Category Archives: Spirituality

The Book of Tobit – Chapters 4-5

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Tobias and RaphaelChapter Four – Dying Wishes

Following the prayers of both Tobit and Sarah, we are presented with one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture (in my humble opinion).

Tobit realizes that since he has petitioned the Almighty for death, he should probably get his affairs in order (just in case God acquiesces and grants him his wish of an early death). As such, he calls for Tobias and not only reminds him of the lot of silver in Rages of Media (Tobit 4:1), but also gives to him some parting thoughts and commandments (4:3-19).

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Fasting of Time

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“Life is long if you know how to use it.” -Seneca

Clock on fireSo much of the modern life is wasted in vain pursuits.

Fame, popularity, wealth, “happiness,” pleasure, self-depreciation, self-love, selfishness, hoarding, lust, anger, jealousy, entertainment … I could go on.

And in America, we are given everything needed to – in many cases, instantaneously – satisfy all of these vain pursuits or desires, handed to us on the proverbial silver platter. This is the “way of the world” for us, and it is no wonder you have nations like Iran calling Americans “decadent” and “the Great Satan.” Sure, they’re Islamic extremists, but they have a point. Guilty as charged. Our culture is – for the most part – brain-dead and soulless.

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A Gospel of Doing

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Saint Symeon the New TheologianGiven the variety of ways that the scriptures speak of “being saved” or “inheriting eternal life,” it is always somewhat of a shock for me to encounter people that do not see such diversity and who insist that to “be saved” one must simply believe. And this belief unto salvation is always kept separate from the idea of good works or “doing something” in order to be saved.

While I was once part of a faith tradition that taught such “easy believism,” I am certainly distant from such thought and practice these days – and this becomes all the more apparent the more I encounter this viewpoint as an Orthodox Christian.

However, what is clear to me now (and was becoming clear to me in my life prior to Orthodoxy) is just how explicit the scriptures are that we must be “doing something” in order to ultimately be saved.

Perhaps the main disconnect comes with this idea of “being saved?”

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The Book of Tobit – Chapter 3

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Chapter Three – The Prayers for Healing

The Archangel Michael and the DragonTobit is filled with “sorrow” and “pain” and turns to the Lord in penitential prayer (Tobit 3:1). His great prayer can be divided into three overall parts:

  1. Praise directed towards the Lord: “O Lord, You are righteous. So too are all Your works. All Your ways are mercy and truth. Your judgments are true and just forever” (Tobit 3:2).
  2. Repentance and ‘Lord, have mercy’ on himself and on his fathers before him (that is, Israel – now in exile because of their disobedience): “Remember me and look upon me with favor. Do not punish me for my sins and my ignorance, nor those sins of my fathers which they committed against You. Because they disobeyed Your commands, so You gave us as spoil, captivity and death. You made us a byword of disgrace among all the nations in which we were scattered. Now Your judgments concerning my sins are many and they are true, because I did them, and so did my fathers. For we did not keep Your commandments. Indeed we did not walk in truth before You” (Tobit 3:3-5).
  3. A request to die in peace: “Now do with me as is best before You. Command that my spirit be taken up, so I may be released and become soil, since it is better for me to die than to live. For I have heard false insults, and there is much sorrow within me. Command that I be freed from distress to now enter into the eternal place. Do not turn Your face away from me” (Tobt 3:6).

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Lent, Have Mercy

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Giving up TV for LentWell, it is that time of year again: the time of year when a great number of people in the world – for seemingly no particular reason at all – “give up something” for Lent. Buddhist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Agnostic, Baptist … they’re all in, it seems.

For many, it is nothing more than an attempt at “discipline.” We can liken this to “new year’s resolutions” – those pesky ideals that help drive retail sales of vitamins, energy bars and exercise equipment around the first two weeks of January. I say “an attempt at discipline,” because – for the most part – no one really follows through or makes it out of January alive. This is not because the ambitions are beyond one’s potential reach, necessarily, but because we live in a culture of excess, self-satisfaction and pleasure, and are simply ill-equipped (most of us having a “will” that is in bondage to sin and not wholly “free”) to handle the prospect of extended discipline.

In these cases, it doesn’t really matter what “faith tradition” one comes from, and the “fad” of “giving up stuff for Lent” is neither spiritual nor inherently Christian. It is empty, bare, legalistic, pseudo-asceticism practiced by those without any experience of the true asceticism of the Church. Like most things in America today, it is a trend that will eventually go by the wayside. One can only hope, honestly.

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Orthodox Milk

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“We have much to say [...] but it is hard to explain because you have become slow at understanding. For although by this time you should be teachers, you still need to have someone teach you even the basic principles of God’s oracles. You have come to need milk, and not solid food. Everyone who lives on milk is not experienced in the word of righteousness; such a person is a baby. But solid food is for those who are fully grown, who have trained their senses to discern good and evil.”
Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews 5:11-14

Milk from GreeceI think we Orthodox Christians in the United States underestimate just how much our culture influences, shapes and controls us, and that in a profoundly negative way. Orthodox Christianity “across the pond” has been through some interesting times, to say the least.

What was once really no more than a small, newly-founded missionary effort has since become a place of excitement and the locus of promising growth for the Orthodox Church – even in spite of the many difficulties that were presented by the communist rule over Russia and into eastern Europe in recent memory (and our disconnect with their past). But still, despite the introduction of Orthodoxy to the American culture in the last century or so, we must come to grips with the predominate, individualistic, “whatever works for you” worldview that pervades every aspect of society (and churches).

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Saint Paul and the Apocalyptic Visions of Second Temple Judaism

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An Orthodox Icon of the Prophet EnochAs I continue to examine Second Temple apocalyptic literature, it seems more and more likely that St Paul was drawing on his vast knowledge of this work at times in order to help make illustrations or “give wings” to many of the themes and ideas he was espousing throughout his epistles in the early years of the Church.

For example, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, St Paul makes a connection between the culmination of the priesthood of Melchizedek and Jesus Christ Himself. He of course makes reference to Psalm 109:4 (LXX): “The Lord swore and will not repent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’”  Beyond this, he also intimates that the Melchizedek order was always superior to that of the Levites (e.g. 7:4-10), and that a “change in the priesthood” necessitated a “change in the law” (liturgically speaking, cf. 7:11-12) as well.

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True Prayer and the Spirit

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Orthodox Icon of Saint Innocent of Alaska

“The Holy Spirit teaches true prayer. No one, until he receives the Holy Spirit, can pray in a manner truly pleasing to God; because if anyone who does not have the Holy Spirit begins to pray, his soul is distracted in different directions from one thing to another, and he cannot fix his thoughts on any one thing. Moreover, he does not know properly either himself or his own need, or how to ask or what to ask of God, in fact he does not even know what God is like. But a person in whom the Holy Spirit dwells knows God and sees that He is his Father, and knows how to approach Him, and how to ask and what to ask of Him. His thoughts during prayer are orderly, pure, and aspire to a single object – God. And by prayer he can do literally anything, and can even move mountains from place to place.”

Saint Innocent of Alaska, Indication of the Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven, p. 33

Hypocrisy as the American Dream

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AntigoneNo doubt the result of several fairly recent historical developments, American “Christianity” has produced a whole generation of hypocrites. The hypocrisy of which I’m speaking is found most commonly at the individual level and is part and parcel of our relativistic, “whatever works for you” culture. To put it in fancy, theological words, American Christians have become ontologically and epistemologically Modalists.

Modalism (or Sabellianism) was a heresy that spread in the first few centuries of the Church and espoused that God was one Person but that He simply took on different “modes” or “forms” (as a single Person). God the Father was one “form,” and then He revealed Himself as the “form” of God the Son and then finally as God the Holy Spirit. At no one time were all three “forms” existing concurrently. It was as if God simply put on a different “mask” whenever it suited Him. This is a denial of the Orthodox view of the Trinity, of course, wherein God is three Persons in one Essence (without beginning or end).

Unfortunately, as an aside, there are many actual Modalist movements in the world today, such as some branches of Pentecostalism. Really, any “church” that emphasizes the Holy Spirit over Christ and the Father are semi-Modalist in scope, and this is easy to spot because of their emphasis on “experiences” of the Holy Spirit and ecstatic, chaotic nonsense – while they de-emphasize or undermine the role of the Church (which is the Body of Christ) and His Incarnation and role as its Head (remember, Christ said He would never leave us – cf. St Matt. 28:18-20) as well as the leadership role of men (a de-emphasis of the role of God the Father in the union of the Trinity) in the Church. In other words, just turn your television to TBN and you’ll see this clearly.

The word “hypocrite” comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις which can mean “play-acting” or “coward” depending on the context, and was also used in reference to a stage actor in the ancient world. In other words, someone who played several different characters on stage was a “hypocrite,” as he adorned different masks, costumes and voices to play varying characters. He was not a solitary Person with a single “form,” but a Person with multiple “forms” or appearances, depending on the context (and never more than one “form” at once).

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