The beginning of the Triodion

Icon of the Publican and Pharisee. He who humbles himself
will be exalted.  He who exalts himself will be humbled.

For the next ten weeks to varying degrees, the Orthodox Church will use principally the service book of the Triodion, a collection of hymns for the services throughout the pre-Lenten, Lenten and Holy Week periods.  It is a magnificent collection of great hymns, the vast majority of which few Orthodox Christians will actually use and pray unless they are monastics.  That is a great loss.  I believe that every Orthdox Christian should own a copy of the Triodion and make use of it in his devotional life as much as he can.

Today is the first Sunday of the Triodion where we take special notice of the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.  The lessons contained in those four verses from St. Luke's Gospel are numerous, but the one thing that we should focus on is whether we, in our spiritual lives, are more like the publican or the pharisee?

Most of us, if we were honest, would answer that we are more like the pharisee.  Even more of us would answer that this parable, like so many other parables of the Lord and exhortations of the prophets, concern everyone BESIDES us.  Those were written down for other people, not for someone like me who is just trying to get through  life, make a living, love my wife and kids and not get into trouble.  But, even that train of thought puts one well into the pharisee camp.  Such an evaluation of life being rooted in just doing the right things is exactly where the pharisee stands when he is in the temple.  He does do all the right things and wants to be congratulated for it.

Most of us, if we were honest, would admit we do not enter the Temple of the Lord with downcast face and with a cry of mercy to forgive us our sin, whatever that may be, however little it may be.

Most of us, if we were honest, would admit that being pharisaical isn't really bad at all.

Most of us, if we were honest, would admit that humbling ourselves runs counter to our culture of self-satisfaction, self-validation, self-importance, ego-driven world we find ourselves and maybe seek to change that.

Most of us, if we were honest, would prefer material gifts over spiritual ones.

Most of us, simply, do not want to be the publican.

But that is the spiritual life.  Does God accept us as we are?  Sure.  But he also says that if we love Him to keep his commandments.  That requires humility which almost every single Church Father and Desert Father says is the beginning to becoming like God.  But we want God to do the work for us and yet we still demand credit. God does the work, but so must we.  God did not create a race of automatons to function only according to a certain program.  He created a race in His image and likeness to grow into mature human beings in communion with him.  But that can only happen if we first humble ourselves to the point that we are not equal with God and that we have sinned against our Creator.  That's not a bad thing.  Humility takes  a lot more courage and effort than exalting ourselves for managing to dress ourselves every morning.

The Lenten period is about fasting, prayer and repentance. In short, it's about work.  The work to drag ourselves out of the pit of our sins.  Yes, Christ did do that on the Cross and then in  Hades, made glorious in His Resurrection.  But He did that so that we could also work out our on salvation with fear and trembling.  St. Paul may as well have said humility.

So, let us embrace humility now for the Lenten season that will be upon us in a few very short weeks.  Happy Triodion, everyone!

New revelation about the end of the Gospel of St. Mark

The other day, in my random reflections on Pascha, I wrote the following:

The Gospel read at Matins is from the end of St. Mark which ends with the women being afraid. Many have lamented that this should be the Orthros Gospel and should be replaced with something from Matthew or Luke or John instead that has more joy. But this is completely appropriate. We should be in a state of fear. Our Lord has just been crucified and buried and harrowed Hades. Those things should be frightening because they should never have happened. But such is the God we have, a God who has ALWAYS gone to great extraordinary means to recall His chosen people to Himself. That should inspire us with fear. At the same time, immediately after reading this Gospel, the Priest chants the first "Christ is Risen" alleviating our fear and changing it into joy just like it did for the women and the Disciples.

Today, I was listening to a talk given by Fr. Thomas Hopko which can be heard on Ancient Faith Radio concerning the Resurrection of Christ and one of the things he mentioned touched a little bit on what I had written above.

First, we have to remember that the last chapter (16) of Mark's gospel ends at verse 8:

And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

The remaining verses in chapter 16 are universally regarded by scholars and the church fathers to have been added later. The reasons for why are myriad, but, as I commented above, perhaps it was done by some people who felt that Mark ends too abruptly and is not joyful enough, so something needed to be added to convey the sense of the Resurrection. Fr. Thomas Hopko has an interesting take.

First, we should also be mindful of what verse 7 says:

But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

Fr. Thomas says that he met an Archimandrite from Balamand, Lebanon who said that this is the only time in Mark where human beings are actually given permission to talk about the Messiah, to declare what He has done and what He will do. Every time Christ heals or performs miracles in the Gospel according to St. Mark, He commands both the recipient and the witnesses and the disciples not to speak about who did this and how. In fact, the only ones who are allowed to speak of Christ's work are the demons although Christ silences them before and then casts them out. This is an extraordinary observation.

First, according to the Archimandrite, this shows that God is controlling the message and the messengers. Human beings aren't entrusted yet to proclaim anything because they have not yet seen and heard everything for the message to be proclaimed. But, He does speak openly (parresiai) about His death and Resurrection. I put forth the notion that Christ's miracles, healings, etc. can only be understood through the lens of the events of Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha. This is something I noticed a few months ago when I was going through the daily lectionary. Thus, I can imagine why the women would be astonished and afraid: They are entrusted to proclaim the Resurrection that explains everything they have seen Christ do prior to it. Now, only now, does it all make sense!

But, notice that the Gospel ends abruptly there (again, we are not counting the additional verses as those are clearly added later). We are not told if the women actually do proclaim the word of the angel to the apostles. We're left in a state of "what if?" If Mark were a screenplay writer today, he'd be acclaimed as a master of suspense. Maybe the women couldn't do it. And who would want to end a story with even more of a downer? Thankfully, Mark's witness is not the only one.

God controls the message. God controls the messengers. Everything is revealed in due time. How often do we feel that we are the ones who have to control and shape the message and the messengers as well as the time in which it is proclaimed? Hasn't God already done that? Maybe this Gospel lesson is also a reminder that God does not ultimately depend on us for His will to be done, though I'm sure He would prefer and desire that we would cooperate with His will. That's humility, the same kind of humility our Lord had when He went to His Passion and Death.

The First Sunday of Triodion: The Publican and the Pharisee

Gospel: St. Luke 18: 10-14. The lessons: humility and repentance.

The Lenten season begins then by a quest,a prayer for humility which is the beginning of true repentance. For repentance, above everything else, is a return o the genuine order of things, the restoration of the right vision. It is, therefore, rooted in humility, and humility--the divine and beautiful humility--is its fruit and end.--Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, p.25

The fault of the Pharisee is that he has no desire to change his outlook; he is complacent, self-satisfied, and so he allows no place for God to act within him. The Publican, on the other hand, truly longs for a "change of mind": he is self-dissatisfied, "poor in spirit," and where there is this saving self-dissatisfaction, there is room for God to act. Unless we learn the secret of the Publican's inward poverty, we hall not share in the Lenten springtime.--Bishop KALLISTOS, "The Meaning of the Great Fast" from The Lenten Triodion, p. 40

The Church welcomes the Lenten spring with a spirit of exultation. She greets the time of repentance with the expectancy and enthusiasm of a child entering into a new and exciting experience. The tone of the church services is one of brightness and light. The words are a clarion call to a spiritual contest, the invitation to a spiritual adventure, the summons to a spiritual feat. There is nothing gloomy here, nothing dark or remorseful, masochistic or morbid, anxious or hysterical, pietistic or sentimental.--Fr. Thomas Hopko, The Lenten Spring, p. 9

Brethren, let us not pray as the Pharisee: for he who exults himself s hall be humbled. Let us humble ourselves before God and with fasting cry aloud as the Publican: God be merciful to us sinners.

A Pharisee, overcome with vainglory, and a Publican, bowed down in repentance came to Thee the only Master. The one boasted and was deprived of blessings, while the other kept silent and was accounted worthy of gifts. Confirm me, O Christ our God, in these his cries of sorrow, for Thou lovest mankind.--Idiomela stichera at Psalm 140 at Great Vespers

Dogs as models for the Christian Life? In some respects, at least

My fiancee, Carla, and I had to make the very sad decision today of putting down our dog, Jasmine. For the last week, Jasmine wasn't herself. Her playfulness and energy had almost totally vanished, as did her appetite and her strength. After taking her to the vet last Friday, we found out she had kidney failure and apparently this condition just completely slipped any notice on our parts or the vet's for the past months and years. And Jazzy, tough as she was, just couldn't fight it any more. We decided to take her home for a day just to say our final good-byes. We couldn't bear to watch her not eating, not drinking, the toxins in her body slowly eating away at her so at 6:15 pm CDT, our Jazzy was put to rest.

Prior to my seeing Carla and, by extension, her dog, I was never a dog person. I liked cats. To me, dogs were too familiar with people, sniffing at them all the time, had bad manners, would go to the bathroom where they pleased and were dirty. I passed that hatred on to my brother's dog, especially since it bit me after I saved her life. But I probably didn't like Queeny to begin with simply because beagles are, in my opinion, loud and obnoxious dogs. But Jasmine was different.

Jasmine was a people dog. She loved other people. Other dogs, not so much. Whenever we would take Jasmine over to Carla's sister's house, where there are two dogs, Jazzy would ignore them and prefer to hang with the adults. Whenever Sheila wanted to play, Jazzy would go to her "home base" of the couch where she could be safe from Sheila's unwanted advances. On walks, Jazzy would ignore other neighborhood dogs who wanted to sniff her and be friends, but loved meeting new people, especially people. I can remember when my godfather's son, Dominic, was up for a visit and I brought Jazzy with me. Every time Dom petted Jazzy, he would laugh and you could tell Jasmine was happy, too.

At home, Jazzy would always show her affection. She knew your routine and would be in the room awaiting your return. How many times I saw her on my bed after I came out of the shower just waiting for me to pet her. Even when I sat at the computer typing, Jazzy would always put her head underneath my arm and try to lift it from the keyboard just so I would pet her, but those incidents were also annoying to me.

After all, sitting at the computer was so that I could do work or do other worthwhile things like check email, look at facebook or read lots of pointless blogs and post my own. No matter how many times I would tell Jazzy "no" or just try to ignore her, she would always come back until my heart melted for her and I would give up my little nothings on the computer to return her affections.

I've committed myself to a lot of thinking today about Jasmine, what good memories she brought to both me and Carla. And one of the things that came to mind was Jasmine's persistence. It didn't matter what you were doing or what you were engaged in while she was in the same room, she wanted to let you know of her affections and have you return them. This reminds me of the story of the Canannite woman from the Gospel according to St. Matthew (with slight variant in the Gospel according to St. Mark).

This woman, a foreigner, whether Cannanite or Greek, implores Christ, calling Him the Son of David, to have mercy on her daughter who was suffering from demon-possession. Her pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears. Christ refuses to listen to her and the disciples say to the Master that He should send her away because "she keeps crying after us." The verb in Greek, krazei, is in the present tense but there is the sense of constant persistent present action. )It is also worth noting that the verb is the same as we see in the psalms, especially Psalm 140 which is sung at Vespers, "Lord, I have cried unto Thee." The verb krazein is specifically used to call unto the Lord.). Her persistence pays off.

Though Christ ignores her at first, He eventually answers but insultingly so. He says that I have not come here for you but for the lost sheep of Israel saying it is not good to cast the bread of children (a reference to Himself as the Bread of Life) and cast it to the dogs. She cleverly responds that though such is the case, even the dogs will still dine on the crumbs that fall from the master's table. The Lord remarks that her faith is great and that her daughter would be healed. Her persistence paid off just as the dogs persistence to get the mere crumbs from the table of the Lord paid off, just as Jazzy's persistence for the attention of her masters.

There can be victory in the spiritual life without persistence. This Gospel is read on the Sunday before the Lenten Triodion begins. It is a Gospel to help prepare us for Lent. Action is required. True worship and praise of the Lord cannot be merely passive or receptive. It requires action, outside of Lent and during Lent, indeed for the whole Christian life.

The Sunday afterwards we read the Gospel of the Publican and the Pharisee which stresses the theme of humility. As much as Jazzy always wanted attention and even demanded it, she knew when it was time to back down and obey. She displayed humility and obedience. There is a prayer, attributed to St. Basil the Great, which reads:

O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song has been a groan of travail. May we realize that they live not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee and that they love the sweetness of life even as we, and serve Thee better in their place than we in ours.

The last line, in italics, is particularly striking to me. St. Basil says that the animals do show a great degree of humility before the Lord. Perhaps this is due to the animals having no soul (psyche) like us humans but however you parse it, St. Basil appears to write that animals have fulfilled their vocation to the Lord much better than we to whom Christ came in the flesh. Such a humbling perspective.

Though all creation groans (Romans 8:22) and all creation has fallen, both man and beast, the cosmos around us reflects for us what true worship of the Lord is and what it encompasses. From the air and to the sea and to the land and to the beasts and to the Lord Himself incarnate for our sake, examples abound as to what it is to live the Christian life. God himself did not hesitate to use animals in the economy of salvation such as Barlaam's ass or the Holy Spirit appearing in the form of a dove. The psalms abound with animal examples of holy living such as with the bee. So, listen to the animals.

I very much miss Jasmine and I will for a long time, but she has caused me to realize that I need to recapture the virtues of persistence and humility especially as we enter the season of Pentecost. Thank you Jasmine; we love you.

Recquiescat in pace canis nostra--May our dog rest in peace!

How does one become humble?

I attempted to answer this question yesterday, but a theologian of much better skill should answer this so I give you the words of the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann. He writes:

How does one become humble? The answer, for a Christian, is simple: by contemplating Christ, the divine humility incarnate, the One in whom Gad has revealed once and for all his glory as humility and His humility as glory. "Today," Christ said on the night of His ultimate self-humiliation, "the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him." Humility is learned by contemplating Christ who said: "Learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart." Finally, it is learned by measuring everything by Him, by referring everything to Him. For without Christ, true humility is impossible, while with the Pharisee, even religion becomes pride in human achievements, another form of pharisaic self-glorification.

The lenten season begins then by a quest, a prayer for humility which is the beginning of true repentance.

--Great Lent, 20.

Triodion Begins--Lesson # 1: Humility

Today was the beginning of the use of the Lenten Triodion. The next four Sundays in the Eastern Rite churches are pre-Lenten but serve as springboards for how we are to enter into the great fast with attention to our spiritual plight, the necessity of our Lord's cross and repentance. Today is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee.

I need not go into a full recap of the story since this is probably one of the most familiar parables from the Gospel according to St. Luke. Two very different men, a tax collector loathed by all and a Pharisee, a member of the "holier than thou" religious party both enter into the synagogue to pray. The Pharisee boasts of his own great deeds; the publican can only boast of his sinfulness. The Pharisee exults in his generosity; the publican exults in his meekness. The Pharisee praises his alms-giving; publicans were well known for outright theft. The Pharisee commends his own phsyical fasting from foods; the publican does not fast from his sins. The lesson of this parable can be summed up in one word: HUMILITY.

Our society has a skewed idea as to what is considered humility. Some view humility as the inability to take a complement. "Hey, you're a good singer." "No, I'm not." "Wow, that guy is so humble." Others view humility as not reacting in the same manner when another person attacks or curses you. In most cases, we harbor resentment towards the person that attacks and curses us. Humility is not a passive aggressive trait.

Humility derives from the Latin word, humus which means "earth." To be humble and to possess humility one must be as the earth. Consider what we humans do to the earth. We pollute it, we contaminate it, we treat it as a commodity. But, in spite of all of that, the earth produces wheat, fruit and other great plants in abundance for us. And it keeps doing so year after year, of course helped by man's innovations. To be humble is to not simply shrug off complements or foster a passive aggressive mindset to those who persecute us. Humility and being humble is to be steadfast in the Gospel to bless those who curse, pray for those who persecute, love those who are indifferent or even spiteful. It is to regard ourselves as the lowest so that others may have what is the highest.

To live the Life in Christ, humility must be paramount. Without humility all other virtues we have will be for naught. Such is why that this week is free from all fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. Fasting, as excellent and necessary it is as a spiritual discipline, is only a diet without humility. Fasting without prayer, without alms giving, without our eyes on Christ is nothing more than a change in diet. Humility must be incorporated.

How do we practice humility? For starters, we must do as the publican does. In our churches, in our icon corners or at any time we pray to God, we must first confess that we are sinners and that only God can forgive our sins. Yes, give thanks to God and entreat Him for what you need, but be mindful of your own sinfulness before the Lord who made you not to be a sinner but to be in His image and likeness.

Let us begin our journey to Golgotha with humility!