The Sin and Sinfulness of Anger

I finished reading the excellent little book FINDING HAPPINESS: MONASTIC STEPS FOR A FULFILLING LIFE  by Abbot Christopher Jamison.  I will share some of his comments on the sin of anger – a sin which is so pervasive in our lives that many just consider it natural and human, even if potentially harmful to others, rather than sinful.  Jamison’s comments are culled from the Christian monastic tradition, and though he sees value in the psycho-analytical tradition, he is offering the particularly insightful wisdom of the monastic tradition in dealing with anger.   He especially quotes from St. John Cassian (d. 435AD) who many credit with bringing monastic spirituality to the Christian West.  Jamison writes from his own experience as monk, offering all practicing Christians sound advice on how to deal with the vice of anger:

“…I came to see that my anger came from being a very goal-oriented person.  I resented this other person’s actions threatening the achievement of my goals…”

“… the belief that we always need love and approval from those significant to us and that we must avoid their disapproval is irrational.  Its irrationality lies in the fact that we literally defeat ourselves by handing our well-being over to a whole host of significant others.  A more rational belief is that love and approval are good and we will seek them when we can, but they are not absolutely essential all the time from all significant others.”

“Cassian calls it (anger) ‘a deadly poison… that must be totally uprooted.  He quotes scripture at length to show the harm that can come to one who is angry, destroying right judgment, wisdom and the interior light of contemplation.  He insists that ‘man’s anger does not work God’s righteousness’, and then goes on to challenge those who seek to justify anger directed towards those who do wrong.  He is disdainful of those who quote passages of scripture that say ‘God was angry with Israel’, saying that such passages are figurative and notes stingingly that if people take the metaphor literally how will they cope with other passages that suggest God was ‘asleep like a man drunk with wine’. (Psalm 78:65)  To use scripture as a source for justifying anger, he says, is to derive death from the very place where the medicine of salvation is found.       Cassian is particularly critical of a monk who gets angry with the wrongdoing of another brother, which he sees as an example of taking the speck of wrongdoing out of the other person’s eye before removing the plank of wrath in our own.” 

“… our not getting angry must derive not from someone else’s perfection but from our own virtue, which is achieved not by another person’s patience but by our own forbearance.”

“The popular notions that it is good to ‘let off steam’ or that it is right ‘to give those people a piece of my mind’ are based on a very mechanistic view of human beings.  We are not steam engines, we are rational beings who can make our own choices; we are not objects that can cut off a piece of our mind, we are whole people with integrated emotions.” 

The monastic tradition according to Jamison sees anger as an especially destructive and egregious sin, especially within an intentional Christian community such as a monastery.  Of course there is recognition that anger does occur even among people committed to Christian peace, but as St. Paul says in one of very rare places where the word ‘angry’ occurs in the New Testament,  “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger…” (Ephesians 4:26)

The Cult of Saints and the Holy Parishioner

Fr. Michael Plekon in his book HIDDEN HOLINESS offers us ideas of personal holiness which steer far away from sensationalism or spectacular displays of people of great renown.   He offers examples of holiness which might be better termed “the Kingdom of God breaking into this world” through the lives of devout Christians who have not grabbed the headlines on the nightly news.   As Plekon expresses it: 

“What I tried to show throughout is that the ‘cult of celebrity’ will not soon go away.  Our culture thrives on the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ and those of the spectacularly saintly.”

Plekon turns away from the stilted hagiographies with their stylized stories of spectacular miracles to look  into the lives of men and women who embraced Christ but will not be written about in the lives of saints.  His very point is that in embracing the more “cult of celebrity” ideas of sainthood, we miss seeing the holiness all around us.  We set up ideas of holiness which are inimitable and then wonder why we lack examples in hagiography of moms and dads and laborers and normal kinds of people.  The cult of celebrity when mixed with the cult of saints leaves us with spectacular stories which have little to do with our daily lives.  We might find such stories as great examples of God intervening in the world in the most fantastic ways, but then find little connection to what we are actually experiencing in our own daily lives.  Holiness thus becomes the stuff of heavenly superheroes who belong to a pagan pantheon rather than what each and every Christian is called to live in their daily walk with Christ.

“We’re constantly invited to live our lives through the carefully packaged lives of celebrities, even people who are famous only for performing some infamously stupid or vulgar act… Holy realism rejects these false images of the world and human life, and it reminds us of who we really are… Holy realism asserts that life does matter, how we live it matters.  It’s not willing to accept… that the endless daily drudgery is all there is to life.  Holy realism takes a stand for awe and wonder and beauty even in the midst of the ordinary daily activities.”  (Kathleen Norris)

 As Roman Catholic social activist Dorothy Day notes, the Christian life as we experience it is not always making a choice  between the cosmic good and evil in which the fate of the world depends on what we do.   Much more common is we are making small choices in which we decide to love someone by denying ourselves something quite simple and mundane.   We take up the cross daily to follow Christ, not just once in some grand display of splendor.

“Archbishop Robichaud, in his book Holiness for All, emphasizes the fact that the choice is not between good and evil for Christians – that it is not in this way that one proves one’s love… but between good and better.  In other words, we must give up over and over again even the good things of the world, to choose God…” 

Holiness is connected to our praying daily, forgiving someone, giving generously to someone, admitting we are wrong and asking forgiveness, turning away from our selfish self interest in order to serve and love someone else, doing the next right thing.

For whatever reason holiness for much of Christian history ended up being a merging of the cult of saints with the cult of celebrity.   This is not just a modern thing.   The lives of saints in Orthodoxy are filled with spectacular and miraculous events that are said to have happened to the saints.   Yet, holiness does not belong only to heaven or only to superheroes.  It is the stuff of which the Christian life is made.  Holiness is part of the life of each baptized Christian, of each communicant, of each confessant, of each person who repents, of each who prays, gives and forgives.  Plekon’s book reminds us of this truth which ultimately helps restore holiness to the life of each of us and to make us realize that we are to be the holy ones of God.  As the priest claims at every Divine Liturgy, “Holy things for the Holy Ones.”  We each are called to this holiness and we are to be the holy ones of God.  

And saints are not just to be displayed on our walls as icons, they are to be examples of how to live our daily lives as Christians  in the the 21st Century in our homes, neighborhoods, places of business or employment, ball parks, grocery stores and vacation resorts.

On Being a Christian

In Luke 5:11, when Jesus calls the fishermen to come be His disciples, He tells them, “Do not be afraid….”   Christians like all human beings are also subject to many fears – some good and some not so much, some rational and others completely irrational.   Christians are seen to fear God, Satan, Judgment Day, change, science, philosophy, socialism, other religions, apostasy, secularism, and a host of other things.     Evagrios the Solitary offers Christians a simple reminder and rebuke about our fears:

When you stand in prayer before God the Almighty, who created all things and takes thought for all, why are you so foolish as to forget the fear of God and to be scared of mosquitoes and cockroaches? Have you not heard it said, ‘You shall fear the Lord your God’ (Deut. 6:13); or again ‘Fear and dread shall fall upon them’ (Exod. 15:16)?   

 Keeping perspective on all things is essential to the Christian.  Ultimately there is only one we need to fear and that is God who in the end will judge each of us.   St. Mark the Ascetic offered some positive advice about what we ought to be thinking about.   He wrote about what things should guide and guard a Christian:  

He grows in love, is adorned with gentleness, rejoices greatly in spirit, is ruled by the peace of Christ, led by kindness, guarded by goodness, protected by the fear of God, enlightened by understanding and knowledge, illumined by wisdom, guided by humility.                                

The Christian is is grow in virtue, but he or she does not have to go at this alone; for we have the Church as the Christian community to which we belong to help us in our spiritual growth.   Why belong to the church?    Jeremy Begbie in his most interesting book RESOUNDING TRUTH  says leaning to be a Christian is like learning to play piano—there really is something to learn; there are standards, there are right and wrong ways of doing things. We need to learn to submit ourselves to the well established tradition. Just as we can recognize the difference between noise and music, so too we can recognize the difference between determining our own beliefs & ethics and being a real disciple of Christ the Master.

 I decide to play the piano…In other words, I become an apprentice to a  tradition provided by others, a whole set of tried and tested skills, an accumulated knowledge with a very long history. I learn standards or excellence; I submit my choices, preferences, and tastes to standards already held and tested by others. I learn what is considered “musical” and “unmusical,” what counts as good phrasing and poor phrasing, what makes a composer “great” rather than mediocre.

We not only need to come to faith in Christ, we must learn how to be Christians – how to live according to the Gospel teachings we have embraced.  Repentance means change.  We must be willing to learn how to be a Christian by making ourselves disciples of Christ.   If our Christianity is merely a matter of deciding to believe, there will be no evidence of the newness of life to which we are called.   We are called to strive to be Christ’s disciples.  Christianity calls us to a newness of life.  As the Scriptures put it, we are to sing a new song. 

“Sing to the Lord a new song” (Ps. 149:1). In a spiritual sense the coming of the New Testament is a new song; everything that happened then was new—testament (“I shall make a new testament with you,” Scripture says), creation (“If anyone is in Christ,” Scripture says, “There is a new creation”), human being (“Having stripped off the former self,” Scripture says, “and put on the new, renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one creating it”). On account of the new life, then, and everything else, it is called a New Testament, and the inspired author urges us now to sing a new song typical of it.   (St. John Chrysostom)

Let All You Do Be Done in Love

“Let yourself be persecuted but do not persecute others. Let yourself be crucified but do not crucify others.  Let yourself be insulted but do not   insult others. Let yourself be slandered but do no slander others. …  Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  Such is the sign of purity.  Suffer with the sick.  Be afflicted with sinners.  Exult with those who repent.  Be the friend of all.  But in your spirit remain alone. … Spread your cloak over anyone who falls into sin and shield him.  And if you cannot take his fault on yourself and accept punishment in his place, do not destroy his character.”  (Isaac of Nineveh) …  ‘Agapeic’ love is not a sentimental whim or a physical attraction, both of which are doomed to fade away quickly, and anyway do not come at will.  No.  It is the awareness of God’s love for another person.  Only God can enable us to understand our neighbor according to the ‘feeling’, the intuition of the ‘Spirit’.           (Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism)

Life as a Sojourn on a Stormy Sea

Matthew 14:22-34

Then Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was many furlongs distant from the land, beaten by the waves; for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear.  But immediately he spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.” And  Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret.

 This Gospel lesson (9^th Sunday after Pentecost) immediately follows the Matthew 14:14-22 Gospel lesson of Jesus feeding the 5000 (used on the 8^th Sunday after Pentecost).    In the Orthodox Church lectionary these two Sunday Gospel lesson are linked by one verse, Matthew 14:22:  “Then Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.”  In the earlier reading (14:14-22), the disciples experience a foretaste of the Kingdom of God when Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes in the wilderness feeding the thousands who had listened to him preach all day.  The event takes place in what Matthew calls “the desert” a place which is not well known for providing fish or wheat to feed the hungry!  This is how Matthew highlights the miracle for the event is reminiscent of the great Exodus where the Jews also hungered for lack of food and God provided for them.  (You can read my comments on that Gospel at Christ & the Crowd: You Feed Them).

After giving the disciples and the crowd that foretaste of the Kingdom of God, the same experience the Jews had during the Exodus in the desert, Jesus compels the disciples to get into the boat “to go to the other side” of the sea.  The disciples obey Jesus, but soon find themselves in great difficult struggling against a sudden squall which had blown up on the sea.

We have in this story an imagery of the Church.   We do experience with Christ a foretaste of the Kingdom – He converts bread and wine into His Body and Blood and feeds us every Sunday.  But we can only foretaste the Kingdom in the Liturgy – it is not a place for us to stay, but a moment for us together to give thanks to the Holy Trinity and to receive the grace of the forgiveness of our sins and nurture for our continued sojourn on earth. 

Like the disciples we are compelled not to stay in that mystical moment of experiencing God’s provision but to go ahead to the other shore – to continue on with the sojourn of our daily lives.  Like the disciples, just getting on with our daily lives can prove to be tempestuous and a trial of our faith.  The sea of life surges with the storm not only of temptation but of all manners of threats to our luxury not to mention our lives.   We are doing what Christ tells us – go ahead to the other shore – only to find the journey is arduous and dangerous.  And we wonder where Christ is in the moments in which our faith is put to the test.

There is in our Gospel story an unexpected lull in which the disciples think they see a ghost, and perhaps have come face to face with death itself; instead it turns out to be Christ coming to their rescue walking on the churning sea.  From this point of view the story is a resurrection story.  It is also a Transfiguration story for they see Christ able to do something not normally possible for humans and something they have never seen Christ do.   He is revealed as having a mysterious power to fearlessly walk through the storm as well as on the water. 

The storm and the transfigured mystery of Christ are given a hiatus when Peter asks to join Christ – is he thinking this is a dream or a vision?  Is he remembering the foretaste of the Kingdom and now he wants to experience a bit more?   In any case, Peter walks out into the storm toward Christ.  He suddenly is shaken out of his reverie.  For the text surprisingly says that only once out on the water does Peter “see the wind.”   Perhaps he was asleep or in a trance for the wind was a major part of what the disciples were already experiencing.  And then another startling phrase.  Peter “begins to sink.”   Now I think most of us know it takes but a second to sink in water.  One hardly “begins to sink” for one plunges into the water.   Peter is given grace though apparently entering into this transfigured moment, for as he comes to his senses as to where he is – as he awakens to reality he only begins to sink.   Jesus immediately reaches out and embraces his doubting disciple.  As reality dawns, Peter’s faith sinks.   Jesus will not allow His chosen leader of the disciples to be humiliated before his brethren.  Jesus saves not only his life but even his dignity. 

And in Matthew’s Gospel this transfigured moment leads to the disciples bowing down in worship before Christ.  For those who doubt that the first Christians recognized Jesus as more than a mere prophet, Matthew, considered to be the most Jewish of the Gospel writers, has them on their knees worshipping the Son of God.

For us, the recognition in our worship that Jesus is Christ, and Lord, and Son of God is what sustains us on our own spiritual sojourn.  We like the disciples in the Gospel lesson have not reached our destination – the other side.  Like them we experience the surging storms in life, and find comfort and strength even in the face of death in the presence of Christ in our midst.  He is and ever shall be.

Christ & the Crowd: You Feed Them

8th Sunday after Pentecost   2009     GOSPEL:   Matthew 14:14-22

At that time when Jesus went ashore he saw a great throng; and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass; and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Then he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.

Christ & the Crowd

This Gospel Lesson (Matthew 14:14-22) is a timely lesson for Christians today, for indeed we are exactly like the disciples in vs. 22 whom Christ has made to get into the boat and He has sent us “to the other side.”   For we often sense that all the miracles and glorious things of God happened “over there” and “back then” while all we can do is tell people of the glorious and miraculous signs that Jesus did “over there.”   

 Why doesn’t He still do these things now?  Why doesn’t He feed the 5000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread – homeless shelters and soup kitchens could use that kind of help today.  Then they wouldn’t have to rely on donations, the generosity of the weary or grudging public, or on taxes which they hate paying even if the money goes for charity and works of compassion.

 Chrysostom in the 4^th Century in one of his sermons apparently faced a similar question, to which he said that in the days of old as recorded in Scriptures they needed miracles and signs because they didn’t have a clear knowledge of God.  But he says to his flock that now “ordinary things shout aloud and declare the Lord.”   

 He points to anything that happens on a daily basis as being parts of the marvels and miracles of God for those who have eyes to see.   Following Chrysostom’s logic, we today might point to the works and discoveries of science as revealing to us the marvelous universe of the Creator God.  Just think about the photos of the Hubble Space Telescope revealing the mysteries of the vastness of a 14 billion year old universe.   Or the discoveries of DNA and what that has revealed about the marvels of the unfolding of life on earth.  Macroscopically and microscopically science reveals to us the marvels of the universe which we do not see revealed in our Scriptures.   As the Akathist Hymn, “Glory to God for All Things,” has it, scientists are the new prophets of God revealing what God is doing in the universe.

 So we stand on “the other side” not just of the Sea of Galilee, but across an ocean, and on the other side of history, where we can tell people about what Christ did “back then” and “over there” and marvel and give thanks.  However Christ has stayed on the other side, and left us to be the heralds of His Kingdom, before He comes to join us.

 Some will say but Christ and the Holy Spirit are still active in the world, and miracles happen daily as attested by saints and countless Christians.  But the claims of God’s actions in the lives of believers is met with total skepticism by those who do not know God – the miracles seem lame, lacking real evidence, anecdotal, and not ending the real problems of the world which continue unabated except for what science does to deal with them.

The miracles of Christ as reported in the Gospel were all signs of the Kingdom of Heaven.  They were intended to make people aware of this other reality, a life beyond this life and a Kingdom not of this world.   Jesus did not feed 5000 daily.  He did not open a free restaurant and distribute food to the hungry every day.  In the Gospels there are only two references to Him performing such a miracle.  This would tend to indicate that though He had miraculous – divine!- power, He used that power judiciously.   He was not mostly a miracle worker as such miracles were done sparingly.   They were used to give people a foretaste of “something other,” of heaven breaking into this world, of God’s Kingdom touching this earth, but not yet fully revealed.   He was, however, the one in whom the the Kingdom of God had been united to the people of earth.

The crowds were satisfied with what Jesus gave them – the bread and the fish, at least.   Would they have been so satisfied if all He gave them was a promise of a Kingdom which was not yet but was to come?  

They did crucify Him in the end.  A king with no army to conquer the world wasn’t all that attractive to them, as Isaiah had predicted (Isaiah 53).  The bread and fish satisfied for a day, but when it wasn’t given to them daily, they had little use for the impoverished itinerant preacher of love and an upside down kingdom.   Maybe that is why the disciples wanted Christ to send the crowds away – they wanted the Kingdom and its marvels, but they were uneasy about the crowd (for whom Jesus had only compassion) and how easily the crowd’s mood does change.  It’s as easy for the crowd to crown as it is to crucify their king.   Many an American politician has experienced that.

We who have been sent “to the other side” without the miraculous multiplying bread and fish, were sent to be witnesses (Greek: martyrs) of what Christ did long ago.  We know the story.  We know what it reveals.   Are we willing to live accordingly?  Are we willing to take the loaves and fishes, few as they may be, which we have received from God, to share with a hungry world?   Our hands must not just be stretched out to God begging to receive  blessings from Him.  We are to stretch out our hands offering to the world what we have received from God.

The disciples asked Jesus to send the crowds away – they barely had enough nourishment, resources for themselves.  Instead Jesus takes from the disciples what resources they did have and says, “the crowd doesn’t need to go away, you feed them.”   Our task as disciples, our test of faith, is to see whether we are so willing to be completely and cheerfully generous with what we have been given to make sure the crowd knows the marvels of God’s love and sees the signs of His Kingdom breaking into their reality today.    Our own hearts must be changed first, before we can expect the crowds to want to follow Christ.

A sequel blog:  Life as a Sojourn on a Stormy Sea

The Church: Realizing the Ideal

Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us Christians how we are to live in relationship to one another – in love and service to one another.  No Christians are exempt from this way of life.  All come to church, not supposedly to see what they can get out of it, but in order to imitate Christ – as the one who serves and looks to the interest of his/her neighbor before his/her own interest.   Two quotes from the saints below about how they think we should be living if we are following the Gospel commands which Christ gave to us.   The first by St. John of Kronstadt on “the Kingdom of love”:

Dislike, enmity, or hatred should be unknown amongst Christians even by name. How can dislike exist amongst Christians?  Everywhere you see love, everywhere you breathe the fragrance of love. Our God is the God of love. His kingdom is the kingdom of love. From love to us He did not spare His only-begotten Son, but delivered Him up to die for our sakes, “to be the propitiation for our sins.” In your home you see love in those around, for they are sealed in baptism and chrism with the cross of love, and wear the cross; they also partake with you in church of the “supper of love.” In church there are everywhere symbols of love: crosses, the sign of the cross, the saints who were pleasing to God by their love to Him and to their neighbor, and Incarnate Love Itself. In heaven and upon earth everywhere there is love. It rests and rejoices the heart, like God, whist enmity kills the soul and the body. And you must show love, always and everywhere. How can you not love when everywhere you hear love preached, when only the destroyer of mankind, the devil, is eternal enmity!                                      

The second quote is from St. John Chrysostom in which he offers us an ideal for the church.  However, Christianity is not mostly about ideals, but rather about love incarnate.  We are supposed to realize the ideals!   Here is Chrysostom on the unity of the Church: 

 He [Christ] brings us into unity by means of many  images…He is the Head, we are the body;…He is the Foundation, we the building; He the vine, we the branches; He the Bridegroom, we the bride; He the Shepherd, we the sheep; He is the Way, we they who walk therein; again, we are the  temple, He the indweller (enoikos); He the First-begotten, we the  brothers; He the Heir, we the co-heirs; He the Life, we the living; He the Resurrection, we those who rise; He the light, we the illuminated. All these things indicate unity; and they allow no void interval, not even the smallest. For he who removes himself but a little, will go on till he has become very distant.          

The Freedom to love vs. The Bondage of Self-love

Creation of Adam and Eve

The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book has a prayer which speaks about “bondage of self.”  We really can be so self centered - paying so much attention to what “I” want –  as to be enslaved to the self.  Such bondage cuts us off not only from the rest of humanity but from our own humanity.  We are after all created as social, relational beings.  To be so self-centered, so narcissistically captivated by self-love, is to lose our connection to humanity – our own as well as that of all or any other human beings.  Self-love is no love at all.  True love always involves another – someone else who becomes the focus of our altruistic concern and affection.   Constantly paying attention to our own needs and wants is not exercising our freedom, but enslaving ourselves in that bondage of self.   Here is the prayer to be freed from bondage of self:

 God, I offer myself to You – to build with me and to do with me as You will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Your Power, Your Love, and Your Way of life. May I do Your will always!

Biblical Scholar N.T.Wright in his The Resurrection of the Son of God  comments on 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 in which St. Paul says:

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;  but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Wright comments:

The point of I Corinthians 13:8-13 is that the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God’s future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty; it is the Christian destiny.  

The Christian destiny is to love by which we also overcome that self-love which is a sign of the world fallen in sin.  Jesus said who ever commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34).   The way to freedom is to love others, not to indulge the self.  

 

Please Your Neighbor Not Yourself

We who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. For even Christ did not please Himself… (Romans 15:1-2)

Fr. Charles Joanides in his book  Attending to Your Marriage offers the following paraphrased version of a story from the desert fathers to illustrate the importance of and the possibility of people living together in harmony.  He uses the story in reference to married couples working together, but the story from the monastic tradition talks about the values and virtues any Christians need to live together in concord. 

One day, two brothers were sitting together, and one of the two offered the following observation: 

“Brother, it occurs to me that we have never had an argument.”

            “Yes,” stated the other, “this is true.”

            “Well, I would like to conduct and experiment.”

            “What kind of experiment?”

            “Let’s have an argument.”

            “Very well, but how will we do this?”

The monk offering the suggestion paused and then stated, “I have an idea. Here’s a brick. I will put the brick between us and I will say that it is mine, and you will argue that it is yours. We will then continue arguing until one of us succeeds in winning the argument. Any questions?”

“No brother, I don’t think so,” stated the second brother with some trepidation.

The second brother responds, “No brother, I believe it’s mine.”

The first brother retorts, “I distinctly remember it being my brick.”

The second brother responds, “No brother, I think it belongs to me.”

The first brother retorts with more conviction, “I believe you’re wrong. It’s my brick.”

Seeing his brother becoming distressed, the second monk says, “Yes, I think you are correct. It is your brick.”

After some silence, the first brother observes, “No brother, let it be ours-to God’s glory.”

These precious stories may sometimes seem simplistic, but they are anything but simple. In this case, these two precious souls who were coexisting in relative harmony and peace find this exercise impossible to complete. The reason why is related to their mutual struggle to live Christ-like existences. To be more specific, their chosen lifestyle compelled them to consider their neighbor’s needs as much, and more, than their own needs.

                                                                 

Being a Christian: Neither a Spectator’s Sport, Nor Theater

St. John Chrysostom once compared the Christian life to theater in the sense that at the end of the play as the actors take off their masks and go to their real/normal lives, so too Christians when their lives are over will be revealed for who they really are when they leave the stage of this world. 

 In a theater of this world at mid-day the stage is set and many actors enter, playing parts, wearing masks on their faces, retelling some old story, narrating the events. One becomes a philosopher, though he is not a philosopher. Another becomes a king, though he is not a king, but has the appearance of a king for the story…but when evening overtakes them, and the play is ended, and everyone goes out, the masks are cast aside.  …  The masks are removed, the deceit departs, the truth is revealed. He who is a free man inside the theater is found to be a slave outside; for, as I said, the deceit is inside, but the truth is outside. Evening overtakes them, the play is ended, the truth appears. So it is also in life and its end. The present world is a theater, the conditions of men are roles: wealth and poverty, ruler and ruled, and so forth. When this day is cast aside, and that terrible night comes, or rather day, night indeed for sinners, but day for the righteous, when the play is ended, when the masks are removed, when each person is judged with his works-not each person with his wealth, not each person with his power, but each person with his works, whether he is a ruler or a king, a woman or a man, when He requires an account of our life and our good deeds, not the weight of our reputation, not the slightness of our poverty, not the tyranny of our disdain-give me your deeds if you are a slave but nobler than a free person, if you are a woman but braver than a man. When the masks are removed, then the truly rich and the truly poor are revealed.  …   The same thing happens when this life ends.  

Being a Christian is not a spectator’s sport – we don’t attend church services to watch actors in a drama.  We are to engage in the Christian life daily.  We are called to ministry, to serve one another, to love one another, to pray for one another, to worship God, to keep the commandments of Christ, to give thanks to the Lord.   We don’t “go to church” to get something out of it, rather we go to work, labor, serve, minister, use the gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon us for the building up of the Church.   We don’t go to church for show either – we are not actors playing out our parts but waiting to return to the real world or to escape the real world by running to the play.   We are to always be ourselves at home, at work or at church, living out the Gospel life to the glory of God and for the love of neighbor.