The Return of the Empires

I recently read an article in the Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected source for international news, about a movement supporting the establishment of the Caliphate, a single Islamic nation of 1.5 billion Muslims that would "stretch from Indonesia to Morocco." The article, "The Caliphate: One nation, under Allah, with 1.5 billion Muslims," by James Brandon, is from the May 10, 2006 edition of the paper.

On the other hand, the NeoByzantine Movement is dedicated to the formation of Nea Byzantia, a NeoByzantine Union of Orthodox Christian countries. The movement's website, neobyzantine.org, includes information on Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine Empire, and the NeoByzantine movement itself.

Which empire would you rather live in? (A rhetorical question.)

The actual establishment of such empires may seem unlikely, but the potential influence of these political ideas upon the people of the world is something to consider.

For a good article related to the Byzantine Empire, read Father Joseph Huneycutt's recent article, "Who was Constantine the Great?" on his Orthodixie Blog. The article first appeared on the Da Vinci Dialogue website.

The above image of Hagia Sophia ("the Church of Holy Wisdom"), once among the greatest churches in the Christian world, has been enhanced to show what the church would look like without the four minarets built around it by the Muslims. Hagia Sophia was constructed by the Emperor Justinian in the Imperial City of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Christian (Roman) Empire known as the Byzantine Empire. After the Islamic Invasion, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque. Today, it is a museum. For Orthodox Christians, it remains a symbol of the day when the Orthodox Christian Faith was the Faith of an Empire. Current photos and a brief history of Hagia Sophia can be found at orthodoxwiki.com. (The larger, original version of the above image is available here on orthodoxwiki.com.)

The Death That Rocked the World

Jesus Christ was crucified on a hill called Golgotha, “The Place of the Skull.” At the time of his crucifixion in the first century it was located outside of the walls of Jerusalem. Today, the place of Christ’s crucifixion rests underneath an Orthodox Christian chapel inside the Church of the Resurrection (a.k.a. Church of the Holy Sepulchre). The rock of Golgotha that held the Precious Cross is visible underneath the chapel’s floor.

The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross was a cosmic event. St. Luke describes the scene:

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. (Luke 24.44-46, RSV)

St. Matthew adds,

and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!" (Matthew 51-54, RSV)

What effect did Christ’s death have upon us and the whole universe? Hieromonk Damascene’s article, “What Christ Accomplished on the Cross” (orthodoxinfo.com), explains the Orthodox Christian understanding of the event. Frederica Mathewes-Green’s essay, “Christ’s Death: Rescue Mission, Not Payment for Sins” (beliefnet.com), is also worth reading. My previous post on the “River of Fire” relates to the subject as well.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (Photograph from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, Bibleplaces.com. Used by permission.)

Frederica Mathewes-Green

Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green is one of my favorite contemporary Orthodox Christian authors. Her essays, books, and radio commentaries reveal the Orthodox way of life in its beautiful mystery and down-to-earth practicality.

Her personal website contains essays and selections from her books, including, Facing East, At the Corner of East and Now, The Illumined Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation, The Open Door, Gender: Men, Women, Sex and Feminism, Real Choices, and First Fruits of Prayer.

The Christianity Today website contains links to her columns and an interview with her about iconography. She also talks about her own spiritual journey in another interview.

Several of her articles appear on beliefnet.com.

In addition to her writings, one can hear her radio commentaries on the National Public Radio (NPR) website. They include commentaries on beauty in Orthodox worship, Holy Week and Pascha (Easter), abortion, and the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia.

In an article on the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page (OpinionJournal.com), she explains why unity between the Orthodox Christian Church and the Roman Catholic Church is difficult to achieve. The article explains well how the Eastern Orthodox perspective on unity differs dramatically from the Western Roman Catholic view.

Her National Review Online articles are also available online.

Additionally, she has recently contributed an article to the Da Vinci Dialogue.

A Look at Paradise Through Poetry

In his collection of Hymns On Paradise, St. Ephrem the Syrian, who lived during the fourth century, uses theological poetry to reveal the indescribable beauty of Paradise and explain our relationship to it. It’s a great example of how Orthodox Christian theology, rooted in the East, remains unconfined by rigid Western academic explanations and philosophical descriptions. Instead, Orthodox Christian theology is regarded as a mystery, encountered through personal experience, and expressed through stories and poetry.

Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press has published an English translation of St. Ephrem’s hymns, originally written in the ancient language of Syriac-Aramaic. The translator is Sebastian Brock, who also wrote the book’s lengthy introduction. As an added bonus, St. Ephrem’s commentary on the Book of Genesis follows the hymns. (I would recommend reading the hymns themselves before reading the introduction.)

Here are a few selections from St. Ephrem’s Hymns:

Blessed is he for whom Paradise yearns.
Yes, Paradise yearns for the man whose goodness
makes him beautiful;
it engulfs him at its gateway,
it embraces him in its bosom,
it caresses him in its very womb,
for it splits open and receives him
into its inmost parts.
But if there is someone it abhors,
it removes him and casts him out;
this is the gate of testing
that belongs to Him who loves mankind.

Blessed is He who was pierced and so removed
the sword from the entry to Paradise.

Forge here on earth and take
the key to Paradise;
the Door that welcomes you;
the Door, all discerning,
conforms its measure to those who enter it:
in its wisdom
it shrinks and it grows.
According to the stature and rank
attainted by each person, it shows by its dimensions
whether they are perfect,
or lacking in something.

(Hymn II, 1-2)

Paradise delighted me
as much by its peacefulness as by its beauty:
in it there resides a beauty
that has no spot;
in it exists a peacefulness that knows no fear.
How blessed is that person
accounted worthy to receive it,
if not by right,
yet at least by grace;
if not because of good works,
yet at least through mercy.

(Hymn V, 12)

Around the trees the air is limpid
as the saints recline;
below them are blossoms,
above them is fruit;
fruits serve as their sky,
flowers as their earth.
Who has ever heard of
or seen
a cloud of fruits providing shade
for the head,
or a garment of flowers
spread out beneath the feat?

(Hymn IX, 5)

In His justice He gave
abundant comfort to the animals;
they do not feel shame for adultery,
nor guilt for stealing;
without being ashamed
they pursue every comfort they encounter,
for they are above
care and shame;
the satisfaction of their desires
is sufficient to please them.
Because they have no resurrection,
neither are they subject to blame.

The fool, who is unwilling to realize
his honorable state
prefers to become just an animal,
rather than a man,
so that, without incurring judgment,
he may serve naught but his lusts.
But had there been sown in animals
just a little
of the sense of discernment,
then long ago would the wild asses have lamented
and wept at their not
having been human.

(Hymn XII, 19-20)

I highly recommend this translation of the Hymns On Paradise. It’s available from St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press and also on Amazon.com.

A previous essay related to St. Ephrem of Syria, "The Way of Humility," has also been posted on Symeon's Journal.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo by Dana S. Kees. The selections from the hymns are from Hymns on Paradise by St. Ephrem the Syrian, Introduction and Translation by Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press), 1990. ISBN 0-88141-076-4 .

The Holy Tomb of Jesus Christ

Every year, Orthodox Christians gather in Jerusalem at the Church of the Resurrection, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on Pascha (Easter) to celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ.

According to Eusebius, the Emperor Hadrian had covered up the Holy Sepulchre (Tomb) with dirt and built upon it a pagan temple dedicated to the goddess, Venus. When the Emperor Constantine ascended to the throne of the Roman Empire, his devout Christian mother, Helena, traveled to Jerusalem. She found the place of Christ's Crucifixion and the Holy Sepulchre. When Helena found these holy places, Constantine built a church at the site. The Holy Sepulchre itself is enclosed in a structure called an edicule inside the rotunda of the church.

The annual Paschal celebration at the Holy Sepulchre includes the Ceremony of the Holy Light (or Holy Fire). Only the Orthodox Patriarch of the Church of Jerusalem possesses the honor of receiving the miraculously appearing Holy Light from the Tomb. Information on the Holy Light and photos are available from the website of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. An article by Niels Christian Hvidt on the Holy Fire is available at the Orthodox Christian Information Center (orthodoxinfo.com). Holyfire.org is a website dedicated specifically to the miracle. An article from the Russian News & Information Agency confirming the descent of Holy Fire on the Holy Sepulchre last year (2005) is available on the SpiritHit News site (spirithit.com). A great photo of the event accompanies the article.

"Come ye take light from the Light that is never overtaken by night. Come glorify the Christ, risen from the dead."

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, available at Bibleplaces.com. Used by permission.)

Great & Holy Pascha (Easter)

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti!

Almaseeh qam! Hakkan qam!

Christos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!

Christus resurrexit! Vere resurrexit!

+

Christ is risen from the dead,

trampling down death by death,

and on those in the tombs bestowing life!

Today He is suspended on a Tree
who suspended the earth over the waters.
A crown of thorns was placed on the head

of the King of angels.
He who wore a false purple robe

covered the heavens with clouds.
He was smitten who, in the Jordan, delivered Adam.
The Groom of the Church was fastened with nails
and the Son of the Virgin was pierced with a spear.
Thy suffering we adore, O Christ.
Make us to behold thy glorious Resurrection.

St. Mary of Egypt: A Woman for Our Generation

A hiermonk (priest-monk) named Zosimas walked deep into the Palestinian desert to spend several weeks alone in prayer and fasting. While there, he hoped to find a man of superior holiness who could help him with his own spiritual struggle. On his twentieth day in the wilderness, as he was praying, he saw a creature whose form resembled a human being. It was thin and naked. It had dark skin that looked as though it had been darkened by the sun and white hair that fell just below the shoulders. It was a woman. He ran after her. When he approached her she told him that she couldn’t turn around because she was a woman and naked. Zosimas gave her his cloak. After covering her body she turned around, addressed Zosimas by name, and recognized him as a priest, although he was dressed in the simple clothing of a monk.

Believing that God had led him into the desert to meet her, Zosimas begged the woman to tell him her story. Although ashamed of her past, she spoke to him about the life she once lived and how she came to reside in the desert.

She was a native Egyptian. Leaving her parents at the age of twelve, she traveled to the city of Alexandria, where she lost her virginity, became enslaved to lustful passions, and gladly fed her all-consuming desire for sexual pleasure. Her income came from begging and spinning flax, not prostitution. Even though men offered to pay her for her services she refused the money. She didn’t sleep with them for the money. She enjoyed it.

One summer she saw a group of Egyptians and Libyans heading toward the shore to board a ship that would carry them to Jerusalem where they could venerate the Precious and Life-giving Cross upon which Jesus Christ had been crucified. She wanted to go on the trip, not as a spiritual pilgrimage, but to find more men with whom she could satisfy her appetite for sexual pleasure. Since she didn’t have any money, she offered her body as payment. Not only did she seduce men onboard the ship, but after reaching land she continued to seek out lovers among both the residents of Jerusalem and foreigners who were visiting the city. Even on the holy feast day of the Exaltation of the Cross she was still looking for young men to take to bed.

She noticed that the people around her began making their way to the church to see the lifting up of the Precious Cross. She followed them there, but when she tried to enter the church she was stopped by an invisible force. Unable to pass through the door, she was swept aside by the crowd. Thinking that her problem was caused by some kind of womanly weakness, she tried using her elbows to push her way through the people. Again, while everyone else passed beside her to go inside, she was unable to enter as though a detachment of soldiers were guarding the way. After three or four attempts, exhausted, without strength for another try, she walked to the corner of the porch and stood alone.

Why couldn’t she enter the church to see the Life-giving Cross? The reason became apparent to her. She had been barred from the church because of her sinful lifestyle. The filth of sin had polluted her soul. As the eyes of her heart opened to see her shameful way of life, she cried tears of repentance and beat her breast in deep sorrow.

Looking up, she saw above her an icon of the Virgin Mary. In desperation she prayed,

O Lady, Mother of God, who gave birth in the flesh to God the Word, I know that it’s no honor or praise to you when one as impure and depraved as I am looks upon your icon, O ever-virgin, who kept your body and soul in purity. I justifiably inspire hatred and disgust in the presence of your virginal purity, but I’ve heard that God, who was born of you, became a man for the purpose of calling sinners to repentance. So, help me, because I have no other help. Order that the entrance of the church be opened to me. Let me see the Tree, worthy of honor, on which He who was born of you suffered in the flesh and on which He shed His holy blood for the redemption of sinners and for me, unworthy as I am. Be my faithful witness before your Son that I will never again defile my body by the impurity of fornication. As soon as I have seen the Tree of the Cross, I will renounce the world and its temptations and will go wherever you will lead me.

After her prayer, she walked into the crowd. The same force which once prevented her from entering the church seemed to clear her way. She explained to Zosimas what she saw when she entered the church: “I saw the Life-giving Cross. I also saw the Mysteries of God and how the Lord accepts repentance.”

When she left the church, she asked the Virgin Mary to lead her down the path to repentance. She heard a voice speak these words: “If you cross the Jordan you will find glorious rest.” Leaving behind her sinful life, she began living a life of repentance motivated and guided by the Holy Spirit.

By the time Zosimas met this woman, whose name was Mary, she had lived in the desert beyond the Jordan River about forty-seven years. During her first seventeen years in the desert she fought the wild beasts of her passions, the self-centered desires for pleasure that once kept her heart far from God. He past life haunted her. Those old unspiritual songs she once sung with enthusiasm remained fresh in her memory. They confused her mind. Sometimes she was tempted to start singing them again. The sexual appetite she once glutinously satisfied sought to regain control of her soul. “A fire was kindled in my miserable heart that seemed to consume me and to make me thirsty for embraces.” Through a spiritual lifestyle, including fasting and prayer, she overcame the evil passions, was healed of her self-inflicted wounds, and received the purifying grace of God.

St. Mary of Egypt, who fell asleep in the Lord in 522 AD, is a woman that our generation should get to know. So many young men and women in our own time can relate to her before she turned her life around through repentance. How many Americans are inflicting spiritual wounds upon themselves, desecrating the sanctity of their bodies, defiling the image of God within them, and following self-centered passions that lead them farther and farther away from the beauty of Paradise? There are so many young people in America who accept lustful passions and behaviors as “natural,” although they are really corruptions of our human nature that are contrary to sexual wholeness and spiritual life. Our culture, ignorant of the true and living God, accepts and promotes sexual sins that damage the soul, while ridiculing the pure and innocent. The sickness of American culture has caused a great deal of confusion and pain in our generation.

The life of St. Mary offers hope for those who have ripped and stained their virginal purity and lay in despair. Through repentance, turning to the loving God who heals, restores, and transforms, they can throw off their ruined garments and be clothed once again with the radiant garments of purity and holiness. No matter how distant they find themselves from God and how much they have been enslaved to sinful passions, God will meet them where they are and set them free. They can leave behind their sins and begin a life renewed by the Spirit. Through a lifestyle of repentance, the passions calm so that the temporary pleasures of the body lose their luster compared to the pleasure of union with the One who bestows every good and perfect thing upon us.

St. Mary was led into the desert. Does this mean that everyone who leaves behind a lifestyle of sexual sin will need to live the rest of his or her life alone in a deserted place? No, the desert is not for everybody. Perhaps God will lead some people in our generation away from society into the wilderness to live alone as hermits. Maybe He will draw some into monastic communities to fast and pray with others dedicated to the same kind of life. As God knew what St. Mary needed to overcome her sins, He knows what each one of us personally needs to overcome ours. Most people will probably live their lives of repentance while remaining in society. Instead of escaping to the wilderness or a monastery, some will remain unmarried, finding refuge in the life of a parish. For others, a marriage blessed by the Church and nurtured within the Church will be their path of salvation. Marriage is a relationship in which a husband and wife can repent of their past sins together and express their sexuality with one another in love and purity, without sin or shame.

St. Mary’s personal story involves repentance from sexual sins in particular, but she’s a model of repentance in general. Her life encourages us to repent of every kind of sin that afflicts us and draws us from God, in whose image we have been made. No matter what particular sins we find ourselves committing, repentance leads us to healing and wholeness. St. Mary shows us how to leave behind everything that hinders our spiritual health and growth, and to stay on the path to Paradise. Although she struggled violently against her former ways of thinking and acting for many years before she overcame them, she kept the Faith, remained in prayer, and stayed on course, guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. Healing sometimes takes time, but the Great Physician of our souls is always with us to care for us through the process. Let’s follow St. Mary’s example and ask her to prayerfully intercede with Christ, our God, on our behalf.

O Thou who searches the depths of our heart, who hast foreseen all things concerning us before we came into existence, Thou hast delivered from a life of bondage the woman who fled to Thee, O Saviour; and with never-silent voice she cries out to Thy tender love: ‘O ye priests bless Him, and ye people exalt Him above all for ever.’

O holy transformation, that brought thee to a better way of life! O godlike love that hated carnal pleasures! O burning faith in God! We bless thee, Mary worthy of all praise, and we exalt thee above all for ever.

O holy Mary, thou hast received the recompense for thy toil, and the due reward for all the labours whereby thou hast cast down the vengeful enemy. And now thou singest with the angels, crying aloud with never-silent voice and exalting Christ above all for ever. (Triodion)

The complete story of St. Mary of Egypt, as recorded by St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, can be found at monochos.net. An abbreviated version of the story is printed in First Fruits of Prayer by Frederica Mathewes-Green, Paraclete Press, 2006.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (The verses quoted at the end of this essay are from Vespers and Matins of the Fifth Sunday of Lent on which we celebrate the memory of Our Holy Mother, Mary of Egypt, canticle 8, 2nd canon, taken from the Lenten Triodion, St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2001. The icon of St. Mary of Egypt is from the IconoGraphics ColorWorks Library, Theologic Systems, Theologic.com. Used by permission.)

The Catechumen: Preparing for Illumination

On Wednesday evening, we gathered together for the solemn Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. (The Holy Gifts are called presanctified because they, the bread and wine, were consecrated on the previous Sunday for Holy Communion during the week.) During the Liturgy, we prayed a special prayer for a particular group of people called catechumens:

O God our God, the Creator and Maker of all things, who willest that all men should be saved, and should come to the knowledge of the truth, look upon Thy servants the catechumens and deliver them from their former delusion and from the wiles of the adversary. And call them unto life eternal, enlightening their souls and bodies and numbering them with Thy rational flock, which is called by Thy holy name.

What is a catechumen? A catechumen is one who is learning the Faith. He or she is a person who has renounced paganism and is preparing to become an Orthodox Christian through the mystery of Holy Baptism.*

In the summer following my 18th birthday I found myself on a military base standing at attention with a group of other young men. We were being yelled at by an instructor. Welcome to Basic Military Training. I arrived there with the clothes on my back and a suitcase in my hand. Soon after my colleagues and I stepped off the bus, the process of turning undisciplined civilians into professional military men began. The military stripped us of our identities. They shaved our heads, took away our clothes, and gave us camouflage uniforms to put on. Everything we brought with us, except for a short list of acceptable items, were packed into our suitcases and locked away. We had come to the base looking like a bunch of guys from varying backgrounds with different personalities. The military took away our individuality. After a while we all looked like we belonged to the same group. Our instructors wanted to teach us how to think like a single unit and work together as a team. They intended to educate us in the essentials of military duty, socialize us in the military way of life, and instill in us the values of honor, integrity, and discipline.

When I started my Basic Training I had already made a firm commitment to serve in the military by taking the oath of enlistment. Nevertheless, until I had completed Basic Training I was in an ambiguous state. My identity was uncertain. The military was forming me into the kind of person they wanted me to be, but the process was not yet complete. I wasn’t really a civilian anymore, but I wasn’t completely initiated into the military yet either.

As nations prepare young men and women for military life through a period of initial training, the Orthodox Church prepares men and women for initiation into the fullness of the spiritual life. As people turn from paganism to the true Faith, they must learn a new way of understanding the world and adopt the Church’s common beliefs as their own. (The process of abandoning an old way of life for the new life in the Faith can be challenging spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally.) Catechumens learn basic knowledge of the Faith through formal instruction, build relationships with Orthodox Christians, and observe how the spiritual life is practically lived within the Church and out in the world by the Church. This period of preparation allows the catechumen to begin to understand what being an Orthodox Christian, a cross-bearing disciple of Jesus Christ, really means.

Catechumens are stripped of their old pagan identities. While they aren’t yet Orthodox Christians, “the Faithful,” they aren’t pagans anymore either since they’ve already begun their spiritual journey toward their entrance into the Church, the mystical community of Christ’s own. The catechumen’s training culminates in Holy Baptism, whereby the person is united with Christ, received into the Church, initiated into the Holy Mysteries, and illumined by divine knowledge. Once received into the Church, the newly illumined Orthodox Christian begins living the fullness of the spiritual way of life, the journey of salvation that leads to union with God. He or she still lives in this world, but now lives here as a traveler who truly belongs to the kingdom of heaven. Having received as a catechumen basic instruction, the spiritual milk of an infant, the illumined one is now ready to receive the more substantial nourishment necessary for spiritual maturity and growth.

Let’s remember the catechumens in our prayers, and also ask God to bring us more men and women who seek spiritual truth, rebirth, renewal, healing, and wholeness through a relationship with the true and living God.

Reveal, O Master, Thy countenance to those who are preparing for holy illumination and who long to put away the pollution of sin. Enlighten their minds. Secure them in the faith. Establish them in hope. Perfect them in love. Show them to be honorable members of Thy Christ, who gave Himself as a deliverance for our souls.

* Note: I use the word pagan in the ancient sense to mean a non-Christian, one who does not know, through experience, the true and living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The term paganism refers to non-Christian religions or ways of life. In contemporary times, a catechumen may also be a Christian who is outside of the Holy Orthodox Church and is preparing to unite himself or herself with the Church. Christians outside of the Church who have already been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity are usually received through the mystery of Holy Chrismation.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo copyright © 2005 by Dana S. Kees. (Prayers for the catechumens from The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts as published by the Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America.)

Thoughts on Repentance

Our Creator made Adam and Eve, our first parents, in His own image and likeness. While clothed with physical bodies, they bore the image of the Spirit who fills all things and cannot be contained. God created them to reflect the radiance of His own divine light, ever-flourishing life, pure goodness, and selfless love. Our first parents used their freedom, not to embrace the loving One who nurtured them, but to turn away from Him. Instead of obeying the One who knew the best for them, Adam and Eve thought they could do better following their own desires. Their actions brought spiritual darkness, evil, and self-centeredness into the creation. Another way of saying this is that Adam and Eve brought death into the world. Death is a reality in the world because our first parents’ sinned. Sin causes death.

Death is a sickness, a disease that afflicts us all. It seems natural to us because we see it all around us, but it’s not really natural. It’s an aberration, the desecration of life. God didn’t intend for death to be a part of His creation. Death is the result of our sin because when we reject God, we separate ourselves from the Source of Life. We have the freedom to remain in Life, but also the freedom to leave it behind.

Physical sickness and bodily death are aspects of death, but the influence of death is far more pervasive. We were not only born afflicted by physical death, which will cause our mortal bodies to die, but we are also afflicted with spiritual death, spiritual sickness. Our warped thoughts and feelings, and skewed vision of the world, draws our hearts away from God, our Creator and Healer. While we still bear the image of God, sin has distorted this image. Although we remain mirrors that reflect the brilliant glory of God, we are scratched, cracked, and blackened by the pollution of sin.

Many of us have been taught that we were born into this world as sinners guilty of Adam and Eve’s original sin. This idea is not in harmony with the Orthodox Christian Faith. The doctrine that Adam and Eve’s guilt is passed on from generation to generation may have originated with St. Augustine, whose writings have influenced many churches in the Western world. (St. Augustine is regarded as a Saint by the Orthodox Church, but he was not infallible when he expressed his theological opinions.) According to the Faith of the Holy Apostles, we inherit death, not guilt, from our first parents. We are born into this world as innocent infants. It is true that we are all sinners, every one of us, but not because we are born guilty. We are guilty sinners because we commit sin. We misuse our freedom to disobey our loving Father, who created us and who knows the best way for us. We choose to act according to our self-centered desires instead of expressing selfless love. We live in a way that keeps us in darkness rather than leading us to the One who is Light and enlightens our hearts and minds. We submit ourselves to the destructive passions within us that draw us away from God instead of drawing near to the One who purifies the desires of our hearts.

The truth that we’ve inherited death from our first parents is the bad news. The good news is that we can be freed from the curse of death. Our souls can be healed from the illness that keeps us from experiencing fullness of life. We can overcome spiritual death, restore the image of God within us, regain the likeness of our Creator, and find true life, immortal life. We can end our isolation from the Spirit, restore communion, and experience union with God. Through the process of salvation, spiritual healing, we become “divinized,” reflecting the divine radiance of God like polished mirrors in the sun. We can even surpass the spiritual maturity of our first parents. Even more, by overcoming spiritual death in this life, we also overcome physical death. If we are spiritually alive when our mortal bodies die, then we will rise from the dead with spiritually transformed bodies that will never die, and we will live forever in Paradise in the presence of God.

The process of liberation and healing involves repentance. Repentance is a spiritual U-turn. If you’re in your car driving somewhere and you realize that you’re going the wrong way, in the opposite direction of your destination, you need to find a place to turn around so you can start heading the right way. If you need to go south, continuing northward won’t help your cause. On the road of life, if we go in the direction of sin we will find ourselves at the gates of hell, eternal death. If we go in the direction of repentance we will reach Paradise, eternal life. Repentance is the recognition that we’re going the wrong way, and the change of direction that puts us on the right course for the right place.

Repentance is much more than a feeling of guilt. (We should never be lazy and just wallow in our guilt.) It’s also more than confession, although confession and repentance are like sisters. (Someone can confess a sin without being sorry for committing it and without any intention to repent. What kind of confession is that?) Repentance is a radical change of the mind (and heart) about the way we are, how we see things, and what we do. It’s a change from black to white, a conversion of the soul. When we really repent of a sin we never intend to commit that sin again. If we do commit the same sin again, we repent again with the same intention, hoping through divine power to overcome it. Repentance is a lifestyle, a continual process of looking honestly inside our hearts to discover and expose the soul-polluting sins within us, confessing them to God, and boldly throwing them off like old, dirty clothes.

When we turn away from our sins, we don’t just turn toward goodness, ethics, or morality as abstract ideas. We turn to God Himself, the Source of every good and perfect thing. Since sin is the rejection of God and a turning away from Him, repentance means turning back to God to fully embrace Him. He is always ready to run toward us with arms outstretched to forgive us and welcome us home. The more we reject self-centeredness and return to the One who is Love Himself, the more He fills our hearts with self-giving love. The more we turn from darkness, the absence of light, and return to the Light Himself, the more He enlightens our minds and hearts with divine illumination. The more we leave our isolation, the more He communes with us. The more we repent of the sins that sicken our souls and turn back to our loving Creator, the more He heals us from spiritual illness, the more alive we become, and the more we take on His divine image and likeness. By His death and triumphant resurrection, Christ has defeated death and has swung open the gates of Paradise. If we live a life of repentance, purifying ourselves through His divine grace, we can return to Paradise and live in union with our loving Creator forever.

We hear a lot these days about self-esteem, achieving success, and reaching our full potential. Self-improvement experts, books, and seminars may improve some aspects of our lives, but they ultimately fail because they only deal with the surface-level symptoms of our real problem, death. Since our main problem involves spiritual sickness, we need a spiritual path to recovery. When we realize our true identity as descendents of Adam and Eve and live an ongoing lifestyle of sincere repentance to liberate ourselves from our sins, we can finally experience the divine healing and personal transformation we desire. This is the only way we can ever reach our full potential and return to Paradise.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo copyright © 2004 by Dana S. Kees.

The Holy Cross: The Gate of Paradise

Our first parents, Adam & Eve, lived in Paradise, the Garden of Eden. They enjoyed a life of blissful purity in the intimate presence with their loving, nurturing Creator, who had given them the fruit of every tree in the garden for food, except one. God warned them not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil.

The fruit of that tree alone was not good for them, at least not yet. Knowing this, the Serpent, the once-angelic being who had himself rebelled against God, appeared in the garden to deceive our first mother. He encouraged her to ignore God's instructions and to instead follow her own selfish desires. She listened. Eve reached out her hand, took fruit from the forbidden tree, and ate it. She gave some of the fruit to her husband, Adam, who also at it. Through their prideful, rebellious sin, they brought death, an existence of spiritual and physical corruption, chaos, and decay, into the vibrant, harmonious creation. The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge and Good & Evil was itself good and meant for life. The fruit itself did not bring death, but the prideful rejection of God in favor of self-centeredness, the opposite of selfless love, brought death. Adam & Eve used their own freedom to do evil instead of good, a choice that brought isolation and sickness upon themselves, their descendents, and the whole world.

Our Creator, in His infinite love for the humanity He had created in His own image, did not intend to allow death to enslave and weaken us forever. To prevent them from also eating fruit from the Tree of Life and living forever poisoned by death, He exiled our first parents from Paradise and posted an angelic guard with a flaming sword to protect the sacred way to the Tree of Life.

The descendents of Adam & Eve, all of us who have lived on the Earth, have been born into a fallen world as children afflicted by the disease of death. After the sin of our first parents, the generations of humanity that followed continued to drift away from God into the dark shadows of self-destructive sin and ignorance. Even so, our Creator was not absent, but was always present and active in the world preparing us for the day of salvation, when He would free us from the curse of death and bring us back into Paradise.

In the fullness of time, the Archangel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary and announced to Her that she would give birth to a son, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. "I'm the Lord's servant," Mary replied, "Let everything happen to me according to your word." As the first Eve brought sin into the world by choosing of her own free will to disobey God, the New Eve, through faithful obedience, would give birth to Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God in human flesh. As the New Adam, Christ would free us from the death brought upon us by (the first) Adam and lead us back into Paradise.

When Christ came into the world, His enemies did not recognize Him or understand why He had come to walk among us. In their sinful ignorance, they intended to destroy Him by executing Him on a wooden cross, a symbol of punishment, defeat, pain, and death. They didn't understand that He had come into the world for this very purpose, to willing ascend the Cross and, through the Cross, to rescue us from death. Since Christ was completely human, having been born of a human woman with a mortal body, He died as one of us, leaving His body for burial and descending into Hades , the place of the dead (often translated as "hell"). Although Christ was fully human, He wasn't merely human. He was also truly God, the Son through whom the Father brought all things into existence. Since He was Life Himself, death could not contain Him. He trampled death by His own death and freed humanity from the curse of death.

The Holy Cross is the Door of Paradise, through which we return to real life in the presence of God:

The fiery sword no longer guards the gate of Eden, for in a strange and glorious way the wood of the Cross has quenched its flames. The sting of death and the victory of hell are now destroyed for Thou art come, my Saviour, crying unto those in hell: 'Return again to Paradise.'

Pilate set up three crosses in the place of the Skull, two for the thieves and one for the Giver of Life. Seeing Him, hell cried to those below: 'O ministers and powers! Who is this that has fixed a nail in my heart? A wooden spear has pierced me suddenly, and I am torn apart. Inwardly I suffer; anguish has seized my belly and my senses. My spirit trembles, and I am constrained to cast out Adam and his posterity. A tree brought them to my realm, but now the Tree of the Cross brings them back again to Paradise.' (Matins, Sunday of the Cross, Triodion)

The Cross is also the Tree of Life and Jesus Christ is its fruit:

Come, Adam and Eve, our first father and mother, who fell from the choir on high through the envy of the murderer of man, when of old with bitter pleasure ye tasted from the tree in Paradise. See, the Tree of the Cross, revered by all, draws near! Run with haste and embrace it joyfully, and cry to it with faith: O precious Cross, thou art our succour; partaking of thy fruit, we have gained incorruption; we are restored once more to Eden, and have received great mercy.
(Saturday Vespers, Sunday of the Cross, Triodion)

Whoever eats of this Tree receives spiritual purification, healing, illumination, transformation, and eternal life. Spiritual death struck our first parents immediately after their sin and physical death eventually followed. Through the Cross, we have access to spiritual healing and union with God in the eternal realm of Paradise right now, even while living in this world. We are travelers in the world heading toward our beloved home country, the Kingdom of God - Paradise, where our hearts reside. Eventually our lives on the Earth will end and our physical bodies will die, but since we live in mystical union with the Divine One who Himself triumphed over death by the Cross, death will not be able to contain us either. In the final triumph of the Cross, even physical death will be destroyed once and for all. We will rise from the dead to finally experience the fullness of Paradise in the presence of God forever.

How do we experience the reality of the Cross? We mystically experience the reality of the Cross by living the fullness of the Orthodoxy Christian way of life. Whether prayerfully making the sign of the cross over ourselves (During the baptismal service we proclaim, "Let all adverse powers be crushed beneath the sign of the image of thy cross."), or by giving our bodies over to martyrdom for the sake of Christ and His Church, as many of the Saints have done, the Cross for us is not just a symbol, but a present reality made real in our lives through the Holy Spirit as a spiritual weapon and instrument of salvation. We especially experience the Cross through our participation in the Holy Mysteries, central to our life within the Church. The Mysteries infuse us with the transforming power of the Cross that brings our hearts closer to Christ, unites with Him, forms us into His divine image, and enables us to more perfectly embody His healing love in the world.

While on the Earth, Christ taught His disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8.34, RSV). Our way of life is the daily lifestyle of taking up the cross and following Christ. The way of self-denial is the way of love. It involves relinquishing our own self-centered desires so that we can really love God and also love the people around us with pure, selfless love. How much should we love God and love others? Our example is the Cross, where God, with arms outstretched, shows us how much He loves us.

Today is the Sunday that marks the half-way point between the beginning of the Fast (Great Lent) and the Feast of Feasts (Pascha/Easter). It is the Sunday of the Adoration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross. We read about the Cross from the Holy Scripture and carry the Cross in procession while singing,

O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance, granting to Thy people victory over all their enemies, and by the power of Thy Cross, preserving Thy kingdom.

We bow down before the Cross in worship, singing again,

Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, Sovereign Lord, and Thy Holy Resurrection we glorify.

For us the Holy Cross, is not a sign of death, but a sign of Life. During the Fast, let us look toward Holy Week and Pascha (Easter) when we will celebrate in greater fullness the beauty of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection, not only in the spiritual history of humankind, but as a reality we are called to live every single day of our earthly lives on the way toward Paradise.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo © 2005 by Dana S. Kees. (Passages from Vespers and Matins from The Lenten Triodion, trans. by Mother Mary and Bishop Kallistos Ware, St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 2001.)

Resource: Political Commentary Worth Considering

We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, the divine dominion where Christ is King, but right now we are also living as legal residents in the world, a place where human politics influences society and culture. In a healthy society and culture, the Faith shapes politics.

Several days ago I heard a commentary on National Public Radio (NPR) by Rod Dreher, author of the new book, Crunchy Cons. He identifies crunchy conservatives as those who value family over career, small businesses more than "big business," and living in traditional communities instead of manufactured developments. They are ecology-minded conservationists who eat organic foods. They hold to values that are both counter-cultural and traditional, tend to educate their children at home, reject consumerism, and place their religious faith at the center of their lives.

I don't identify myself as either liberal or conservative. I'm an Orthodox Christian. Our Faith transcends general political labels, parties, and platforms. I'm not interested in reforming a political party, but I am interested in living the Orthodox Christian way of life in America. Several of the ideas identified with the crunchy conservative ideology is also part of the Orthodox Christian worldview. I'm not offering an endorsement of a political party or ideology, but I like the idea of a political movement inspired, influenced, and shaped by spiritual values that are in harmony with, or at least sympathetic to, our way of life.

Rod Dreher's commentary and an excerpt from his book are available on the NPR website (npr.org). To listen to his commentary, click on the red button at the top of the page, just under the heading. You can read his Crunchy Con blog on National Review Online. Our own Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Orthodoxy Christian author and commentator, contributes to the blog. I'm glad there's an Orthodox voice in the ongoing discussion.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo © 2006 by Dana S. Kees.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

Last Sunday, Orthodox Christians celebrated the Triumph of Orthodoxy. We remembered a time when a group called the Iconoclasts (“icon-smashers”) attempted to eradicate the presence and veneration of icons in the life of the Church. They may have been influenced by both the teachings of Judaism and Islam, which prohibit at least some kinds of images, especially images of God. During this period, certain emperors influenced by the iconoclasts enforced the prohibition on icons and sometimes severely persecuted those who continued to honor them. The Triumph of Orthodoxy celebrates the public restoration of the icons to the churches under the leadership of the Empress Theodora in the year 843. During the reign of her husband, the iconoclast Emperor Theophilos, she had secretly kept icons and continued to venerate them. The Church had already affirmed the centrality of the holy icons in the Orthodox Christian life during the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). When Theodora took control of the empire after her husband’s death, the icons were restored to the churches in a solemn procession on the First Sunday of Great Lent. (When her son Michael came of age and assumed the throne, Theodora retired to a women’s monastery until her death.) After the restoration of the icons, the Church once again condemned iconoclasm and reaffirmed the Orthodox teaching concerning the veneration of icons.

Since the year 843 the Church has celebrated the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the First Sunday of Lent. The event affirms the spiritual nature of painted icons, their importance in prayer and worship, and their significance for communicating the Truth. The Triumph of Orthodoxy celebrates the bold conquest of spiritual Wisdom and Truth and the shameful defeat of ignorance and confusion. In a culture that at best ignores Truth and at worst denies its existence, the Triumph of Orthodoxy is an event worth remembering and celebrating. It also reminds us of the great mystery that Christ, “the image (icon) of the invisible God,” became human like us. Those who saw Christ walking on the Earth saw the living God in human flesh. Unlike the Israelites, who were forbidden before the birth of Christ from making images of God, we now see with our eyes, kiss with our lips, and venerate with our hearts the holy icons depicting Jesus Christ Himself. As we honor the icons of Christ, we also respectfully honor the icons of His Mother with all His Saints.

The meaning of icons was described during Vespers (evening prayer) on Saturday night:

The grace of truth has shone forth upon us; the mysteries darkly prefigured in the times of old have now been openly fulfilled. For behold, the Church is clothed in beauty that surpasses all things shadowed by the ark of testimony. This is the safeguard of the Orthodox faith; for if we hold fast to the ikon of the Saviour whom we worship, we shall not go astray. Let all who do not share this faith be covered with shame; but we shall glory in the ikon of the Word made flesh, which we venerate but worship not as an idol. So, let us kiss it, and with all the faithful cry aloud: O God, save Thy people and bless Thy inheritance.

During our worship at Matins (morning prayer) before the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning, the chanters said these words:

Keeping the laws of the Church that we have received from the Fathers, we paint ikons of Christ and His saints, and with our lips and hearts we will venerate them as we cry aloud: O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.

The honour and veneration that we show to the ikon we ascribe to the prototype it represents, following the teaching of the saints inspired by God, and with faith we cry aloud to Christ: O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.

Her mind enlightened by the illumination of the Holy Spirit and filled with the wisdom of God, the honoured Empress has loved the beauty and splendour of Christ’s Church, and with all the faithful she blesses Jesus, the God-Man.

The celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy concluded with Vespers on Sunday evening. During a procession with the icons around the church, we sang a hymn to Christ:

Before Thy spotless icon, we adore thee gracious Lord, and ask forgiveness of our stumblings, O Christ our God, for of thine own will it pleased Thee to ascend the Cross in the flesh to deliver us, Thy creatures, from enslavement to our foes. Wherefore, greatfully we cry to Thee, “Thou hast filled all things with gladness, O our Saviour, for Thou hast come to save the world.”

Then, we loudly reproclaimed the Synodikon, the official statement concerning icons declared by the Christian Church at the Seventh Ecumenical Council:

As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught, as the Church has received, as the teachers have dogmatized, as the Universe has agreed, as Grace has shown forth, as Truth has revealed, as falsehood has been dissolved, as Wisdom has presented, as Christ awarded, thus we declare, thus we assert, thus we preach Christ our true God, and honor His Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord; and on the other hand honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration.

This is the Faith of the Apostles,
this is the Faith of the Fathers,
this is the Faith of the Orthodox,
this is the Faith which has established the Universe.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (Text from Saturday night Vespers and Sunday Matins & Vespers from The Lenten Triodion, trans. by Mother Mary and Bishop Kallistos Ware. St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2001. Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy from the IconoGraphics ColorWorks Library, Theologic Systems, Theologic.com. Used by permission.)

About Forgiveness

Jesus once told a story about a father and his son. The young man asked his father to give him his share of the inheritance. When he received it, he left home, traveled to a far-off country, and wasted everything supporting his wild lifestyle. When he spent all of his money and a famine hit the land, the once carefree playboy found himself working as a pig-feeder on a farm. He was so hungry that he longed to fill his stomach with pig’s food, but no one gave him anything to eat. He thought to himself, “My father’s employees eat as much as they want and have food left over. Here I am, starving. I’m going back home to tell my father, 'I have sinned against heaven and before you. I’m not worthy to be called your son, so make me like one of your hired servants.'” As he approached home his father saw him in the distance. He had compassion on his son, ran to him, embraced him, and kissed him. The prodigal son, as he had planned, asked to be made like a hired servant, but his father ordered the servants to bring the best robe to cover him, put a ring on his hand, place sandals on his feet, and to kill the fatted calf for a “welcome home” party. The father proclaimed, “My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost, but now is found!”

Last Sunday night we began Great Lent, the annual season of spiritual training, with Forgiveness Vespers. This is one of the prayers chanted during the service:

As the Prodigal Son, I also come to Thee, O compassionate Lord, and I fall down before Thee. Accept me as one of Thy hired servants, and have mercy on me.

As the man who fell among thieves and was wounded, I too have fallen through my sins and my soul is wounded. To whom shall I flee for refuge, guilty that I am, if not to Thee, the merciful Physician of our souls? Pour on me, O God, the oil of Thy great mercy.

Sinner though I be, O Saviour, cut me not down as the barren fig tree. Grant me forgiveness for my many years of sin, and water my soul with tears of repentance, that as fruit I may offer Thee acts of mercy and compassion.

Thou art the Sun of righteousness; illumine the hearts of those who praise Thee, singing: Glory be to Thee, O Lord.

The story of the prodigal son is about us and our relationship with God. Although His love for us is infinite, we sometimes act more like self-absorbed rebellious teenagers than mature loving and loyal sons and daughters. Nevertheless, no matter how distant from God we find ourselves and how irresponsibly we live, the way back to God is repentance, changing our minds and hearts about how we are living, and returning to the Father’s warm embrace. Since we constantly fall into sin, which not only injures our relationship with God, but also damages our relationships with others and wounds our own souls, then the spiritual life is a life of constant repentance, turning away from sin back to God. The more spiritual we grow, the more self-aware we become, and the more self-aware we become, the more clearly we see our own faults that keep us from perfect, harmonious spiritual communion with God and others. When we see a fault, we throw it off, turn away from it, look to God, and God forgives.

One of our most familiar prayers of forgiveness is the one Christ taught us:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Another way of saying, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” is “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” As God compassionately forgives us, we are called to compassionately forgive others. As we received God’s healing grace, we have been appointed ministers of His healing grace to those around us. Through the act of forgiveness, we restore relationships, remove pain, heal wounds, throw off pride, and disarm our spiritual enemy. Forgiveness is a divine medicine bestowed upon us and given to us for use in the name of Christ, the Physician of our Souls.

When St. Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how often should I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Up to seven times?,” Jesus replied, “I’m not telling you to forgive him up to seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18.21-22). As God’s mercy and love flows freely toward us, may selfless, compassionate forgiveness flow from our hearts to others as spiritual acts of worship offered from pure hearts.

At the conclusion of Forgiveness Vespers on Sunday evening, our senior priest asked us to forgive him for anything he has done or said in the past year that didn’t live up to his title as “Father.” All of our priests asked each other for forgiveness and stood in front of the congregation to receive us. One by one we walked forward. When I reached the priests I embraced them and asked for their forgiveness as they asked for mine. After speaking with the priests, I made my way down a long line of my brothers and sisters that stretched around the interior of the church. After exchanging forgiveness, we kissed each other three times, a kiss on one cheek, then the other, then back again. When I reached the end of the line, I joined it, another link in the chain, to receive those coming after me.

The act of forgiveness expressed during Forgiveness Vespers is not a shallow sentimental ritual meant to make us all feel good. It’s the real thing, an actual opportunity for us to heal and experience the healing that forgiveness brings. It’s a chance for each of us to give the forgiveness we expect God to give us during our journey of repentance. It’s a sign showing us how we must always live, a lifestyle of forgiveness. It’s a great way to begin Great Lent, when we look deeply into our souls, become more aware of our own sinfulness, and run back to the only One who can wash us clean, make us whole, and give us newness of life.

If I have sinned against you and wounded you, please forgive me.
O Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us all.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (Text of Forgiveness Vespers from The Lenten Triodion, trans. by Mother Mary and Bishop Kallistos Ware. St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2001. Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son is in the public domain, available at the Art Renewal Center, artrenewal.org.)

An Invitation: Come & See

Over the next several weeks I plan to post a series of articles relating to Great Lent, the intense forty-day period of spiritual training and preparation that leads us to Great & Holy Pascha (Easter). I hope you personally benefit from what I write during this time, but I would like to invite you, not only to read about the Orthodox Christian Faith, but to also learn about our way of life by experience. Great Lent, which begins this Sunday evening, provides a really good opportunity for those who are not Orthodox Christians to visit us in our local churches to see how we practice repentance, pray for healing and wholeness, worship our loving Creator in His presence, and commune with the living God. Our culture extols the virtues of physical exercise and diet for physical health. Discover the ancient way of engaging in spiritual training for the good health of the entire being.

Peace, Symeon

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (The icon shown above is from St. Philip Antiochian Orthodox Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: http://www.stphilipflorida.com. Used by permission.)

Humility & Wisdom

In ancient Greece a shrine dedicated to the pagan god, Apollo, stood at Delphi. People seeking answers to questions from the god would travel to the shrine and ask the oracle, a priestess of Apollo, who would answer the question on behalf of the god. A man named Chaerephon once asked the oracle, “Who is the wisest man?” She replied that Socrates was the wisest man.

Upon hearing the oracle's answer from his friend, Socrates was puzzled. Knowing that he was not the wisest man, but unwilling to accept that the god lied, Socrates set out to talk to others with reputations for wisdom. By talking to these wise men he hoped to discover how he could possibly be the wisest man. After speaking with them, Socrates discovered that even though they possessed great reputations for being wise and they certainly saw themselves as being wise, they really weren’t wise at all. He found that they didn’t know much, but they thought they knew much more than they actually did. They had deceived themselves by overestimating their own wisdom. On the other hand, Socrates didn’t know much either, but he realized how little he knew. Therefore, Socrates concluded that he was indeed the wisest man because he recognized his own ignorance (Plato, The Apology).

If we understand wisdom the way Socrates did, we can be rather unwise ourselves. We are ignorant of more than we know, but we can often overestimate our wisdom. Recognizing our own ignorance is humbling, but when we think we know more than we actually do we can become quite arrogant. Everyone around us seems less intelligent, wise, and knowledgeable than we are. We can even become so arrogant that we judge our Creator, the source of all knowledge and wisdom, as possessing less wisdom and knowledge than we do. How can anyone actually think that he or she has a more complete and coherent understanding of reality than the One who creates reality out of nothing? In our ignorance, we can question whether God is really infinitely holy, powerful, loving, merciful, and compassionate. How can we, who are sinners full of self-righteous pride, hedonistic lust, selfish ambition, and spiritual laziness, judge the true and living God? We are blindly arrogant and incredibly unaware of our own empty ignorance.

Challenging God is sometimes an emotional reaction to our personal pain and inability to understand things that happen in our lives. When we don’t understand why we are hurting or life doesn’t seem to make sense and we can’t find anyone around us to blame, we direct our anger, frustration, and anxiety toward our Creator. Consider the story of Job. During a period of tremendous suffering, Job began to make accusations against God.

God answered him,

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb; when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?’ Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”

Then Job, realizing his own ignorance, responded,

“Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.”

God continued,

“Will you put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?”

Job answered,

“I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.’ I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 38.1-11, 40.2-9, 42.1-8, RSV)

In the end, Job realized how ignorant and arrogant he had been to challenge God. He repented, trading self-righteousness for humility, and proceeded to live a long, fulfilled life.

Questioning God or blaming Him for whatever happens in the world that we don’t understand doesn’t lead us to greater wisdom and knowledge or make us more pure, loving, spiritually healthy people. Arrogance actually shuts our hearts and minds to God’s grace, love, and wisdom. It causes us to ignore our own sinfulness and turns our hearts against the only One who can help us. A child who rebels against her loving parents, questions their authority, rejects their instructions, and accuses them of not understanding her or desiring what is best for her will not likely grow closer to her parents as long as these attitudes are kept in her heart. She will grow inward and distant from them. The child who obeys her parents in humility, even without understanding why they give certain instructions, confides in them, and genuinely loves them is likely to build a strong, enduring relationship and develop a way of thinking and understanding the world shaped by their views. Instead of arrogantly challenging God like an immature child challenges her parents, we can improve our knowledge of ourselves and our comprehension of reality by loving God with our hearts, obeying the teachings He has given to us for our benefit, and nurturing our relationship with Him, our compassionate Father.

Rather than trying to figure out reasons things happen in the world, we can benefit from humbly embracing the divine mystery of the One who is incomprehensible and uncontainable. Through our intimate spiritual communion, God transforms our hearts so that we are capable of understanding reality from the divine perspective, a perspective that often makes little sense to secular culture. In a corrupted, dysfunctional world, “common sense,” the sense held in common among people influenced by the world, is not necessarily good sense. “Let no one deceived himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again, 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile'” (1 Cor. 3.18-21, RSV).

How do we escape from the arrogance in our hearts that causes us to challenge, accuse, and question the One who loves us? How do we humbly embrace the mystery of the Holy Trinity and commune in a relationship of love and trust with the living God, the source all wisdom the knowledge? We accomplish these things by living the dynamic spiritual life within the Church, the mystical community of Christ’s disciples. The Church is the temple of God where the Spirit of God dwells. She is the guardian and preserver of the Truth, the one who proclaims the Truth to the world, and who lives the Truth within the world. God created the Church, reveals Himself to her, dwells within her, and guides her every day of her life. Within the Church we find Holy Tradition, the Faith passed down to us from the Apostles, in its fullest form. The Holy Scripture, revealing the Truth through human language, as well as the correct interpretation of Scripture, are present within the Church. The Holy Icons, revealing the Truth visually through art, are kept within the Church. The Holy Mysteries through which we mystically experience the Truth remain inseparable from our life in the Church. Within the Church we pray, both individually and together as one body, one temple. A true theologian in not a philosopher, but one who prays, communing and communicating with God, who molds our hearts like wax and imparts wisdom to those who seek it.

The complete spiritual way of life that leads into the depths of divine spirituality is the life of the Orthodox Christian Church. Through the Church, built upon the Apostles, we come to the knowledge of the Truth and acquire spiritual wisdom, not through intellectual philosophical ideas, but through the Spirit. As St. Paul said of the Apostles, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eyes has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,’ God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2.6-10, RSV). The word “orthodox” in the term "Orthodox Christianity" means, in part, “correct belief” or “right faith.” As Orthodox Christians, we hold to the original Christian faith that has endured for two thousand years, but being an Orthodox Christian is not just about being right, that is, intellectually knowing the right doctrines. Knowledge that remains in the mind alone without descending into the heart can puff up our pride. However, when Truth abides in the heart and is embodied as a lifestyle in the world, it produces humility. If we have humble hearts, the Spirit can teach us, shape our perceptions, and grant us wisdom.

Through our life in the Church, a life involving a dynamic relationship with the One who loves us, we can learn to better understand what our Creator has revealed to us and has entrusted to us. We can also learn to confidently accept the indescribable mystery that remains beyond our human comprehension. Let’s keep this psalm of King David in our hearts so that we may recognize our ignorance and find peace, tranquility, and wisdom through our communion with the Holy Trinity:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted,
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
Too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a child that is quieted is my soul.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forevermore.

(Psalm 130/131, RSV)

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo copyright © 2005 by Dana S. Kees.

The Way of Humility

Sometimes it’s not easy to look at ourselves honestly, seeing ourselves as we really are. Looking into our own hearts truthfully can be painful. Having pride is easier. Pride insulates our awareness and shapes our perception so that when we look at ourselves we don’t seem that bad. Our hearts look purer in our own eyes than they really are and our faults appear dramatically minimized in size and importance. It’s like a pig looking into a magic mirror and seeing a princess. Have you ever known a parent who thinks her child is absolutely perfect? Even though the child perpetually gets into trouble at school the problem is always the fault of a school administrator, teacher, or another student. We look at ourselves in that way. If we have conflict with someone else, we can’t believe what the other person said or did. Do we never say or do things we shouldn’t? (I know even when I don’t act, I think.) Our coworkers, clients, neighbors, and friends may seem incompetent and immature to us. Do we never make mistakes or do stupid things? “Those people” don’t know what they’re doing? Each of us possesses enough ignorance to go around. Pride is a raging ocean of dark storm clouds around our hearts, keeping us from honest self-awareness. It causes the heart to grow damp and cold. When it overtakes us, our relationship with others (who are not as good as us anyway, we think) begins to decay. Because we are so good, we appoint ourselves as judges over other people.

Jesus once told a story about a tax collector and a Pharisee. Tax collectors were hated in their day because, in addition to collecting taxes for the pagan Roman government, they collected an added fee for themselves. Pharisees, on the other hand, didn’t want anything to do with the pagans. They strived for holiness and purity by following strict religious rules and regulations. One day, both the Pharisee and the tax collector walked to the temple for prayer. The Pharisee stood and prayed, “God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, corrupt, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I tithe everything I own.” The tax collector, standing far away, would not even lift up his eyes toward heaven, but pounded his chest, praying, “God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Jesus said, “I tell you, this man went home justified instead of the other one: for whoever exalts himself will be brought down and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (The Gospel of St. Luke 18.10-14).

When we embrace humility we realize how much we really are like the sinners around us. The sinners are not “those people.” We are the sinners. We may actually be worse than most people. As one of the Egyptian Fathers said, “Don’t look down on anyone because you don’t know whether the spirit of God prefers to dwell in you or in them.” The purpose of humility is not to enable us to realize how sinful and corrupt we are so that we can wallow in guilt and depression. Humility is not self-defeating, but empowering. Humility conditions our hearts with the right attitude for us to stand before God and receive the mercy, forgiveness, and restoration He desires to bestow upon us. God is a loving Father who, like in the story of the Prodigal Son, comes running to embrace us when He sees that we’ve left behind our sinful pride to return home. Pride causes isolation. It isolates us from God, ourselves, and those around us. Humility opens our hearts to love, communion, wholeness, and harmony.

Humility is the way toward Paradise and the path of spiritual perfection. God created us as humble creatures, making us in His own divine image and likeness. In the Garden of Eden, our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, were tempted to turn away from God with pride. They took the bait and experienced sin, the evil that corrupts our souls and separates us from God. By their own actions, they lost the glory of the divine likeness they once possessed. As the image of God within them warped, the natural passions of humility and love were replaced with arrogant self-centeredness.

When God confronted Adam about eating fruit from the only forbidden tree in the Garden of Paradise, Adam defended himself by saying, “The woman you put here with me gave it to me and I ate it.” Adam’s pride is palpable. I can tell we are his descendents. Things haven’t changed so much that they haven’t remained the same, although down through the centuries we may have become more intellectually creative, emotionally convincing, and philosophically complex in our attempts to deflect blame away from ourselves, condemn others as guilty, and find ourselves innocent (or at least better than the other guilty people).

Since the first sin by our ancestors in Paradise, the war against pride has been fought in the hearts of those determined to regain the divine likeness, find spiritual wholeness, and enter once again through the gates of Paradise. One simple, practical step we can take to become more humble is to dedicate ourselves to saying the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, a prayer dating back to the fourth century:

O Lord and Master of my Life,
Take away from me the spirit of laziness,
faint-heartedness, lust for power, and idle talk.
+

Instead grant me, your servant,
the spirit of purity, humility, patience, and love.
+

Yes, Lord and King,
give me the power to see my own faults
and not to judge my brother.
For You are blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.
+

We, as Orthodox Christians, pray this prayer together during the forty days of Great Lent preceeding Pascha (Easter). The prayer will undoubtedly be a vital part of my personal prayers during Lent this year. That for which the prayer asks, I desperately need. It sums up so much about my own faults and my desire to escape my sins and become better than I am.

Standing before an icon of Christ, we begin the prayer. As His servants, who have come to Him requesting love, mercy, and grace, we acknowledge Him as our Lord, Master, and King. Humility grows in an environment where we remember who God is and who we are in relationship to Him. We ask Him to release us from self-centered inclinations, laziness, faint-heartedness (despair), selfish ambition, and idle talk, and to fill our hearts with purity, humility, patience, and love. Our prayer also specifically asks God to help us see ourselves as we really are instead of seeing what everybody else does wrong. If we are able to see our own faults, instead of seeing the faults of other people, we can embody a spirit of humility that allows all the good things we ask for to flourish within our souls and to be made real in our actions.

When we pray this prayer, we don’t just pray with mind, heart, and lips, but with the whole body. Three times during the prayer (marked with a + sign above), we prostrate ourselves before the true and living God, the Creator of all things. At the end of the prayer, we bow twelve times, praying each time, “O God, cleanse me, a sinner.” Then we prayer the prayer a second time from beginning to end, followed by a final prostration. In humbling our body, we remind ourselves to humble our hearts. We sin with our bodies to our own hurt so we make use of our bodies to do good and glorify God. The weak, lazy flesh must be brought under the submission of the awakened, humble spirit.

Through the ancient prayer of St. Ephraim, we approach God in humility, asking for humility. Our spiritual lives involve “synergy,” the cooperation between our free will and God’s grace. We bring Him as much repentance, humility, and love as we can, and He meets us half way to transform us into a person who more closely reflects His own divine image and likeness. Let’s look at ourselves honestly and repent of our self-destructive arrogance so that our Creator, who loves us, can heal us and transform us into spiritually empowered humble creatures capable of true worship, healthy relationships, and divine love.

We have nothing to lose but our pride.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photograph of icon showing St. Ephraim of Syria by Dana S. Kees.

My Favorite Love Poems

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor a man ever loved.

- William Shakespeare


How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning


To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

- Anne Bradstreet


From The Song of Solomon

How graceful are your feet in sandles, O queenly maiden!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.
Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon,
by the gate of Bathrabbim.
Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, overlooking Damascus.
Your head crowns you like Carmel,
and your flowing locks are like purple;
a king is held captive in the tresses.

How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden!
You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.
I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches.
Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
and the scent of your breath like apples,
and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly,
gliding over lips and teeth.

- from the Holy Scripture (Song of Solomon 7.1-9, RSV).

Spiritual Education

While looking around a museum bookstore, I once saw a mother with her young daughter, who may have been about four years old. The mother was talking to the attendant behind the counter when the child pointed to a statue on a shelf. “May I see Anubis please?,” the girl asked. “You know who he is?,” the surprised attendant answered. The girl declared, “He’s my favorite!” I guess the attendant didn’t expect the child to recognize Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead. I didn’t expect it either.

I don’t know anything about the girl or her family, but I’m compelled to wonder how much the little one knew about the Orthodox Christian faith. Is it possible that she could recognize an image of Anibus, but wouldn’t be able to identify an icon of St. Nicholas, the Archangel Michael, John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, or even Jesus Christ Himself? Could she know the myth of Anubis embalming Osiris, but not know the story of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead, or the triumphant account of Christ’s own crucifixion and resurrection? Such a thing is indeed possible, especially in America.

Take a look at the instructions God gave to the Israelites through Moses about teaching their children:

Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words, all that I command you on this day, shall be in your heart and in your soul. You shall teach them to your children, and you shall speak about them when you sit in the house, when you walk along the path, when you lie down, and when you get up. You shall fasten them as a sign upon your hand, and it shall be immoveable from before your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your houses and your gates.

And in the future time, when your son asks you, “What are the testimonies, ordinances, and judgments the Lord our God has commanded us?,” say this to him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in the land of Egypt, and the Lord rescued us with a mighty hand and with a high arm. He brought us here to give us this land, which He had promised to give our ancestors. The Lord charged us to observe all these ordinances and to fear the Lord our God so that it may be well with us and we may live as we do today.” (Deut. 6.1-9, 20-25)

These instructions reflect the way we should teach our children within the Church. With all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength we are called to love God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to love those around us in His name. Let us wear the Holy Cross around our necks so that it hangs near our hearts and make the Sign of the Cross to remember what God has done and who He has made us to be. In our homes, let’s constantly tell the story of how we became a people, the Church, and discuss the teachings of the Faith for our benefit and the benefit of our children. If we do not nurture them as Christians, we abandon them to the pagans and their secular culture. Let’s keep retelling the stories preserved in Holy Tradition so that we remember who God is, who we are, and how we should live. May we also hang Holy Icons in our homes so that the divine Truth revealed in them remains always before our eyes.

When I think about the girl in the museum, the education of children comes to mind, but the story relates to adults as well. Many young adults (and older adults for that matter) have no significant knowledge of the Holy Scripture, the lives of the Saints through the ages, or of the Orthodox Christian way of life. What should we do about the ignorance pervading our culture? (As a young unmarried man without children, I’m particularly interested in this part.) We can teach those around us by telling our spiritual Story, explaining our way of life and the reasons we live it, and by endowing both the message and messenger with credibility by living the Faith we proclaim in love. We have been called to be light in the world of darkness. May the divine radiance of the Holy Spirit shine brightly through us.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. Photo by Dana S. Kees. (My paraphrase of the biblical text is based upon Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton’s translation of the Septuagint, 1851.)

Praying with the Icon of Christ & His Mother

If I stopped someone on the street, showed her this image painted on wood, and asked her, “What can you tell me about this?” she could probably identify it as a painting and recognize the subjects as Mary and Jesus. If so, she would be correct, but her answer would only capture the surface of the reality behind it. This is not merely a painting, but an “icon,” a sacred image. It is a visual representation of the heavenly reality that teaches us about the spiritual world around us.

The woman pictured here is indeed Mary. She is typically adorned with three stars representing her virginity, before the birth of her child, during the birth of her child, and after His birth. She is the ever-Virgin Mary, who conceived her child without a man through the Holy Spirit and gave birth to Him, the Son of God. A few Greek letters identify her as the “Mother of God.” (She is also called the Theotokos, the “God-bearer.”) The titles bestowed upon her tell us who she is, but more importantly reveal the identity of her Son. If she is the Mother of God, then her Son is God Himself in human flesh.

A few Greek initials reveal her Son’s name, Jesus Christ. A halo, divided into three parts with three letters, surrounds His head. The letters spell the Greek words meaning, “the One Who Is” or “the Existing One.” Who is this child? Remember back to the time our Creator spoke to Moses through a burning bush. Moses asked God His name. God replied, “I Am Who I Am.” “The One Who Is,” who can identify Himself by simply saying, “I Am,” and who forbade the Israelites from making an image of Him has come into the world as a human being, born of a woman, to take on an image we could see and we can still portray. As St. Paul said, Christ is the icon (image) of the invisible God. The invisible One became visible and the One who cannot be contained confined Himself to a human body. The icon proclaims the unfathomable mystery that Jesus Christ is fully God, beyond comprehension, and completely human, one of us.

The icon teaches us eternal Truth, but it accomplishes more than instructing us. It allows us to see into the spiritual world. This is why icons are called “windows to heaven.” We pray standing before them, peering beyond the image into heaven itself, where Christ dwells and where His mother, with all the Saints of heaven, pray to Christ, our God, for those of us on earth. Icons direct our hearts and minds to heaven while showing us the heavenly reality present around us. When I see the icon of Christ, I see Christ Himself through the icon. When I kiss the icon, I kiss my Saviour by means of the icon. When I honor the icon, I worship my God represented by the icon. When I pray before the icon, I speak with Christ who is portrayed by the icon. I'm thankful to God that He has given us holy icons. They help me to pray, teach my mind, guide my heart, comfort my soul, and remind me Who is always with me every moment of every day. Through our prayers, may we become living icons who reflect the image and likeness of Christ, pointing others, not to ourselves, but to the loving and compassionate One Who Is.

Copyright © 2006 by Dana S. Kees. (Icon from the IconoGraphics ColorWorks Collection, Theologic.com)