Prayers for peace

Nothing is more basic to Christian life than prayer. It is the foundation of all other response, not an alternative to response. Please find time each day to be aware of wars now going on in the world and to pray for peace.

Wars or near-war conflicts are currently being fought in Afghanistan, Burundi, Chechnya, Colombia, Congo, Georgia, India and Pakistan (over Kashmir), Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Sudan. The list of countries at war regularly changes, but the reality of war is immediate and daily in the lives of millions of people.

Here is a short service of prayer which may be useful to you.

We thank You, Master and Lover of mankind, King of the ages and giver of all good things, for destroying the dividing wall of enmity and granting peace to those who seek your mercy. We appeal to You to awaken the longing for a peaceful life in all those who are filled with hatred for their neighbors, thinking especially of those at war or preparing for war. Grant peace to your servants. Implant in them the fear of You and confirm in them love one for another. Extinguish every dispute and banish all temptations to disagreement. For You are our peace and to You we ascribe glory: to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

We pray, Lord our God, for all those who suffer from acts of war, [especially for the victims and all those in the struggle in ............................].

We pray for your peace and your mercy in the midst of the great suffering that people are now inflicting on each other. Accept the prayers of your Church, so that by your goodness peace may return to all peoples. Hear us and have mercy on us.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Lord our God, remember and have mercy on our brothers and sisters who are involved in every civil conflict. Remove from their midst all hostility, confusion and hatred. Lead everyone along the path of reconciliation and peace, we pray You, hear us and have mercy on us.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Let all believers turn aside from violence and do what makes for peace. By the strength of your mighty arm save your people and your Holy Church from all evil oppression; hear the supplications of all who call to You in sorrow and affliction, day and night. Merciful God, let their lives not be lost, we pray You, hear us and have mercy.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

But grant, O Lord, peace, love and speedy reconciliation to your people whom You have redeemed with your precious blood. Make your presence known to those who have turned away from You and do not seek You, so that none of them may be lost, but all may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, so that everyone, in true love and harmony, O long-suffering Lord, may praise your all holy Name.

Amen.

source: http://incommunion.org/articles/introduction/prayers

St. Anthoy the Great

Anthony the Great

The Reading is from Matthew 11:27-30

The Lord said to his disciples, "All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

The Monastery of Saint Anthony the Great (Mar Antonios al-Kabir) is situated at a height of 950 meters above sea level in the celebrated Valley of Qozhaya, " the Living Treasure ", in the Zghorta district of North Lebanon.

The pine trees and oak trees cover the great hills surrounding it. Fruit trees of every description grow all along the valley which extends into the Valley of Qannubin to form the great Qadisha Valley, thus bearing witness to the history of eremitic life and the quest for holiness in Lebanon.

Watch these two videos fro more.

More Americans join Orthodox Christian churches

By Tom Breen, Associated Press
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Greg Mencotti worried he would never find a spiritual home.

The Sunday school teacher grew up Roman Catholic, lost his faith and became an atheist. Eventually, he returned to Christianity, this time as a born-again Christian, spending years worshipping in a Methodist congregation. Still, he felt his search wasn't over.

That led him to the Holy Spirit Antiochian Orthodox Church in Huntington, W. Va., a denomination with Mideast roots that, like all Orthodox groups, traces its origins to the earliest days of Christianity.

Today, Mencotti is one of about 250 million Orthodox believers worldwide — and among a significant number of newcomers attracted to this ancient way of worship. The trend is especially notable since so few in the United States know about the Orthodox churches here.

"I was like most Americans," said Mencotti, who was urged by his wife to explore Orthodox worship. "I didn't understand anything about Orthodoxy."

Orthodoxy was born from the Great Schism of 1054, when feuds over papal authority and differences in the liturgy split Christianity into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox halves.

In the United States, Orthodox Christians are a fraction of religious believers, numbering about 1.2 million, according to estimates by Orthodox researchers.

In the past, their growth had been largely fueled by immigration, with churches forming mainly along ethnic lines. Some converts came to Orthodoxy through marriage to a church member.

But now about one-third of all U.S. Orthodox priests are converts — and that number is likely to grow, according to Alexei D. Krindatch, research director at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif. A 2006 survey of the four Orthodox seminaries in the country found that about 43% of seminarians are converts, Krindatch said.

There are no exact figures on the rate of conversion across the 22 separate U.S. Orthodox jurisdictions. But when Mencotti began attending Orthodox worship, the church was packed with converts, including the church's pastor, the Rev. John Dixon.

The Rev. John Matusiak, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Wheaton, Ill., part of the Orthodox Church in America, said his parish has grown from 20 people in the early 1990s to more than 600 today, with the overwhelming majority of new members younger than 40.

Krindatch's research found that one-third of the more than 200 U.S. parishes in the Antiochian Orthodox Church were founded after 1990.

Matusiak said growth is especially apparent in suburbs and commuter towns. "People in Wheaton weren't flocking to Orthodoxy, because there was never a church here," Matusiak said.

Many converts credit the beauty of the liturgy and the durability of the theology, which can be a comfort to those seeking shelter from divisive battles over biblical interpretation in other Christian traditions.

Dixon, who was raised an Old Regular Baptist, an austere faith of the Southern Appalachians, said his conversion grew from his studies about the origins of Christianity as an undergraduate at Marshall University. The turning point came when he first attended services at an Orthodox church.

"As soon as I came in that day," he says, "I knew I was home."

Convert-fueled growth, though, has its challenges.

Like converts in all faiths, the newly Orthodox bring a zeal that can be unsettling for those born into the church, who tend to be more easygoing in their religious observance. Parishes run the risk of dividing between new and lifelong parishioners, Krindatch says.

"Converts to Orthodoxy form their own little quasi-seminary and it's almost a closed group," says the Rev. Joseph Huneycutt, associate pastor of St. George Anti-ochian Orthodox Church in Houston, who was raised Southern Baptist then became Orthodox.

And some worry about converts' impact on the churches. They are entering the parishes at a time when many lay activists across Orthodox denominations are pushing church leaders to let go of ethnic divisions and pool resources so they can better evangelize in the United States.

Huneycutt, author of One Flew Over the Onion Dome, a book about conversion, and the editor of OrthoDixie, a blog about Orthodoxy in the South, said he was drawn to the faith by the beauty of its rituals and its teachings.

On his first visit, he said the church was filled with the smell of incense and the sound of the chanted Divine Liturgy. The altar was largely concealed by the iconostasis, a large screen or wall hung with icons of Christ, Mary, angels and Apostles. And worshippers received Communion from a chalice and spoon.

"I had become convinced that the Eucharist was the center of Christian worship — ancient Christian worship," Huneycutt says. "Once I had reached that point in my personal walk with Christ, there was no going back."

source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-01-11-orthodox_x.htm

From the Church of God in Gaza

Father Manuel Mussallam

January 12, 2009

From the Church of God in Gaza

To the beloved Saints in Palestine and the world

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

From the valley of tears, from Gaza that is sinking in its blood, the blood that has strangled the joy in the hearts of one and a half million inhabitants, I send you this message of faith and hope. But the message of love is imprisoned; choked in our throats as Christians; we do not venture to even say it to ourselves. The priests of the Church today are raising hope as a banner, so that God will have mercy on us and have compassion on us and keep a remnant for himself in Gaza so that the light of Christ that was lit by Deacon Philip at the establishment of the church will not be extinguished and continue to shine in Gaza. May Christ`s compassion revive our love for God even though it is currently in "intensive care".



I announce to you from the heart of the father and priest, the death of the daughter of our school in Holy Family, the dear, Christine Wadi al-Turk, the first Christian to die in the war. Christine was in the tenth grade in our school and she died this morning, Friday, January 2, 2009 as a result of fear and the cold. The windows in her home were open to protect the children from glass fragments and the missiles that pass above it. The bombing that hit her neighbor`s home caused her whole body to shake in horror. She could not bear all this, so she went to complain to her Creator about her situation and request a home and a refuge where there is no crying, screaming or wailing, but joy and happiness.



Our brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,



What you see on television and what you hear is not all of the harsh reality experienced by our people in Gaza. The television and radio cannot transmit the whole truth because of its immensity in our land. The bitter siege on Gaza has become a hurricane that is growing every hour until it has become a war crime, a crime against humanity. If the people of Gaza are now presenting their tragedy to the court of conscience of every human, who has "goodwill", the time to come is the time of God`s just court.

The children of Gaza and their parents are sleeping in the corridors of their home, if there are any, or in the toilets and bathrooms for their protection. They are trembling with fear at every voice, movement and bombardment and the heavy shelling of the F-16 planes.



It is true that these planes in most of their flights so far, have targeted the main government and Hamas headquarters, but all of these headquarters are near people`s homes, and are not more than 6 meters away, which is the legal distance between buildings. Therefore, people`s homes have been severely damaged and many children have died because of this. Our children are living in a state of trauma and fear. They are sick from it and for other reasons such as the lack of food, malnutrition, poverty and the cold...



As for the tragedies that are occurring in the hospitals, you can say what you like. These hospitals did not have basic first aid before the war and now thousands of the wounded and the sick are pouring into the hospitals and they are performing operations in the hospital corridors. Many of them are sent to the Rafah crossing to Egypt, those who pass may not return as they die on the way and the situation of the people in the hospitals is frightening and sad, hysteric.



I would like to tell you a story that happened in the hospital with the Abdel Latif family. One of her sons had disappeared during the first bombing and his family looked for him, but did not find him on the first or the second day of the war. On the third day, while the family was walking around the hospital, they came upon the Jaradah family who were surrounding one of their injured sons who was disfigured. This injured young man had had one of his legs amputated, his face was disfigured, not because of the aircraft shelling, but because glass had fallen on him while he was in the hospital after the planes had bombed part of it. The Abdel Latif family approached the Jaradah family to console them, and when they approached the injured man, Mr. Abdel Latif discovered that he was his son and not the son of the Jaradah family. Amid the family controversy, they waited for the wounded man to wake up and say his name so that the Abdel Latif family would take him...



I summarize my letter to you by lifting our suffering to God and to you. Our people in Gaza are treated like animals in a zoo, they eat but remain hungry, they cry, but no one wipes their tears. There is no water, no electricity, no food, but fear, terror and blockade ... Yesterday the bakery refused to give me bread. The reason being that the baker refused to feed me with flour that is not worthy of humans so that he will not disrespect my priesthood. The good flour had finished, and what flour he had was inappropriate for human consumption. I have avowed to not eat bread for the duration of this war.



We want you to raise your continuous prayers to God, and not to hold a mass or service without remembering the suffering of Gaza before God. I am sending short messages from the Bible to our parishioners to increase the hope in their hearts. We have all agreed to pray this prayer at the top of every hour: "O Lord of peace rain peace on us, O Lord of peace, grant peace to our land. Have mercy, O Lord, on your people and do not keep us in enmity forever. Please stand with us now and sing this prayer with us.



Your prayers with us move the whole world and teach it that any love that is prevented from reaching your brothers and sisters in Gaza is not the love of Christ and the Church. The love of Christ and the Church does not recognize political and social barriers, wars and so on. When your love reaches us, it makes us feel that we, in Gaza, are an integral part of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and our Muslim brothers and sisters in our midst are our people and our destiny, we have what they have and we suffer like they do, we are all the people of Palestine.



In the midst of all this, our people in Gaza remain rejecting war as a means for peace and confirming that the road to peace is peace. We in Gaza are steadfast and have resolution in our eyes: "between slavery and death, we have no choice." We want to live to praise the Lord in Palestine and witness for Christ, we want to live for Palestine, not die for it, but if death is imposed on us, we will not die except honest, brave and strong.



We join you in your prayers so that Christ may give us His real peace, so that " The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. Isaiah 11:6.



The peace of Christ, that peace to which you are called to be one body be with all of you and protect you. Amen.



Your Brother,

Father Manuel Mussallam

Priest of the Catholic Church in Gaza

source: http://www.abouna.org/Details.aspx?id=2012&tp=6

One Parish’s Engagement with its Homeless Neighbors

by Jill Wallerstedt

The morning begins as most do: friends coming for breakfast. A table spread with toast, peanut butter, jelly, butter, honey, bagels, cereal and milk makes you want to fill your belly, then have a cup of coffee or tea and chat about what’s going on around our small town.

We are part of St. Brigid Fellowship, an outreach to the homeless here in Isla Vista, California. To be homeless is to be nameless, avoided, shunned, blamed, hungry and exposed to the elements. Each morning that St. Brigid’s opens its door, every visitor is known by name, has a place to belong, and finds friends, acceptance, food, clothing and help getting out of any situations they wish to leave.

Isla Vista is a densely-packed, square-mile beach-side community which abuts the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). It is home to students from UCSB and Santa Barbara City College, who make up 85 percent of the population, as well as homeowners, low-income workers, and homeless (many of whom prefer the term “unhoused” because Athe earth is our home.”)

Neighboring Santa Barbara deserves its reputation as a beautiful haven for the wealthy, lying between scenic foothills and the Pacific Ocean, and blessed with nearly year-round sunshine. For the not-so-wealthy, the limited housing and high cost of living make it difficult to make ends meet. Isla Vista and Goleta offer lower cost housing, but even so, a one bedroom apartment in Isla Vista rents for $1,100 a month. Students who rent on the nicest, beach-side streets pay $850 each for the privilege of sharing a bedroom with an ocean view.

Many of the unhoused come to Isla Vista because it is a small community and easy to navigate. The parks are their hang-outs. It’s illegal to sleep in the parks or in vehicles anywhere in Isla Vista at night, so a lot of sleeping happens during the day. Those with income are eligible for low-cost housing, but the waiting time is two to five years once you apply. The existing shelters are almost always full. There are no social services available here: the nearest ones are six miles away and the rest are in downtown Santa Barbara, twelve miles away. To survive, those without income or government benefits get money for food and alcohol by panhandling (or “spanging spare changing) or collecting cans and bottles to recycle for money.

St. Athanasius Antiochian Orthodox Church is near the heart of Isla Vista on a parcel of land surrounded by these parks. Our parish has been here since the early 1970s, long before we became Orthodox converts in 1987. We had a monthly food distribution for the poor for many years and have served Christmas breakfast for many years since.

In 1999 a group of Protestant volunteers asked if they could use our church kitchen to serve a weekly meal to the homeless on Thursday nights. They brought pre-cooked meals to our stove-less kitchen, set tables up outside, held a Bible study and then served dinner. I remember looking at the meeting on the patio, and think¬ing how nice it would be if they came into Vespers with us.

When this group could no longer provide meals, Fr. Jon-Stephen Hedges, our assistant pastor, took over. He moved the meal night to Monday and served one-pot soups and stews he cooked at home and hamburgers he grilled on the church barbecue. Attendance grew, perhaps because the only overtly religious elements to the dinners were the prayer beforehand and the cook’s clerical collar.

Fr. Jon got to know Aour neighbors on the streets,” as he calls them, and earned their trust. He heard their stories, made friends, helped where he could. They started to drop by his office on the church property during the week, and eventually, his other church work suffered. At the time, I was looking for a new job, and I was blessed to be offered a full-time job by the church in 2005: half-time raising money for our church school, St. John of Damascus Academy, and half-time working as assistant to Fr. Jon in his various duties.

Within a few months we realized that our work on the streets needed its own office. We rented space in the next-door medical clinic with a room for my office, a sitting area and supply closets, and a meeting room where mental health workers, job counselors and other providers could meet with us and our “clients.”

We opened the doors three mornings a week for drop-ins. Fr. Jon-Stephen named the ministry after St. Brigid, the Irish saint who was a compatriot of St. Patrick’s and who is commemorated both east and west. The scroll on her icon reads: “To care for the poor; To lighten everyone’s burden; To comfort the suffering.” This became our motto. The church agreed to a modest budget for our ministry.

Fr. Jon continued to see our neighbors in his office, but he was able to refer the simpler, day-to-day needs to me. The work started slowly. I handed out hygiene supplies, sleeping bags, coats, bus tokens, rain gear, and socks which were purchased by the church or donated. We offered the use of our telephone for calls and messages, and our address for applying for benefits and receiving mail. We served coffee. I met people and established friendships. I learned street names (Pirate, Wolf, Leprechaun, Veg-man) and their real names. I learned how to respond to angry outbursts as well as abject misery. I laughed and cried with people. I heard what it was like to be on the streets: stories of how others treated them, looked at them, how inequitable the system was. I became used to missing teeth, dirty hands, unkempt hair. The requests were so direct: AIt was freezing last night. Do you have anything warm to wear?” “I need a tarp to put over my sleeping bag when it rains.” “How do I get on food stamps?” “Do you have clean socks?”

We never intended to meet every need, especially those that were addressed by other organizations in Santa Barbara. We installed a rack with brochures about local services. From the start we were blessed to have the presence of Jennifer Ferraez, a parishioner who is also a Santa Barbara County Mental Health Outreach Worker for the Homeless. She arranged weekly visits to St. Brigid as part of her outreach, and taught me about the resources available in our community. She also provided the mental health assessments, referrals and counseling so many of our people needed. She is my sounding board and an ever-ready source of information.

As my unhoused friends started to trust me, they confided more. In this some¬times painful, personal exchange I heard about failed marriages, abusive child¬hoods, deep sorrows. I often felt overwhelmed. Prayer became a constant ally. I met people who were alcoholic or drug dependent, had mental illness, chronic medical conditions B and some with all three. I had my first face to face conversation with someone who was psychotic (he confided he was a superhero and offered to teach me to fly.) Most wanted housing, some lived in vehicles, others were happy on the streets if they could keep warm and fed.

I learned to make referrals for food stamps and general relief, how to help someone apply for SSI. Sometimes I couldn’t help in any other way but to listen, and mostly this was the most important. A public health nurse visited once a week, and the clinic downstairs began to see homeless people without charge.

About a year into the work, we had to move while the clinic remodeled. Since the move was to be temporary, we rented a portable construction office for $125 a month, a large trailer that occupied four spaces in our parking lot. I hung yellow lace curtains in the windows, which were quite silly really. St. Brigid’s new home quickly became known as “the dumpster with curtains.”

In the narrow trailer I had two storage cabinets in the back, my desk, filing cabinet and computer in the middle, and a table in front across from the door for a coffee pot and a computer that people could use. We stored sleeping bags and blankets under a slanted, built-in drafting-table, and put the phone and reference books on top of it. Actually, this is all that’s needed to start an outreach ministry - an open door, some basic supplies, an open heart.

Jennifer continued to come in once a week and to the Monday night dinners to help and teach. Fr. Jon-Stephen’s office was still next door on the church property and he came by daily. People began to drop by in greater numbers, not just to get something they needed but to hang out and talk. A sense of community emerged.

Somewhere along the line I developed my two rules: the first is that St. Brigid’s is a place of peace, a refuge from the streets, and that shouting, swearing and anger belonged elsewhere. (Some of the men who came in were so sensitive that if someone outside even used a loud voice in happy conversation, they would become upset and unable to talk.) The second rule was not to take coffee from the coffee pot before it finished brewing. I also inconspicuously monitored conversations and re-directed any that were inappropriate or disruptive.

We started serving peanut butter and jelly and bread with the coffee; then we got a toaster. The food table was outside the trailer. When it was cold we all wore coats. We jury-rigged a tarp outside that we could sit under when it rained, but we still got wet. One particularly rainy, blustery day, a friend got a large tarp out of her van and we all worked together to hang it around the church’s Sunday awning. I learned how to make ties from pieces of torn t-shirt. It worked fairly well as the only rain shelter in the area that day. We used the trailer for two years, then found out that the medical clinic was sold and we could not return to our office there.

We recently moved into a larger trailer on the church property and now have the luxury of two rooms: one for an office, and the other for our food table, supplies, computers, chairs and beginning library. When it’s sunny we use the deck outside and when it rains, we will even have a roof. What a concept!

We’re now open five days a week for breakfast. With a grant we received we are hiring a 15-hour-a-week helper, Nikki Coalson, a young woman in our church. This means I can work with people in crisis while she makes sure everything runs smooth¬ly. We are applying for other grants to expand our services.

I wish I had time to tell you the stories. Each person has his/her own, and together we have made new ones. Our team B all part time in the work B has made referrals for alcohol/drug detox, found people housing, gotten them benefits, seen them succeed, seen them relapse and start drinking again, shared joys, arranged reunions with family, had friends die.

The Monday night dinners have continued, drawing more people, some who never come in the mornings. Members of our church and the community help cook and serve, including doctors, nurses and politicians. There is now a group of UCSB pre-med students who have started a group called “Street Health Outreach”. They also cook a Saturday morning breakfast once a month and do street rounds the other Saturdays.

St. Brigid Fellowship has become a community, and a unifying force in Isla Vista. Fr. Jon-Stephen works Athe big picture” to make connections with other agencies and publicize our work as well as continuing his personal relationships here. Fr. Jon carries a badge as Chaplain to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and several other agencies. On him, the badge is a bridge. He also has an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT-B) certification. All of us work together to solve homelessness one person at a time. We’re part of Santa Barbara County’s Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness.

As for philosophy, we use an “incarnational model,” meeting people on the streets as Jesus did, addressing immediate needs and starting relationships that can lead out of homelessness. This is not a one-way ministry, us to them. All of us, both housed and unhoused, work together to solve problems.

When things are tough, we look at others as Mother Teresa did, as Christ in his distressing disguise, and do all with love. As St. John Kronstadt reminds us: “Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him; because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.”

This work is a blessing. My faith has grown, as has my prayer life.

If you or your parish is considering starting an outreach ministry, just know that it can be done simply. The most important part is taking the time to listen and talk. Your ministry can be handing out socks or sack lunches in the park, or feeding people once a week, or giving gift certificates to fast food or grocery stores. Whatever it is, take the time to talk. Introduce yourself and ask their name. You would be surprised how meaningful just exchanging names is to a person who is used to being snubbed and ignored. Don’t think you have to address all of the problems you will encounter - just do your part and listen to the Lord who will walk along side you and give you guidance, joy and peace.

Feel free to contact me, Fr. Jon-Stephen Hedges, and Jennifer Ferraez at office@saintb.sbcoxmail.com, or (805) 968-8028.

Better yet, join us for breakfast and a cup of coffee. We would love to meet you.

Jill Wallerstedt has lived in Isla Vista, California for 30 years. She lives in a house dedicated to St. Xenia with two roommates and works for St Athanasius Orthodox Church as a homeless outreach worker and a fund-raising professional. Her dream is to be a full-time writer and live in community.

Then and Now: Confessions of an Outreach Worker

Then, when I saw a homeless person, I saw the dishevelment, shuffling, and shopping cart. Now I see a person with a story. Not likely a happy story, but there might be some joy in it. Maybe grace.

Then I saw filth, poor hygiene, beards and thought, go to a shelter. Now I know that the street is safer for some people, and there are not enough beds to go around for the rest.

Then I noticed the skin sores and rashes, hacking coughs, missing teeth. Now I see the bigger problems: the ?structure resistance” keeping a person away from services; the bad receptions at health clinics; the perfunctory dismissals for inability to pay; the lack of dental providers even for those with benefits.

Then I saw the blank stares and the “off in their own world” look and thought mental illness. Now I know that it might be a sane defense against the constant stares and comments of others.

Then I thought, get a job. Now I know the devastation of untreated mental illness and substance abuse, the consequences of severe child abuse, the effects of 35 years in jail. I know that the simple lack of a shower and clean clothes can cost a person their job.

Then I asked, Why doesn’t someone solve this problem? Now I ask - what is your name? Do you have somewhere safe to sleep? Are you warm enough? Do you want to talk?

Then I saw anonymous people, lumped together in my brain in the category “Avoid if at all possible, be kind if not able to avoid, keep your hand on your purse.” Now I know Rainbow from Little Rick. I know how people get their street names: Nira Dave, Buckethead, Veg-man. More importantly I know their given names, the names I call them by. A name is the beginning of identity.

Then I thought all homeless were alike. Now I know that some avoid everyone, including other homeless people, while others find strength in numbers. I know who drinks to excess and who can hold their liquor, who I can count on for help and who will just use me. I know why the women are on the street and why they always have a boyfriend, no matter how bad he is.

Then I believed everyone’s story. Now I take everything with a grain of salt until I can verify it.

Then I felt lower middle class, comparing myself to most others in Santa Barbara. Now, my car, roof, shower, washer, money, and health insurance seem like incredible wealth. Keys are a status symbol.

Then I wondered where brilliance and madness intersected and how to tell the difference. I still wonder.

Then I saw objects. Now I see individuals.

C Jill Wallerstedt

source: http://incommunion.org/?p=1066

Worship in a Secular Age

Worship in a Secular Age

Paper presented at the 8^th General Assembly of Syndesmos in Boston, USA.

1971 July 18-24

Fr. Paul Verghese

Let me open the subject by painting two pictures of worship services I have seen during this year in two different parts of the world, under totally different circumstances.

I shall begin with what happened just ten days ago in Olinda, in the Northeast province of Brazil in a Roman Catholic Church. Olinda is perhaps the oldest Catholic community in Latin America, and the Benedictine Abbey Church where I went for a Sunday evening mass bore eloquent testimony to a bygone era of baroque triumphalism. The statuary was musty and repellent to a sensitive eastern mind, while the tarnished bronze and gold altar bespoke of neglect and decadence as well as of a loud and ugly Spanish splendour that had faded away.

The service, however, was in stark contrast with the setting. The altar had been placed down in the nave, and a handsome young Benedictine monk in shirt sleeves was flittering to and fro in the chancel getting things ready for the mass as the worshippers waited on their benches, chattering informally, some young lovers holding their beloveds in their arms; lots of teenagers and young people happily gossipping away or chewing gum; a few older and more traditional looking Catholics with rosaries in their hands. The Catholic priest did the first part of the mass up to the Gospel and sermon in his shirt sleeves and preached a sermon on the Good Samaritan- a very good secular sermon, substituting the priest by a Catholic bishop, the Levite by a Protestant pastor, and the Good Samaritan by a city prostitute who took the victim of a car accident to the nearest hospital in a taxi. He made it clear that he was by no means suggesting that it was better to be a city prostitute than a Catholic bishop, but simply that in this particular instance the prostitute was more Christian than the bishop. After this the priest invited a German Lutheran girl of about 20 to talk to the Church about her experiences in Brazil. The girl was clad in dirty red pants and a red striped T-shirt which had obviously not been washed for many weeks. I had noticed this girl coming to Church with a lit cigarette in her mouth, which she had carefully put out before entering, depositing the butt in her purse for later use. She spoke about how the churches had failed to do anything about the real problems of humanity and were insincere and hypocritical. She suggested that the word God should not be used at all since it was much misunderstood. After she finished, the priest vested himself, said mass, and half of those present took communion, while a group of youngsters played some mellow rhythm music on the guitar. What was left in the chalice and paten was given to some teenagers to consume at the altar, and they did so with obvious relish, looking at each other and giggling. There was a song about peace and then the benediction.

The two American Episcopalian friends who were with me were thrilled to their bones, and regretted that their own church could not do anything of the kind. This was truly worship in a secular age, which spoke to the needs of people.

The second experience I want to talk about happened in the Pechora monastery in northwestern Russia last April, during Lent. This monastery is also a silent witness of a bygone age in the history of the Russian Church, an age when Church and State were even more closely linked than in Portuguese Brazil. The gold in the chapels was well maintained and far from tarnished or faded. The icons and frescoes still shone with an inner spiritual vitality which seemed to be quite independent of the iconographer's technique of mixing paints. The monks were old and infirm, not very au courant with the passing clouds of ideology or fashion in the outside world. They faithfully did their manual labour in the monastery gardens, said their offices in the chapels, reverently laid incense in their golden censers and visited the rows of underground tombs of Russia's heroes and saints- all exactly as it had gone on for three or nine centuries in the past. There were some Russian tourists present, and from their clothes and attitudes, one would think that they were completely secular, drawn to this inaccessible monastery only by a historical or archaeological interest. They did not quite know how to make the sign of the Cross, but that did not seem to prevent them from reverent participation in what to many secular people in the west must have appeared sheer superstition and meaningless ritualism.

I must now make a confession to you. I was carried away by the vespers at the Pechora monastery and I had a deep sense of communion with God, with the Saints and with the Russian orthodox people in that ritual, which had no apparent relevance to our secular age, or to the problems confronted by Soviet Russia today. I must also confess that I felt I was a mere spectator at the service in Brazil, with absolutely no sense of participation, though I tried to sing the Portuguese hymns and say the Lord's Prayer in the Mass. Perhaps that confession is enough for some of you to stop listening to me. If so, I shall not be offended. Perhaps my mind and spirit are sick, and I need to be healed and restored to a renewed technological-secular consciousness.

But let me just make a series of simple statements which reveal my own difficulties with this ideology the "Secular" which has marked the ecumenical scene during the past 20 years and is today being quietly superseded.

1. The expression "secular age" is literally a tautology, like saying a "bovine cow" or an "ecclesiastical church" -for seculum means age or time - world. "Secular age" thus means "temporal time". My Latin is not very good, but it would, translated into Latin, read something like Saeculum Saeculi, and if we parody the response to the Gloria Patri, would sound like a good response to Gloria tibi homine. I will accept the terminology of "Secular age" as a working idea, but not as a concept which can stand philosophical or linguistic justification.

2. That leads me to my second point namely that the Secular ethos of our world today is characterized by two mutually related factors -(a) the eclipse of God and (b) the autonomy of man.

It is important to note that it is the eclipse of God that makes possible the autonomy of man. The eclipse can be interpreted in at least three different ways.

One way has been to talk of the death of God, as an "event which took place in our life time" from which even humanity is to draw the conclusion that man is on his own, and that he must take the responsibility to shape and control reality. This way was first proposed in recent history by Frederich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and a few so-called theologians .

A second way, which is still a life option for many theologians of the West, is the way proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Here the proclamation is that God wants man to live as if God did not exist -etsi Deus non darehor. The eclipse of God is thus something willed by God Himself in order to make humanity wake up from its passivity and inaction so that it can assume responsibility for the world and do what is needed. Here the demand is for a "church for others" in a "world come of age", practising a religionless Christianity, a secular gospel lived out in the secular world.

The third and more profound interpretation of the eclipse of God has come from the great Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. Buber advances two reasons for the eclipse of God which I shall interpret in my own language. The first is an event in the consciousness of man- namely that he has now reached a stage beyond self-awareness. He is now conscious of his consciousness. He knows that he thinks, as for example, Descartes beginning his philosophy with the thought about the fact that he is thinking, and deriving the certainty of his existence from that fact. Now this consciousness of consciousness or thought bending back on itself rises up as a cloud between us and the other about whom I am conscious. In prayer, for example, the consciousness of the fact that I am praying, rises up as a cloud between me and God, and my awareness of myself in prayer shuts out the presence of God and thus makes prayer impossible. The eclipse of God is thus experienced most deeply in the inability to pray. Prayer does not get through. Like modern thought it turns upon itself and feeds upon itself.

A second reason for the eclipse of God, in this way of thinking, is that technology has developed an objectifying tendency on the part of man towards all reality, or in Buber's language, the tendency to turn every "Thou" into an "it". What was only personally addressed before has now become an object to manipulate and exploit, as we do with nature today. If God could have been caught in the web of our science, our technology would be there to objectify Him also and enslave Him in order to exploit Him for our own purposes. When God refuses to be caught by our objectifying consciousness, we deny His existence. It is thus the objectifying consciousness which is so central to science and technology that induced the eclipse of God.

3. This leads me to my third point. If the Secular age is one characterized by the eclipse of God, and if it is the eclipse of God that is behind the assertion of the autonomy of man, then the most characteristic feature of the Secular age is the eclipse of God, and we have to evaluate this phenomenon as objectively as we can. I believe that the idea of the death of God is valid and an explanation for the eclipse of God only in the sense that what has died is not God, but only our idea of God. This idea of God, on deeper analysis, turns out to be an idol that has been created by theologians, especially in the West. In that sense the death of this idol is a matter for rejoicing, especially for Christians whose relation to God is not through ideas, but rather through the act of worship and prayer in which God remains a subject and not an object, one who can be addressed, loved and adored, but who cannot be described or conceptualised or comprehended

While I have some sympathy thus with the idea of the death of God, interpreted in this special sense of the death of an idea or of an idol, I have no such sympathy for the second or Bonhoefferian type of interpretation of the eclipse of God. Let me briefly indicate my main difficulty with Bonhoeffer's central demand that God wants us to live ''as if God did not exist". Bonhoeffer fully affirms the reality of God, but wants us to cease being passive and to assume full responsibility for the world, ''as if God did not exist" -etsi Deus non darehor. I can understand the circumstances in which he developed this strange idea in the context of a demonic Third Reich in Nazi Germany. The pietistic majority in the Lutheran Church was too prone to take a literalistic view of the Lutheran idea of two kingdoms and to maintain faith or religion as a purely internal matter in one's consciousness, whereas in all "secular" matters one was simply to give un-questioning obedience to the regime in power, which had, after all, according to St. Paul in Romans 13, been "ordained by God". Neither was it enough, according to Bonhoeffer, simply to maintain the purity of one's faith by confessing only the Lordship of Jesus Christ as Earth had done in re-fusing to confess Hitler as Lord. It was necessary to accept responsibility for changing the situation and not merely to keep your religion in your heart or to profess it by word of mouth. When Bonhoeffer spoke about religionless Christianity in a secular age, he was rejecting the religion of the Pietists and the Barthians, and was asking for a faith that resulted not in piety or in words, but in action.

Where Bonhoeffer went wrong, it seems to me, was in suggesting that God wants us to live as if God did not exist. For if we are to live as if God did not exist, clearly we cannot pray or worship, since so to do would be to live as if God did exist. Bonhoeffer of course said some things about the diplina arcani or the hidden life of prayer, but he was basically mistaken about the place of prayer and worship in the life of the Christian. The Orthodox believe that personal prayer and community worship, rather than theology or proclamation, are the true modes of not only affirming the being of God, but also of confessing and acknowledging the fact that we are not our own, that we are not autonomous, that we have our being from God can only be addressed in prayer and worship.

To live as if God did not exist would therefore be to live without prayer and worship, and to live that way is truly to perish in the lack of the knowledge of God. It is for this reason that the outdated monks of Pechora monastery were more directly relevant to our own existence than the apparently relevant worship of the Abbey Church in Olinda.

4. Here we come to the fourth point. The "Secular Age" is a natural consequence of a God-objectifying theology, and the right way to prevent this happening to our own Orthodox Churches is to renew worship in such a way that it becomes the authentic means of addressing the transcendent God through the incarnate Christ in the Holy Spirit, and of experiencing our union with the transcendent God. Theology has to remain a handmaid of worship, love and service, but not the object or even the mode of expression of faith. The Spirit of Scholasticism with its tendency to objectify God and to analyse Him had already involved and pervaded our own Orthodox Churches quite some few centuries ago, partly due to our struggle with the Latins and with the Protestants. We need today to pull back from this scholastic tendency in our theology to make theology ancillary to worship and mission, rather than the central pre-occupation of the Church. This is particularly urgent because the very ecumenical movement may expose us to the temptation of expressing the difference between us, the Eastern tradition and those of the Western tradition in purely dogmatic or theological terms. We may be tempted to defend dogma, just because it is being attacked by Western theologians ever since Harnack, despite Barth's attempts to reinstate dogma.

5. Fifthly, I would like to say that we of the Eastern tradition have to learn something from this phenomenon of a secular faith and a secular theology. Our tradition is just as much in danger as was Western theology some centuries ago, of carving out a certain realm of life as the proper field of "religion" and regarding the rest as "secular", of no concern to the Church. This danger calls for three definite reforms in our own Church tradition.

First, our prayer and worship have to become more deeply saturated with a genuine and authentic concern for the life of humanity, especially of the poor and the oppressed. This does not mean developing new and "relevant" forms of experimental worship; but it does mean a thorough revision of all our litanies and intercessory prayers used in the Eucharistic liturgy and in daily offices, as well as in personal or family prayer. The litanies and intercessory prayers that we now use are sadly dated in the past, and we need to create new prayers related to the current situation of our Churches and of the people around us. This calls for a certain boldness in liturgical innovation, which is sure to be strongly resisted and opposed by our own people, but unless this is done we would not truly be fulfilling the role of the Christian Church as the Body of Him who is the Priest of Creation, even Jesus Christ the perpetual Intercessor for the world.

Secondly, the same concern for suffering humanity- and that includes the desperate poor and the lonely rich, the struggling revolutionaries and the callous upper classes - should be expressed also in our preaching, which should always strive to relate the lessons from the Scriptures to the lives of the people around us. A new programme of intensive training of the priests for the understanding of the Bible and for its authentic interpretation has to be envisaged by the Eastern Churches. We are still deplorably weak at this point, and there should be an attempt in which all the seminaries and theological faculties of the Orthodox world can cooperate to make Biblical preaching once again relevant as it was in the days of St. John Chrysostom and the Cappadocian Fathers.

Third, the Orthodox Churches have also been hit by the malaise that has befallen almost all Christian Churches - what I call our middle-class isolation for the masses of people. The people who are most active in the local Church, priest and laity -are usually out of touch with the people of lower socio-economic levels. This phenomenon fundamentally distorts the true character of the Church where the rich and the poor, the Greek and the Russian, the Syrian and the American all belong to the same and only Body of Christ. A special effort has to be made, to interpret the poor and the dispossessed first in the Eucharistic assembly inside the Church building, and also in a life of genuine compassion and sharing in the daily life of the Christian community as a whole. If any one member of the Church suffers, the whole body suffers. This reality must be manifested in the life of the Church which must become a genuine commune, with authentic mutual aid and support. Here is an area where the young are in a better position to pioneer in bringing the healing and comforting presence of the Church to the aid of the poor, the depressed, the oppressed, the lonely, the sick, the bereaved, etc. Women too, it seems to me, have a special role in this ministry of diakonia, without which intercessory prayer in a secular age becomes meaningless and hypocritical.

6. Sixth, it is a matter of rejoicing that the reaction against traditional forms of worship are not half as acute or wide-spread in the Eastern Church as it is in the Western Churches. We can take comfort in the fact that Eastern worship, which follows the authentic tradition of the Church, is a time-tested and basically healthy form. We do not need the gimmicks of experimental worship to pander to the sensation-seeking and the bored. But the fact that we need much less liturgical reform than the West should not lead us to the conclusion that we need none at all.

I want to mention here a few reforms which seem to be totally and urgently necessary.

a. Regular Communion

I would place as the first reform necessary the restoration of regular communion by all members of the Church except those that have been ex-communicated. I do not doubt that participation in the Divine Liturgy without participation in the Eucharistic Communion has its own value for the Christian, and does help him to be open to God through the Scriptures and through the prayers and the drama of the liturgy. This is why the Tradition insists that even ex-communicated Christians should attend the liturgy without taking communion. But is it not ironic that the majority of Christians should act like ex-communicated Christians every Sunday? What good reasons are there for our believing people not being encouraged to enter into full bodily, sacramental communion with our Lord Jesus Christ and with the saints and the deported and with each other every Sunday? Is that not our true reality? Is that not the reality we have to live in the Resurrection and therefore today? I hope again that the youth of the Orthodox Churches would show the way for the rest of the Church. We need of course to help our bishops and priests see the need for such regular communion. Perhaps it may be possible to start with regular group communion of some young people once every month with the preparation and then move on to regularly weekly communion. Just as Protestant youth is clamouring for indiscriminate inter-communion, which I think is justified among Protestants, our Orthodox youth must show the way forward by practising regularly communion with adequate preparation.

b. Re-examination of Confession

Many of the Orthodox Churches seem to insist on auricular Confession and Absolution before Communion. We need to have a historical-theological study of the origins of this practice. Clearly this was not the case in the early centuries when everyone took communion every Sunday. The general confession and general absolution were regarded as adequate in those days. Special auricular confession was used very rarely, and then only in the case of graver sins like apostasy, murder and adultery. My own limited knowledge of the tradition has convinced me that the practice of regular auricular confession came into the Orthodox Churches only around the 12th century or later as a result of Latin influence. But I am not arguing for the abolition of auricular confession. I am convinced that this is a pastoral necessity for believers living in a sinful world to have the possibility of a periodic personal confession to a priest of the Church and receiving personal absolution. But this should not be made obligatory every time before receiving communion. What is even more important is to give proper training to our priests to hear confession in a way that is genuinely helpful to the believer. Today quite often confession is perfunctory and therefore a parody of true confession. Spiritual counselling is related to personal confession, but such counselling can be done independently of auricular confession and absolution and can be done in the home or in the study by a competent priest, or even by unordained but spiritually mature and psychologically trained laymen. This whole matter of spiritual counselling and auricular confession should be thoroughly studied by the Orthodox Churches together and new patterns evolved to make them really serve the purpose of spiritual growth for all believers. This is vital to the renewal of worship and renewal of the life of the Church.

c. Congregational Participation

I am a great believer in the magnificent contribution that well-trained choirs can make to the spiritual beauty and orderliness of Eastern worship. But I do not think that the choir has any right to usurp completely the role of the congregation in responding to the prayers of the priest and the deacon in the liturgy. The Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the hymns and the responses should be said by the whole congregation and the role of the choir must be to lead the congregation in these responses, prayers and hymns, and not to replace them. The congregation is the worshipping community and they should not be reduced to the level of mere spectators. I feel that this needs proper examination and the formulation of necessary reforms by the authorities of the Church.

d. The Language of Worship

I do believe that the normal language of the people should be the language used in worship. I think this has always been the practice of the Eastern Churches. Problems are raised for immigrant communities where the older generation places more emphasis on ethnic identity, while the younger members ask for the possibility of more understanding participation. I think the principle of using the normal language of the people should be strongly emphasized, and I doubt the validity of the ethnic identity in the Christian Church. I would however be in favour of retaining certain expressions in the traditional liturgical language of the particular Church, because our ordinary language is inadequate to express our deeper emotions, and certain old expressions for praising God like Halleluyah, Amen, Kyrie Eleison and even the Gloria and its response can still be used in an ancient language to bring more emotional depth into our prayers. But the basic principle should be the use of the ordinary language, without total elimination of some of the expressions in the ancient liturgical language. There are moments in the worship of God when intelligibility has to give place to a kind of speaking in tongues - in ardent exaltation in an unusual language which speaks to more than the mind.

e. Preparation of the Congregation for Worship

Our most significant form of religious education may be in enabling believers to understand the true meaning of worship, especially of the Eucharist and the other sacramental mysteries of the Church. The structure, the symbolism and the theology of eucharistic worship have to be taught again and again to our people, and we have to train them to participate much more consciously and actively in the worship of the Church. Our people have to be taught why they worship and that worship is an act of the whole Church and not just the priest and the choir. They should not be tempted to evaluate the worship of the Church by the measure of what they get out of it. They have to be trained to see that worship is the great saving act which results from the Incarnation, and therefore to engage in it with joy and readiness, not looking for selfish personal benefits or private edification. A more intelligent rationale for worship and a more profound theology of worship have to be taught to our people, than what they now have. Here is also the place to teach them the relation between worship and daily life.

f. Architecture and Symbolic Art in the Church

Our Churches are beginning to be led astray by certain contemporary trends in Church art and architecture, where modernity becomes a higher priority than symbolic meaning, and functional utility more than the spiritual atmosphere. The church building is the presence of heaven on earth, an earthly experience in time of the kingdom that transcends time and space. The space inside the Church should therefore be so organised as to transcend ordinary space. The art and the symbolism must certainly point beyond the ordinary concerns of functional utility. The altar must remain a place of mystery into which priests and deacons enter only with fear and trembling and not in the casual manner in which many priests and laymen enter it today. If we become too casual in the Church, we will soon lose all our sense of the transcendent and be reduced to the secular. This applies to the vestments, the iconostasis, and paintings inside the Church, all of which must be conducive to experiencing the sense of the transcendent.

Conclusion

The Secular Age, however tautological an expression that might be, is a reality--a dangerous reality. The eclipse of God is about the worst thing that can happen to man. It is only by the grace of God that there happen to be some redeeming features in the fact of this secular age. Orthodox Churches have to become aware of both the peril and the opportunity in the crisis. Both the dangerous and the positive aspects call for two related reactions on the part of the Orthodox Church.

The danger lies in the fact that the secular world is a world separated from God. All that is separated from God must perish, for there is no being that can have any being apart or separated from Him who is the source and ground of all being. The world is in peril of being destroyed, for the wrath of God destroys everything that is evil. This means that we in the Orthodox Churches have a special role to play. It is perhaps a role for a creative minority in the Orthodox Church. We are to become like Abraham praying for Sodom and Gomorrah: "Lord if there be 50, nay 10, nay 5 righteous men in these cities, destroy them not, O Lord". The role of the Church, the Body of Him who is the Priest of Creation is to continue incessantly in prayer for our world. Thus alone the Church becomes the saving link between God and the world, even when the world does not recognize God. It is not theology that links God and the world, but the life of the Church united in prayer with the Great Intercessor, who became part of our world in order to link it to God.

The task of vicarious worship and priestly intercession is being increasingly neglected by our secularised western Christian brethren. As in Pechora, there are Catholic monks in Carthusian and Trappist monasteries who continue to engage in this ministry of intercession. But in general, Catholic monasticism is in danger of becoming a secular activistic group, while our own monks are not adequately sensitive to the needs and problems of the world of today. The one thing which can revitalize our worship is to have a new kind of monastic movement, fully at home in the modern world and in the world of the great mystery of worship and prayer. I do not think the way to renewal of worship in our Churches is either through a new theology or more active participation in social and political questions, but by developing a genuine, God-centred, loving, vicarious interiority of the Spirit through the disciplined community of worship, work, study and service. Such monastic communities must spring out of the new situations in the secular world -- whether in America, Greece, Russia, the Middle East or India. Now I personally wish I could leave aside my globe-trotting and my administrative and other activism, and become a part of such a genuinely eucharistic praying, loving community!

The positive aspect of the secular crisis is that the Orthodox are called upon to re-interpret, re-appropriate and re-live their own Christian heritage in the context of a world that poses new questions to us in the new social setting in which God has placed us. We must not be bullied to inertia by the admiration and praise that we hear from the non-Orthodox or even from the Orthodox about the superiority of our worship forms.

We must also listen to the criticisms leveled against us by our fellow-Christians of the West. These are mainly three:

I. First about our ethnic insularity. The Church cannot belong to anyone nation, whether that nation be Hebrew or Greek, Slavic or Indian. The Church is a Sacrament of the unity of all mankind, of all nations, and peoples, and unless we break open the ethnic barriers, our worship will remain inadequate as a witness to the Kingdom of God in time and space. Here I expect our youth to show us the way in overcoming our petty parochialism, so that a genuinely multi-ethnic Church becomes formed, especially in America and the Middle East, but also in Greece and Russia.

II. The second criticism was recently phrased by a sympathetic Protestant friend who said: "The Orthodox are in communion with each other, but how they hate each other, after having given the embrace of love and taken communion together!" This is a terrible insult to our worship, and unless we do something to overcome this mutual hatred between our Churches, our worship in a secular age would become a parody of true Christian worship. Here again Orthodox youth must break through and show us the way. How my heart grieves to see the great Orthodox Church divided by human pettiness, personality cult and power-seeking!

III. The third criticism is about our insensitivity and lack of concern about the problems of the world in which we live. We may be justified in accusing our western brethren of activism and lack of interiority. But are we not in danger today of having neither time nor interiority nor any love for mankind? The Antonine monks of the ancient Egyptian desert were men who burned with genuine love for mankind and linked that love to the love of God in true prayer. We should stop boasting about the quality of our worship and realize with horror that often what draws us to our Churches is sheer ethnic pride without the love of God or the love of man. The great vocation of the Orthodox Church today is to demonstrate a new way of authentically relating the two poles of the Christian life, the love of God and the love of man. We are not equipped to do that now. We have to learn prayer again. We have to be released from our personal, group, and ethnic egoism through a deeper experience of the love of God in faith and worship. And we must develop a new awareness of and sensitivity to the fears and aspirations of mankind, identifying ourselves with the victims of misery and oppression of injustice and inhumanity. This love of God and this love for the whole of mankind must be intensely relived, in order that the Church may be purged of the heresy of divisive struggles for power and be purified to fulfill its ministry of being the Priest of Creation and its Good Shepherd who cares for it, nourishes it, and dies for it.

source: http://www.paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/worship_in_a_secular_age.htm

We have a dream too

What are you going to be doing Monday? We all have a dream. I invite you to join me on Monday at our church in Plymouth and join your prayers with ours...a prayer that all of God's children may realize their dreams. St. Mary the Protectress Orthodox Church is located at 1000 South Michigan Street, Plymouth, Indiana. There is not much I get right, but I know that with the Holy Spirit's help, I can pray with compassion and tears. Can not be with us. Take a few moments at noon on Monday and speak out with us to God...no matter who you call Him.