DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN, ARCHBISHOP OF SHANGHAI AND SAN
FRANCISCO
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS (USPS 412-260)
is published monthly by St. Nectarios American Orthodox Cathedral,
10300 Ashworth Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98133-9410.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
OCW, 10300 Ashworth Ave. N., Seattle, WA. 98133-9410
Fr. Neketas S. Palassis, Editor Email: frneketas@stnectariospress.com
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Fax: 206-523-0550
OCTOBER, 2004, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 10 (1541)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. A Sane Family in an Insane World
2. New Items from the Book Center
The more closely attentive you are to your mind, the greater the
longing with which you will pray to Jesus; and the more carelessly you
examine your mind, the further you will separate yourself from Him.
Just as close attentiveness brilliantly illumines the mind, so the
lapse from watchfulness and from the sweet invocation of Jesus will
darken it completely. All this happens naturally, not in any other way;
and you will experience it if you test it out in practice. For there is
no virtue -- least of all this blessed light - generating activity --
which cannot be learnt from experience.
St. Hesychius the Priest
1. A SANE FAMILY IN AN INSANE WORLD
By Fr. Seraphim Johnson
"Take heed to thyself, and keep thine heart diligently: forget
not any of the things which thine eyes have seen, and let them not
depart from thine heart all the days of thy life. And teach them to thy
children and thy grandchildren." Deuteronomy 4:9.
The Fallen World is Insane.
God has given all men clear principles for living in the world
He created. These principles are most clearly stated in the Scriptures
and the teachings of the Church and shown in the lives of the Saints,
but they are also written in our hearts, as the Apostle Paul says. They
are the truth about the world as it really is. But we don't want to
follow these principles because they hinder our living as we want to
live. So we have two choices: "In the intellectual life, one either
conforms desire to truth or truth to desire."1 That is, we can adjust
the way we live to bring it into agreement with the truth that God has
revealed to us, or we can distort the truth to make it agree with the
way we choose to live. One of these ways is sanity: to live in the real
world made by God. The other way is insanity: to live in a fantasy
world of our creation.
As Christians, we all would confess that the world is fallen;
i.e., it has departed from God and the purpose for which He created it.
The world is corrupt, bent, and perverted; it is no longer the true
world which God created. But in our lives we act all too often as if
this fallen world is the way God meant it to be. We proclaim the truth
of the spiritual life with our lips, but in our hearts we are not
really too sure that it is real. We are caught up in what our senses
tell us, and we have trouble going behind them to see the spiritual
reality of our fallen world, with the result that in our daily lives we
forget the truth that this world is not our home. If our senses were
reliable, it would not be so dangerous to depend on them, but because
of the fall and our disobedience, our senses are corrupted. They do not
show us the world as it really is, but rather they filter it through a
screen of error and lies. The result is that we live in a world of
fantasy. Of course, I don't mean a world like Harry Potter or Star
Wars. We know these worlds are fantasies, but we think we live in the
"real world." And we don't.
Our fantasies tell us that we can have all the things we want,
that we can live however we want, ignoring God and His commandments.
God is an abstract concept in this fantasy, rather than the Source of
everything and the Ruler of everything. In our blindness, we think we
can live in ways He tells us not to, that we can fool Him and hide from
Him; as the Psalmist says, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is
no God" (Ps. 13:1).
Now, let us stop and think for a minute. What do we call someone who
thinks he is all-powerful? Who thinks he can command the elements? Who
thinks he is Napoleon, or Jesus Christ, or Alexander the Great? We call
them "insane." Insane because they are living in a fantasy world, a
world which is unreal, a world of delusion. And yet when we deny God's
created world and live in our own made-up world, are we not just as
insane?
This insanity is all around us. It informs the thinking of
virtually all the "wise" men and women of this world. Those who have
been the leaders of thought in recent centuries, who have laid the
foundation for the world in which we live, have chosen to conform truth
to their desires, rather than subjecting their desires to the truth. In
doing this, they have taught false principles which have filtered into
the thinking of almost every person in Western culture.
As the English scholar C. S. Lewis notes:
"There is something which unites magic and applied science while
separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of
old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality,
and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For
magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to
the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the
practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as
disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead."2
The characteristic of many of the founders of our modern world
has in fact been uncontrolled sexual passion, expressed as adultery or
homosexuality. Margaret Mead and Edward Sapir, the founders of the
social science of anthropology, were adulterers and Mead was also a
lesbian; they wrote their accounts of the lives of primitive people,
supposedly unaffected by the evils of civilization and therefore
displaying mankind in its "original" and "proper" form, to support
their own immoral lives.3 Freud, the founder of the modern "talking
therapy" psychoanalysis, which acts as a secular substitute for the
Church's Mystery of Confession, engaged in an incestuous relationship
with his sister-in-law for years, and based his Oedipus theory on his
own sexual perversions.4 The father of modern economic theory, John
Maynard Keynes, was part of a group of active, promiscuous homosexuals,
and his economic theories encouraging deficits and debt have guided
Western governments for decades.5 We could go on, citing examples from
art, literature, the universities, etc. But the point is clear: the
leading thinkers of our civilization chose their desires over the
truth. And therefore, the leading thinkers of our civilization were
truly and literally insane, out of touch with reality; and the world
they created is insane, because it denies the reality of God and His
Will.
There is another fact we need to note about the perverted
thinking of these "leading intellectuals." Homosexuals cannot have
children, and adulterers above all do not want to have children. Both
are strongly anti-child, because either they cannot have them, or
having them might reveal their sinful way of life to the world. This
anti-child attitude has several consequences. The first is
shortsightedness. Having children is an investment in the future. When
you have a child, you are participating in God's plan for the
continuation of the world. And you care about the future. You care what
happens to your child, you care what kind of life your child will lead,
you care what kind of world your child will live in. But when you have
decided against children, your focus is on yourself and your own
immediate desires. Who cares about the future, since "in the long run
we will all be dead"? This is so vividly clear in Keynesian economic
theory, which encourages building up huge debts through spending beyond
one's income so that the present life will be comfortable, but it has
no concern for future generations that will inherit these debts.
The anti-child view of life is expressed in another way:
children are a burden which we should try to be rid of. If the birth of
a child would be inconvenient, the mother should have the right to kill
it in the womb through abortion. Once the child is born, the parents
should not allow themselves to be inconvenienced by it unduly, but
should put the child in day-care as soon as possible, so the mother can
return to self-fulfillment through working outside the home. It has
become somehow wrong and even "sick" for a mother to prefer to raise
her children, rather than to get rid of them as soon as possible and go
back to work. Don't sacrifice for your children; let them sacrifice for
you! Again, disciplining children and raising them to be civilized
rather than savages is difficult and time-consuming work. It interferes
constantly with the parents' self-fulfillment and enjoyment. So those
who have absorbed the anti-child, anti-future way of thinking taught,
for example, by the infamous Dr. Spock, ignore raising their children.
The child is a burden to be ignored and shunned as much as possible.
"Let the schools train them, let their peers train them, let anyone
train them, but leave me alone!" And the result is children who have
been ruined, who have no sense of being loved, who have no limits, who
have no self-control because they have never been controlled. Children
who are themselves insane, because they have been raised by insane
parents who ignored their God-given responsibility to train up their
children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6).
As the social philosophies of these insane thinkers have
infiltrated all our institutions - schools and universities, art,
movies and literature, political thinking, and even churches - they
have taken over the minds of almost everyone living in Western
civilization. Their insanity is plainly seen in many of our social
policies. For decades we paid unmarried mothers a subsidy from the
government, and then we were shocked to find more illegitimate
children. We have a whole social and tax system which discourages
marriage, and then we wonder why so many people live together without
getting married. This is insanity! And, sadly, most Christians share in
this insanity. Surveys by the Barna group show that 64% of all American
adults and 83% of teenagers think there is no absolute moral truth, but
that truth is relative to the individual; i.e., that we should conform
the truth to our desires. But even more discouraging is the fact that
only 32% of so-called "born again" Christian adults and 9% of
"born-again" teenagers in America believe in moral absolutes.6 I wonder
what the figures would be for Orthodox Christians. I fear they would
not be much better.
The Christian Task is to Restore Sanity.
Thanks be to God, though, for He has not abandoned us Orthodox
Christians to insanity. Our Lord Jesus Christ was born into this insane
world for one reason, and only for one reason: to restore fallen,
insane human beings to sanity. True sanity is obedience to God. Sanity
is taking your God-given place in the great fabric of creation and
fulfilling the tasks God has placed before you. But for fallen,
disobedient mankind, this is not possible. Only the God-Man Jesus
Christ could restore the possibility of obedience to the fallen
creation, and only through obedience can we become sane.
"Let us remember that man's body and soul are called equally. Both are
to be united to God through virtue: to be sanctified, deified,
glorified, and to manifest in this world God's glory and the first
fruits of the Kingdom through the transfiguring presence of the Spirit.
'I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your
flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and
to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to
righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye
were free from righteousness' (I Cor. 6:19-20). It is clear, according
to the Apostle's teaching, that the body's proper and natural purpose
is to be consecrated to God, to glorify God, and to be a bearer of the
Holy Spirit, every bit as much as the soul with which it is united."7
Before our Lord Jesus Christ, men created religions of their own to try
to make the gods conform to their wishes. All the world's religions are
designed either to propitiate angry, capricious gods and keep them from
harming people or to attract the gods' favor so they will do what their
worshippers want. In either case, they are another attempt to conform
the truth to our desires, rather than our desires to the truth. We want
to do what we want, but we fear we might offend the gods, so we come up
with rituals and sacrifices to buy them off, to make them leave us
alone. That way, we hope to be able to get away with living our own way
and avoid their punishment. Or we think we can bribe the gods with our
prayers, offerings, and rites so that they will do what we want. Many
pagan religions have elaborate spells and rituals which supposedly can
compel spirit beings to do what the magician or shaman wants. Their
religion manipulates the gods so that they will allow men to live as
they wish. Even the apparently higher religions like Buddhism are
subtle ways of having one's own will. The Buddhist who follows the
higher, purer forms of his religion recognizes no god at all. He is on
his own in the world. He may find certain principles of living which
will supposedly detach him from the power of the world, but in the end
he is living as he wishes with no authority over him.
The attraction Islam has for so many people at the present
time is of the same sort. It has a set of external acts that must be
performed: prayer five times a day, fasting in Ramadan, almsgiving,
pilgrimage, avoiding alcohol, etc. These will satisfy Allah, and a man
is then free to do what he wants, to be as vicious and power-hungry as
he wants.
God saw mankind following all sorts of religions, all of them derived
from Satan, all of them in truth ways for human beings to try to
conform the world to their desires. When he decided to rescue His
fallen creatures, He revealed Himself to selected individuals: Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses. God gave the Jews the Law so that they
might come to understand His nature and see their own disobedience, and
be prepared for our Lord who would show them how to return to
obedience. But they turned the Law into just another religion, another
system for buying God off. They tabulated the rules, then they made
additional rules, so that if you kept their new rules, you wouldn't
violate God's rules. And if you kept all the rules, then you were
worthy of God's kingdom. But in fact, a Jew does not even have to
believe in God; he just has to keep the rules. He can lie and cheat and
deceive non-Jews, since the Law does not forbid this, and he is still a
good Jew.
All religions have the same purpose: follow the rules, and the
gods/Allah/spirits will leave you alone and let you do what you want.
That is, 98% of your life is your own, to live as you wish, so long as
you give 2% to your rituals. But sadly, this is just more insanity.
Christianity, though, is not one more religion among all these
others. Our Lord's purpose was not to give us a set of rules and rites
to follow to buy God off. He did not come to show us how to appease
God, He came to show us how to please God. Christianity is not a set of
rules, but a way of life designed to cure the sickness of disobedience.
The purpose of Christianity is to change men's hearts and minds so they
are conformed to God and become healthy again as before the Fall.
Christianity is not rules; it is life, it is sanity. It makes it
possible for us to live a sane life in the world God has made. A
Christian can never properly say, "There, I've followed all the rules,
so God is in my debt and can't punish me." Insane followers of
religions can say this (although they're wrong), but all a sane
Christian can ever say is, "I'm a sinner who has fallen short of God's
will for me."8
Of course, this means that Christianity is hard, because it
demands that we conform our wills to the world God has created. It
would be so much easier to force the world to obey us! To use our
religious rituals or our science to make the world the way we want it!
But Christianity says that we have to do the opposite: we have to make
ourselves the way God wants us. And we don't want to do that. After
all, that's what the Fall was about in the first place: Adam and Eve
wanted the world on their terms, not God's. And even after Baptism, we
continue to want the world our own way.
Because of this, Christians all through history have busily
been converting Christianity into a religion. Seeing that it's hard to
transform one's whole life through total obedience to God, they try to
adjust Christianity, to make it a set of rules and rituals. Then they
can follow the rules, and the rest of life is their own. So we take the
need to pray always, and we turn it into reading prayers for 10 minutes
in the morning and the evening. We take the need to deny ourselves, and
turn it into fasting on Wednesday and Friday (or at least abstaining
from certain kinds of food on those days, even though we still eat as
much as we want). We take the need to live constantly in God's
presence, and turn it into a requirement to go to Liturgy for two hours
on Sunday morning. We take the requirement to be holy, even as our God
is holy, and turn it into the Ten Commandments. Some of us even use
vows and promises to try to force God to do our will. In other words,
many Orthodox Christians work hard to turn Christianity into just
another systems of rules and rituals.
When that happens, we stop conforming our wills to God, and we start
trying to conform the world to our desires. We take the tremendous gift
our Lord has given us - the gift of restoring our relationship with
God, of making it possible for us to be what we were created to be -
and we destroy it. We turn it into something corrupt and pointless. And
we destroy any chance of being healed from the sickness of
disobedience. We turn from the hope of sanity and go back to the
insanity of the fallen world. And then we wonder why Christianity
doesn't seem to have any power. Why it doesn't seem to make a
difference in our lives. And, even worse, we destroy the hope of sanity
for our families.
Creating a Sane Family.
We have seen that our task as Christians is to become sane, but if we
live in a family, we have an additional task: to make our family sane
too. As spouses, we need to help our spouse to sanity; and as parents,
we need to lead our children to sanity. But just as we so often lose
sight of our quest for sanity in our own lives, even more do we forget
about it with our families. And then, as one elder in Greece said:
"Just think, parents come and complain about all sorts of
problems they face with their sons and daughters. I remind them that
whatever they consider to be their child's problem is really not the
primary issue. The primary issue is whether their son or daughter has
an authentic relationship with the living God. If not, then this vacuum
will unavoidably be filled by vices such as drugs, promiscuity,
drinking, sloth, you name it. But when they establish a right
relationship with God, then all other problems will eventually find
their resolution. That's how things work."9
So often we parents forget about restoring sanity to our
children and settle instead for trying to make them be good. We give
them a set of rules we expect them to follow, and then we get angry or
sad when they don't follow them. But we do not set before them the real
goal of Christian living. Remember, God does not want you or your
children to be good, He wants you all to be holy. These are not the
same thing at all. Goodness is following the rules, holiness is
becoming like God. Deification is the route to sanity. Of course, if
you become like God, you will generally be good, although at times your
"goodness" will not agree with the world's definition of goodness. But
being good will never make you holy.
Parents at home are likely to reinforce this misunderstanding.
They stress outward behavior. They want their children to be "good" in
public; i.e., not to throw tantrums when they're little, not to drink
too much, or use drugs, or drive too fast when they get older. But they
don't hold up the ideal of holiness. And even worse, they don't show it
in their own lives. Children are very perceptive. They see what really
matters to their parents, and all too often they see that the Christian
life is not what matters to their parents. They are expected to go to
church on Sunday and major feast days, to fast, to say prayers in a
rote way morning and evening, not to talk back, and generally not to
fight too blatantly with their brothers and sisters. When they get
older, they are told not to drink too much, not to give in to sexual
temptations, not to drive too fast. And that's it. That's Christianity
as far as they are concerned. These poor children can't see any reason
for the rules they're given. They are just arbitrary. Who cares if you
eat meat on Friday? Is God some kind of judge who keeps track of your
faults in a big book? That idea is soon outgrown, and then there is no
motivation for "being good." Then the parents wonder why their children
are not turning out the way they want them to. Why aren't they going to
church and being good Orthodox Christians?
But a better question is: why should they be good Orthodox
Christians if they have never been given an understanding of what
Orthodox Christianity is? If we raise them to think Christianity is no
more than a set of unmotivated rules, imposed arbitrarily by a distant
God for Whom we have no feeling and of Whom we have no knowledge, why
would we expect them to follow those rules when they are old enough to
start thinking for themselves. We have made Christianity just another
of the many competing religions, not the way to come to know the living
God and become like Him. We have deprived our children of motivation,
and they respond by being unmotivated.
So what can we do? The husband and wife have to start with
themselves and their mutual relationship. Each of them must keep the
true goal of Christianity before their eyes all the time, and they must
use all the weapons and tools the Church offers to become sane
Christians. They must be on guard all the time, lest they be corrupted
and misled by the insanity of the world around them. They must think,
study, compare, always asking if this thought or action is compatible
with Christian sanity. They must be vigilant and watchful in their own
lives, and focus on establishing a living relationship with God, a
relationship which is not just intellectual, but which determines how
they live in all aspects of their lives.
Along with this focus on their own individual holiness, the
husband and the wife must each make it their goal in life to bring
their spouse to holiness. Following the ideals of the world, even
Christian people marry for completely wrong reasons. Some marry for
sexual satisfaction, some marry for companionship, but in almost all
cases they marry because they expect to get something from the
marriage: support when they are down, understanding, etc. But a
Christian should marry, not for what he or she can get, but for what
they can give. The purpose of Christian marriage is not to be
supported, but to support; not to be encouraged, but to encourage; not
even to attain one's own salvation, but to help another to salvation.
Too often a husband and wife act like fleas on a dog: all they want is
to draw their own nourishment, not to nourish the other. But as
Christians, our first concern must be our spouse's relationship with
the Lord, leading to transfiguration and salvation. Husbands, you need
to help your wives become holy! Wives, you need to lead your husbands
to become like God! If you are saved without your spouse, what a grief
and shame that would be!
This is the major reason the Church discourages, or even
prohibits, marriage to non-Orthodox Christians. How can you attain the
primary purpose of marriage - mutual holiness - if you do not even have
the same goal in life? How can an insane person help you become sane?
And can you really live a sane life when you are yoked to an insane
person? Will you not constantly be drawing apart, heading in different
directions? Or will you, the Orthodox spouse, in fact be drawn in the
direction of the world and insanity?
The husband and wife are crowned in marriage, because God
intends them to be a new kingdom on this earth. The husband is the
king, the wife the queen; together they are to create an island of
sanity in the midst of an insane world. And when they are given
children, these are their subjects, to be trained as citizens of the
sane kingdom, the Kingdom of God in the larger sense, and the kingdom
of the sane family in the narrower sense. There is nothing more
important for the father and mother, after their mutual salvation, than
the sanity of their children.
To raise sane children in a sane kingdom, you cannot be
satisfied with a set of rules. This is itself insanity, since it does
not offer a reason for obedience to these rules. The children must be
presented from their earliest years with the vision of what it means to
lead a sane life, and they must be cautioned to understand that the
world around them is insane in its opposition to God. Parents cannot
let their children immerse themselves in the music, books, television,
and way of life of the fallen world and then think that prayers in the
morning and evening, fasting on Wednesday and Friday, and church on
most Sundays will make their children Orthodox Christians. If your
children are filled with the mythologies of Star Wars or Harry Potter,
which are not in any way Christian; if they learn from their friends
that sexual purity is "no big deal"; if they fill their waking hours
with music which is Satanic in its inspiration, this is what will
determine their outlook. And no amount of time in church, fasting, or
prayers read from a book will influence them.
We Orthodox Christians have the most amazing, most powerful,
most wonderful possibility offered to us: to become like God, to be
deified, to be transfigured! But we don't present that possibility to
our children, because we don't accept it for ourselves. Children are
not stupid or blind. They see much more than we want them to see. We
pay lip service to sanity, while we pursue the good things of this
insane world in our own lives and we think that our children will not
notice. But they do! They see what we really care about. And if they
see we don't care about mutual support in the way of deification, they
most assuredly won't care about it either! We wonder why our children
are not the Orthodox Christians we would like them to be, when the
answer is perfectly plain: we are not the Orthodox Christians we are
called to be, and they are simply following our example. If we don't
take the wondrous possibility of deification seriously, no set of rules
we try to impose on our children (or ourselves, for that matter) will
produce true Orthodox Christians.
Of course, you cannot force another person to holiness. It is
always possible that your spouse or child will turn from God for a time
or for good. You cannot stop them, if that is their free choice, but if
you have not encouraged them and helped them by modeling for them the
true life in Christ, you will answer before God for neglecting what is
in fact the primary task He gave you in life. But if you fail to grow
in Christ yourself and to lead your spouse and children to growth in
Christ, you have no hope of creating a sane family. You will end your
days in insanity, and you will bring down your family with you into the
insanity of rebellion against God and His creation. What a fall that
will be! What a loss! May God grant that all Orthodox Christians keep
their focus on His sanity and guide each other into His Kingdom!
So What Do I Do Now?
Now I am going to do something very risky. After talking about
the danger of reducing Christianity to rules, I am going to talk about
some very practical things Orthodox Christians can do to become sane.
Sanity, after all, is not an abstract state: it is knowing God as a
person Who loves us, Who cares for us, and Whom we want to be like.
Have you ever watched a little child follow his father or her mother
around? They have their little lawn mowers or stoves so they can be
like Mommy or Daddy, and that's a good model for us with God. Copy His
life as shown in the Gospels and in the lives of the saints so that you
become like Him.
The very first thing you have to do is recognize that the
world is insane, and you are infected with insanity too. If you think
you're healthy, you can't be cured. But if you know you're sick, out of
touch with reality, then there is hope for you to be healed. Knowing
the Orthodox Faith and reading books which remind us of the Faith and
its true view of the world is essential for recognizing our sickness
and being healed from it.
However, academic knowledge alone is not enough to save us.
Most of you probably already know a lot of facts about Orthodoxy, but
these facts have to become real before they affect you. And the only
way they become real is by constant contact with the only doctor who
can heal our insanity - our Lord Jesus Christ. His Name is our weapon
of healing. It was through this weapon that the Saints were made whole
and sane. If you don't know God, you can't become like Him. And the
only way to get to know Him is by talking with Him. We need to call on
His Name constantly. This means constant prayer during the day. Prayer
can't be just ten minutes morning and evening; it has to be a part of
your whole life. Every time you have a moment when you have to wait for
something or someone, call on the Lord Jesus Christ. When you are
working at manual tasks, call on the Lord Jesus. Call on Him, but
remember to stop and listen sometimes, in case He wants to tell you
something. You received the grace of the Holy Spirit in Chrismation,
and that grace will lead you to constant prayer, if you let it. But you
have to cooperate with it. Call on the Holy Spirit to remind you to
pray and to guide you in prayer, and then PRAY.
In addition to praying the Jesus Prayer or similar brief
prayers calling for God's help, it is vital for the members of a
healthy family to be praying for each other. Husbands, pray for your
wives. Every time you think of them during the day, say a brief prayer
for them. When you know they have a temptation or a special task, pray
for them. Wives, do the same for your husbands. Show your love for each
other by asking God to help your spouse frequently throughout the day.
And pray for your children. Don't just worry about them; pray for them.
Let them understand that you pray for them, and ask them to pray for
you. Teach them that a family is only held together through mutual
prayer. Children, pray for your parents all through the day, but
especially when you know they have worries or problems. Bind the family
together in love through mutual prayer.
Many Saints' lives give us examples of the power of prayer to
create a Christian family. Consider Sts. Gregory and Nonna, the parents
of St. Gregory the Theologian and two other children who became saints
(January 1); Sts. Xenophon and Mary and their children, all of whom
were faithful to our Lord in great trials, and all of whom came to
sanctity (January 26); or Sts. Emmelia and Basil the Elder, parents of
St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Peter of Sebaste, St.
Macrina the Younger, and St. Naucratius (May 30). These and many other
saints give us examples of sane family living. We should study their
lives and then pray to them for help. They should be our friends, our
guides, our confidants as we build our own families.
So we see that we have to go beyond weekly attendance at
Liturgy. We have to make our whole week a preparation for union with
God in His Holy Mysteries, and in that union we will be united as a
family. Holy Communion and the Liturgy can only take their rightful
place in your life if they are the culmination of a constant effort to
grow closer to God, to root out insanity, and to be conformed to the
real world God has created. If we take the Lord's Body and Blood
without this preparation, while we are still living in insanity, we are
more likely to be harmed, as the Apostle says, than to be helped. But
with a life of sanity, the Body and Blood of our Lord bring us together
with all the sane people who have ever lived, unite us as a family, and
prepare us for a life of union with God forever in His Kingdom, the
Kingdom of the truly sane.
This talk was delivered at the 2002 Mini-Conference at Pillars of
Orthodox Church in Mt. Holly Springs, PA.
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1. Jones, E. Michael, Degenerate Moderns, San Francisco, 1993, p. 16.
2. Lewis, C.S., The Abolition of Man, New York, 1947, p. 88.
3. Jones, op. cit., pp. 19-49.
4. Ibid., pp. 153-233.
5. Ibid., pp. 51-78.
6. Cited in Virtuosity, 10 May 2002.
7. Larchet, Jean-Claude, Thérapeutique des maladies
spirituelles, Paris, 2000, p. 172.
8. A number of recent Orthodox authors have clarified the
difference between Christianity and religion, showing that only
Christianity leads to health and sanity. These include, for example:
Romanides, John, The Cure of the Neurobiological Sickness of Religion,
1996; Vlachos, Hierotheos, Orthodox Psychotherapy, 1994; and Larchet,
Jean-Claude, Thérapeutique des maladies spirtuelles, 2000;
Théologie de
la maladie, 2001; and, Thérapeutique des maladies mentales,
1992.
9. Markides, Kyriacos C., The Mountain of Silence, New York, 2001, p.
193.