Tag Archives: St. Basil the Great

Hovering over the meadow.

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Our Orthodox commemoration of the Three Holy Hierarchs and Ecumenical Teachers was instituted as a result of 11th-century debates about which of them was the greatest. They themselves had to intervene by means of a vision given to St. John Bishop of Euchaita, who chose January 30 for their feast.

These three gifts to the Church are Basil the Great (330-379), Gregory the Theologian (329-389), and John Chrysostom (347-407). Each has his own feast day, but they are held in such esteem that it isn’t too much for us to remember them again together, they who in the words of a hymn, “have enlightened the world with the rays of their divine doctrines. They are sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom filling all creation with springs of heavenly knowledge.”

A hymn of Matins on their feast day echoes a theme that runs through hagiography generally; it is the sweetness of true theology and and God’s Word imparted to us.

Like bees hovering over the meadow of scriptures,
You embraced the wonderful pollen of their flowers.
Together you have produced for all the faithful
The honey of your teachings for their complete delight.
Therefore as we each enjoy this,
We cry out with gladness:
Blessed ones, even after death,
Be advocates for us who praise you!

Ironing and baking through the calendar.

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After the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we change from red to gold altar cloths. Earlier in the week I helped to iron the gold ones that had gotten creases being in storage bins, a task that is done right there in the temple.

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Three of us ironed, and draped the smoothed gold cloths over chairs. The fourth walked around the church making the exchange on icon stands and tables.

The cloths that belong in the altar itself were laid over the choir stands temporarily, where our rector could later switch them out for the red ones in the altar at his convenience, sometime before the next service.

The red ones were put away in bins, where they will stay at least until next September, if I read the rubrics correctly.

 

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Leavetaking of Nativity was yesterday, so this icon of the Christmas feast has been removed; today was another great feast, The Circumcision of Christ. Born a Jew, our Lord was circumcised eight days after birth according to the law.

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icon & basil breadIn addition to being one of the twelve great feasts of the church year, today is the day we remember St. Basil the Great, and after Liturgy this morning we gathered in the fellowship hall to eat some St. Basil bread, of which we had four loaves, including one gluten-free. The Greek word for this is Vasilopita, and many traditions have grown up around it over the centuries. I like this telling of the story linking it to St. Basil: Vasilopita.

We sang and ate the blessed bread after it had been cut in several symbolic ways, first into quarters by the sign of the cross made with the knife. Various chunks were swiftly and ceremonially removed for Christ, for the poor, and I can’t remember who all, because I was too focused on taking pictures!IMG_1452 chunk

A coin was baked into each loaf, as is the custom, so we were warned to bite our cake gently.  Our parishioner who bears the name of Basil was blessed to find the first coin in his slice.

I stood around drinking coffee, eating the sweet bread, and chatting for a good while before I came home and changed into walking clothes so that I could get out in the sunshine with friend Elsie for the better part of an hour. We timed our walk to be in the warmest part of the day, and it was almost 50° by then.

I’ve been burning a lot of wood, and the stack that was “temporarily” in my driveway for five months has been whittled down to almost nothing. Now my new utility yard is ready to receive the firewood again, but I’m not going to bother moving this little bit of old wood back there. I’ll stack the new supply of wood I’ve ordered there next week.

Tomorrow is the first day of winter that we have been forbidden to burn wood, because of the deteriorating air quality. It often happens like this: when you most want a good fire is when the inversion layer keeps the cold and the pollutants close to the earth. I’m glad I have a good furnace but it’s disturbing to hear it coming on all day and night when we don’t have a fire in the stove. Next week we are expecting the El Niño system to bring us rain, so that will clear up and warm up the air.

This week between Christmas and New Year’s has been a struggle for me, trying to accept my new life that is evolving, or that I am creating; I’ll be glad to be slightly less cold next week and to lay in some fresh fuel-wood. Since I can’t have a fire tomorrow I am thinking of baking bread, which would help to warm up the house and make it homey. Theophany is just around the corner, and for about ten days now the days have been getting longer — have you noticed? Here comes the sun!

Happy New Year to all my dear blogging friends and readers!

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It is no mean contest.

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Each one of these quotes contains some truth about our humanity and this way we have of creating strong predispositions  in ourselves. If we have any good habits, of course we don’t worry about them being too strong, or try to fight against them. But most of the thoughts I’ve collected seem only to apply to the habits we feel are “bad,” or at least not promoting our goals. From what I’ve seen, the majority of us fallen humans are all too prone to lay aside what appear to be the bonds of good character in what is known as The Moment of Weakness. Don’t trust in these habits! Pray and seek God, and live.

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables.  – Spanish proverb

Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.  – Georges Gurdjieff

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts. – Blaise Pascal

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
– Samuel Johnson

It is no mean contest to overcome one’s bad habits, for custom, strengthened by enduring a long time, takes on the force of [second] nature.
– St. Basil the Great

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis – once that crisis can be recognized and understood.  – Norman Cousins

Lord, have mercy on us!

The Feast of Angels

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Being raised in Protestant churches, I learned little about angels. Since coming to Orthodoxy, I’ve been introduced to a large body of teaching, and some practices that help me learn experientially, too. Some lessons come through the feasts such as on November 8th (beginning with Vespers tonight, actually), when we celebrate the Feast of The Synaxis of the Chief of the Heavenly Hosts, Archangel Michael and the Other Heavenly Bodiless Powers.

I read that the commemoration was established at the beginning of the fourth century at the Council of Laodicea. It was set to be celebrated in what was at that time the ninth month of the year, because there are nine ranks of angels.

This very rich article also tells a lot about angels according to our tradition. One teaching that gets me thinking about the mysteries of God’s Kingdom is about the angels’ bodies. But aren’t they body-less, as the name of the feast calls them? On that topic and others, here are some excerpts from the blog post, passing on to us the teachings of several church fathers:

St. John of Damascus says they are creatures limited in space and time; they have their own specific external appearance. Compared to humans, they are bodiless due to the human’s “heavy body,” but compared to God they have a body. “We speak about the angels as bodiless and immaterial compared to us, but in fact everything is heavy and material compared to God, to Whom nobody can be compared, because only the Divine is non-material and bodiless.”

St. John Chrysostom says that “… every one of us has his angel;” and St. Basil the Great adds, “Beside every believer in God sits his angel, so repent.” Finally, the angel of prayer is the angel who helps us to pray. St. Clement of Alexandria says, “Even when a person prays alone, he is accompanied by angels.” Tertullian commands the Christian not to sit when he prays in respect for the angel of prayer standing beside him.

That last sentence is the kind of nugget of truth that I can hope to remember, and let it influence my everyday life. Some will say, Why not just remember that God Himself sits with you, so repent? etc. What I have concluded after debating about these things many years ago is that if God has chosen to use angels in His salvation work, why should we ignore or reject them? Why don’t we just say, Thank you, Lord! and show our appreciation by our acts?

In our parish we have many who are named for the Archangel Michael; we’ll have Divine Liturgy tomorrow morning and give thanks for the work of angels in our lives. I’d like to muse longer over more quotes from this article but I better return to my housework if I want to make it to church in the morning.