Category Archives: quotes

He spoke of prison with nostalgia.

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Braga quote joy OCN crp

“My dear friends, I think the mystery of my life is joy, and I never tire of telling everyone
to be joyful. Why should we be sad when we belong to the Lord and He love us so much
that He cannot take His eyes off us, as a mother cannot take her eyes off her baby?”

About ten years ago, James Kushiner interviewed Father Roman Braga for Salvo magazine, and the interview was published in this article: “Solitary Refinement.”

Not long afterward, following Fr. Roman’s repose in death, Kushiner wrote again, in a 2015 Touchstone magazine newsletter:

Prisoner of the Redeemer   

Early this morning, about a four-hour drive east of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, a new and much smaller church in the Michigan countryside sheltered the body of a recently departed priest-monk of the Orthodox Church, Fr. Roman Braga. His funeral was scheduled to begin at 9:30 AM.

While Fr. Roman held no office as elevated as the Archbishop of Chicago, it would not surprise me if in some ways he influenced nearly as many people over the years through his counsel, prayers, and service to the church–to all who spoke with him.

Fr. Roman moved to Michigan from Brazil the same year I moved from Michigan to Chicago (1972). Twenty-five years later, on October 7, 1997, I met him for the first time at Holy Dormition Orthodox Monastery in Michigan. I was privileged to have a several conversations with him over the years, including an interview published in Salvo Magazine (Solitary Refinement: How One Man Found Freedom Inside a Communist Prison. A former high school teacher, he *loved* Salvo and young people.) His counsel helped me in many ways.

Fr. Roman was expelled from his native Romania in 1968, where he had served as a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church. He had spent 5 years in a labor camp digging the Black Sea Canal, and later served 6 years of a new 18-year sentence, including time in solitary confinement, before being released under a general amnesty in 1964. He began his priestly ministry, watched carefully by the secret police, who came one night in 1968 with a Brazilian passport in hand and expelled him.

Fr. Roman said he discovered Jesus Christ more deeply in the depths of his being in prison, especially in solitary confinement, where he came to experience true spiritual freedom. He spoke of prison with nostalgia.

The New Testament has many scenes in prison: John and Peter, then Peter, Paul and Silas, then Paul. How many of Paul’s epistles were written from prison?

Didn’t the new church of God began in a prison (phulake), with the first sermon preached (ekeruxen) to its prisoners by Pilate’s former Prisoner (1 Peter 3:19)? Here the “gates of hell” did not prevail against Christ and his new church as he burst those gates and led the captives free.

I could sense from the way Fr. Roman prayed and chanted the “Akathist Hymn to Jesus Christ” on Sundays before Divine Liturgy that I was witnessing a loving communion between the Lord and his servant. One stanza is an icon of his faith:

Jesus, true God.
Jesus, Son of David.
Jesus, glorious King.
Jesus, innocent Lamb.
Jesus, Shepherd most marvellous.
Jesus, Protector of mine infancy.
Jesus, Guide of my youth.
Jesus, Boast of mine old age.
Jesus, my Hope at death.
Jesus, my Life after death.
Jesus, my Comfort at Your judgment.
Jesus, my Desire, let me not then be ashamed.

He also praised Jesus Christ, “Redeemer of those below” and “Vanquisher of the nethermost powers.” Fr. Roman was singing a song to his Paschal Liberator. I will always think of him with a captivating twinkle in his eye, revealing an inner joy forged in the crucible of prison. He was, with St. Paul, a “prisoner of the Lord” and true servant.

Father Roman, I trust, beholds the face of his Beloved Savior in the mansions of the righteous. Christ is risen! Memory eternal!

Yours for Christ, Creed & Culture,

James M. Kushiner

Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James

Why it is never finished.

beauty, my garden, quotes, ,
2016

“Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, its appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.”

-W.S. Merwin

2022

Only by daring to leap.

humanity, love, quotes, , , , ,
Bright Monday

“No frail human morality can ever hope to contain the overflowing fullness of life with which Christ desires to rejuvenate the faithful.

“The world will not be saved by optimistic humanism that believes human progress and morality will eventually save the world. For Dostoevsky and the church fathers, man’s deepest problems are not moral, nor even psychological, but ultimately existential and ontological. It’s not about following the rules or feeling balanced. It is a matter of choice and it is a matter of human nature being touched by the hand of God Himself.

“Only by daring to leap towards God in spite of the good and evil that exist in the heart can the believer hope to get beyond the contradiction of the human condition. In order to avoid descending into nihilism, Dostoevsky offers his readers another path: the acceptance of suffering and affliction in the context of a relationship with God. It is only in this context that man is able to recognize a path out of his fallen condition. It is only this Love that is able to transform suffering into salvific joy.”

-Father Alexis Trader (Now Bishop Alexis of the Diocese of Sitka)

Read more here: Ancient Christian Wisdom blog

 

No one could kill him.

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“He died although he cannot die; he dies although he is immortal, in his very human nature inseparably united with his Godhead. His soul, without being separated from God, is torn out of his body, while both his soul and his flesh remain united with the Godhead. He will lie in the tomb incorruptible until the third day, because his body cannot be touched by corruption. It is full of the divine presence. It is pervaded by it as a sword of iron is pervaded by fire in the furnace, and the soul of Christ descends into hell resplendent with the glory of his Godhead.

“The death of Christ is a tearing apart of an immortal body from a soul that is alive and remains alive forever. This makes the death of Christ a tragedy beyond our imagining, far beyond any suffering that we can humanly picture or experience.

“Christ’s death is an act of supreme love. It was true when he said, ‘No one takes my life from me; I give it freely myself.’ No one could kill him — the Immortal; no one could quench this Light that is the shining of the splendor of God. He gave his life, he accepted the impossible death to share with us all the tragedy of our human condition.”

–Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

I attended Matins of Holy Friday this evening; it’s a long service during which twelve Gospel readings of Christ’s passion are read, while we stand holding candles. One of the most beloved hymns of this evening is: “Today is Hung Upon the Tree.” That link is to the version that our parish choir sings, but at a somewhat more stately pace. Tonight we had plenty of men singing, and the sound was full, and appropriately worshipful.

“We worship Thy passion, O Christ.
Show us also Thy glorious Resurrection!”