Category Archives: saints

Holiness is not nice.

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Anthony Esolen wrote in Touchstone a few years ago his observations of how good and holy people such as Mother Teresa manage to provoke hatred of themselves. This caused him

“…to ask what it is about the holy that strikes fear into the hearts of so many. We think that the saints are beautiful, and they are. Then how do people miss it?

“Then again, why should we be surprised that they miss it, when in Jesus himself, as far as many a Pharisee would concede, no beauty was to be found? When Jesus wrought his signs and wonders, and when he taught with authority about the kingdom of God, what did those Pharisees ask him, but why his disciples did not wash their hands before eating, and suchlike? They had before them the Lord, the long-awaited anointed of God, who had made the blind to see and the deaf to hear, and somehow the truth could not penetrate the shells of their self-regard.

“For the holy is a challenge to us, and therefore an affront. It does not curry our favor. It does not mingle with the guests at parties in our own honor, eating cucumber sandwiches and speaking empty pleasantries. It is not nice. It stands in fearful judgment before us. The holy is set apart; its ways are not our ways; yet it calls us to surrender our ways, and to be converted.”

“Let us, finally, be quite clear about one thing. Those who believe in God, and who honor his holiness, longing to be transformed in mind and soul—they are the true and only humanists. They hold so high a view of man that, if they were to see a victim of cholera dying in a ditch in Calcutta, they would burn in shame that the image of God should be treated with such contempt; or should they see a rich man destroying his soul with the vices that money can buy, they would pray that he might someday see what man is called to be.”

Read the whole article here: Hagiophobia

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.”

What dust can do.

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St. Paul

Father Stephen writes about how we don’t often follow the Apostle Paul’s example of glorying in our weakness. The title of his blog post is “Your Weakness Saves You.” We need to pray out of our weakness and not when we are feeling strong; but Fr. Stephen observes that many of us would prefer to glory in our strength:

At some level, we believe that we are not saved through our weakness, but will be saved through our strength, and that the whole life of grace is God’s effort to make us stronger – never suspecting that God’s grace may actually be purposefully developing our weaknesses.
….
I often tell people who say they are struggling with prayer to quit trying to pray like a Pharisee and learn to pray like a Publican. We often want to pray from strength – to approach God when we at least feel spiritually alive. The Publican refuses to lift his eyes to heaven. The contradiction of his life and the goodness of God are more than he can bear. And yet he prays. And, ironically, it is he who goes down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee.

I find that the Orthodox prayer book cultivates this awareness of my weakness with its many cries of “Lord, have mercy.” Sometimes I am engaged in some activity that doesn’t allow me to give my full attention to prayer, but I am still burdened over a difficult situation or the need of a friend. I can express my helplessness to do anything by human strength, my inability to even think about what a solution might be, by praying “Lord, have mercy,” as many times as necessary to reach a place of quietness of heart.

As Psalm 103 reminds us weekly, “He remembers that we are dust.” When I pray that, I feel the love and tenderness of the Lord. He knows our weakness, and when we know it too, and pray with that understanding, we are near to Him.

St. Panteleimon

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St. Panteleimon had studied medicine, but it was by the miraculous powers of Christ that he healed many people whom the doctors had not been able to help. He was martyred in 304 after the jealous doctors denounced him as a Christian.

We remembered him with hymns in church today, the same morning that the gospel passage recounted Christ’s healing of the Gadarene maniacs. In both cases the earthly powers did not rejoice that the sick had been made whole, or that God was present and active in their midst. Their spiritual eyes were so clouded over that they completely missed the blessing. Lord, have mercy!

I love this painting of St. Panteleimon that Leah posted last week.

 

St Panteleimon the Healer by Nikolay Roerich