DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO

September 4/17, 2000
THIRTEENTH SUNDAY OF ST. MATTHEW
Vol. XXXIII, No. 26(1499)

TO OUR READERS: We apologize for the  recent delays in publishing. This issue, dated September 4/17, actually was produced and distributed in December. We hope to  be caught up soon. Pray for us.

Epistle: First Corinthians  16:13-24. Gospel: Matthew 21: 33- 44-42. Tone: IV.
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    In his homily on the holy Feast of Lights [i.e. Theophany], Saint Gregory the Theologian relates, “I confess myself to be a man – that is to say, an animal shifty and of a changeable nature . . . I know that I too am encompassed with infirmity” [Homily 39:18].

    Some years ago, a woman came to me for confession. With a voice filled with remorse, she said to me, “Your Grace, I am a scoundrel.” Saint Gregory the Theologians words, mentioned above, flashed through my mind, and I replied to her, “Well then, welcome to the human race.”

    Saint Symeon the New Theologian, speaking of our flawed nature and God’s response to this condition, says: “Nearly all men reject the weak and the poor as objects of disgust; an earthly king cannot bear the sight of them, rulers turn away from them with revulsion and loathing, while the rich ignore them and pass them by when they meet them as though they did not exist: nobody thinks it is desirable to associate with them. But God, Who is served by myriads of powers without number, Who “sustains all things by the word of His power” [Hebrews 1:31], Whose majesty is beyond anyone’s endurance, has not disdained to become the father, the friend, the brother of those rejected ones. He willed to become incarnate so that He might become “like unto us in all things except for sin” [Hebrews 4:15] and make us to share in His glory and His kingdom. How astounding are the riches of His great goodness! How ineffable is the condescension of our Master and our God! [Discourse 2:4]”

    Indeed, Our Lord Jesus Christ did not disdain us, but He came to us when we were in our crippled condition. It is only necessary to consider the genealogy of our Savior, as it is recorded by the holy Apostles and Evangelist Matthew, to perceive that it includes such people as Rahab [formerly an idolatrous prostitute], Tamar [who played the part of a harlot], Ruth [who had been a Moabite idolater] and the Prophet King David [who was guilty of both adultery and murder].

    Yet, it was precisely for such as these that our Savior became incarnate.
“They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinner to repentance [Matthew 9:12-15].”

    Time and again, the Saints remind us that Christ became incarnate to rescue and liberate fallen Adam. As Saint Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, says:“Since our sinning made us strangers to God, the angels, God’s citizens, cut us off as strangers from their company. But . . . since the King of Heaven took upon Himself the weakness of our human body, the company of angels on high no longer despises us. The angels return to bring us peace, they put aside the reason for their earlier hostility; they now honor, as their companions those whom they had previously despised as weak and despicable. [Homily on Luke 2:1-14]”

    And again, standing in awe before God the Word’s great condescension, and the depth of His love in His becoming incarnate and being born in the flesh, Saint Isaac the Syrian prays: “Awake in me an understanding of Thy humility, wherewith Thou didst sojourn in the world in the tenement composed of our members, which by the mediation of the holy Virgin Thou didst bear, so that with this continual and unfailing recollection, I may accept the humility of my nature with delight [Homily Thirty-Six].

    Thus, in the writings of the Holy Fathers, my fellow Orthodox Christians, we find a wealth of insights into the cause for God’s “pitching up His tent among us,” as the Greek text of John 1:14 says literally. Nowhere here do we find Western scholasticism’s legalistic concerns over satisfying God the Father’s wrath, or the doctrine of our need to placate God’s allegedly insulted justice. On the contrary, in the God-inspired texts of the God-bearing Fathers, we find expressions of God’s desire to heal the violated and broken nature of mankind; of God’s desire to restore the ancient image to its primal glory; of God’s desire to bestow upon His beloved creature its original heritage and honor.

    Seeing, therefore, mankind now receiving the divine distinction which it had wrongfully and lawlessly sought to attain in Eden, heaven and earth exult, the Prophets rejoice, the Angels chant in glory, Saints skip for joy, and together with Saint Ephraim of Syria, the Holy Spirit’s melodious harp, they sing: “Divinity flew down and descended to raise and draw up humanity. The Son has made beautiful the servant’s deformity, and he has become a god, just as he desired [Hymns on Virginity, 48:17-18].”

    My beloved Orthodox Christians,

    Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!

    Your fervent suppliant unto God,
 

    +Ephraim, Metropolitan of Boston
 

Nativity of Our Savior
December, 2000
Protocol Number 1910
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    EASTON — Syndicated columnist George F. Will told graduates of Lafayette College yesterday that politicians who speak of values are contributing to a problem of declining virtues.

    “Unlike virtues, everyone has lots of values. Hitler had lots of values. But George Washington had virtues,” Will said. “When we move beyond talk of good and evil, when the categories of virtue and vice are transcended, we are left with the thin gruel of values-talk, the talk of a non-judgmental age, an age that is only judgmental about the sin of being judgmental.”

    The columnist went on to tell the 512 graduates, “Virtues are habits, difficult to develop and therefore not accessible to all. Therefore, speaking of virtues rather than values is considered elitist, offensive to democracy’s egalitarian, leveling ethos. I say that is precisely why talk of virtues should be revived and talk of values should be abandoned.”

    WASHINGTON, D.C.—If gay marriage is legalized, does the bride’s family pay for the wedding and reception? And how do you tell which one is the bride, anyway? Would there be a best man, or would that be the bride too? What about the maid of honor?

    I know, I know: I’m intolerant. But why is tolerance such an unquestioned virtue? And by the way, why is it a virtue demanded only of conservatives?

    You tolerate a thing when you put up with it despite your disapproval of it. But if you really disapprove of a thing, shouldn’t you try to do away with it, or at least discourage it? That depends.

    Today’s idea of tolerance has its origins in the policy of religious toleration. For centuries England tolerated Roman Catholics, who were regarded as heretics owing their chief loyalty to a foreign power (the papacy). But Roman Catholics were also barred from public offices, universities, and other positions of influence. Toleration wasn’t considered a virtue: it was only a po1icy, based on the assumption that ideally there should be no Roman Catholics in England. The policy was to allow Roman Catholicism to exist (in private), while discouraging people from embracing it.

    By today’s standards, such toleration was very intolerant. But by England’s lights, it was a perfectly rational policy. And many governments have followed that model, putting up with vice without giving it a moral sanction. There was a time when laws against prostitution and pornography went unenforced in certain parts of town, but when they ventured out into the “respectable” neighborhoods, they were sternly prosecuted.

    The principle was that vice, in order to be tolerable, must never pretend to be anything better than vice. The whore plied her trade without exalting it as “sexual freedom.” That was before Hugh Hefner, the porno-philosopher. Today every vice is a “right” (smoking excepted, of course).

    In our day, liberals are forever demanding that conservatives be more tolerant of everything from abortion to Communism. But liberals don’t merely tolerate such things; they approve and promote them—a very different matter.

    Liberals don’t just put up with abortion and sodomy; they want full legal and moral acceptance for such things, and they call even moral disapproval “intolerance” or “hate.” To say they “tolerate” such things is like saying the Pope tolerates Roman Catholics, or that Israel tolerates Jews. In a word, nonsense. If you like something, you don’t have to tolerate it.

    When liberals celebrate old Reds like Lillian Hellman and her lover Dashiell Hammett as heroes and victims, they don’t mention the monstrous evil of Communism or the moral responsibility of those who supported it. They don’t think Hellman and Hammett need forgiveness; they think it was actually quite admirable of them to hold such “progressive” views against the “intolerant” society around them.

    On the other hand, liberals aren’t particularly tolerant of smokers, gun owners, pro-lifers, or conservatives. They hate them, and they want to cause them as much trouble as possible, even by circumscribing their legal rights. It was thanks to anti-abortion protesters that liberals finally discovered limits to the First Amendment.
Tolerance is a virtue when you put up with a lesser evil for the sake of a greater good, such as social peace. It isn’t a virtue at all—it becomes a vice—when it means abandoning your moral standards out of cowardice or pusillanimity. We tolerate a lot in our families for the sake of preserving love and kindness; we tolerate a certain amount of noise and bother from our neighbors for the sake of general harmony. But if you tolerate your son’s heroin habit, you deserve to be called something harsher than “tolerant.”

    At its best, tolerance is charitable patience with human weakness, out of love for the person. It shows itself in the disposition to listen to others and to make an effort of imagination to understand their feelings and point of view. You may still disapprove of what they do, but you’ve given them a fair chance to explain themselves.

    A lot of people who call for tolerance these days probably wouldn’t recognize the real thing.
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    Wall calendar with liturgical dates and daily saints listed according to the Julian Calendar.  Color coded for feasts and fasts Pascha dates to the year 2015.  Calendar backs feature quotations from the writings of the Holy Fathers. Accompanied by booklet with daily scripture readings for entire year
$6.00 + shipping 

    Handy size (3-1/2x5 in.) for pocket or purse. Contains major daily  feast, HOCNA directory, fasting instructions, 10 years of Pascha dates, and space for notes and phone numbers.  $2.00 + shipping

Full color illustrations from the churches of Chora & St. Sophia in Constantinople. Oct. 2000-Dec. 2001. Descriptions on the back of each photograph. 6-3/4 x 9-1/2 inches with hanger and fold-out stand on back. e$12.00 + shipping

Mosaics and views of Hagia Sophia in full color. Small size (3-3/8 x 6-1/4) is perfect for desk and as a “stocking stuffer.” Has hanger and fold-out stand on back. Oct. 2000 – Dec. 2001   e$5.00 + shipping

    This book is an engaging, scholarly work by one of the most profound and provocative Orthodox theologians of our time. “Fr. Michael…gives an expositon of our Holy Orthodox Faith and defends its position in the present cultural relativistic society. He maintains the patristic spirit of holding fast to the uniqueness of Orthodoxy that offers the truth of salvation only through Christ.”

           Rev. George C. Papademetriou, Assoc. Professor. Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology