Orthodixie

The ol’ peepers just ain’t what they used to be. Ten years ago I was assisting with a funeral with eight other clergy. For the first time I was having trouble seeing the service book and holding it further, closer, etc, when a Greek priest said:  “Fr Joseph!  Where are your glasses?” I smiled proudly and said, “I don’t wear glasses.” He hissed:  “I know. WHERE are your glasses?  That afternoon, I bought my first pair of Readers.

Aging, in small measure, has its funny moments.

For example: Scientists to Hold Controversial Black Mass …

Listen to the rest of the story on the Orthodixie Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio!

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The phone. We could answer or not. We could take it off the hook. I could be disconnected. We could change numbers and no one could find us. We could just unplug it from the wall. We could, forgive me this, LIE and say we didn’t hear the phone, or we weren’t home …

Then, the answering machine. We could leave witty greeting messages. We would return home excitedly to the blinking of the light indicating that someone cared enough to leave a message, or two, or SEVEN! Or we could save messages, or fail to delete them, and our little tape or chip would become full – and no one could reach us.

BTW, for you younger listeners … there were no personal computers. No email or social media. Earth, phone, TV. That was it.

Then came the Mobile phone – with the status symbol car antennae. My old boss, a man of means, opined: “Why would I want a phone in my car? I go for a drive to get away from the phone!”

My mom and my aunt both had the early portable phones … that required a shoulder bag, like a small piece of luggage, to operate … when they left home, it looked like they were LEAVING HOME.

Then came flip phones, slide phones, iphones, etc …

I’ll never forget the first time I was, ahem, BUSY in a public men’s room stall, alone … When in walked a man chattering away …

Listen to the Orthodixie Podcast for the rest — HERE.

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Okay, so I didn’t get this icon.  But it is cool, no?

When I converted to Orthodoxy, it’s a long story, I took St Joseph the Betrothed as my patron saint.  My given name is David, born on June 26th.

That just happens to be the feast day for St David of Thessaloniki.  So, that’s the icon I got from Orthodox Christian Supply.

I cannot but say Amen to every word that Owen White writes about the quality of workmanship from Orthodox Christian Supply.

I will say, true story, this was the first time that I’ve had an icon in the altar for blessing that altar boys asked me where it came from!  That’s a testimony!

Check ’em out:  Orthodox Christian Supply

BTW, here’s the image of St David: 

RESOLUTION TO OPPOSE THE RECENT UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISION THAT LEGALLY RE-DEFINED MARRIAGE TO INCLUDE TWO PEOPLE OF THE SAME SEX

WHEREAS, on June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court, in the case entitled “Obergefell, et al. v. Hodges, Director, Ohio Department of Health, et al.,” by a marginal majority decision, held that no State may deny same-sex couples the right to marry; and that, in so doing, the Supreme Court has legally redefined the sacred, long-held, and profound meaning of marriage;

AND WHEREAS the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, under the direct leadership of his Eminence Metropolitan Archbishop JOSEPH (Al-Zehlaoui), and the hierarchy of the Archdiocese, continues to shepherd its faithful members throughout all of North America, and as such, is deeply concerned about the recent developments regarding “same-sex marriage”;

AND WHEREAS the Holy Orthodox Church, recognizing marriage to be a fundamental sacrament and institution, ordained only by God Himself, and teaching that marriage and sexuality, which are firmly grounded in Holy Scripture, two thousand years of church tradition, and canon law, holds that marriage consists in the conjugal union of one man and one woman and that authentic marriage is blessed by Almighty God as a Holy Sacrament of the Church;

AND WHEREAS the Holy Scripture attests that God created man and woman in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:27–31), that those called to do so might enjoy a conjugal union that ideally leads to procreation with the birth of children, every such union exists to create of a man and a woman a new reality of “one flesh”; and that this can be achieved only in a relationship between individuals of opposite gender (“God made them male and female … So they are no longer two but one flesh”; Mark 10:6–8);

AND WHEREAS the Holy Orthodox Church also teaches that the union between one man and one woman in the Sacrament of Marriage reflects the union between Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:21–33) and, as such, marriage is necessarily monogamous and heterosexual; and that, within this union, sexual relations between a husband and wife are to be cherished and protected as a sacred expression of their love that has been blessed by God; and that such is God’s plan for His human creatures from the very beginning;

AND WHEREAS the Holy Orthodox Church is cognizant that God’s divine purpose is increasingly questioned and diminished, that is, challenged or denied, by a society influenced by secularism, relativism, and social and political pressures which have been working to normalize and legalize “same-sex unions”;

AND WHEREAS it is our duty to express Christian love that is honest and charitable, recognizing the struggles of all people from all kinds of sin, and we encourage each other toward sexual purity (“Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief”; 1 Timothy 1:15); and we encourage all Christians always to speak in charity and love, without denigration or mockery towards anyone; and we hold that all persons must be treated with respect and kindness while being called to living a Godly life;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that this 52nd Archdiocesan Convention, duly assembled at Boston, Massachusetts, from July 20–26, 2015, reaffirms through the clergy and laity of the Antiochian Christian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, that Christ by His presence at the Marriage Feast of Cana in Galilee declared marriage between one man and one women an honorable estate; that all Christians be lovingly called to sexual purity, holiness and repentance; that marriage cannot be redefined as a union between same-sex couples, and that no sexual activity outside of the Sacrament of Marriage between one man and one woman be blessed; that the Orthodox Church cannot and will not condone nor bless “same-sex unions” of any degree. It is further resolved that marriage between one man and one women is a sacred sacrament and institution ordained by God, and that homosexual unions are not. This being said, however, we must stress that a person with a homosexual orientation is to be cared for with the same compassion and love that is bestowed by our Lord Jesus Christ upon all persons.

SOURCE:  http://www.antiochian.org/sites/default/files/september_2015_word_for_archdiocese.pdf

Years ago I was assigned a new prayer rule by my spiritual father, the reading of the daily selections of the Psalms, the kathismata. At the time, we lived next door to the church and I would dutifully read or chant the Psalms morning and evening in the temple. Somewhere along the way my rule was either changed, or I lapsed; I cannot remember which. Passing years saw me fondly recall that discipline, but it was only upon reading Donald Sheehan’s book, The Grace of Incorruption, that I once again fell in love with God in the Psalms. I am in Donato’s debt.

A happy coincidence occurred when, having just finished The Grace of Incorruption, I attended Camp St Raphael, our annual church youth camp, in Oklahoma. The other priest serving that week, Fr Mark Haas and I had done this stint together a number of times in the past. Upon retiring the first night, we noticed that each of us had brought just two books to camp – the same two books: The Psalter[1] and the new book by Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos), “I Know A Man in Christ” – Elder Sophrony the Hesychast and Theologian.[2]  I related to Fr Mark how I had just finished The Grace of Incorruption which had rekindled my habit of the daily Psalm readings. Each evening, and in spare time, found each of us plowing through one or other of these works.

This brings me to another coincidence: my previous rule of prayer. Like Sheehan, though not nearly as dramatically, I began the practice of the Jesus Prayer years before converting to Orthodox Christianity. While an Episcopalian in seminary, a friend who had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy sent me a prayer rope and the words of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”I mentioned at the outset that my spiritual father had changed my rule, giving me the daily reading of the Psalter. That which was replaced was my previous rule of three hundred Jesus Prayers each day. And it is here, with the Jesus Prayer that Sheehan’s posthumous anthology begins:

At dawn on April 4 [1976], I was all of a sudden awakened, fully and completely. What awoke me were these words sounding in my mind: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. For an instant I thought someone had spoke aloud, but then I realized the words were in me. I sat up, fresh and alert. The words repeated themselves. And then repeated again. I looked over at the window, and the first light of dawn was coming in (pp.6-7).

He goes on, to beautiful and moving effect, to relate his journey with this great gift, the Jesus Prayer. What ties all of these happenings together is the pursuit, for lack of a better word, of stillness. “St Isaac the Syrian, the seventh-century Orthodox saint whose writings on the way of stillness have shaped the Orthodox understanding of prayer for thirteen centuries, says: ‘If you love repentance, love stillness also,’ adding that stillness is ‘the mother of repentance’” (p.84).

For Isaac – and, indeed, for all Eastern Orthodox ascetic teaching – stillness can be defined as the voluntary practice of separating oneself from every anxiety, both one’s own and others’. Now as one astute commentator on Isaac says: “The state of stillness of mind is not acquired by human effort alone but is a gift.” Isaac says: “No one is so stupid as to want to find this by means of struggle and the strength of his own will, for this is the gift of the revelation to the intellect, and it is not … a matter of the will.” And yet – here is the key – you must be attentive, even expectant, that the gift of stillness truly exists in God’s hands and that He greatly wishes to give it to you. You cannot will the gift of stillness. But you must choose actively to await its giving (p.109).

The stage is thus set, in the first part of the book, to present us with Sheehan’s wonderful and thorough exposition of Psalm 118:

In the entire 176 lines of this immense psalm, only the first four lines do not have both “I” and “thou” actively present: for this grace of relationship between the human and the divine is the whole poem’s clear pattern. The significance of this pattern is, at every moment, equally clear: the pattern teaches us the way of stillness. The way in which the psalm accomplishes this can best be suggested by noting this: what instantly unmakes in us any practice of stillness we may attempt is the way our minds cling to – and incessantly replay – our resentments and angers and grievances, imagined or real. The pattern of relationship that every stanza of the twenty-two in this poem sustains, directly teaches the way to surrender our mind’s clinging to its angers and resentments. And once again: we can enter into that dance of blessedness only when we voluntarily choose to walk in the law of the Lord, to search more deeply into His testimonies, and to seek Him with our whole heart (p.111).

But the magic, if you will, of Psalm 118 – its lyrical verse and response, human and divine – is found throughout the Psalter in poetic patterns. Sheehan writes, “Psalmic poetics everywhere presupposes the active reality of distinct yet related voices: the voices of the psalmists … and the divine voice of God” (p.121). And, continuing in this thread:

The fallen reason thus breaks open. Yet once so broken – and it is broken in the action of every psalm – the mind of David can then be lyricized by God – enlarged, made new, illumined, by David’s love for God and God’s for him. Now, amidst the very brokenness, he can begin to sing that wholeness and healing which God himself is singing: “O Lord, thou shalt open my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise” (Ps.50:15). By singing the psalm, the Davidic mind heals itself and all the world (p.125).

This lyrical alchemy, while obvious in many Psalms – and appreciated in practice – is charismatically (mystically?) gifted in the diapsalma.[3] Sheehan notes that St Gregory of Nyssa devotes an entire chapter to the meaning of diapslama in his Treatise on the Inscriptions [or Titles] of the Psalms. St Gregory writes:

Diapsalma is a pause which occurs suddenly in the midst of the singing of a psalm in order to receive an additional thought which is being introduced by God. Or, one might rather define it as follows. Diapsalma is a teaching from the Spirit which occurs in a mysterious manner in the soul when the attention given to this (new) though impedes the continuity of the song” (p.151).

Sheehan also notes the empirical power within the recitation of the Psalms:

One other part of my experience in psalmic prayer is also, I think, worth mentioning here. To pray the Psalms regularly is to be attached unceasingly. And the effects of ceaseless demonic attack are flatness of speech and restlessness of mind and a consequent vanishing of sweetness of vision and the disappearance of any or all dynamis (power) … If I try to battle directly the attack, then I immediately open the door to mental restlessness; if I try simply to lie low, then spiritual flatness instantly ensues. The only hope I have in such moments (and they are frequent indeed) is to stay as attentive as I can to the psalm’s actual works as they are occurring to me. For psalmic dynamis – the power of the Psalms – is coming not at all from me but solely from the poems themselves (p.154).

I highly recommend this book for those who regularly pray the psalter or who wish to enter into praying the psalter; for the casual reader, it may prove slow slogging. This is not negative criticism, but a truthful encouragement: pray the Psalms! Yet, had I not previously done so – regularly prayed the Psalms – I would not have appreciated this work in the same depth or light. It’s deep. Which brings me ‘round to the title of this reflection, particularly alchemical oratory:

In making our approach to the subject of psalmic poetics, three points are important at the outset. First, psalmic poetics are aural and oral – in the ear and mouth – sung (chanted), not silently read. Second, psalmic poetics are communal, holding meaning for the entire Israelite community. Third, psalmic poetics are actions of blessedness, actions that secure whole communities from demonic human violence …” (p.120).

That is to say, if I may, that the daily recitation of the Psalms, like the Jesus Prayer, is a way to stillness – as in, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps.45).

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[1] The Psalter According to the Seventy, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston – 2007.

[2] Fr Sophrony is well known for his and his monastery’s practice of the Jesus Prayer.

[3] “Diapsalma” is the Greek Septuagint equivalent of the Hebrew word “Selah”. This word, which is only found in the poetical books of the Old Testament, occurs some 70 times in the Psalms. This term had a musical significance in the ancient Hebrew singing of the Psalms. There are various views, but St John Chrysostom took it to mean the part of a Psalm that was assigned to another choir. St Gregory of Nyssa took it to mean a pause. [(Bp) John Shaw, taken from an Orthodox list comment]