jim henson

I heard a very interesting and important talk from All Saints Orthodox Monastery in Canada.  The talk was about Nihilism and the Apocalypse.

The word nihilism comes from the Latin word nihil which means "nothing".  Nihilists believe that life here on earth is without meaning.  Those who are religious nihilists believe that only the afterlife has any meaning at all.  Taken to its logical extreme, this can lead to such things as suicide bombings and other violent acts which are meant to bring on the afterlife or the next age. According to the tape, the first suicide bombers were  communists.

There is a religious group who is currently preaching that the world will end in a few days.  There have been many of these groups in the past and I'm sure there will be many in the future.  Unfortunately, this interest in the End Times is fueled by the idea that the world as it is now is unlivable.  The video pointed out that many of our children are no longer learning about beauty in art, music or poetry in school, not to mention anything religious that might let them know that life has meaning.  Our entire world-view in the West is one of nihilism fueled by atheistic consumerism.

There is a connection, apparently, between a kind of philosophical puritanism and intellectual nihilism.  There is a Utopian ideal that sometimes goes along with nihilism.  Seeing this world as contaminated and impure leads people to want to destroy it instead of learning to see and rejoice in its beauty.  It leads people to turn their backs on others who are really the core of the meaning and beauty of life.

Rather than try to improve their own world, beginning with their own church, these groups form off-shoots, either official or unofficial.  They form spiritual barricades around themselves, only letting in the chosen few who believe as they do.  The rest of the world, they believe, will be destroyed.

What these groups should be doing instead, is living out the message of the Gospel, which is love.  Love is not about warning people that God will be coming down to destroy everyone (except, of course, those who are doing the warning).

Love is about relationship. Love is about empathy.  The speakers in the video say that evil is having no empathy at all.  Satan has no empathy.

In the bible, Jesus says "The Kingdom of God is at hand."  If we live the way He taught, we will be living in The Kingdom.  The film points out that a better translation of  the biblical "world to come" is "the age to come."  We are not necessarily waiting for a perfect place where we will not have to put up with any of those annoying people. Those annoying people are here to help us become more and more like God.

I was saying the Jesus Prayer today and realized that both it and today's Gospel use the word "living".

Living Water
Today's Gospel from John tells the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus tells her that if she knew who He was and knew "the Gift of God" He would give her "Living Water."

Living water is water that is not stagnant--it is flowing and moving; it sustains life.  The early Church used to baptize in "living water".

The Jesus Prayer
Many Orthodox and other Christians pray The Jesus Prayer daily:

God is the "Living Water" Christ speaks of.  He is the Uncreated Energy.  He sustains all life.

If we meditate on that image, we discover that our troubled, stagnant lives are but a drop in the ocean of God's merciful love.  When we have stopped feeling, stopped caring and stopped moving forward, if we allow ourselves to become a drop in the deep ocean of God's caring love He will dissolve all our temporal shortcomings and cares and we will become one with Our Lord who cares for us so deeply.

Say the Jesus Prayer slowly, meditating on each word, and ask God to allow you to become one with Him.

This shall be a sign unto you.  You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a feeding trough.  ~Luke 2:12

The sign of Christ's coming was our Savior lying in a feeding trough.  He is our food.  We are to hunger and thirst after righteousness, Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes.  We are to hunger and thirst after HIM.

In the East, the feast of Christmas is preceded by the Nativity Fast.  Abstinence from meat,  dairy and eggs occurs from November 15th (in some churches December 10) until December 24th. Fish is allowed.  From the 13th until the 24th, fish, olive oil and wine are added to the list of foods that are fasted from.

The idea in the East is not to worry overmuch about incurring a penalty of sin, but to encourage us to use Christ's three-fold method of prayer, fasting and almsgiving to help us draw closer to the Lord and to anticipate and be able to fully rejoice in His coming.

The time of conspicuous consumption which arrives for believers and non-believers alike, and all but replaces the Holy Season now begins at the same time we are being asked to remember the Holy Souls in early November.  When the Church is calling us to more fervent prayer and a awareness of our own mortality, the world temps us from all sides to mortgage both our finances and our souls in a futile attempt to drown out the poverty in our own innermost selves.

Fasting from spending, fasting from overindulgence in food, and fasting from meaningless pursuits as a way to focus our hearts on the eternal is more important now than ever in the 2000 year history of Christianity.  Our Lord in his infinite wisdom, has given us ample spiritual food for these challenging times.

The sign is our Savior waiting for us in a feeding trough.

Therefore, let us keep the feast. 
~1 Corrinthians 5:8

This is part of an Orthodox theology series on YouTube.  I love this concept of the Uncreated Energies of God and sin being a misuse of our energies.  This is SO common today--it is so easy to misuse our energies today--and our energies come from God and are a part of God--*and* energy is relationship and Grace, not something nebulous that lets us do something  for ourselves.

Do you sometimes have difficulty with consistency in morning prayer?  Beginning to Pray, by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom suggests that spontaneous prayer tends to come forth most easily when we are either in the depths of despair, and realize our own spiritual poverty, or on a spiritual mountain top and are praising God.

For those times in between, pre-written prayers are best.  One that he recommends is a prayer by Orthodox Saint Philaret of Moscow.  It is a beautifully appropriate morning prayer.

O Lord,
grant that I may 
meet the coming day 
in peace.

Help me in all things
to rely upon 
Thy Holy Will.
In every hour 
of the day,
reveal Thy will to me.

Bless my dealings with all who 
surround me.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me
throughout the day with peace of soul,
and with the firm conviction that 
Thy will governs all.

In all my deeds and words,
guide my thoughts and feelings.

In unforeseen events, let me not forget
that all are sent by Thee.

Teach me to act firmly and wisely,
without embittering and embarrassing others.

Give me the strength to bear the fatigue
of the coming day with all that it shall bring.

Direct my will.

Teach me to pray.

Pray Thou Thyself in me.

~Amen.

Hat tip to Deacon Michael of Ancient Faith Radio.

Much of the ideas in this post are taken from the essay, The Transfiguration of Creation by Vincent Rossi. Hat tip to Vivificat for pointing the way there.

Today is the feast of the Transfiguration in both the East and the West.  The biblical Transfiguration occurred when Jesus took Peter, James and John up on top of a mountain and suddenly, Jesus became transfigured: "his clothes became dazzlingly white" and He began to converse with Moses and Elijah, who appeared with Him.  [Mark 9:3-4]

What is Transfiguration? 
Often, we hear this story and think, "That's nice that Peter, James and John got to see that."  Like Peter, we completely miss the point!  ("Rabbi, it is good for us to be here.  Let us put up three tents--one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." [Mark 9:5])  However, as Rossi illustrates in his essay, there is *much* more to it than that.

The English word for the biblical Greek term for "transfiguration" is metamorphosis--a profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism. Rossi says that it "signif(ies) the crossing of (or) passing through a boundary" and that "the cosmos itself is (a) three-fold (created) boundary" of time, space and matter that "is breached, torn open and transfigured by the power of the Triune God. The boundary is between the Divine and the human, the uncreated and the created, eternity and time, the heaven and the earth, death in life, and life in death."  To transfigure, then, is to completely change.  In the case of humanity and creation, it means to heal--to make it become like God--to cross that boundary to the Divine.

God calls us to "consecrate and transfigure the world".  At the Transfiguration, the Light from Christ shown on the apostles themselves and even transfigured Christ's own garments.  Thus, we are called, as Christians, to become transfigured, to transfigure society and even to transfigure all (creation) that we come in contact with.  We must, like St. Francis of Assisi, treat everything in creation as having God's Presence.  We must recognize the sacramental nature of all things and all people.

Barriers to Transfiguration
A big task?  Yes.  Rossi writes that the Church fathers point out three obstacles to this transfiguration:  ignorance, forgetfulness and sloth.  Ignorance, not of "facts" for we have those at our fingertips, but of God's Presence in all of creation.  Similarly, the sin of forgetfulness, involves forgetting that God is in all He created, including ourselves and all those we have been put with on this earth. Sloth, in this case, is linked to despair.  We think we can do nothing to change the world.  We are even sure, many times, that we can do nothing to change ourselves so that is what we do--nothing.

The Way to Heal God's World 
 How can this be done?  St. Paul gives us the way in Romans.  

 "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice--holy and pleasing to God.  This is your reasonable service.  And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:1-2) 

If we seek to be one with God and "be transformed by the renewing of our minds" , we will think like Him and do His work.  We gain the ability to do this "by the mercies of God".  What, specifically, does this involve? It involves a total and complete transformation of ourselves and all that surrounds us.

Notes About Scripture Translation
Offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, does not involve the physical only, but the spiritual, emotional and mental as well.

"Reasonable" here does mean merely "logical" or what we in the west think of as the mind, but "like Christ" who is the "Logos" or Word.  God's Word is what created the world and all that it contains, ("and God said, 'Let there be light") and we are called to transfigure it through Christ.

"Service" is better translated as "worship."  Some translations say "This is your spiritual worship."  So, to be transfigured is really the true worship of God because it involves the transformation of our whole selves and our very lives.

To "renew our minds", we must remember that the "mind" (nous) also involves the heart.  Eastern Christian prayer begins with placing the mind in the heart with which we are able to see God.

The Transfiguration opened the eyes of the disciples to be able to see Christ as He really is.
We, as Christians, are called to join with Christ to heal and transfigure our world, both our fellow human beings, and all of creation.  We are called to heal each other's hunger, sadness, despair, and the spiritual forgetfulness of God's all-consuming presence.

We can only do this by becoming one with Christ.

For tomorrow's Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, I wanted to show these icons, discovered last year, that depict the two saints.  They are from the 4th century and are believed to be the oldest icons in existence.  What amazed me, is how similar they are to icons of the two saints today.  The Eastern Church really has preserved the writing of icons, as it is called, down to the present day.

In both pictures, Peter is shown with white hair and a round white beard, and Paul is shown with brown hair, balding, and a brown pointed beard.

Traditionally, the icon of St. Peter and St. Paul represents the hoped-for unity between the East and the West. '

May it come quickly!