Category Archives: church

How to become fresh and youthful.

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“The Paschal season of the Church is preceded by the season of Great Lent, which is also preceded by its own liturgical preparation. The first sign of the approach of Great Lent comes five Sundays before its beginning. On this Sunday the Gospel reading is about Zacchaeus the tax-collector. It tells how Christ brought salvation to the sinful man, and how his life was changed simply because he “sought to see who Jesus was” (Luke 19:3). The desire and effort to see Jesus begins the entire movement through Lent towards Pascha. It is the first movement of salvation.”

This excerpt from our church bulletin explains why this date on the church calendar is a good one for someone to become a catechumen, as two people did on Sunday in my parish, and as I did seven years ago. It was not my first introduction to life in Christ, but it was definitely the time when I climbed up to the best vantage point to see Christ and His Church in all its fullness.

When I was a little child in Sunday School I learned some details of the story by way of a song:

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.
And when the Savior passed that way He looked up in the tree;
And He said, ‘Zacchaeus, you come down, for I’m going to your house today.'”

In his Gospel homily Sunday our rector pointed out that the Lord also said, “Make haste.” In other words, “Get down here, man! Don’t be dilly-dallying about, but begin right now to mean business with God.” And this week St. Nikolai explains how this man and his experience are meaningful to each of us:

“Today, salvation has come to this house.”
(St. Luke 19:9).

“Thus it was spoken by the One Whose word is life and joy and restoration of the righteous. Just as the bleak forest clothes itself into greenery and flowers from the breath of spring, so does every man, regardless of how arid and darkened by sin, become fresh and youthful from the nearness of Christ. For the nearness of Christ is as the nearness of some life-giving and fragrant balsam which restores health, increases life, give fragrance to the soul, to the thoughts and to the words of man. In other words, distance from Christ means decay and death and His nearness means salvation and life.”
….
“Draw near to us O Lord, draw near and bring to us Your eternal salvation.”

Every branch He prunes.

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I traveled over the hill to the nearby monastery one morning last week and pruned roses for three hours. The sisters who came to this place inherited a big garden next to the river, with many plantings they are learning to manage. Sister Xenia is the chief gardener, and she spends a lot of time on the job, but it’s not the only task she’s assigned, and she appreciates any help outsiders can give.

Frost had to be scraped off my car before I left home. It was still below freezing at that time, and I wore my denim skirt, leggings, work boots and a thick flannel shirt over one of my old turtlenecks. But after I’d arrived and started in with my clippers, it wasn’t long before a springtime breeze began to blow.

So many roses! And most of them are not in a location that is good for roses; they are in the shade too much. Each bush was a big challenge to my skill and art, presenting one or more problems including:

1) Too tall and leggy, with no buds down low that my pruning might channel the lifeblood to.

2) Too many large canes and branches crowding each other, so that I had to thin drastically, after deciding based on uncertain parameters which ones to remove.

3) Bushes growing too close to another type of shrub or tree, as in the case of the one pictured, where a Pittosporum has surrounded one tall rosebush.

4) Growing close to the path or over the sidewalk, catching on the sisters’ habits or poking passersby.

5) Dead wood

It really was a joy to have quiet time to focus completely on a project like this, and I needed every bit of my mental resources and powers of concentration to do the work. Also my imagination, as I tried to envision what effect my cuts would have on each bush in the next months and even years.

Afterward when I was driving home, I began to ask myself why I hadn’t prayed while working, and quickly realized that it had taken all of my attention and creativity to do the task set before me. Is it perhaps a little like restoring a painting that has been severely damaged… a little like designing a building that must be raised on top of living ruins?  I wonder that, having no real knowledge of those types of art.

One thing for certain, the glory of this art won’t show until after many weeks the plants produce the actual rose flowers. I have just decided that a visit to the monastery is necessary when that brilliance begins, because I’ve never even seen these bushes in bloom. In the meantime I’m posting some old rose photos from my own parish church grounds, to keep me happily anticipating warmer weather.

At about noon the nuns gather for the 6th Hour prayers, and when the bell rang the announcement I laid down my tools and joined them. There was my chance to pray and soak up the Spirit, and the spirit of the place, and to stand up straight for a while and breathe the incense.

I hadn’t pruned all the roses, but I ate lunch with the sisters and went home anyway, meditating on what made the experience so fatiguing. Does it cause God this much trouble to prune us, as the Bible says he does: “Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. John 15:2” Does He say to Himself, “I did the best I could, under the circumstances.”? Maybe we grow all out of shape in odd ways, not getting enough of the Sun of Righteousness.

Speaking of sun, it had brought the temperature up to 79 degrees that afternoon. We are all aching for rain here in the West, as we suffer a terrible drought that makes it hard to enjoy those lovely warm rays. The drought is like a dark un-cloud looming behind the sun. Now that I am invested in a few dozen rosebushes, I am a little concerned that some of them might not make it through a water-rationed cycle of seasons to next January when I will try to get back and minister to them.

As we anticipate a possibly very long dry season, my motherly/sisterly feelings are reaching out to the plants and animals, and I’m praying more intently in Divine Liturgy along with the deacon, “For favorable weather, an abundance of the fruits of the earth, and temperate seasons, let us pray to the Lord.”

Use your small prayer bucket.

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Any prayer is a gift from God. And we, the weakest, have prayer of the lips. For the time being, we fulfill this, my dear. The well is deep, but the rope is short and the bucket is small… Each one does what he can, just as the bee does not take all the nectar from the flower.

But it is very good if you do a little prayer rule. I know this myself: if I get up and do a little of my rule, it seems as if I am a different man all day long. But if you get up in the morning and you whirl around the house – because you have this and that to do – then your whole day goes poorly. So do a little of your prayer rule every day, like the righteous Job, who offered sacrifice every day for his children in case they had sinned in their thoughts.

-Elder Paisius of Romania