bell tower on the little church, which I know I have shared before one other time when it was set off brightly by the pyracantha:

In the afternoon I walked around the neighborhood
and saw several plants that seem to be thriving in this season:

At home, some of my miniature irises have popped out!

Though there is nothing festal about this part,
I also want to wish you a Happy Groundhog Day!

Addendum: Not one minute after I published this post, I saw this video by Jonathan Pageau and Richard Rohlin, on “the forgotten Christian origins of Groundhog Day” ! I had to come back and add that link for you. Probably one of you will get to watching it before I do…

This feeling expresses itself.

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“People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, ‘Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty and humaneness.’

“A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

“Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body, which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.”

-Sergei Fudel, Light in the Darkness

Kursk-root icon visits Russia in 2009.

The swallow brings divine tidings.

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A good many Orthodox Christians are celebrating Christmas today.
With them I say, “Christ is born and God is with us! Happy Feast!”

(Though I hope they are not looking at the computer today!) BUT – I am among those who celebrated the last two weeks, and have just completed the Twelve Days, and Theophany…  So, we come to the Synaxis of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John.

From The Orthodox Church in America:

“In the Orthodox Church it is customary, on the day following the Great Feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, to remember those saints who participated directly in the sacred event. So, on the day following the Theophany of the Lord, the Church honors the one who participated directly in the Baptism of Christ, placing his own hand upon the head of the Savior.

“Saint John, the holy Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, whom the Lord called the greatest of the prophets, concludes the history of the Old Testament and opens the era of the New Testament. The holy Prophet John bore witness to the Only-Begotten Son of God, incarnate in the flesh. Saint John was accounted worthy to baptize Him in the waters of the Jordan, and he was a witness of the Theophany of the Most Holy Trinity on the day of the Savior’s Baptism.

“The holy Prophet John, the son of the Priest Zachariah and Righteous Elizabeth, was related to the Lord on His mother’s side. The holy Forerunner John was born six months before Christ. The Archangel Gabriel announced his birth in the Temple at Jerusalem, revealing to Zachariah that a son was to be born to him.

“Through the prayers offered beforehand, the child was filled with the Holy Spirit. Saint John prepared himself in the wilds of the desert for his great service by a strict life, by fasting, prayer and sympathy for the fate of God’s people.

“At the age of thirty, he came forth preaching repentance. He appeared on the banks of the Jordan, to prepare the people by his preaching to accept the Savior of the world. In church hymnology, Saint John is called a “bright morning star,” whose gleaming outshone the brilliance of all the other stars, announcing the coming dawn of the day of grace, illumined with the light of the spiritual Sun, our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Having baptized the sinless Lamb of God, Saint John soon died a martyr’s death, beheaded by the sword on orders of King Herod at the request of his daughter Salome.”

As the lover of the Spirit,
the swallow that brings divine tidings of grace, O Forerunner,
thou hast made known clearly to mankind the dispensation of the King,
Who shone forth in brightness from a pure Virgin for the restoration of man.
Thou dost banish the dominion of dark and evil ways,
and guide the hearts of those baptized in repentance to eternal life,
O blessed Prophet inspired by God!

 -Hymn of the Feast