The magic of existence

Some people talk as though it were totally barbaric and unworthy of Him that God should have created a world in which such a thing as sin exists, that has so corrupted His chief creation, Man, that He now must punish him with eternal torment in fire, unless he accept the bloody death of a unique Man, who is also somehow His only-begotten Son, who sacrificed Himself voluntarily to satisfy the requirement of His angry heavenly Father, whose Law demands blood to compensate for its violation, as a ransom for his sins, so that he can be regenerated in sinlessness as his first forefather Adam was originally created.

This is like saying that
God created a good universe
into which His chief creature, Man, was placed
with the expectation that he would always be of one will with Him,
while at the same time allowing an evil agent into it,
which He knew would corrupt Man’s will,
and then forcing Himself to eternally punish this Man
and all his descendents from their very births
to eternal damnation for breaking a Law
which He established and to which He is now bound,
when He could have either not created that Law at all,
or else overridden it for Man’s sake,
or else not allowed the evil agent to deceive Man
and cause the sin that must now be avenged,
since God is holy
and cannot tolerate sin.

Well, what would you have?
A good God who created a good universe
into which He placed a good creature, Man,
who sometimes acts against what he knows intuitively is right
by a standard he didn’t create
but which the good God did,
whose Son also entered that good universe
and somehow was accidentally put to death
but was rescued and resuscitated somehow,
so that His teachings could be learned and followed,
restoring Man,
if not to his originally perfect and righteous state,
at least to a state in which his moral failures
are somewhat in control,
allowing most men to live together in relative peace and safety
and to enjoy a reasonable level of freedom and happiness?

Religion.

That would be nice!
That is how Man would like it.
That is how Man in his natural state would like to see existence
and give it meaning.

That is how a civilised and worthy God
would have set things up,
that is, if He exists.

Let’s have none of this sacrificial talk!
Away with the barbaric demand for blood by an angry God,
who is unfit to be called Father
if He has to send His only Son
to a humiliating, bloody, excruciatingly painful death,
to save His creatures from a sinfulness
He almost willed them to have,
to save them from an eternal and fiery torment
that He imposes on all who reject His love.

His love?
Would a loving God have such a plan?
Would He create beings only to torture them
for not being His robot slaves?

With all due respect to those
who try to prove God
loving, righteous, rational, and worthy of our praise
by departing from the words
of holy and divine scripture
to paint a picture of Him
in colors that are pleasing to our sense
and standard of right and wrong,
of what we call love, and mercy,
and what we would honor as holy

—I know what they are trying to do,
to make God lovable
so that we will love Him and believe in Him—

This strategy in the end
does not produce the effect in us
that the Word of God was revealed to produce,
does not raise us out of our mortal, human reason
to immortal, divine faith,
does not deliver us from death and bring us to true life,
does not equip us for and acculturate us
to what we can only call
—because it is just the other side of our ontological “event horizon”
and we cannot express it any other way—
life eternal.

The real universe,
not the one that scientists explore,
test, measure and define by human standards,
not the one that sociologists and historians archive
and try to understand,
not the one that moralists and would-be theologians
devise as a frame of reference
to interpret the results of the studies
of the other two groups,

but the real universe
—what really exists,
what really operates and animates
all that we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel
and philosophize—
is so beyond our human capacities
as to be conveyable to us
only in what seems miraculous or magical,
or else so out of sync with what we should have expected
that it seems barbaric and primitive in the extreme.

Not that real universe,
but its Creator,
has told us about that existence
which lies just beyond our human nature’s “event horizon”
by taking up a literature as the vehicle of His Word,
and that is what we call the Holy Bible.

Why holy?
Because it is, like Him, totally other,
fully incomprehensible to those
who would fit it into the container of their minds alone.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not grasped it.

The Bible teaches us,
as a mother teaches her toddler using baby talk,
how to take the first steps into that real universe
where there is no other map that we can yet read,
where there are features
that could harm or even destroy us
in our present state of being and level of maturity
if we met them without warning.

We must listen very carefully,
mimic and memorize the instructions
just as we receive them,
even in the limited language that we know thus far,

because for us,
where we are headed,
where we have no choice but to be headed,
is a state that now can only seem to be
the magic of existence.

It will only be magic
until we find out and understand what lies behind it,
until we find ourselves actually and even factually
crossing that “event horizon”
that limits our mortal, human vision,
until by faith we come to
immortal,
divine being.

Théosis.

But I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself.
John 12:32 NIV

The utterly unlike

There’s lots of things, even persons, who are, or will soon be seen to be, utterly unlike what we have imagined them to be all our lives.

Firstly, of course, there’s God. Whatever you conceive Him or Her to be, and even if you have memorized and understood everything the bible and all theologians have said about Him, and even read what the pagans have said about Him, you still (I should say, we still) are going to find out that though in everything that really mattered we knew Him quite well, there will be a whole lot about Him that will just take us by surprise—mostly, things that we couldn’t have even begun to know about Him, due to our puny brains and sensory apparatus not having a way to process the information. Ants may know that we’re there, and they may even have a good idea that we’re big, clumsy, slow-moving and dangerous. In everything that really matters to them they know us quite well. They won’t understand why some of us avoid stepping on them. They won’t begin to suspect that we compose and listen to something we call music, even though they may have something analogous to it on a very minor scale. Unfortunately for them, one of us hasn’t been transformed into an ant like themselves, so as to give them a better idea of what those big shadow-casters are that pass over their trails.

Secondly, there’s our own human nature, that which we seem to be while we are alive “in the flesh.” As a young man, I spent many hours observing my body and my spirit in function, long hours lying quiet but wide awake in the night. The result of my observations was a gradually increasing awareness that “I am not that” in reference first to my body, then even to my spirit, even to my mind. Anything that I was able to observe, watch and study, was yet experience outside whatever it is that I am. All these observations and my non-verbal thinking about them only demonstrated to me what holy scripture teaches, “For that which is,” that which exists, the world of things in its essence and with its causes, “is far off,” far removed from the sight of man, “and it is deep, deep; who can discover it?” (Ecclesiastes 7:24) How ironic, that even our very own selves, that we (think we) can know first-hand, should still be beyond our ken! Most of us don’t want to put the label “utterly unlike” on our cache of life experience, but I think that what life really is is utterly unlike our perception. We only know what we need to know and can know, and that’s not much.

Thirdly, or maybe I should say lastly, there’s death. Whatever you conceive it to be, or not be, and even if you’ve had a near death experience, or even been dead and through miracle or modern science been resuscitated, you still can’t come closer to knowing or understanding what it is than the distance separating East from West. My youthful experiments in observation also impinged on death. I used to withdraw my energy from my bodily extremities to experience “this is a hand, not my hand” and even “this is a body, not my body.” I tried to observe what remains when all senses, sight, hearing, touch, and finally even all thought, become inaccessible to a mind. What is left? Locked in a realm of being which cannot exist, yet does, I imagined the body I once inhabited, breathless, unfeeling, unmoving, as a formless numbness, and the existence of the outer world (where life was still going on) as an inaccessible “it,” not a thing or a place, just a nothing that somehow is, and beyond my penetration. That was as close as I came to apprehending death. It was very unlike what my normal mind envisions when I think of death, but it was still not “utterly unlike.”

It is this kind of approach that brings us, I think, to the threshold of at least sensing that what awaits us after this (what we call) life is something and Someone “utterly unlike” everything we have ever seen, heard, felt or thought. It makes even spelling the Name with a capital letter pale as insolence and ignorance before the reality of Him Who Is, and of As It Must Be. Not even speaking of God or of what we know about Him and His plan of salvation as written in His Word, the scriptures, we can still know Him as He reveals Himself to us and through us without our help or our imagination, and knowing Him thus, the “utterly unlike” gradually dawns on us, and of that, no man living can speak.

Originally posted June 30, 2009

Womanhood

This blog is so much more than what its name implies, Dress Code for Christian Women. It is by the author of the blog If God Is Love and is a specialised look at many aspects of Christian womanhood (and manhood, too). It starts out with this… 

Christianity cannot oppress people. If any church, doctrine, or custom oppresses, discriminates, or coerces, then it is in error. Christianity is a religion of liberation in Christ, and this involves repentance and a belief in the Gospels. Another word for this process is submission. That is to say, the believer submits his or her mind and heart to Jesus Christ, to His teachings as recorded in the Bible, and to the leadership of appropriate authority (such as the desert fathers and mothers, the early Church fathers, the elders). The purpose of legitimate authority is to love the sinner, to teach truth, and to guide individuals and communities on their spiritual journey...

Please read more: You won't be sorry you did...

Is it better to be a simpleton?

The following essay is excerpted from a blog I found this morning,
If God Is Love, which I intend to read regularly, and which I have also linked in the side panel of Cost of Discipleship. I recommend it to you, brethren, as a ‘safe and sound’ oasis in the wasteland of ‘Christian’ blogs.

Is It Better to Be a Simpleton? 

12/13/2013

The following is a quotation from The Prologue from Ohrid.

“It is better to be a simpleton and to approach God with love than to be a know-it-all and, at the same time, be an enemy of God.” These are the words of the priest-martyr, St. Ireneaus of Lyon. The truth of these words has been confirmed at all times and is also confirmed in our time. One thing must be added to this, namely, that the lovers of God are not simpletons because they know God well enough that they are able to love Him.

Of all human knowledge, this knowledge is more important and greater. To this must be added that the enemies of God cannot be more knowledgeable, even though they consider themselves as such, because their knowledge is unavoidably chaotic, for it does not have a source and does not have order. For the source and order of all knowledge is God.

Some of the saints, such as Paul the Simple, did not know how to read or write yet with the strength of their spirit and divine love surpassed the entire world. Whosoever approaches God with love, that person is not capable of crime. Knowledge without love toward God is motivated by the spirit of criminality and war. St. Euthymius the Great taught: “Have love; for what salt is to food, love is to every virtue. Every virtue is tasteless and cold if it is not seasoned and warmed by divine love.”

— My Notes — 

If a loving simpleton is contrasted to a know-it-all intellectual, then I would rather be a simpleton. Yet, many of us probably fall somewhere in between. For example, I am not a scholar and I do not have enough years left in my life to become a scholar. I understand some things, probably misunderstand a few things, and lack knowledge of many things. However, a self-educated person (someone who reads a lot) is not the same as a simpleton, and a scholar (in the true academic spirit) is not the same as a know-it-all.

There is an intellectual category which I call Steroid Intellectuals. They are able to read and remember everything. Within religious circles, I find that Steroid Intellectuals probably use the technicalities of doctrine as distraction — as a way to escape the real impact of their own sins, as an obsession in order to avoid emotion, as a bulwark against inner emptiness, and as a competitive game. I am not criticizing them — just trying to understand them because I often feel vulnerable in their presence when they blast forth details like gangsters firing semi-automatic guns. The curious thing about Steroid Intellectuals is that sometimes they are rank beginners, fresh converts, newbies who have read much and lived little.

How much does a Christian need to know? How much book-learning? Which books? The answer is probably very personal as well as practical. I expect to continue reading books for the rest of my life. Inasmuch as each individual is unique and must follow their own path to God, each individual’s library might also be unique. One book is essential, the Bible. Other books might be regarded as standard or common to an understanding of religion. And, still other books are personal choices. One way to appreciate the uniqueness of an individual is to read a couple of the books which he or she loves — as a way to travel a few miles on their path.

Reading books is also a matter of time and priorities. We all have other responsibilities and enjoyments. Sometimes, I would rather do other things — work in the garden, try a new recipe, or sit back and watch the sun go down. And, sometimes, I would rather read the same book again than to start a new book, or read again a book which I read several years ago and in which I now have a renewed interest.

I admire the true scholar, the keen mind, the teacher, the intellectual who has the patience and loving-kindness to reach people at their own level and for the purpose of glorifying Jesus Christ rather than the human intellect.

Which will it be?

Divine humanity, or human divinity? Which would we rather have? This is the question that is presented to man in every generation from the first to the last.

The first is not in our control, something we could not even guess at, something only dreamt of by those whose hearts persistently seek the Most-High, wondering what He is.

The second is what we found ourselves left with. Since we couldn’t discover divine humanity, we consoled ourselves by inventing human divinity.

Human beings, worthy or unworthy, raised some of themselves to the status of gods. The ancient heroes of the Greeks, of the Indians, of the Chinese, gods.

The wielders of earthly power, those in whom their peoples invested the ring, orb and crown of authority, lauded ‘guardians of mankind’ and ‘benefactors,’ gods.

Those fools who once graced the courts of kings with levity to assuage the harshness of our earthly exile, now electronically glorified, our entertainers, gods.

Human divinities all, they are sculpted images of the human nature, to be worshipped by their adorers, or vilified by opponents who worship not men but things.

Yet, divine humanity, after long ages, He did appear. He, the bedreamt of prophets and prophet-kings, has appeared, does appear, and now lives among us.

No sculpture, no painted image can convey Him to us better than He Himself can, walking in our midst, as one of us, though we do not recognize Him but in retrospect.

He is Divine Humanity, having taken our human nature into the fiery folds of His sixfold wings up to the Throne of the Divine Nature, making us enter heaven, and the heaven of heavens.

Making us sit upon His Throne and upon His Father’s Throne, making us sup with Him and with His Father and the Spirit Holy at the banquet Table, in the light of a thousand suns.

Every molecule of our humanity transformed in Him into Divinity, no particle of darkness remains, no shadow, only light, light, wonderous light, bright, bright, brighter.

Divine humanity, or human divinity? Which do you choose?
‘No one lights a lamp to hide it under a bushel.’
‘A city set on a hill cannot be hid.’
‘I set before you life,
And death.’

Apocalypse

I hope now to stir your minds to remember
Things others have taught you
I am merely repeating
That which you were mocked for believing
“What sort of light is cast from devouring hope?”
Not in this dissipated world
But a vision more substantial

Consider the light then given from life
Ever present, now made immanent
Ended in their polluted water
But clean water still carries the life it always did
Filth must forget to survive
Remembering makes for fresh rain
Or better, fire

Everyone is hung up about waiting
But time is an easy thing to waste
There is no time for evil
All the time in the world for good
This is not because what you do does not matter
But because it does
Only death should die!

There is a fire we have not yet known
But will sooner than dawn breaks from night
We call it vengeance in our ignorance
But the maiden knew no hate
Rather burned brightly
The sun still envies the mercy seat
Stepping before us on to the new day

So, be quickened and run
Chase the stars across their crystal spheres
Refresh your brother
Carry your sister
In all things give thanks to your father
Know your neighbor
Open your mouth in faith and love

Spotless, blameless, peaceful even in suffering
Just as with him we can be
Even if it is hard to understand
But you need not twist
Or be crushed by weight beyond your strength
Even a strong man knows to use a lever
So a cross is given to move the world

Keep the memory close at hand
How they were lost to their own trickery
Their hearts slept the watch
What fools the wise who know not the hour
The far country has been brought near
This land stands conquered
And will end before our labors are done

The doors of the house
Built from the wood of the fig tree
They will not stand the four winds
Nor will the clouds of glory be kept out
Great the thunder, mighty the quake
Mountains cast into churning seas
The unapproachable approaches!

Please, lest this be counted for evil
And time be lost for me to speak
Do not settle for your delusions
Refuse the devils at the window
Admit the disease receive the cure
The great physician does not disappoint
And you may yet know what you were made for

— David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical

Lost and found

Why do we witness?
Is it to save people from hell and from the wrath of an angry God?

No, only Christ can save people, and hell is the fruit of mankind’s choosing—and the wrath of an angry God? Well, let the scriptures teach men of that, if they will only read.

We witness out of love for the lost, yes, we do, but also with trust in the man-loving God to move the hearts of those who are stuck, to actually create clean hearts in those who have no hearts, or whose hearts are filthy.

Love for the lost is akin to love for our own souls which we have already delivered to the foot of the Throne. We only want to share what has been bestowed on us, knowing that
outside of God, all is nothing.

Yes, we witness out of love for the lost, but only because we are driven to it by knowing what ‘lost’ really means.
‘I once was lost, but now I am found.’

To speak of people ‘going to hell’ is not part of our vocabulary, except to speak in terms of common parlance. Who can utter the words with meaning?

When we hear the mention of ‘hell’ we see the image of the Day of Judgment, whose nature and timing are known alone to God. We see the Lord separating the sheep from the goats. We hear the voice speaking, ‘Whatever you did to the least of these, you did it unto Me’ (cf., Matthew 25:40), and we tremble as we realize that the ‘lost’ we say we love are they for whom Christ died.

Our love becomes the greater. It becomes our life, not just an idea we say we believe in. We sing the song of the redeemed by our witness, and our worship is like that of holy apostle Paul, who writes, ‘the God I worship spiritually by preaching the Good News of His Son…’ (Romans 1:9).

How great is the mercy of God our Savior, the God of Israel, who makes His home among us, in our praises! And what are those praises if not our testimony that ‘God is great!’ not by His mighty power only, but by His condescension, His longsuffering love, His mercy?

And what is our testimony if not our witness, our love for those whom God places next to us, our neighbors? And how can we love those for whom Christ died? By telling them they are lost? That they are going to hell? Or by telling them the Good News that even before they knew they were sinners, Christ gave His life for them, even before they could say ‘in sins, my mother conceived me’ (Psalm 51)?

This is our witness, our testimony, our life, our love, our faith—that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst’ (1 Timothy 1:15).

Be rocks

All the unpleasant things which are within your soul and cause you anxiety can become occasions for the glorification of God and cease to torment you. Have trust in God. Then you will forget your worries and become His instruments. Distress shows that we are not entrusting our life to Christ. Doesn’t St. Paul say, ‘We are afflicted on every side, but not distressed?’

Deal with everything with love, kindness, meekness, patience and humility. Be rocks. Let all the waves break over you and turn back leaving you untroubled. You’ll say, ‘That sounds fine, but is it possible?’ The answer is ‘Yes, always—with the grace of God.’ If we look at things in human terms, of course, it is impossible. But instead of affecting you adversely, all these things can be of benefit to you, increasing your patience and your faith. Because all the difficulties that surround us represent a kind of gymnastics for us. We exercise ourselves in patience and endurance.

Elder Porphyrios,Wounded by Love, page 145

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Read the words aloud

Devote yourselves to the Scriptures. Love reading and studying them. The more I hear the Psalter and the poetic canons, the more I want to hear them. They are so close to life and engaging that I cannot have enough of them. Read clearly and distinctly, word by word. Read the words aloud and listen to them; that’s a great help. And where you come across a particularly meaty passage, read it again to understand it better. What can I say? I listen to the words again and again with an unquenchable thirst. They sweeten the soul. That is what is important.

And so since you will thirst for the words of the poetic canons, of the Psalter and of all the church service books and since you will desire to read, hear and take them to heart, as soon as the simantron sounds, you will run at once with love and eagerness to hear the first words of the daily cycle of prayer, ‘On rising from sleep, we fall down before You, Good Lord.’ That’s the way to achieve the object of your desire. The soul then reverts to its original luster, to its primeval state, to its ancient beauty. What does God say, On whom shall I look, if not on the meek and peaceful man who fears my words (Isaiah 66:2, LXX). Christ gives grace to the person who loves His words and all good things come easily to him.

Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, pages 163-164

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Love, love, love

Above everything is love. The thing that must concern you, my children, is love for the other person, for his soul. Whatever we do, whether it is prayer or offering advice or pointing out some error, let us do it with love. Without love, prayer is of no benefit, advice is hurtful and pointing out errors is harmful and destructive to the other person who senses whether we love him or not and reacts accordingly. Love, love, love! Love for our brother prepares us to love Christ more. Isn't that perfect?

Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, page 181

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Around us like bees

Let us scatter our love selflessly to all, without regard to the way they act towards us. When the grace of God enters us, we will not be concerned about whether they love us or not or whether they speak to us politely or not. We will feel the need to love all people. It’s egotism on our part to wish for others to speak to us politely. If they don’t, we shouldn’t be upset. Let them speak to us as they wish. We needn’t become beggars for love. Our aim should be to love them and pray for them with all our soul. Then we will become aware that all people love us without our seeking it and without our begging for their love. They will love us freely and sincerely from the depths of their heart without our blackmailing them. When we love without seeking to be loved, people will gather around us like bees. This is true for everyone.

Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, pages 181-182

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Looking for you

Lately, India has been on my mind a lot more than usual. I have a very long personal history with India going back to my teen years.

At about the age of 13, I picked up a book from my parents’ library, a novel about a girl my age growing up in India, that had a chapter entitled Krishna the Joyous. I also read H. G. Wells’ bulky 2-volume History of the World, which had lots of line drawings of pagan gods, among them Ganesh the elephant-headed god and, again, Krishna with his flute.

Later, in my college years and a little beyond, George Harrison brought to our attention the Hare Krishna movement through his music and then, suddenly, there they were, chanting and playing their weird instruments, finger cymbals, mridangas (my favorite, a type of drum), and jumping up and down with ecstatic fury all around town. In Edmonton, Alberta, where I lived after college, I used to visit the Hare Krishna temple, chant in Sanskrit, partake of bhagavad-prasadam (consecrated food), and read their books, but I never took the plunge. Why? Well, because of Jesus. He is real, Krishna is only a beautiful story.

Back to my interest in India, and even in one Indian religion, the Hare Krishnas, what attracted me to them was the beauty and joy evident in their worship. When I read their beliefs, though I could see instantly that it was all based on classical mythology, I was impressed by two things: They believe that there is only one God, whom they identify with the Krishna of the myths; and their scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita, seemed to have verses that were borrowed from the gospel according to Saint John. That made me think that somehow their form of Hinduism had been influenced by Christian ideas and was better than the others.

Mind you, all this was before I had accepted Jesus Christ at the age of 24. I was, of course, still dealing in what C. S. Lewis called “boys’ philosophy,” and hadn’t yet come to realize the objective reality of our situation—born into a sinful world, and headed for Gehenna. Once that fact is grasped, one doesn’t care a fig anymore for myths, beautiful or otherwise, but only for Him who alone can deliver us from eternal death, Him who tramples death by death and gives life to those in the tombs.

The whispers of the Truth arrive even in the ears of peoples who walk in darkness, begetting in them the beginnings of faith, but in Whom they do not know, and so teachers and prophets arise among them, taking the best they can find from their human speculations, from myths, from ancient tales handed down, and religions are created that approach the Truth yet still fall short. It’s the universal, world-wide story of man looking for God. But this is, simply put, not how it works. Man’s search for God is nothing compared to God’s search for man.

Starting with Eden, it was not Adam and Eve who went looking for God, “but Yahweh God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He asked.” God was looking for man. Later, though Noah could see that the world was full of wickedness, he had no plan, no work to do to fix this problem, but then, “God said to Noah, The end has come for all things of flesh…” and gave him the instructions as to what he was to do. Not Noah’s search for God, but God’s search for a man who would obey Him. Our first father Abraham, though he lived among an idolatrous people and was offended, he would have remained there, had not “Yahweh said to Abram, Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you…” Again, not man’s search for God, but a living and caring God looking for man.

Throughout the Bible, this story, this true story, is repeated over and over again. It’s true that in Psalms, we read things like, “I have sought You with my whole heart, do not let me stray from Your commandments,” but these words are the prayers of one whom God has already found. God looked for him, found him, and now he seeks God. It’s not that we don’t look for God, but that’s not how we find Him: He looks for us, He finds us, we accept Him and what He has done for us, and now we look for the God whom we know, to please Him who is our Saviour and Lord.

In all the myths, you never hear of a god looking for man, only men looking for gods. When they don’t find them, since they know that there must be a “divine something,” they comfort themselves with man-made gods and religions. Planting these seeds, they obtain trees which bear fruit after their own kind, from ancient times down to the present, fruit that may give wisdom and knowledge, but can never give eternal life.

But here we have a God, the God, who is looking for man, and when He finds him, there is no such thing as religion anymore. “I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.” When He finds us, He plants in us His own seed, that grows in us and bears fruit after its own kind, fruit that will last, the fruit of eternal life. He is always looking for man. He is looking for me. He is looking for you.

From darkness to Light

I live on a planet called ‘earth,’ but it might as well be called ‘judgment world.’ I am racking my brain to come up with spectacular sins to confess to my priest to fulfill the unwritten obligation to endure the mystery of repentance at least four times yearly during the great fasts. Why is it so hard to confess our own sins, when we can hardly refrain from confessing the sins of others by the minute?

So, a president is photographed being jolly and cell phone snapping a shot at a memorial service. Meanwhile, his wife stares straight ahead with what looks like an attitude of studied disapproval. Who took that photo, I wonder, instead of being solemn and respectful? It seems we are all citizens of ‘judgment world.’

While I was preparing to reenter the Church as an adult Christian, though still on the sidelines looking in, the first Orthodox priest I ever knew said to me, ‘Try not to pass judgment on others, because that’s not your job. That’s what Christ will do when He returns, so let’s not take His job away from Him.’ I knew Father Ihor wasn’t kidding, and I never forgot what he said. In trying to follow his advice, I have found it not very easy, especially when everyone around you is doing it—judging, I mean. Almost as a survival tactic, you start doing it too, just so you don’t fall behind. Then, in a moment of calmness and clarity—which will happen if you pause a moment to catch your breath—you realize with horror what you’ve been doing and cry, ‘Lord, have mercy!’ and, perhaps just a little later, you’re back to judging again, even if it’s only yourself.

We know the scriptures so well that we become inattentive, and in our mental looms sometimes false weavings are weft. We hear ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ and as soon as the commandment courses through our bodies with our lifeblood, it is contaminated by the ‘food’ we eat—what we see, hear and unthinkingly enact every day—it morphs into its very opposite, ‘judge your neighbor as yourself,’ and we find ourselves obeying a very different commandment.

Yes, we do judge ourselves, with mercy, and think we are being disciplined harshly. But if our neighbor ‘helps’ us, we rebuff his rebuke even if well-intentioned—are any really so?—feeling slighted, insulted, condemned, and so we judge him back. After all, ‘even steven.’ Yes, we’re all guilty, hands down.

This is life on planet earth, the ‘judgment world.’ If we had no other sin to confess, this one would be enough. That’s exactly why I lazily confess that ‘I am a sinner,’ and why I ask your prayers ‘for Romanós the sinner.’

What? Did I kill anyone? Did I steal? Did I lie? Did I commit adultery? Did I not honor my parents? Did I take the Lord’s name in vain, worship idols made by hand or, even worse, have different gods before Him? Well, answering the previous probes, I might have to say ‘yes, and no,’ and leave it to the questioner to guess which of the eight I have transgressed. Better yet, go ask my enemies, if I have any. Enemies always tell the truth—from their point of view. Really, though, my worst enemy—or my best—is myself, or he would be if he weren’t too shy to fess up to his—I mean, my—shenanigans.

At least I don’t work on Sunday, and I don’t covet. Those two of the Ten I accidentally left out. Was it a Freudian slip? Nobody works on the Sabbath unless they have to, and therefore, it isn’t their fault. Even the Church excuses us in this case, as long as we try our best to make it up during the week. We think that it’s enough just to make an appearance, maybe light a candle, kiss an ikon, and skip out. After all, we’re with Christ ‘twenty-four seven’ wherever we are, right? There’s no escape. As for coveting, like everyone I know I have everything I need already, so why should I want more? Besides, ‘there’s no pockets in a shroud’ and, speaking of ‘judgment world,’ we know that ‘whoever has the biggest part has the worst part.’ That’s what the saints say anyway, and I’m with them (I hope!).

Yes, we do indeed live on a planet called ‘earth,’ and whether we believe it or not, it really is a ‘judgment world.’ We’ve been sent here, deliberately, not to work off our bad karma or to attain enlightenment, but to learn to speak God’s language. Judgment is the language of this world that we pick up in infancy and speak for the rest of our lives unless, unless we are drawn to the learning of the language of God and of the age to come, and that language is silence. Learning His language we pass from judgment to mercy, and from mercy to glory, and finally and forever, from darkness to Light.

Abstract

The place where I come from is a small town
They think so small, they use small words
But not me, I'm smarter than that,
I worked it out
I'll be stretching my mouth
to let those big words come right out
I've had enough, I'm getting out
to the city, the big big city
I'll be a big noise
with all the big boys,
so much stuff I will own

And I will pray to a big god,
as I kneel in the big church

My parties have all the big names
and I greet them with the widest smile
Tell them how my life is one big adventure
and always they're amazed
when I show them 'round my house to my bed
I had it made like a mountain range
with snow white pillows for my big fat head
And my heaven will be a big heaven,
and I will walk through the front door

— Peter Gabriel, Big Time

How sad it is, to know the truth about something and, with a gleam in your eye and a tight smile on your lips, to enunciate that truth to an audience that you think probably doesn’t have or know that truth. They may be visitors to your church, to whom you are giving a ‘tour.’ They may be students or auditors in your class or seminar to whom you are revealing the truth. In either case you feel quite justified. They came here. They asked for it. Now, you’re going to let them have it. Always, however, with that gleam in your eye, that tight smile, those controlled, well-rehearsed words. How often you’ve practiced them, over and over in your mind, so that when you had the opportunity, they could come pouring out.

Any questioning, however slight, you accept as a challenge to your—oops! I mean, the Church’s authority—and you grasp the handle bars of your wingèd intellectual vehicle even more tightly, as you careen into your opponent with astonishing precision and speed, knocking them off their high horse—splat! face-down on the pavement where they belong. Of course, the gleam in your eye and the tight smiling lips are consistent all the way. You do not betray the slightest lack of nerve. You know that you’re right. You know that they know that you know you are right. That’s all that matters, really. They invited themselves here. It’s your forum. They are your guests. Like the heaven that treats the myriad creatures as straw dogs, you have shown your mettle.

We all want to be right. We all want recognition somehow, for whatever it is we think we’re proud of, whether it’s something as mundane as our good looks (is that really mundane?) or something as sublime as the creed we hold, whether it is Godly or the opposite. Our own brains are a fertile field for the sowing of our thoughts and desires, and we make them come up the way we want them to, or so we think. We get our house in order and we receive our guests with contingent hospitality, to show off our treasures, humbly laying them at their feet, so they may worship us with a clear conscience, and we can be self-effacing as we pass them another refreshment, more chunks of our own flesh, or our blue blood to drink.

I am a Christian. I belong to an ancient church. I confess and try to practice an ancient faith. I keep my door unlocked to the stranger, but there are some to whom I cannot unlock it, because I am just a man, and what they might require of me is that I give as God gives. Perish the thought. I am just a man, Lord, just a stupid man! Ask my wife, my friends, they’ll tell you. I am worthless. Yet I keep pretending to be someone I am not. I escape one trap of conceit to fall headlong into another, and while I am burning my neighbor’s house down to save him from his worldliness, I find that my bridges have been burned. Who was it working behind my back? Was it that ancient One, the only Lover of mankind? He is so unfair. Why can’t He leave me alone, so that I can make myself out to be the Solomon of the thousand lusty love chants, at once wise and voluptuous?

A spectacled older gentleman standing surrounded by his admiring students, almost three generations of them, never having learned the lesson that love conquers all, even our own vain hearts, our useless, suffocating knowledge, or our pretended wisdom, and instead, promotes himself under a thousand masks, hoping to brand his greatness on yet another generation’s unmarked hide, so they will remember him with awe, how he vanquished the infidels, the antagonists of the truth, and established once again the triumph of Orthodoxy. Now, we don’t need to pray as we sing the words, ‘Soson, Kyrie, ton laón Sou…’ Save, O Lord, Your people, because his invincible wisdom, his teaching, has secured the faith and those confessing it against all its enemies. We can sing now, just to follow the tradition, to live in the luxury of the world-conquering faith. Nothing more to do.

Man has closed the door on God, so he can be heard better as he talks about Him. Once they made Him out to be a great Craftsman working on a gigantic clockwork, and having assembled it, and wound it up, gave Him permission to go away and leave it to continue ticking forever. Now they were free to not talk about Him anymore, for what was the need? This time around, we bring Him back to animate our discussions, tying Him hand and foot by our ease, gagging Him with our mouthsome words, deafening ourselves from the voice of many waters heard by the eager ears of John the Revelator, so that we can hear ourselves better, and glorify Him by our works, so that men, seeing them, will glorify us in return. Not without cause does the tree-bound Lord cry out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ and, though we no longer tremble at it, pant His parting prayer, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

A baby's ramble on prayer

Aιτειτε και δοθησεται υμιν, ζητειτε και ευρησετε, κρουετε και ανοιγησεται υμιν
Matthew 7:7

Eαν τι αιτησητε εν τω ονοματι μου, εγω ποιησω
John 14:14
My good brother in Christ and fellow blogger wrote,

Consider a prayer asking for anything you can think of: something shallow, like a new car. Something more meaningful, like our gentle old grandmother being rescued from cancer. This whole exchange is rooted in the assumption that things are meant to go a certain way. If we had not prayed, we would have not gotten the car, grandma would have succumbed to the cancer. One of the crazy things about this is, sometimes we act like we’ve got a reality by democracy. We do our little prayer chains and prayer requests and all those things as if the idea is, if enough people vote our way God will change the world. Another crazy thing is, that we act like God must be simply making it up as he goes. Or that we are so different than those people who tried to argue God out of his plans. Because, the thing is this: if God had a plan for us not to get that car, we are asking him to change the plan for us. We’re not any different than those people in the bible… except that, oftentimes, we’re doing it for much more selfish reasons.
This was a very perceptive post. I liked what he wrote a lot. It was very realistic. I especially liked what he said about the democracy of the prayer chain. “…if enough people vote our way God will change the world…”
It makes me wonder, really, why people do these things.

Jesus does say,
“Whatever you agree upon in prayer, ask, you will get it.”
(cf. Matthew 7:7, John 14:14, wow! the chapter and verse numbers!)
The reality, though, is that this doesn't seem to happen
much of the time.

Is it because we haven't enough faith?
Or because we haven't fasted?
Or because we're too sinful for God to hear us,
let alone grant our request?
Or because He has already decided to do something His way not ours?

The Jews have a saying in the Talmud that I have made much use of.
“Undo your will for the sake of Heaven, and Heaven will undo its will for your sake.”

Of course, you know by Heaven they mean God. You know how the Jews are, they are afraid to say "God" in case that is taking His name in vain. God bless ’em!

A large part of the problem is that existence is not as linear and flat and “Yes or No” as we think it is. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “it all seems planless to the darkened mind, but that's because it is ALL plan” (Perelandra). When the picture is too big for us to see, and it usually is, existence and the events and things that fill time are too much for us, yet we pray to move mountains, and that is really some mountain!
For me, it boils down to this. Prayer, like most divine things, is a mystery. It's not ours to understand it, but ours to do it, not looking for mechanical results, but accepting that it is necessary only because God commands us to do it. When Christ says, “it will be done for you,” He isn't promising that it will look the way you expected, but also, He doesn't want us to cynically ‘spiritualize it’ in our philosophical way, like the fox who couldn't reach the grapes calling them sour, and say, “Well, He answered my prayer, I just don't know how,” and then pretend to believe it. All these humanistic workarounds to try to justify God to our intellects are just a waste of time.

Prayer is a commandment and a mystery, just like everything else that has to do with, not only God but, existence.

“The Being” (Greek > Ο Ων, Ηο Ón) has had a contraction within Himself, making room for us to be, like a woman's body makes room in her womb for the embryo, then for the baby. Neither we nor the unborn baby know what's going on. We just exist, not even knowing that we exist, until God says it's time for us to be born for real.

And when that happens, intellect, watch out!

The cross

The cross.

I used to wear a cross once.

All Orthodox are supposed to wear the cross they received at baptism.
That original cross of mine is packed away among my memorabilia, I hope. I did wear a cross for at least 20 years of my adult Christian life—the cross of San Damiano, an ancient icon painted by Serbian Orthodox monks that found its way into a small church in central Italy, dating from the days when Italy was still an Orthodox land. The cross of San Damiano was the icon from which Christ spoke to Francesco of Assisi, ‘Repair My Church which, as you can see, is lying in ruins.’

I stopped wearing my cross because it was worn out, and because at some point, my cross changed from something metallic and detachable, to being a part of me, something others can't see, something I can never take off. When I knew that for sure, that I was bearing my cross, then I didn't have to wear it.

The cross is something you can't really talk about, when it's the reality of your life. All the jabber and blab about the cross, however eloquent, is still just words. To enter into the reality of the cross is a gift of God. When He grants it to you to suffer, and to suffer in ways you never knew existed, then there is no longer an image outside yourself that really stands for anything much. The whole panoply of Orthodox iconography, in fact, dies away into mere imagery, when the cross is your life.

I know I wanted to communicate something in this post, but it isn't really possible, I know that now. But crossbearers know each other.
Their sanctuary is the time and place where in this world they meet for even a moment, their communion is feeding each other with the broken fragments of their lives that Christ has taken to Himself and returned to them, ‘This is My Body broken for you.’

No matter how big the visual cross, whether it's empty, plain wood, or has an icon of Jesus on it, whether the ceremony were slow and awe-inspiring, or the quick, efficient march that we experience in some contemporary churches, it would be the same. 

It can never compare to the reality of being pressed like raw dough with the seal of the true cross, so as to be baked in the oven of tribulations, to come out as pure communion bread. That's our life in Christ, broken but not divided, eaten but not consumed. 

Christ is in our midst. He is, and ever shall be.

A man-loving God

Ο Μόνος Φιλάνθρωπος, o Mónos Philánthropos, the only lover of mankind, the only loving God. However you translate His name, it comes out the same, giving the lie to all who rely on His fierce anger to incinerate the unbeliever and the unrepentant. Aside from the ample hints throughout the scriptures that there will be a reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, we have no details, except what our imaginations supply, clouds and songs of praise and light for the one, fiery lake and demons and darkness for the other. Our imaginations supply us with these images of eternal blessedness and eternal damnation whether we are Christians or not, whether we believe in the Bible or not: these images are the common domain of all humanity. That's what makes them suspect. We cannot, or we should not, second guess God, especially those of us who believe a God who becomes Man and tells us, 'If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.'

I am no universal salvationist, but stay close as I can to the words of holy and divine scripture, yet I do not live in a religious world where God is roasting the unrepentant forever on the points of pitch forks. I don't know what punishments await the wicked or what joys are in store for the righteous, except what He reveals to me about myself here and now, nor who the wicked or the righteous be: I hope I will be numbered among the righteous, though I cannot see how that can possibly be, except only if the righteousness of Christ is covering me. Yet, I still believe in God who is Ο Μόνος Φιλάνθρωπος, o Mónos Philánthropos, the only lover of mankind, the only loving God. If it weren't plain enough in scripture, we have the testimony of the Church, which from the very beginnings has believed in this man-befriending God. How can anyone come away from reading the gospels or the epistles of the New Covenant without coming to this startling conclusion: God is love? Hear what an early father, a desert father, says,

The Lord, indeed, is the Lover of mankind so full of tender compassion whenever we turn completely toward Him and are freed from all things contrary. Even though we, in our supreme ignorance, childishness, and tendency toward evil, turn away from true life and place many impediments along our own path because we really do not like to repent, nevertheless, He has great mercy on us. He patiently waits for us until we will be converted and return to Him and be enlightened in our inner selves that our faces may not be ashamed in the Day of Judgment.

If that seems difficult and troublesome to us because practicing virtue is hard, but, more so, because of the insidious suggesting of the adversary, still He is very full of compassion, long-suffering and patient as He waits for our conversion. And when we do sin, He is ready to lift us up for He desires our repentance. And when we fall, He is not ashamed to take us back, as the Prophet says, “When men fall, do they not rise again? Or if one turns away, does he not return?” (Jeremiah 8:4) We only have to have a sincere heart and live in vigilance and be converted immediately after seeking His help and He Himself is most ready to save us. For He looks for our ardent will, as best we can, to turn toward Him. When we show good faith and promptness glowing from our desiring, then He works in us a true conversion.

Abba Makarios, 4th century

Watching

A sister in Christ wrote me the other day…

Two comments two different Christian people remarked to me today: “Surely the Lord is coming soon!” and, “Our country is being judged.” Short of joining the Conservative Mennonites as I did for six years, how will our grandchildren survive while being lulled to sleep, brain washed? We can’t serve the Lord and fill our eyes and minds with blasphemy as so many ‘Christians’ are doing today, Bibles and religious literature all over the house, but watching Desperate Housewives. “God is not mocked...” I can’t help but cry out, “Maranatha, even so Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

It was her observation ‘…Bibles and religious literature all over the house, but watching Desperate Housewives,’ that really caught my attention. Why? Because this is what I have seen all around me in almost every Christian community I have either lived in or visited, from conservative Baptist to Eastern Orthodox.

As humans, this is not what we were made for, and as Christians, this is not what we are called to be. The Message in all its fullness, that is what we were made for, what we are called to. This is nothing doctrinaire, this is not a political statement, though it’s true that we were made for the polis, that ancient Greek idea of living together.

We were made for unity in freedom, yet we find ourselves divided in slavery. The slogans of Ingsoc (English Socialism) as described in the negative utopian (at the time) futuristic fairy tale 1984 by George Orwell—“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”—have practically become the ethos of our ‘post-modern’ world, not articulated in words, but fulfilled in acts.

The other well-known futurist negative utopia, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, also comes close to portraying another side of our current reality—complete, unabated abandonment to self-gratification. Their slogans? Well, I blush to quote them— “Promiscuity is a citizen's duty. Everyone belongs to everyone else.”

A third negative utopian novel whose title, Fahrenheit 451, was recently hijacked by Michael Moore as the title for his negative anti-American film Fahrenheit 9/11, brings up another feature of our contemporary society that comes close to fulfilling its soul-distorting prophecies.

In the world of Fahreheit 451, the role of the fire department had changed. Rather than put out fires, they started them, specifically, they burned books, and when they found a house too full of them to be emptied and burned in the street, they burned down the house with its literary content (and sometimes its owner, as above).


In that world it was a crime to read books. The substitute? Twenty-four hour seven-days a week non-stop interactive big screen TV. The content of their programming? Literally wall-to-wall soap operas.

Well, maybe we haven’t gotten that bad yet. It isn’t a crime to read books. It’s just that people act as though it were. But the aspect of 24/7 entertainment at the expense of real life has certainly nearly taken us over. The misguided efforts of ‘Christian TV’ programming to ‘cover the earth with God’s Word’ seem to have had some rather sad side effects as well.

I know of many people whose entire spiritual focus is watching ‘Christian’ TV shows. As one of my sons has observed, they appear to be ‘worshiping the television set.’ This deviation has spread from the living room to the bed room to the kitchen and even into the bathroom, and from there, it has invaded the houses of worship of many denominations, to where you can’t be in the presence of God anymore. The ‘worship’ is just too flashy and loud, and fun.

‘Bibles and religious literature all over the house, but watching…’

Yes, watching what? Is it as the Word of God tells us, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41), and “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

But while we have this precious Word of God in our midst, rather than build our lives upon it as our foundation, we dismiss it casually, and join the romp to glorify our flesh as we can no longer ‘distinguish the stale from the fresh.’ We subsist on what is not even fit to be fed to hogs, when the feast of faith has been laid out before us ‘in the presence of our enemies.’

Lord Jesus Christ, living Son of living God and Word of Life,
have mercy upon us!

Trisaghion

Αγιος ο Θεός, Αγιος Ισχυρός, Αγιος Αθάνατος, ελέησον ημάς.
Aghios o Theós, Aghios Is’chyrós, Aghios Athánatos, eléïson imás.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!

One only is Holy, but He is God, He is Mighty, and He is Deathless. Not three Holies, but One, we know Him as God the Father, as His Mighty Son, and as His Deathless Holy Spirit. Even in this most ancient of all prayer cries, the undivided Triad is manifest. The undivided Trinity, as believed in and lived in the Holy Church for, yes, we do not presume to know the how, but the Who, of God.

We know that God is One. This is no secret even to the polytheist if he is a thinking man. Humankind did not evolve an idea of One God by gradually adding spirit to spirit, god to god, by a sort of mathematical reduction. If anyone has arrived at the idea of such a ‘one god’ in this fashion, that ‘god’ is certainly not the God of the Bible, not the God of Jesus Christ.

No, for the only God that is, the self-existing Divine Nature, revealed through His manifold works, the material universe and seen by the mind of rational men, was at the beginning with man, just as the Bible tells in the story of Adam and Eve and the original paradise. ‘The man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…’ (Genesis 3:8).

It was the devil’s envy that brought death into the world, as well as the worship of many gods. Man devolved from relational monotheism to religious polytheism. Religion in the Garden of Eden? Hardly! What would be the need? There God walked with man and spoke to us face to face. Religion only came upon our race as sickness comes, a sickness called sin that brings death.

Human beings the world over have always believed in the immortality of the soul, but this is an unfounded belief. It is more of a hope, and a vain hope, as there is no proof in nature of our personal survival of death. ‘Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’ (Ecclesiastes 3:21). We find ancient graves well-stocked for living somewhere.

Almost all religions believe something like this: ‘The soul of man is immortal and cannot die.’ This is what you find among Hindus, for example, who believe what is taught by their god Krishna, ‘That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul’ (Bhagavad Gita 2:17). For them, the ‘imperishable soul’ lives on through reincarnation.

For others, especially in East Asia, the souls of their ancestors are alive ‘somewhere’ and must be appeased, cared for, and helped. This is the most prevalent belief of most of humanity. In the three ‘Abrahamic’ faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this belief takes on added content: the good ‘go to heaven’ at death, the bad ‘go to hell.’ This is, of course, at the level of popular religion.

As C. S. Lewis has written, ‘To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression — like believing the earth is flat’ (Mere Christianity, Book 4, Chapter 1), and the same is true of the popular religion of the biblically illiterate everywhere. For many people, it’s just not worth the time and effort to learn and understand the truths of faith, what man is, who God is, and how He deals with us.

The soul of man, despite our wishful thinking, our pious hopes, and our individual speculations, is not immortal by nature. Only One is Immortal, just as only One is God, and only One is Mighty. Having been originally made in His image, our first parents shared in the Divine Nature, in Might, and in Immortality, but by their rebellion, the image of God in them and us was broken.

We are born into a fallen world, disfigured, that is, dis-imaged, damaged, and what would have been an immortal soul in us, is immortal no longer, by nature.

We live and move and have our being only in God, only by His grace, only by His gift, only by His remembrance of us. Why else do we find in the psalms the petition to ‘remember us’, why else did the thief say to Christ, ‘remember me’?

We are living souls only by the good will of our Creator, who remembers us in life and in death. The soul of man, as it turns out, is immortal after all, but not by nature. Our lives are in His hands. Whether we are alive in the body or gone to ‘be with the Lord’, it is all by His will, by His mercy. How totally we are dependent on Him for everything! Knowing He loves us removes the fear of death.

When we pray the Trisagion, ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!’ how true this prayer is, how wonderful that it has been revealed to us! We can depend on God, in fact He expects us to depend on Him, for everything, especially for our earthly life, and for the immortality that only He can grant us. There is so much more I would say if I could, but all I can say is, Thank You, Lord.

True to the core

This morning I have nothing to write, but to praise our good Lord for raising up His servants and giving them the courage to speak the truth, regardless of their station in life or position in society. I know the voice of Truth when I hear it speaking through a twenty-nine year old Christian brother unknown to the world, or when it is speaking through the highly visible pastor of the largest Christian community on earth. Neither may be ‘Orthodox’ by the criteria of the Church I belong to, but again I say, I know the voice of Truth when I hear it. I do not follow the man who speaks the words of Truth, but whoever he is, I rejoice that the words are spoken, and with him I seek to follow and obey no one but the only Teacher of mankind, who is the Truth in human form, that is, Jesus Christ. That being said, I want to share what Pope Francis is saying to the Church. God knows who He is speaking through and who He is speaking to.

Pope Francis on the Mission of the Church

I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds… And you have to start from the ground up.

The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. The confessor, for example, is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ‘This is not a sin’ or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.

How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage.

… We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound. In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

I say this also thinking about the preaching and content of our preaching. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. The homily is the touchstone to measure the pastor’s proximity and ability to meet his people, because those who preach must recognize the heart of their community and must be able to see where the desire for God is lively and ardent. The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.

Read more of what Pope Francis is saying at America Magazine.