Time to Pray; Time to Nag

There are days I sit and catch up with myself, in a way. I am concerned with many things and with people, and I forget to listen to my own heartbeat. It is not important for this world that I have an opinion to share  - but it maybe important for me to share it. Very quickly it may become a request for more, but I am not an entertainer. I have participated a little in the public eye, and may do so again. Still, I feel like the Lord reminds me, ever so gently, that I should come to Him, be in His presence, rest by his feet and take shelter under his wings. I speak in images, and hopefully you sense what I say with these words.

            So, He calls me to come before Him, to pray. I have a small prayer book. It is so good to have; it helps me get started. I have the Bible open. Presently I am reading in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

            In the moments of prayer, I can be totally honest with God. He knows all my thoughts and feelings, all my opining, disagreements; all the people I wish could stop menacing  - he hears about them. I am not a lady full of sainthood when I pray. I don’t think I look anything like Mama…whats-her-name, with the mild, saint-like gleam in her eyes. No, I am sadly honest about my own shortcomings, but the Lord knows…and I am forever urging God to reveal himself to people who are just so blind!

            I don’t want to nag, really; but I think I nag, nonetheless.

I have heard, read, and learnt much about prayer. At times I was almost like a pro, and it was blissful as long as it lasted. But then again, I forgot about the whole thing. Well, that’s how I am:  like a lightning bug on fire, buzzing about, and then settling down in the shadows, only to become an ordinary bug in the daytime. But God is God; He is in charge, and I am happy. He calls me in for refills, for a nice cup of tea in His tent. I rest my weary mind; I rest and know that His will be done, in His time.

            And still, he is ok with the fact that I nag.

Paschal Message of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow And All Russia 2016

Paschal Message of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow And All Russia

to the Archpastors, Pastors, Deacons, Monks and Nuns

and All the Faithful Children of the Russian Orthodox Church

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,

 that we should be called the sons of God

(1 Jn 3:1)

Your Graces the archpastors, all-honourable priests, 

God-loving monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters:

 CHRIST IS RISEN!

             With these joyous and life-affirming words I greet you, my beloved, from the depths of my heart and congratulate you all on the great and saving feast of Pascha.

The Church calls this day ‘the feast of feasts and the festival of festivals’ through the lips of one of her great ecumenical teachers, St. Gregory the Theologian. Herein is contained a profound spiritual meaning, for ‘Pascha is as far exalted above all – not only those which are merely human and crawl on the ground but also those which are of Christ himself and are celebrated in for him – as the sun is exalted above the stars’ (Oration 45: On Holy Pascha). The glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus, which has become the most important event in the history of the salvation of the human race, contains the very meaning and profound essence of our faith, the heart and mighty power of the Christian message to the world. In these days what we preach may be encapsulated in these three words: Christ is risen! ‘In saying this, what more can I say? All has been said!’ proclaims St. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow (Homily for Holy Pascha, 18 April 1826).

The history of humanity after the fall of Adam is the history of the unceasing struggle of good with evil. Having shown disobedience to the Creator, people embarked upon their own life and sin came into the world, and with it suffering and disease, corruption and death. Yet, most importantly, sin separated people from God who did not create evil and who does not know any falsehood. No righteous man has ever been able to overcome this tragic division, this great spiritual abyss, as it is impossible to do so purely through human endeavour. And so it was that, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, ‘there arose within us a need for a God made flesh and made dead, that we might live’ (Oration 45: On Holy Pascha).

In other words, Christ’s resurrection has become the breach into eternity thanks to which human limitation has been overcome and the thirst to be united with God has been satisfied. Pascha is the triumph of the Maker’s boundless love for people, ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (Jn 3:16).

And yet what does it mean to celebrate Pascha in a world weighed down by pain and suffering, exhausted from war and conflict, replete with hatred and enmity? What does it mean to sing ‘trampling down death by death and to those in the tombs he has given life,’ when death remains the evident culmination of the earthly life of each one of us? Undoubtedly, Pascha does not abolish the real presence of death in the cosmos, but now human pain and the tragedy of our earthly life are surmounted by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, who has granted to us, his disciples and followers, unconquerable hope in attainment of eternal life. Death is henceforth for us Christians no longer a parting but the joyful encounter and longed for reunification with God.

Christ, ‘the first fruits of them that slept’ (1 Cor 15:20), has shown us the only possible way of overcoming sin and death. This is the way of love. And it is to this love that we are called to bear witness before the whole world. And we are called in the first instance by the example of our own lives, for ‘by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another’ (Jn 13:35).

Love, which according to the apostle Paul, ‘is the bond of perfectness’ (Col 3:14), is the loftiest and greatest of Christian virtues. When we enter eternity and are enabled to see the Lord, our faith will be transformed into knowledge, and our hope in salvation with be turned into reality by God’s mercy. And yet, ‘charity never faileth’ (1 Cor 13:8) and does not know change.

As St. Ignatius Bryanchaninov so wonderfully writes, ‘the perfection of Christianity lies in the perfect love of one’s neighbour’ (Ascetic Essays: On Love of One’s Neighbour). What does ‘perfect love’ mean? It is a love that extends to a love for strangers, for ill-wishers and even for enemies. It is a sacrificial love which transcends all human reasoning as it cannot be contained by the framework of everyday worldly logic. We can attain it only through great spiritual endeavours which evoke the grace of God that grants to us the chance to respond to hatred with love and to evil with virtue.

It is precisely this love which Christ has shown to us when for our salvation he endured terrible humiliation, suffering on the cross and the agonizing death. By his all-conquering love, which fills all things, hades was destroyed to its foundation and finally the gates of paradise were opened to all humanity. In all of life’s circumstances we are called upon to remember that the powers of evil are indeed illusory and not so great, for they stand no comparison with the powers of love and virtue, the sole fount of which is God. Let us recall, too, that the best response to and the most effective means of resisting sin and falsehood is our sincere prayer that is lifted up from the depths of our heart, and first of all prayer which is communal, offered up in church in worship, and even more so communion of the Body and Blood of the Saviour in the mystery of the Eucharist.

In experiencing today great Paschal joy and contemplating with reverence and awe Christ the Giver of Life who has risen from the tomb, let us share this saving message with our neighbours and those far from us, so that they too may see the ineffable radiance of Divine Love and together with us ‘bless and glorify the all-honorable and majestic name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit’.

May the saving light of Christ’s resurrection, which surpasses all human comprehension, immutably illumine our way through life, enlightening and comforting us in making us participants and heirs of the kingdom of heaven.

Rejoice, my beloved, for

CHRIST GOD HAS TRULY RISEN!

Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia: Read his Easter Sermons.

2012

Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is delivering his traditional Easter address to Orthodox believers.

‘Let hope give you strength’

­I address you, dear brothers and sisters, with this Paschal greeting: Christ is risen!

This greeting, which we have inherited from the days of holy apostles, proclaims divine truth and asserts a historical fact. Indeed, 2,000 years have passed, but nobody can say that this greeting is no longer relevant. It is living and effective, and this alone manifests divine power and truth.

The greeting that you have just heard and that you will pass to each other later today contains a great hope, because our Lord Jesus Christ, being without sin, in other words not having sinned before men or before God, was crucified, and before that subject to suffering, torture and humiliation.

How often, when facing suffering, especially suffering inflicted by other people, we become anxious and desperate. We think that it is unjust for us to suffer, that we don’t deserve this. We resist injustice. Believers often say that by being reviled they are bearing their cross.

So why is apostles’ greeting, ‘Christ is risen!’, a sign of hope for us? It’s because if Christ, who was without sin, suffered, we, too, should remember our Lord and Savior when facing injustice, slander, malice and lies.

Every one of us, even those who suffer unjustly, has some personal sins, some wrongdoings. This alone means that we can regard our suffering as a punishment for our wrongdoings.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who had not committed any wrongdoing and had never lied, accepted reviling from people and even agreed to be put to death being innocent.

The Lord has taken the way of the cross, and now He encourages us to follow Him and remember that resurrection follows the cross.

The Lord has risen from the dead, and this resurrection is His victory over all those lies.

We believe that as we proclaim, with faith and hope, that Christ is risen, we too are heirs to everything Christ entrusted to His apostles, because Easter, the day of Christ’s resurrection, is a day of great hope, which should strengthen us in our sorrows, help us overcome hardships, cope with injustice and move forward remembering that Christ defeated evil, which means that we too should overcome evil in our lives, through the power of God, the power of prayer and the power of faith.

That is why the holy day of Easter is a celebration of hope for all people.

I would like to share the joy of this celebration and the joy of Christian hope with you. Let this hope give you strength to go through your life, following the great, unfading and shining image of the risen Christ.

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!

2013

‘We become free to live a full life’

The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church, has addressed the faithful with his traditional Easter speech.

Christ is Risen, dear brothers and sisters!

I would like to share the joy of the holy day of Easter with all of you. The Lord has indeed saved us all through his resurrection. And in order to comprehend the significance of this for us as mankind we could consider this example. Just imagine that someone innocent took the blame, responsibility and penalty for all the crimes ever committed by all the wrongdoers and rendered them all free by taking their penalty for them. Our Lord Jesus Christ did just the same, yet with one condition – he didn’t open the doors of the prison cells the sinners are contained in, but undid their locks. And now it is our free choice – to step out and be free or remain locked up. In one of the hymns, we praise our risen Savior saying that He smashed open the eternal fetters and chains and freed us of them. But in order for us to step out of that door and become free we need to make our way towards Him, because there is only one way that leads to the door beyond which the freedom lies.

Our circumstances in life, superstitions, all kinds of stereotypes and false values lead us off this path. We often get tempted with other ways to freedom. At times people spend their entire lives pursuing these ways only to find out in the end that they’re still locked up and instead of obtaining freedom have hit the wall. Some may still have the time and energy to resume their search for a way out, while others may give up the hope to escape their imprisonment.  

If we turn to Christ, we open the door that He unlocked for us. We become free and empowered by His ways and commandments. We become free to live a full life. This doesn’t require any exhausting effort. It only takes to believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ has risen and saved us. It only takes to believe that the door is open. It only takes to believe that living by His will is the true freedom while any other way is the opposite.  

And when we begin to realize this, a whole new life opens to us. We find it easier to be good to people, refrain from foul words or judgments and make our way through life without hurting other people or crippling them.  

We discover that we are able to love, be faithful, and carry the truth into the world. That’s what life in Christ means, that’s what the true freedom is. Maintaining freedom isn’t easy. Each one of us knows how difficult it is for a state to protect its freedom and independence. It sometimes takes a lot of hard work. Protecting one’s freedom from numerous temptations and illusions that the dark powers are sending our way to drive us off the way to salvation isn’t easy just the same way.

The holy day of Easter is a celebration of victory and freedom. Let’s embrace this holy day with these feelings and make the decision, as much as we can, to start making our way towards our risen Savior through the door that He gracefully opened for us by His holy deeds of mercy and truth – and we can do so by helping those who need our help, promoting peace, justice and love among all of us.

Christ is risen indeed! Amen!

2015

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill sends a message to believers of the Russian Orthodox faith as they celebrate Easter Sunday:

Beloved in the Lord my brothers the archpastors, all-honourable fathers, pious monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters!

It is with joy that I greet you with the ancient and yet eternally new and life-affirming victorious exclamation:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

This wondrous resonance of truly life-creating words contains the foundation of our faith, the gift of hope and the fount of love.

Just yesterday, together with the Lord’s disciples, we grieved at the death of our beloved Saviour, while today with the whole world, both visible and invisible, we sing triumphantly: ‘For Christ has risen, the everlasting eternal joy!’ (Canon of Holy Pascha). Just yesterday it would seem that the last hope for salvation had been lost, while today we have acquired firm expectation of eternal life ‘in the never-fading Kingdom of God.’ Just yesterday the ghost of corruption prevailed over creation, casting doubt over the meaning of our earthly life, while today we proclaim to each and all the great victory of Life over death.

The divinely-inspired apostle Paul spoke of the significance of the miracle that took place on that distant, and yet forever near to every Christian night; he tells us directly that this event has the greatest importance for our faith, for ‘if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (1 Cor 15:14). The Lord’s Passover is the very heart and invincible power of Christianity: as St. Philaret of Moscow says, it ‘creates hope, ignites love, inspires prayer, calls down grace, illumines wisdom, destroys all calamities and even death itself, gives vitality to life, makes bliss not a dream but a reality, glory not a phantom but the eternal lightning of the eternal light illuminating all things and defeating nobody’ (Homily on the Day of Holy Pascha, 1826).

Belief in Christ’s Resurrection is inextricably harnessed to the Church’s belief that the incarnate Son of God, in redeeming the human race and tearing asunder the fetters of sin and death, has granted to us genuine spiritual freedom and the joy of being united with our Maker. We are all in full measure communicants of this precious gift of the Saviour, we who have gathered on this radiant night in Orthodox churches to ‘enjoy the banquet of faith,’ as St. John Chrysostom puts it.

Pascha is the culmination of the Saviour’s path of thorns crowned with suffering and the sacrifice of Golgotha. It is not fortuitous that in both the writings of the Fathers and liturgical texts Christ is repeatedly called the ‘First Warrior in the battle for our salvation.’ ‘For I have given you an example,’ (Jn 13:15), the Lord says to his disciples and calls upon us all to follow the example of his life.

Yet how are we to imitate the Saviour? What sort of spiritual heroism can we apply to the realities of modern-day life? Today, when we utter the word ‘heroism,’ an image often arises in peoples’ minds of a legendary warrior, a historical figure or famous hero from the past. Yet the meaning of spiritual heroism lies not in the acquisition of resounding fame or the gain of universal recognition. Through spiritual deeds, immutably linked to our inner endeavours and the limiting of oneself, we can know by experience what true and perfect love is, for the willingness to sacrifice oneself, which lies at the foundation of all spiritual deeds, is the highest manifestation of this feeling.

The Lord has called us to the feat of active love embedded in losing oneself in service to our neighbour, and even more so to those who especially need our support: the suffering, the sick, the lonely and the downcast. If this law of life, which is so clearly manifested and expressed in the earthly life of the Saviour, becomes the inheritance of the majority, then people will be truly happy. Indeed, in serving others, we gain incomparably more than we give: the Lord then enters our hearts and by communicating with divine grace all of human life is changed. As there can be no holiness without labour, as there can be no Resurrection without Golgotha, so too without spiritual feats the genuine spiritual and moral transformation of the human person is impossible.

When spiritual heroism becomes the substance not only of the individual but of an entire people, when in striving for the celestial world the hearts of millions of people are united, ready to defend their homeland and vindicate lofty ideals and values, then truly amazing, wondrous things happen that at times cannot be explained from the perspective of formal logic. The nation acquires enormous spiritual strength which no disasters or enemies are capable of overcoming. The truth of these words is evidently attested by the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, achieved by the self-sacrificing heroism of our people. We shall mark the seventieth anniversary of this glorious date in the current year.

In afflictions and temptations we are called upon to preserve peace and courage, for we have been given the great and glorious promise of victory over evil. Can we be discouraged and despair? No! For we comprise the Church of Christ which, according to the Lord’s true word, cannot be overcome by the ‘gates of hell’ (Mt 16:18), and Divine Revelation bears witness to us by foretelling that ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away’ (Rev 21:4).

I prayerfully wish you all, Your Graces my brothers the archpastors, all-honourable fathers, dear brothers and sisters, strength of spirit and steadfastness in faith, peace and unfailing joy in the Lord, the Conqueror of death. Imbued by the light of Christ’s Resurrection and in communing with the mystery of the Paschal miracle, let us share our exultant joy with those who are close to us and those far from us in testifying to all of the Saviour who has risen from the tomb.

May we all the days of our life be forever warmed, comforted and inspired to good deeds by the ardent words of the good news of Pascha which impart to us the true gift of the joy of life:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

HE IS RISEN INDEED!

Musica Mundana

Fragile

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are
How fragile we are, how fragile we are

Minimalists are without colour

I love spring.

I love summer.

I love autumn.

But I think I am allergic to winter.

As I walked on the muddy dirt road up the hill behind our house, I cherished the shades of brown. I enjoyed the pebbles in grey and white. I let my eyes rest on the old mossy tree trunks that were comfortably showing off their intense green décor. All the colours of the forest floor comforted me. I thought about the white majesty of winter. Then my mind wandered to the bleak white and gray impressions and the dead silence in the woods in winter. 

            No offense, but I reflected upon the present day minimalists, who, in their interior décor like all things white or light shades of white and grey. They must like winter, I thought. They must like the cold. Since I know some minimalists, and they are warm people, I decided what they might like was a certain serenity in the colourless environment, and then – when a person appears in the minimalist interior décor, he is like a colourful silhouette, clearly visible, clearly present. Well, I had to find something positive about it. But I could never live in the lack of shape and colour; it feels like you enter one of these rooms in a morgue, a room for dead people to be kept until burial, and where all the walls are symbolically white.

When I rest my eyes upon the shapes and colours of the forest, I am comforted. The very nature confirms me in my being. It is full of shapes and bursting with colour; but it resonates a calm in me. For some reason I want to think about the baroque art forms: intricate, ornamental, and intense in shape and colours… When I have the chance to stare at it in real life, I am mostly intrigued, partly overwhelmed and not quite able to communicate with it. It is different if I meet it in a museum or in a church setting.

Ah, church:  large cathedrals and church architecture  - I long for it, but it cannot be without content, not without truth, not without Christ Jesus as the Lord and Saviour of this world. The true church must proclaim the gospel of God’s redemption. Otherwise it is useless.

The true church is not minimalist in content! It is large, messy and colourful; it is boasting in colours, shapes and forms – for it responds to the message of life beyond this world. Brilliant!