28th Anniversary of the repose of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

SYOSSET, NY [OCA]

Tuesday, December 13, 2011, the Feast of Saint Herman of Alaska, marks the 28th anniversary of the repose of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Dean of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY, and a leading Orthodox theologian.

Born in 1921 in Estonia to a family of Russian emigres, he spent his youth in France, where he received his secondary and university education. He also completed theological studies at the Orthodox Theological Institute of Saint Sergius in Paris, which was then the center of Russian Orthodox scholarship following the turmoil of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Ordained to the Orthodox priesthood in 1946, he taught Church history at Saint Sergius Institute until 1951, when he was invited to join the faculty of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, at that time located in New York City. He was quickly recognized as a leading exponent of Orthodox liturgical theology, which sees the liturgical tradition of the Church as a major sign and expression of the Christian faith.

He received his doctorate on July 5, 1959 from the Orthodox Theological Institute of Saint Sergius on the dissertation “Tserkovny Ustav: Opyt Vvedeniia v Liturgicheskoe Bogoslovie” [The Church’s Ordo: Introduction to Liturgical Theology]. He held honorary degrees from Butler University, General Theological Seminary, Lafayette College, Iona College, and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.

Besides teaching at Saint Vladimir’s, Father Alexander held positions of adjunct professor at Columbia University, New York University, Union Seminary, and General Theological Seminary in New York and was a popular guest lecturer at many universities throughout the country. He was also active as a representative of the Orthodox Church in the ecumenical movement, and held positions in the Youth Department and the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.

Dean of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary from 1962, he was instrumental in educating a generation of Orthodox priests. During his tenure, the Seminary achieved wide recognition as a center of Orthodox theological studies.

In 1970, he was active in the establishment of the Orthodox Church in America as an autocephalous Church, which at that time became officially independent from the Russian Orthodox Church, and dedicated itself to the unity of Orthodox ethnic jurisdictions in this country.

While committed to the cause of an Orthodox Church which would be united and American, Father Alexander always remained concerned with the fate of believers in the Soviet Union. For 30 years, his sermons were broadcast in Russian on “Radio Liberty” and gained Father Alexander a broad following across the Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitzyn, who while still in the Soviet Union was one of his auditors, remained his friend after emigrating to the West.

Father Alexander published over a dozen books which received wide circulation, including For the Life of the World; Introduction to Liturgical Theology; Ultimate Questions; Church, World, Mission; and numerous articles and tracts. For the Life of the World, a popular volume on Christian faith as reflected in liturgy, has been translated into numerous languages and remains one of the most popular works on Christianity for the general public. He completed a major study on the Eucharist only weeks before his death.

May Father Alexander’s memory be eternal!

For a wealth of additional information and links please visit www.schmemann.org.

http://oca.org/news/headline-news/28th-anniversary-of-the-repose-of-protopresbyter-alexander-schmemann

For more information about the AAC, check the conference website.

July 19, 6:30 pm – Vespers at Bond Chapel
July 20, 7:30 am – Liturgy at Bond Chapel

The prophet Elijah is consumed with zeal for the Lord. He is the voice of God’s closure of the heavens and the one who calls down fire and rain in testimony to the truth of the one God. The oath he utters at the beginning of his ministry is interesting: “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word.” Elijah’s zeal is to prove that the God of Israel is alive, not just dependent on the constructs of human culture, attention span, or the needs of politics.

God is alive and ready to deal with Elijah because he stands before God with vigilance, like the angels, ready to give all his being to the Word which God will speak through him. This is why Elijah has the power to withhold rain by “his word,” because he gives himself over to god in such a way that eventually he will be taken up by the same sort of angelic conveyance that God himself rides, the fiery chariot, the “chariots and horses of Israel.” He can call down the complete consumption of his bull that he offers, even though he saturates it with 12 jars full of water, the full number of the people of Israel. He is the symbol of the charismatic ascetic devoting all his being to God and becoming divine through the working of God in him. He heals and even raises the dead, because the word in him is the Living God, the Living Word.

But the best thing to pull from this story is the sense that Elijah meets God not in a thunder and noise, but in the still small voice. This is the mystery of the incarnation; the small and quiet call to holiness that does not teach us that God is a loud-mouth, a bully or a braggart. God gives power to those who can see him and hear him in quiet, humility and peace. That is where boldness is given and power is received.

This is the only depiction of Elijah direct converse with God, and it is humble, despite his great and public deeds elsewhere. Word itself is like a mustard seed or a small voice, and the Glory of God can only be perceived by the quiet heart united to God. Let us pray to be lit and to be consumed by the quiet of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, the one carrying us on the chariot to Life through the silence of his Cross and his tomb.

Come celebrate the feast with us at Vespers or Liturgy or both.

Romans 12: Challenging Christian and Atheist America by Fr. Ted Bobosh

New beginnings in community: Gender issues and the Church by Fr. Alexis Vinogradov

The icon on the right shows St. Makarios with the cherubim, who, according to legend, appeared to him, “weighed his heart,” and told him that the monastery he had founded in Sketis or Shihet (meaning “weight of heart” in the Egyptian language; still in existence today, at Wadi Natrun, Egypt) would be a blessed inheritance. We ask that St. Makarios pray to God that we also be blessed with the power of the name of Christ and the work of the Spirit so that our parish, neighborhood, and city are transformed by the weight of our hearts’ grace-filled love for God and our neighbor.

In Christ,

Fr. Elijah Mueller

Please take note of the Holy Week/ Paschal schedule. Please join in as many services as possible. If this experience of the Orthodox celebration of Holy Week and Pascha is very new to you, drink deeply, come to everything you can possibly make time for. If you have experienced these services many times, come and add your voice as we sing, your prayer as we pray, and your hope as we hope for the reward that comes to us in humble vigil.

Let us be a community transformed by the coming of Christ, and not solitary in our worldly anxieties and daily cares. Come, stop and rest in the fullness of Christ’s rest, which raises the dead.

If you were planning to go somewhere else where you might be insignificant in the crowd, please choose rather to celebrate with us at St. Makarios, where there is joy in every soul that joins us!

In Christ,
Fr. Elijah

God has given us all that we are and that we have to glorify him. So it is, that in giving up a little of the things with which we filled ourselves, we recognize the Creator above the things which he has created.

We put aside the prideful eating to turn back to the spiritual delights of Paradise. We ascend the mountain with Moses to receive the Law; with Elijah to hear the still, small voice; with Peter, James and John to see Christ transfigured; with myrrh-bearing women to see Christ hanging on the tree of the Cross; and with all assembly of the sons and daughters of the kingdom to the New Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, to see Christ risen.

But all is lost if we do not learn, or progress a little in humility, so that we might boldly and violently defeat our own vanity and pride. This is why the Fast must begin with asking forgiveness and acknowledging God’s forgiveness of all, so that his mercy and love might be poured on us; and from us to others.

Please come join us during this season of bright repentance and joyful entrance into the exalted and peaceful paradise of humility.

From the hymns of the very first day of the Fast:

The fiery chariot received Elijah

who was strengthened by fasting.

By Fasting, Moses was a seer of ineffable things,

and by it, we shall see Christ.

Adam ate the food

and was cast out of paradise for his indulgence.

But we receive the fast with joy, Lord:

Show us worthy of perfect repentance, Lover of mankind.

Cleansed by fasting on Mount Horeb,

Elijah saw God.

Let us also cleanse our hearts with fasting,

and we shall see Christ.

Come join us for the celebration of the two great winter feasts: the Birth of our Lord and the Theophany at his Baptism in Jordan. These feasts are opportunities for us to begin again to understand the incarnation, the birth into our humanity of the Son of God, and the beginning of the revelation of the work of Christ and the Persons of the Trinity. Through the Son of God, the light of the knowledge of God shines on us as we gaze on the accomplishment of the eternal plan of God for our salvation.

Christ is born to “put down the mighty from their thrones and exalt those of low degree.” Christ comes to establish an exalted humanity through humility, generosity, kindness, gentleness, and meekness. He comes to shake the world and be victorious by sharing our human defeat in death, to break it with confident and faithful love. This is what he is born for: the Son of God comes to defeat pride, cynicism, animosity and bitterness by his uncompromised love, love powerful in humility. This is the first and final Word by which God has created and creates again. The immortal and eternal Word of God becomes the Word made flesh to redeem all creation.

Let us learn to trust in God, to believe and to come to union with the One who made us in love. Let Christ be born in us. Let us be born with Him in a baptism which takes us from death to life and from exile on the byways of this fallen world to our home in the kingdom of heaven which is within us, if we only seek Him there.

Now humility of heart comes about in a person for two causes: either from a precise knowledge of his sins, or from recollection of the greatness of God. I mean, how exceedingly the greatness of the Lord of all lowered itself, so that in such ways as these he might converse with and admonish men. He humbled himself so far as to assume a human body, he endured men and associated with them, and showed himself so despised in the world, he who possesses ineffable glory above with God the Father, and at whose sight the angels are struck with awe, and the glory of whose countenance shines throughout their orders.
St. Isaac of Nineveh

Christ is born! Glorify Him!
Fr. Elijah Mueller

While it is normal and healthy to feel shame about one’s sins, one should not feel weighed down by this or fear to confess any particular sin. We can feel shame, but we must also be bold about confronting these sins. The priest is obliged to keep all things confidential, to be even-tempered and unfazed by the sins confessed. Priests have heard many sins, if they have regularly confessed people.

We should not assume that our sins are unique. One of the truths things about sins is that they typical, unremarkable, blasé, hackneyed, etc. And in fact they are not even a matter for ridicule, mockery or shameful laughter unless they are hidden and untreated. So speaking one’s sins is actually liberating; not because we accept the sin, but because we are unambiguously asking God, out loud, for help. And God does help. Christ takes up our cross.

We should have faith that a mystery and a miracle does happen in Confession and Absolution. God takes the sins from us. This does not mean that they will not return, but rather that God, by lifting again and again the burden of our guilt eventually lightens our hearts and minds to be freed of these sins. God’s forgiveness means freedom: removal of “debt” and the burdens which constrain us and bind us to the power of sin and death, our own undoing.

How does one confess? We should speak in generalities for the most part: “I tend to do this, I tend to do that.” We need cleansing from specific bad deeds, but more importantly from the habits and spiritual maladies that are the root of each symptomatic incident. This takes time, and one should not expect a perfect diagnosis of one’s problems from the Confessor. The important thing is getting things out, not our impatient expectations of an immediate cure.

First we must start by obvious personal inter-relational, external, behavioral sins: anger, impatience, irresponsibility, lying, resentment, cheating, greediness, etc. These will often lead us to deal with our own passions and sins against ourselves, our obsessions and compulsions.

The inter-relational sins often clearly have an inner component of feelings, attitudes and inner choices; drives which are actually quite independent of the persons we sin against. Quite often our sins are based out of wounds, fears and sadness we bear within us because of the fallen world, even sins against us.

This last category of “wounding by sin,” is the hardest to identify, and may take time to confess. It is not necessary to feel guilt or even shame about these wounds or disabilities, though these are normally things we irrationally (at least on a psychological and theological level) feel most shame about. It is very important to confess these at least once to our Confessor.

The priest usually will not be able to say anything about these bitter things that work havoc in us. However, it is good to expose them so that we can be moved to freedom from the sins which come from our compromised acceptance that this disabled condition constitutes who and what we are.

Certainly, such a “solution” is a sin against our good Creator. So it is important even to confess things that we have no control over that cause us to sin, because they become our sins by our continuing to give these things power and life and multiplying them in the sins they cause us to commit.

A good example of this is the sin of “defensiveness” or “remembrance of evil”: a prideful, self-protective source of conflict which most people engage in, at some point in on-going, growing relationships. There is usually a “reason” for this behavior, based on wounding over some old issue that seems almost “constitutional” to us. And we are usually off-balance as regards the issue and “project” it (experience, feelings) onto a person who often is not guilty of wounding us.

In summary, just keep it simple. There is complexity in our flaws and sins, but not as much as our pride would have us believe. We need to attempt to be as honest as possible, without going into unnecessary details. We should not provide a picture of our sins, just a sense that we have spoken our sins in outline. The priest listens to us, questions and/or advises a little then prays the prayer of absolution. And we must have faith that a Mystery is at work in us, that God is present to heal and cleanse us.

We must not hate anyone, even if some people hate God and the true faith. God does not need to be defended by us. God needs our love and our love for God is expressed through man, even if that person is your enemy or the enemy of God.
Fr. Roman Braga, from True Prayer Never Ends, the Burning Bush monastic journal, Winter 2010

In the northern hemisphere and in the cold of our climate, this need for salvation is given extra force by our loss of daytime hours, the bitter cold, the burden of additional clothes, and the dangerous or unpleasant driving and walking. We are forced to a remembrance of our frailty and mortality. The turn of the seasons itself shows us this. So we understand clearly our need for light and life.

Jesus Christ brings us that light and life, by coming to share our condition, our weakness, the coldness and bitterness that dominate our mortal life even in the midst of our joys. He is born in our reality so that the reality of heavenly joy, peace, light and life might be born in us.

The kingdom of heaven is within us. Within the “blues” of our earthly existence, a new more victorious spiritual melody is born and heard through faith in the Almighty Creator who pours his power into our weakness. Our Savior comes to lift us from sadness to joy, from oppression to peace and freedom.

We need to be saved for life to be given meaning and steady movement toward the light of the resurrection which pours forth through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray for this peace and light to be given, knowing that God will shed his light on us graciously. We need to begin to set aside a quiet and clean place in our hearts, a place in which the knowledge of Christ might be born, fulfilling the angelic proclamation: “Peace on earth goodwill among men.”

We will send out a Christmas schedule in the next week. The Church would welcome any special Christmas donations from members or friends of the parish.