Glory be to Jesus Christ!
Just a few things:
1. Divine Liturgy: Hearing of confessions and the reading of the hours at 9:30 a.m. Divine Liturgy at 10:00 a.m.
2. Just wanted to send a shoutout to my brother-in-law Andrew and his wife Kathy who were joined together in the Holy Sacrament of Marriage in Calgary on July 31, 2010 in Calgary. It was a lovely wedding. God grant you many years.
3. I came across a cartoon of a priest sitting with one of his parishoners. The priest says to his parishoner, “Stop focushing on what you can’t do in the church, and start focusing on what you can do. You’ll find that a shorter list is much more manageable.”
I thought it was kind of funny and got me thinking about how we approach things in our church life. There are those who will look at the Holy Orthodox Church and say, “Man, you have a lot of “don’ts” in your church. Don’t you find it restrictive or even oppresive?” If you think about it, we can be a “restrictive” church. We fast, we abstain, we have penance, we have rules about when we can have celebrations such as weddings, we have restrictions on who can be ordained, who can approach the chalice. If we were telling someone about Holy Orthodox, it might be a hard sell.
But as I think about all the so-called ”don’ts” I realize that in those supposed restrictions, we find something sorely lacking in our fallen world. We find order. Satan is all about disorder, disruption, disunity. When we sin, when we go contrary to the teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our Holy Orthodox Church, we allow Satan to have his moment of disorder because we seperate ourselves from God and create disorder between ourselves and Him.
Our world lacks order. In medival times there would be a hierarch, a ruler, a king, whatever, that would provide leadership, stability, unity, order. For us, we have only one king and that is our Heavenly Father. The ”Thou shall nots” of the Ten Commandments given by Him, and the fulfillment of the God’s love for humanity found in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His teachings, His very life, provides us with order.
God gave us a great gift when He created us. He gave us freedom of will. He gave us choice. However, with that freedom of will, with the ability to choose, there comes an awesome responsibility. (Or as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I am a comic book geek.) That responsibility is to use this gift wisely and compassionately. When we chose to use it selfishly we create disorder, disharmony, disunity.
The so-called rules and restrictions that some would find oppressive in Holy Orthodox Church, are in fact very liberating because they are given by a loving Father who is God in Heaven, and a loving Mother which is our Holy Church for our benefit and well being. We are all called to be obedient, not out of fear of punishment, but out of love. Just as a child will hopefully be obedient to his or her parents because she trusts and believes that they will protect, nurture and provide for that child so that the child will learn to pass that on, we too trust and believe that our loving Father, our loving King, will protect, nurture, and provide for us.
All the so-called restrictions, the “can’t dos” one will supposedly find in the Holy Orthodox Church teach us to be humble, to be compassionate, to be respectful, to be discerning, to be sacrificial and provide us with something we so desperately need in our lives today: order and stability.
Answer to last week’s question:
Which Old Testament book has a verse in it which is taken as a Messianic prophecy about Jesus being betrayed by a friend? The book of Psalms (41:9)
This week’s question:
In Matthew’s Gospel, which two women were the first people to see Jesus alive again?
See you in church.
In Christ,
Fr. Evan
