Blessed is he who is found watching

The Holiest of weeks is now here and we usher it in with this chant:

Ἰδοὺ ὁ Νυμφίος ἔρχεται ἐν τῷ μέσῳ τῆς νυκτός, καὶ μακάριος ὁ δοῦλος, ὃν εὑρήσει γρηγοροῦντα, ἀνάξιος δὲ πάλιν, ὃν εὑρήσει ῥαθυμοῦντα. Βλέπε οὖν ψυχή μου, μὴ τῷ ὕπνῳ κατενεχθής, ἵνα μῄ τῷ θανάτῳ παραδοθῇς, καὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἔξω κλεισθῇς, ἀλλὰ ἀνάνηψον κράζουσα· Ἅγιος, Ἅγιος, Ἅγιος εἶ ὁ Θεός, δια πρεσβαις των Ασοματων ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς.

Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching,

and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not

be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death, and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, Holy, Holy, art Thou, O our God, Through the intercessions of the Bodiless Powers, have mercy on us.

May Christ our God, who is going to His voluntary Passion, bring us with fervent faith and joy to worship His Crucifixion, Death, Burial and Resurrection and bestow upon us eternal life and the Great Mercy.

No boasting...just fact

We can only celebrate the Resurrection of Christ when we keep long vigil and check the passions.  Then and only then does the joy of Resurrection permeate our souls and minds and bodies, indeed, our entire selves.

The Third Sunday of the Great Fast--Veneration and Adoration of the Life-Giving Cross

And when He had called the people unto Him with His disciples also, He said unto them, "Whosoever desireth to follow after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever desireth to save his life, shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospels, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

 The way of the Christian in this life is the way of the Cross, but that is not the end.  For as we have been baptized into Christ's death, we are baptized into His Resurrection.  The Cross gives death but also life; The Cross condemns and redeems; The Cross reveals our mortality yet promises Eternal Life; The Cross is not simply some "Not guilty" verdict, but the means to refrain from further and recurring evil; The Cross is not just a mirror, but also a window; The Cross crucifies and resurrects; The Cross is a defeat and victory.

Three weeks now into the fast, our hunger and thirst have begun to take their toll.  But in the midst of our physical pangs, the Cross gives us hope.  Christ did not give up on us; in our struggles, we should not give up on Him.

Joke (i.e. Fact) of the Day

This is the punchline from a fictional conversation between a representative of a church who is contacting a news organization to cover a local Roman Catholic Church's ordination of women as priests.

News organization:  "...there’s a name for Roman Catholics who say, ‘I love the Church but it’s going to have to change this and this and this and until they get their heads out of their narthexes and agree with me, I’ll do whatever the hell I feel like doing.’”

Caller:  “What’s that?”

News Organization: “Episcopalians.  But try the National Catholic Reporter.  They love stupid crap like this.”

You can read the whole of this fictional exchange here.  WARNING:  Some nasty language is used.

As funny as that exchange is, it reveals an important question:  Why don't dissenting Catholics just become Episcopalians?  Why do Catholics who dissent from their church's teachings vehemently insist that they must remain Catholic?  If the Church left them, as they say, why not just go become Episcopalian.  There you can have all the heresy you could want:  women priests, women bishops (here in the USA at least), open communion, ordination of gays in "committed relationships," gay weddings, support for abortion on demand, all religions are equal (except for Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox), Pelagianism, Sabellianism, baptism in the name of the "Mother, Daughter and Forest Spirit," etc., etc..

The Episcopalian Church welcomes you, goes their motto.  So, dissenting Catholics, just go and leave the rest of the faithful alone?

What the Church Has to Offer_______________ (fill in blank)

Criticisms of the church abound and always will.  With the recent election of a new Roman Pontifex Maximus and the passing of Western Easter, the media is ablaze with how the church in the 21st century deals with its relevancy, particularly to certain demographics like unmarried parishioners, children, gays, gun collectors, or any other group under the sun.  I have written before that the church actually is at risk when it fractures its overall ministry into smaller ministries which have no connection to the whole.  But, nonetheless, churches, particularly large evangelical megachurches, continue down this perilous self-destruction by its insistence on making a new ministry for every subgroup.  And it doesn't stop at ministries.  Now, there are worship services for married couples, childless couples, gay singles, straight singles, children, cat-people, dog-people (I exaggerate on the last two groups, but why not them?).  If the Church is "catholic", i.e. encompassing the whole, then it must present itself as a "catholic" institution and not reinventing itself for every new trend or demographic out there.

Pastor Peters, a Lutheran, is definitely not a person who follows the current trends, but offers this explanation of what his church does offer for everyone. It is quite good.  Other churches should take from this and apply it. You can read the entire article here.

What does the Church have to offer children?  Should we not cater to them by including some children's music, a children's sermon, and some simplified liturgy that is understandable to children?  If we don't, wouldn't we better serve children by dismissing them from the "adult" nature of the Divine Service and sending them somewhere for content designed for children in mind?

I have also had people say the same thing about disabled (both physical and mental handicaps).  What does the Church have to offer those who physically cannot participate by speaking or singing or standing or kneeling?  I have heard people say the same thing about the single, the single parent family, gay people, etc...  What does the Church have to offer people who are alone, unmarried, and without a family (implication being that everything in worship is designed for the family)?  What does the Church have to offer those single parents who must wrestle with their children alone and who often miss out on parts of worship because they deal with restless or moody children (implication being that since children don't get anything out of worship, at least the parent could appreciate the service without the constraints of uncooperative children to deal with)?  What does the Church have to offer gay people (implication being that the only thing the Church says to gays is that they are unwelcome, evil, and corrupt)?

All of these questions begin with a false premise.  We could spend a great deal of time dealing with the straw men used to dismiss what the Church has to offer folks who do not fit the prime mold of those who are there on Sunday morning.  But I will not do that.  Instead, I will offer a general response to the same question poised for different people and different circumstances.

What does the Church have to offer?

1. God's Word...  the simplest answer.  We offer the Word of God, rightly preached, the Law and Gospel properly distinguished, speaking the Word and applying the Word in the sermon, so that God may work as He has willed and promised in the life of the person (no matter the age, the maturity, the ability, or sexual orientation).  The Word of God is a means of grace.  God is present in His Word and works through His Word.  This is not exclusively nor primarily understanding but the communication of the Truth that endures forever, the Truth that is our way, and the Truth that manifests God's presence and His gifts.  Faith is not an "aha" moment in which we finally "get it" but trust in the will and works of God that give us life and salvation.
2. The Sacraments of Life and Worship... We offer the means of grace, the visible Word, through which God comes to us in the fullness of His divine mercy to impart to us the grace that enables us to stand.  Through baptism we enter into the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection, we are forgiven of our sins, we die and rise to new life in Christ, and we exchange the old identity as no people for the new identity as the people of God.  Through the absolution we who continue to sin find the power of grace both to call us to repentance and confess our sin as well as to forgive that sin and restore us to our Lord.  Through the Eucharist we both become aware of our hunger and thirst and our hunger and thirst are satisfied by the bread which is His body and the cup of His blood, the intimate table fellowship that both unites us to the God whose table it is and binds us as a people who confess a common faith and live within its boundaries and discipline.
3. Catechesis...  We offer not only the directed catechesis of the confirmation program (youth and adult) but the ongoing catechesis of the liturgy and hymns of the Church.  Faith is not something learned and mastered as if one were learning a language but it is also a culture and identity into which we are drawn and which we take on little by little through the liturgy and hymns of the faith (as well as the Word and Sacraments).  Singing the faith is especially helpful for children and those with limited intellectual ability but this is NOT the dumbing down of the faith.  Just the opposite.  It is the life of the faithful in which the faith is passed on by the form and words of the liturgy and the words and music of the hymnody.
4. Holy Life...  We offer the vision of the holy life of faith.  Here the sanctoral cycle is especially helpful and it is a sad reality that too many of our parishes and people have lost touch with this side of the church's calendar.  We learn from and grow into the holy life of the faithful by knowing the stories of the faithful in whom and through whom God has worked.  They are not so much the objects of our attention as the God who worked in them and through them.  With this is our sense of a chaste and pure life (no matter where we find ourselves -- married, single, youth, aged, etc...).  We do not mirror the values and goals of the world around us but the holy life of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is a goal of moral purity to be sure but it is surely more than that.  It is the life of self-denial in which we learn to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us, where we learn to delight in the path of service, and by which we learn what it means to be great in the Kingdom of God.  Holy living (perhaps we could call it sanctification but I am not sure that word says much anymore) is not the domain of those who serve the Church in churchly vocations but the path of life for all the baptized. 

The Great Canon (Russian style)

I'm not a huge fan of Russian music, especially the typewriter chants, but the old Znamenny chant is something to behold when executed well.  This is the choir at a Russian church, presumably in Moscow, presided over by His Beatitude, Patriarch Kirill. The Choir begins each ode of the Canon with the Irmos.  For the first irmos, which you hear while the Patriarch proceeds to the lectern is "He is my helper and my defender and hath become my salvation. He is my God and I will glorify Him, my Fathers' God; I will exalt in Him. For gloriously hath He been glorified."  While the patriarch chants the troparia of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, the choir responds with "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me."

Small digression:  One thing that you should notice is how the people are not singing along but they are still praying. Notice how they make the sign of the cross and bow at each "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me."  It shows that in Orthodoxy, the whole idea of congregational singing is not the norm, nor should it since the music is difficult.  Unlike here in the states, where Orthodox people (mainly converts from Protestantism) think that they "have" to sing because otherwise they are not participating even when they have not an iota of musical ability.  The people in this video are clearly participating; they are praying and lamenting and asking God for mercy.  How is that NOT participation?