Category: Spirituality

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Bush Fires of Love

The bushfires in Victoria over the past week or two have certainly shaken our country. It is hard not to be touched by these scenes of human tragedy in our own ‘backyard’.

We have seen images of charred homes on the news, weeping families and stubbornly resilient hope in people’s eyes. We have seen people’s lives destroyed and acts of heroic courage. We have seen a huge outpouring of support, in words and in donations, for the victims of the fires. We have seen acts of profound selflessness, evidence that there remain in our days people who genuinely care for others.

I received an email that contained this message:

“…a volunteer firefighter who spent three days fighting the fires, saving lives and homes, finally went to his own home for some badly-needed sleep. His house burnt down at 3.30 am while he was sleeping in it.”

I am reminded of the words of our Lord Jesus:

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Some may see this as a gross injustice. Why should a man who worked so hard to save others be treated in this shabby way by life? What had he done that he deserved to die?

But there is a bigger picture: the same words might have been said of Jesus Himself as He hung on the Cross.

When Love enters, Justice retires to the back of the room, for one far greater is present. Love is not about justice for oneself – it is about the giving of oneself. Often, to give in love means to surrender one’s rights willingly and happily.

I don’t know anything else about his firefighter, whether he was a good man or not, whether he loved God or went to Church. But I think his act of selfless giving to save others would not go unrewarded by God.

If nothing else, it is interesting to contemplate that we all must die, one day, somehow. Perhaps this way of dying gives meaning to his life, more than many other ways he might have died? And perhaps that makes his life a life worth living.

Selfless self-sacrifice has its own rewards, not just in eternity, but also here on earth. It means something to forget the self and to serve others, regardless of the cost. How many people are at this very moment stumbling through their day without a real purpose, living selfish lives without meaning?

Perhaps the fire-fighter’s sacrifice is to be celebrated; perhaps we should reserve some sadness for those who still walk on the earth but are dead inside.

Fr Ant

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Contentment…

Life will always have its ups and downs, as I am quite sure you know by now. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the bit that comes before the famous verse: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. It reads:

Philippians 4:11-13
Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content:
I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.
Everywhere and in all things
I have learned both to be full and to be hungry,
both to abound and to suffer need.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

St Paul says a lot of things like that, and it always strikes me that that is the only way a human being can be truly invincible. When your treasure is in Heaven, no one can take it away from you, and no earthly troubles can take away your joy.

I find this to be one of the ways I can tell how sincere my faith in Christ is at any given time. If tribulations come along and I find myself disturbed by them and restless, it is a sure sign that there is something wrong in my relationship with God. It is a message for me to turn back to Him in abject repentance and implore Him for His mercy and forgiveness, and His aid in my weakness.

And yet, we need to distinguish between what is a purely human reaction to life and what is a spiritual state. As humans, our brains are made of cells and chemicals and electrical impulses, and sometimes these physical systems run ahead of our conscious, spiritual mind. Our reaction to pain is a case in point. A person can be totally and utterly convinced that the needle the doctor is about to poke into her skin is for her own good, and will not hurt that much, and yet, she may still flinch and sweat and feel her heart race at the sight of it.

Human brains can sometimes run off on their own into anxiety, or depression, or fear, or anger; all by themselves. So what is the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? The Christian doesn’t suddenly become super-human and beyond human physical instincts and frailty. Even the Lord Christ Himself, when He became human, suffered this kind of reaction in the Garden of Gethsemane. That is what it means to be human.

But to be Christian means to subject the body to the spirit. In Gethsemane, after the weeping and pain came surrender and peace. For the Christian, after the internal battle with the flesh comes surrender to God’s will, and all that this surrender bestows. Love, Joy, Peace. The fruits of the Holy spirit (Galatians 5:22ff) are the gift of God to His children. These are fruits that are practical treasures – not treasures to be locked up in a safe and never seen, but treasures that transform our lives daily and bring fulfilment and contentment to us, we humans whose instincts and desires might never allow us to experience true contentment otherwise.

To follow in the path of Christ is to find this true contentment, in whatever state one is. “If you love Me,” He said, “You will keep My commandments”. Sinners and tax collectors who loved Him in humility and offered a genuine repentance found acceptance and forgiveness with Christ. Their lives were transformed and Love, Joy and Peace became their treasure. The Chief Priests, Scribes and Pharisees practiced a legalistic obedience to God, and yet were always willing to disobey Him in their hearts, seeking their own wills above God’s, trusting to their own wisdom rather than simply obeying the Truth of God. You will recall what Christ said to them…

True contentment is never found in one’s external situation, for that can never be perfect so long as we dwell on earth, nor should we expect it to be. Nor should we set our hopes on making our lives perfect in this world. No, true contentment comes from winning the battle of the ego within, from sincere surrender to God, unconditionally and totally. It begins inside, and works its way out to one’s external life.

It is the seed of Surrender that bears the Fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Fr Ant

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Little Nasties Continued

Angela asks how one can deal with the Little Nasties: the unexpected sins one discovers inside one’s heart.

Finding the Little Nasties within is not always an easy task. They have prodigious camouflage abilities and even when you pick up their scent, they can be surprisingly slippery. And when you finally manage to corner them, they have a way of turning on you viciously.

The faults within us are clever at dressing themselves up as virtues, and it is not uncommon to find that I can be regularly committing a sin under the guise of self-righteousness. “Of course I had to get angry with him – he had to be put in his place. Let’s see him try that with me again!” Detecting a Little Nasty requires a great deal of courage, the courage to strip away the comfortable covering of feeling good about oneself and exposing the raw mess underneath. It is much like cleaning the slough off a nasty festering skin wound – it hurts a lot, but it has to be done so the infection doesn’t end up killing you.

In tandem with courage, brutal honesty will help a great deal. We can all be quite honest about the faults of others (at least within ourselves) but for some reason we find difficulty in applying the same standard of honesty to our own situation.

I don’t think it is possible to attain this sort of honesty without first offering up a sacrifice. The great ox of being pleased with oneself must first be led to the altar and slaughtered, its remains burned as a sweet aroma of surrender on the altar of Truth. Until one gives up this powerful desire to be pleased with oneself, it is virtually impossible to be honest, for it bestows the strongest motivation to find another way of looking at things, a way that is more acceptable and less damning. Once this major barrier is broken down, the door is opened for God to enter and begin the long laborious task of rebuilding one’s self afresh; only this time, He will do it the right way.

Do not misunderstand – I am not saying that one should live their life feeling miserable and despondent about themselves – far from it! For the rebuilt self-image in which God participates is immensely pleasing, but for very different reasons. The self-pleasing image of myself brings misery in the end, for it is based on lies. But the divinely designed self-image is based on Truth, and “the truth will set you free”.

There is an immense joy and peace that comes from seeing the truth in yourself. It is peace because you can feel secure that there are no nasty surprises lurking unseen or undetected and waiting to jump out and destroy your life, or at least your comfortable self-image. No, everything is out in the open, nothing is hidden, what you see is what you get, so you know exactly what you are dealing with. That is actually quite peaceful, even if what you are dealing with involves Little Nasties. Better the cockroach you see and deal with than the cockroach you nervously hear scratching about somewhere behind your pillow!

And it is joy, for Truth brings its own joy. We experience this joy when we learn something new about the truth of God’s creation, for example; like the joy of neatly solving a complex puzzle or of learning how wonderfully designed an eye is. Truth just fits together so neatly! It is as deeply satisfying as clicking the 1000th piece of a jigsaw puzzle into place and stepping back to enjoy the completed masterpiece that cost you so much time and effort. Knowing the truth about the Little Nasties within is similarly satisfying – the picture is not so pretty, but there is a great deal of happiness to be found in finishing it off.

But also like a jigsaw puzzle, putting the real picture together can be incredibly difficult at times. Little Nasties can be a bit like quicksilver – just when you think you’ve got a good grasp, it slips right through your fingers.

You find a Little Nasty in your heart. But within days, perhaps hours, you have been distracted, or become busy with other matters, or subconsciously avoided pursuing it, until before you know it, the Little Nasty has been consigned to that drawer in your mind marked “For Future Investigation – When I Have the Leisure”. For of course, there are far more pressing matters to attend to, aren’t there?

Grasping and holding quicksilver needs patience and care, and a bit of experience. So does hunting Little Nasties. Experience is a great teacher, and the little critters become easier to catch when you’ve learned a few of their tricks so you go in prepared for them. Setting aside some uninterrupted daily time for hunting Little Nasties is one strategy. Moments of quiet contemplation are invaluable in this pursuit. How many Little Nasties have I trapped sitting alone in an empty Church with nothing but my thoughts for company, or walking in a park, or gazing upon the ocean waves lapping on the shore? It is in these moments of serenity that the Spirit of God is most able to work in us.

Dogged persistence is another invaluable tool. There are creatures in nature that bite a human and will never let go, even if they die. I think God may have created these tenacious critters partly as a example for us. Once you have the Little Nasty in your sights, don’t give up until you have flushed it into the open and dealt with it!
Neither should one enter into a conversation with the Little Nasty. Often these conversations end up with the Little Nasty convincing you that it’s not really so bad, and giving you a hundred reasons to let it go, and lulling you into a false sense of security. Do not even begin such a conversation! If you find yourself in one, get out! Tell the Little Nasty, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Worst of all is when a cornered Little Nasty turns vicious. It can rip your soul out, if you let it. It can turn the blame back on you so powerfully that you lose your confidence and your hope and collapse in a shivering heap while it makes its getaway to the safety of the shadows of your heart once more.

“How dare you think you can deal with me in this way?

Who do you think you are?

Don’t you see what a horrible, sinful wreck you are?

Do you really think that the likes of you can ever be a good person?

Come on, who do you think you’re kidding?

I am only the smallest and weakest of your zoo of Little Nasties; there are many more like me you know, and they’re much worse than I am.

Why are you picking on me?

And do you really think you will ever get us all out?

Better men than you have tried before this, and failed!”

This is the kind of stinging attack of which only the desperate are capable. And it can really ram home. The best shield against it is humility. Humility is shield that is made of the strongest materials there are: it is made of God’s grace and bound together by His unconditional love. When it is shiny and polished and well cared for, you can see your reflection in it, but it is a reflection from the loving, gentle, compassionate grace of God that reflects the deep beauty He created in us rather than the ugliness we have accumulated through our years. Oh, you can’t hide the ugliness and you know it’s still there, but somehow when you see that ugliness reflected from God’s grace and love, the original beauty God designed for you shines through it and transforms it.

“Yes,” you find yourself responding to the vicious attack of the cornered Little Nasty, “I am all that you say I am, it is true. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. And He still loves me with all my weakness and faults. And if He has hope for me, then neither will I abandon hope. If He can still see what I might become, if He has a plan for transforming me, then I will trust myself to His grace and love, and I will patiently hunt down every single Nasty that I have so foolishly invited into my heart until I have banished every single one, or until my last dying breath stops me. Now stop your ruckus and give yourself up, for you must know that you will not escape me today, no matter what you do. For the Lord of Truth is by my side.”

To every hunt, there must come an end, one way or another. Sometimes, our Little Nasties get away, but sometimes we catch them and eradicate them from our hearts.

Happy hunting!

Fr Ant

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God and Time

What is time?

An introductory note of warning: some readers may find this blog a bit too theoretical and a waste of ‘time’.

We feel we know with some certainty what most things in our lives are. Things made of matter, of atoms and molecules, we can deal with comfortably, for they are solid and easy to experience with our senses. Even things like light and heat present no great confusion for us, once we understand the nature of electromagnetic radiation. We can even live with the duality in the nature of light, its being both a particle and a wave at the same time (a nice metaphor for the Divinity and Humanity of Christ perhaps?)

But when it comes to time, it is different. We do not really experience time with our senses in the normal sense. We experience the effects of time: things like movement and change. But what about time itself? What exactly is it?

Well if you’re now hoping I will go on to explain what time is, you will be disappointed. As far as I can ascertain, no one has ever been able to come even remotely close to explaining what time is. Oh sure, we fit time nicely into a whole lot of the laws and equations of physics, and we speak of time being the fourth dimension, together with the three dimensions of space forming the beautifully phrased “Time-Space Continuum”. We manipulate the idea of time to solve all sorts of practical problems and we use the time we read off our watches to organise our lives. But none of this even begins to tell us just what time actually is.

Normally, we understand things best by comparison with something already familiar to us. “A chihuahua is like a poodle,” I might explain to someone who has never seen one, “only a lot smaller, and usually with a lot more attitude.” But what can we compare time to? It seems to exist (does it exist?) in a category all its own.

The only thing we can compare it to sensibly is a dimension of space. Thus, we usually represent time using the classic representation of a spatial dimension: the number line. We think of time as being like a line that extends in one dimension, with forwards being the future, backwards being the past, and some point upon the line being the present, where we are now. Then we extend this analogy to have our point of the present slowly (???) moving along that line of time at a constant speed, never being able to stop, or go backwards, or speed up. This is a useful enough analogy for most of our practical needs, and it opens doors for the imagination of science fiction writers to explore by playing with our movement along this line. But is that really what time is?

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, perhaps most famous for being extremely hard to understand, proposed the solution that we are wrong to try to define time in words. Perhaps, he says, or at least as well as I can understand him, the problem is our language. Perhaps there are some things in our world that simply cannot be properly defined using the human lnaguage which is all we know. Perhaps if we could think in some other way, some totally alien way that we cannot now imagine, the nature of time would be obvious, as obvious as the nature of matter. Of course, St Paul preceded him by some 1900 years when he told us about the things in Heaven that “no words can express”. So maybe time is one of those creations of God. Maybe it belongs to the category of creations incomprehensible to the limited mind of man.

And where does God fit in all this? What is the relationship of God to time? I had thought this must have been obvious to most Christians, until I did a bit of research and dicsovered what a marvellous variety of theories Christians have held on this topic! Here are a couple (that I don’t like, by the way):

1. God exists within time Himself, just as we do.

2. God exists outside of our time, but within His own time, a sort of “meta-time”.

I don’t like these explanations, because being your typical Eastern Christian, any explanation that limits God in any way is unacceptable to me. The best explanation I have found so far is that God created time and exists outside of time in some mode that we can never imagine, being prisoners of time ourselves. All time is ‘present’ before Him, or is known to Him. But you see, even in trying to relay that last concept, I had to use a word that implies He is in time, “present”, whereas, He isn’t.

Perhaps that’s enough boggling of the mind for now (another ‘time’ word).

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The Little Nasties and Me

Who am I, really?

Am I the calm and quiet person I like to think of myself as, or am I person who is easily moved to anger when someone pushes the right buttons? A recent incident precipitated this rush of self-examination. Do we ever really know ourselves?

We hold in our minds a sort of self-image, a profile of ourselves. Without it, we probably coundn’t live our lives. When we are faced with decisions, we refer back to this self-image, and to a large degree, it helps determine the decisions we make. You know the old adage: If you tell a child often enough that he is naughty, he will come to believe it, and behave accordingly”. And of course, the reverse is also true. I have seen both sides of this adage in action in real life. I have seen naughty children become angels because someone believed in their goodness, and good children become terrors because someone kept getting them into trouble.

But as adults, are we masters of our own self-image? How much responsibility for it do we bear, and how much is borne by those we meet throughout our lives, especially those who are in a position to affect us strongly?

We take this impact of others for granted in many of the things we say. We speak of a saint such as St Mark who began the conversion of Egypt to Christianity 2,000 years ago. His impact on those first Egyptian Christians was nothing less than life-changing, indeed, nation-changing! Today, we accept immediately and without question that a powerful preacher or author can change the minds and lives of millions.

And yet, can anyone really change your self-image without your consent? In children, I can certainly accept that this happens, for the child is not yet mature enough to choose for him/herself what inputs to accept and to reject. The child to a great extent trusts the judgement of the adults in her life, takes their words and comments at face value, cannot analyse them very deeply, nor assess their validity. Tell a child they are cute, and they’ll beam with happiness, event hey are the most unattractive child ever to be born. Tell a child that they have been naughty, and watch the face drop, even if they have not done anything wrong.

But the grown up should be different. The grown up is required to bear their own responsibility for who they are. They are to be mature enough to filter the truth from the untruth, and thus form a self-image that is valid. And yet, we so often get it wrong…

I find myself unwilling to incorporate feedback that I don’t like from people into my self-image. Yet I jump at the chance when they say nice things about me. And then, an incident like the breaking through of anger suddenly crashes me back to earth once more. My self-image turns out to have been false, even though I had trusted it, and built my behaviour around it. There are little nasties lurking around in the dark corners of my soul that I seem to have conveniently forgotten about. My self-image needs revision, if it is to be accurate … and my self itself needs repentance, if it is to be acceptable. Which should I tackle first?

Perhaps the self-image has to be corrected first, brought back into line with reality. If I don’t know the little nasties inside me, how can I do anything about them? What if I don’t like the self-image I find, when I brush away the deception? Well, that’s when the real work begins…

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In the Light of Dawn

One of my favourite hymns of all time must be the Morning Doxology. The tune is lovely: lively, enthusiastic, full of joy and hope … a great way to start off the day. On special ocassions, like the Raising of Incense for the Great Feasts, Easter, Christmas and Epiphany, this hymn has a special long tune called The Seven Ways. it combines all your favourites from tasbeha and the liturgy, and is a truly heavenly experience, when it is done right.

But it is the words I especially like. Please allow me to share some of them with you, together with some thoughts.

The Light of Truth: who illuminates: every one : who comes into the world.
You came into the world: through Your love for mankind: and all the creation: rejoiced at Your coming.

The imagery of light darkness is of course is a very well known device used in the Gospels and the Bible in general. This hymn applies it, though, in a very intimate way to or daily experiences. It sets out clearly near the beginning just Who exactly is the source of all light in our lives. True, we no longer think that God literally holds the sun in his hands and moves it across the sky for us, but we know that it is He who created this whole universe, gave it its laws of nature, and designed this amazing planet for us to dwell on.It is true, then that every morning that dawns upon us is a gift from the hand of God. The light that shines upon us from the rays of the sun is symbolic of the light of Truth and Love He shines in our hearts.

With the morning, the past day is wiped away, consigned to memory, while a new and exciting day full of potential is revealed by the sun’s light. So also does the light of God push behind us our past failures and weaknesses, and reveal to us new hope, a hope founded not on ourselves, but upon the power of the Giver of that Light. Thus did St Anthony the Great pray every morning, “Lord, I have not yet begun to know You! Forget all the wasted days of my past and let me begin a new life with You this day”.

and later on:

Let there shine in us: the senses of light: and let us not be covered: by the darkness of pain.

It is only when our souls are blinded by the darkness that we can fall in sin. We err when we consciously or unconsciously hide ourselves from the Light of God’s Truth and love, and there in the darkness, our baser instincts can gain control over us. It stands to reason that when one throws open the curtains and lets the Light back in, the works of darkness flee and dissolve away. This is what happens when we repent and then confess. This is what happens every time we invite our Lord into our hearts with warmth and longing.

When going from a dark room out into bright sunshine, one is blinded for a while until the eyes adjust. So also, when returning to the room, the eyes see nothing for a while until they readjust. At the beginning of the day, we cry to God to give us eyes for light, not for darkness, to grant us to roam free in the wide world of light, not to be imprisoned in the man-made prison of our selfishness and self-centredness.

and:

In this morning: ease our inner ways: and our outer ways: with the joy of Your protection.

That which we do on the outside is a reflection of that which we are on the inside. Most sins begin in the mind and heart, and from there progress to fruition in action or word. Thus we ask God to walk with us this day along our inner paths. These are the paths the feet of our mind will tread, the directions our thoughts will follow. Without Jesus to guide us, it is all to easy to lose one’s way and find oneself treading upon thorns and thistles, or fighting through dense undergrowth and branches that will not yield. Much effort, little progress … all because I chose the wrong path.

But with Jesus beside me, listening to His directions, feeling His gentle nudges on my hand in His, looking to Him constantly for a lead, for reassurance, for courage and strength, any path is negotiable. Even when the right path becomes dangerous and difficult, His presence at my side makes the path not only bearable, but passable.

and:

Out of Your goodness: You prepared for us the night: grant us this day: to be without sin.

The night and the day are both from God. He allows us to enjoy the sweet rest of sleep as well as the thrill of the challenges of the day. With Him, good can be found in both darkness and light. Under His protection, we can even “Walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil”. Sleep, often called in Coptic tradition, “the little death”, holds no fear, for it has become inhabited by God.

We give thanks for the night that has safely passed, for all previous nights and days that have now passed. It is good to remember that the Lord has never left us. With that knowledge to fortify us, we can look forward to the new day with hope rather than fear. Perhaps today is the day that I will repent truly from my troublesome sins?

___________________________________

You can find the text of the Morning Doxology in any Psalmodia book, or online, in Coptic and English, at:

http://www.alhan.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=57

You can also hear it as an audio file or download it as an mp3 from the above site or from:

www.coptichymns.net/

www.tasbeha.org/

Aren’t we blessed to live in an age of technology!

Fr Ant

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41

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the hero discovers the answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything: it is 42. Actually, he got it wrong. It is 41.

The Coptic Rite frequently uses a hymn which consists basically of one phrase repeated 41 times. I am referring of course, to the KYRIE ELEISON.

The words are Greek, not Coptic, harking back to the early days of Christianity when Greek was the common language in use throughout most of the Mediterranean civilisations. The Gospels were originally written in Greek and the liturgies we use in the Coptic Church were originally all in Greek. It is only as time went on that they wee translated to the vernacular Coptic. Even today, the standard form of the “Coptic” liturgies we pray – when we say we are praying in Coptic – has a pretty significant percentage that is Greek, not Coptic.

But I’m actually not interested in the language side of things today – I wanted to contemplate on the spiritual significance of the 41 Kyrie Eleisons. You might have asked yourself at some stage, “Why do we just repeat the one phrase over and over like that? Didn’t Jesus warn us against just such a practice?”

“And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7)

Yes, God knows that we need His mercy. But the prayer is for our benefit, not His. It is a reminder to us of that need for mercy, lest we should ever forget and think ourselves self-sufficient without Him. As I sing the repetitions of “Lord have mercy!” I can have two things running through my mind. One is my deep need for the mercy of God; the other is the mercy of God itself, and the God of Mercy Himself.

Our need for mercy stems from our inherent weakness and moral frailty. God is all-good. We desire to be one with God. Yet we sin. By sinning, we exclude ourselves from being one with God. Oops. How is this problem to be solved? There is nothing we can do about it, for it does not lie within our power. Only He can do something about it … and He did.

God’s solution to the problem was to become one of us, to suffer for us and to die for us, and then to rise again from the dead, satisfying the law of justice, yet opening a door to the infinite possibilities of mercy. On His way to completing this course, He was tied to a post and whipped. The 41 Kyrie Eleisons bring us to the very Roman pavement upon which his tired knees rested, and challenge us to look on as the sadistic whip, sharp stones and rusty nails tied to its cords, is scraped over and over across the bare back of the Humble Servant.

Can you stand here unmoved?

What heart of stone would not cry out, “Stop!” Not only is this inhuman, it is uniquely unjust, for all have sinned, all deserve the reward of their evil … but not his Man. Anyone but this Man. This is He whose gentle eyes gave hope to the woman caught in adultery after He saved her life from the bloodthirsty mob … the same eyes that now weep in pain and agony. This is He whose strong voice echoed over the Mount as He taught the multitudes to be meek, lowly, poor in spirit … the same voice that cries out now uncontrollably in suffering. Anyone but this Man.

Imagine that from the midst of His blood and spasming muscles His eyes glanced out for a moment through tangled, sweaty hair and met with yours … And what will you say now? Can anyone remain silent? There is no “I will do something to save You!” You will find no comforting if futile action to ease the burden of this monstrous event. It is done. It is finished. It has happened. And all because of our sins. He took what is ours, and gave us what is His.

What then will you say? Is there anything else we can say, other than “Lord have mercy!”?

Sometimes we pray this hymn with a fast tempo, as if the pain of it is such that we only wish to bring it to an end as soon as we can. At other times, we pray it more slowly, as befits a dirge of sadness. Always, we should pray it with this image firmly held before the eyes of our minds: the broken Body, leaking blood from a thousand points, submitting to this suffering … that I deserved instead.

We cry for mercy because we never meant it to come to this. All those times we gave in to sin … it was never meant to end like this! We cry for mercy for the chains that bind us still to our frail humanity, the undependable, unfaithful, unthankful and brute nature that drags our eternal spirits down into the dust of sin again and again … only the Suffering Servant has the power to break those chains, and so, even while He suffers, we cry out for His mercy. It should be He who cries out for mercy from His tormentors, but instead, it was He who administered mercy to them as He hung on the Cross, asking for His Father’s forgiveness for them. He has taught us to ask, and so we do.

No, this is no vain repetition. This is not multiplying empty useless words (or at least, it never should be). This is our witness, so many times each day, that we know and appreciate the sacrifice of profound love that our loving Saviour offered for us. If any words of prayer have meaning, it is surely these simple words!

Fr Ant

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Criticism of the Criticism of my Criticism of Criticism

Thanks to Romani and Tony for their thoughts (see ‘comments’ on the previous blog).

Of course you are both right in pointing out that there are situations in life where one needs to take a stand and say or do something. Examples that spring to mind might be if I were a German living in Germany in the early 1940’s, watching my Jewish neighbours disappear mysteriously one by one. Another example might be the kinds of subtle and blatant religious persecution going on in Egypt and Sudan and many other places at the moment. In cases of injustice, of the oppression of the poor, neglect of the needy … yes we should definitely not shirk our moral duty to do something.

Even in these situations, where one is morally justified in being criticial, the sins of judgement and pride are never far away. How many people have set out to right a wrong only to end up becoming a wrong themselves? I think there are certain rules one can follow that minimise the dangers of this happening. Please pardon the excessive use of cliches.

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin.

Or as Romani sportingly puts it – play the ball, not the player. Stick to the issue and don’t attack the person. Personal attacks have the very unfortunate side effect of forcing a comparison between the attacker and the attacked, and such comparisons are never good for anyone. They only lead to a sense of self-justification and pride and superiority complexes. If on the other we just stick to the actual issues at hand, there is a far greater chance of ending up with a good outcome. Besides this, personal attacks hardly ever work. Very few people really change anything because someone just told them to.

But for the Grace of God, there Go I…

Even if you do no share the sins you see in others, do not think that’s because you are a specially holy person! If not for God’s protection and care, that could very easily have been you making that mess. If you had lived the life that other person has lived, might you not have done even worse? What is scarier is that today you may be the judge, but tomorrow you may be the criminal yourself. History is replete with examples of normal, good people who, through circumstances, ended up doign abnormally horrible things. Can you really guarantee that will never be you? The Prize winning novel “The Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is a chilling reminder that just beneath our civilised surface lies a wild animal straining to be set free to wreak its havoc. Recommended reading for those who think they are above the sins of others.

Only Poke Your Nose Into Where It Is Warranted

None of us have been appointed sole and sagacious guardians of good for all humanity. We are given responsibility for certain, proscribed areas – parents are responsible for their children; teachers are responsible for their pupils; policemen are responsible for their beats. Within that area of responsiblility, of course you must be proactive in dealing with wrongs and teaching what is right to your charges – it would a sin to neglect that responsibility. But if you notice something wrong that is not within your area of responsibility, it is often wrong and also damaging for you to take it upon yourself to fix it. Just try disciplining someone else’s child and see what I mean! The best course of action in these situations, I think, is to pass on your concerns to the person who is responsible, and leave them to deal with it. I think that’s what we would all like people to do to us, so we should accord the same respect to others. Of course there will be situations where a certain degree of ‘follow-up’ or lobbying is required, but as a general rule, overstepping one’s boundaries does no one any good.

That said, my previous blog was not really considering these kinds of situations as much as looking at the more common situation where one is tempted to be critical of others in a more general sense: things like ciriticising other drivers on the road, or the way your wife folds the washing, or the person on the news who got themselves into terrible credit card debt – that sort of thing.

Here, I think there is a very important distinction to be made between Judging on the one hand and Discernment on the other. In my definition, for the purposes of this discussion, Discernment is where you recognise the difference between right and wrong, simply and objectively, and it pretty much stops there. Judgement takes it one step further and adds a layer of subjective reaction. Generally this takes the form of classifying the person at fault (“What an idiot!”) or comparing oneself favorably aginst the offender (“I’d certainly never be that silly”).

We have to discern – otherwise, ignorantly confusing good with evil, we would fall into many sins: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20) . But we also have to avoid judging others, setting ourselves above them and seeing ourselves as superior to them: “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” (Romans 14:4) Judgement belongs to God and to God alone. We really don’t want to get into a demarcation dispute with Him!

So long as we stick to the purely objective Discernment, we will be reasonably safe, spiritually speaking. Add to Discernment a healthy dose of humility and compassion, and you’ve got a pretty good system going!

Fr Ant

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Fault Finding and Fallibility

Hypothesis #1: We tend to notice most those faults in others from which we ourselves suffer.

This thought first struck me in High School, when a teacher pointed out that when you point the finger at someone else, you are simultaneously pointing your other three fingers at yourself (try it now if you don’t believe me. Just be careful who you pointing at, though). The message being, of course, that I am likely to be three times as guilty as the person I criticise, but am blissfully unaware of the fact. Oddly enough, I have found this principle to run pretty true, for myself at least. Yes, I am most frustrated by people who cut me off in the middle of a sentence. It really bugs me. Then one day I noticed that I do it all the time. Hmmm. Then I began noticing the principle in action in others. Being a priest, I get to hear people complain about lots of things. Such as, “I can’t believe how my wife goes around complaining about me to everyone!” Or this beauty: “I’m not wasting my time with Bill anymore and I’m not going to lower myself to his level. He’s impatient, and he’s a snob”. Yep. Even the best of us do it. Which brings me to another lesson I’ve learned:

Hypothesis #2: No one is infallible (with apologies to Roman Catholic readers )

I used to think otherwise. I clearly recall a sort of yearning, an innocent childhood fantasy that one day I would meet someone who was perfect. I don’t mean Miss Right, I mean someone on whom I could model my own personality, an ideal character, one who knew the right thing to say and do in every situation and always acted with sagacity and grace. Needless to say, potential candidates sooner or later disqualified themselves by revealing the selfish / cruel / stupid side of their nature. I still recall the deep and coldly bitter pain of these disappointments. Eventually of course I realised, as we all do, that no one is in fact perfect.

Then there was the period where I was going to be the first one to attain perfection. After all, I had the blueprint for perfection in my head, right? I knew how a perfect person should act. How hard could it really be? Those guys just didn’t try hard enough, or didn’t know enough. Well, I’m still trying, but I have to tell you that the older I get, the further I feel from perfection. And the more I fail, the more regard I feel for those fallen heroes of my youth who did, after all, quite a lot better than I have ended up doing, personality-wise. Maybe I was wrong to criticise them in my disappointment?

Hypothesis #3: People who are less critical of others tend to be a bit happier in life than people who are very critical of others.

Then again I sometimes wonder if I wasn’t wasting my time searching for the perfect person. Better to just do my best with what I’ve got and enjoy life. Again, experience would seem to bear this out. If you can keep your smile when all around you are angry, then you’re probably not critical. There are people who prove the adage “ignorance is bliss” daily by going about their affairs peacefully, apparently blind to the faults of others. It’s not that they can’t see those faults, mind you. More that they choose not to let them bother them.

Sometimes I have suffered from the delusion that as soon as I point out to this other person their fault, they will immediately raise a finger in the air and declare, “Why that’s it! That’s the very thing that has been making my life miserable all these years. How could I have missed it? And thank you, O thank you so much for pointing it out to me! I am eternally in your debt!” Needless to say, this has never happened to me in real life. So why waste my time, my breath and my blood pressure?

Of course, this principle has its limits. A bit of healthy criticism might well be well placed for a thug who’s mugging a little old lady as you walk by. Perhaps, one may even be justified in giving one’s criticisms a somewhat physical expression by way of intervening. But by and large, most people’s failings really have very little effect on me or on anyone else. If anything, it is the failings-owner him/herself that suffers most from their own failings, which is no business of mine. So why bother? Why get myself tied up in knots over something I can’t change anyway?

Hypothesis #4: Those who are most critical of others tend to be those who are least accepting of criticism, and contrariwise.

I think of this as a sort of litmus test for how critical a person is. Tell a person they are too critical of others, sit back, and watch their reaction. If they start criticising you for criticising them, that sort of proves your case. If they sit back and carefully consider if you are right, you can probably jump in and apologise for saying something about them that is so obviously not the case. It’s not foolproof, but it illustrates this hypothesis. Being overly critical is a kind of self-perpetuating condition. The one who suffers from it maintains their mindset by excessively criticising anyone who criticises their excessive criticism.

Or am I being too critical?

Fr Ant

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Insidious Institutionalism

It is sadly all too common a situation.

In the Enlightenment period, (roughly 1500-1800AD) it is apparent in the writings and the lives of most of the great thinkers. And today, one meets it regularly both inside and outside the Church.

I am talking about the disillusionment with ‘institutionalised’ Christianity.

Honest hearts, struggling with their own weaknesses and faults, look to the Church hoping to find a solid rock of Truth, a firm foundation of Hope on which to model their lives. It is to our shame that such hearts sometimes find nothing more in the Church than an organisation, an institution, a structure. The vision is missing and the original principles of Christ are, shamefully, relegated to a lower priority than principles invented by humans.

This is the great danger of becoming an institution. I hope you don’t misunderstand what I am saying; we benefit greatly from belonging to such an institution; but only if it is done right. If it is done wrong, we can suffer equally greatly.

Here are some of the more common signs of institutionalisation gone wrong:

– acceptance of using the strategies of the ‘world’, whether within the Church, or in dealing with those outside it;

– divisions based on loyalty to a personality rather than to Christ Himself;

– acceptance of the principle, “The goal justifies the means”;

– emphasis on achieving things rather than on being a good person;

– dry ritualism rather than using the rites as personally-moving prayers.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the WWJD question – What Would Jesus Do? It finds an application here. If our Lord were to come to Church this Sunday, I wonder what He would think of it all? It was He who said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”, and His Apostle said, “For the letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life”. If Christianity teaches anything, it is that how you live your life, who you are, deep inside, is what really matters. The outer appearance is secondary, and should naturally flow from what is real inside the heart of the person.

Is it too dangerous for the Church to be an institution? Many in Western Churches have taken that view, and starting from Martin Luther back in the 16th century have gone outside the institutional Church to try to recreate the Church in a more natural setting. But I think this runs an even greater risk. Human beings are who they are, and in the absence of having “The Church” as their foundation, they will seek other foundations, and not always in the right place. Thus we see Churches that care far more about the personalities of the leaders or about being rebellious, or about being ‘hip’, or about one tiny little aspect of Christianity or… or…

The Truth of the Gospels remain untainted by the faults of those who follow the Gospels. If you have a bad experience with a surgeon, it would be irrational for you to condemn all surgery as harmful. Back in my medical days I was privileged to assist a wide variety of surgeons as an intern and resident. At one end of the spectrum was a gentleman whose operation style was anxious and jumpy. One never felt he was really quite sure of what he was doing, despite his many years of experience. At the other end of the spectrum was a quiet, elderly man whose deft, pinpoint accurate touch made every motion of his hands enchanting. I would leave his operations with the feeling that I had not witnessed an operation, but a work of art, like finely performed symphony orchestra concert. It was truly a poetry written with scalpels and stitches.

We should strive to make our institutional Church like that. Our history and our heritage are ingredients of the highest quality, and more than capable of producing works of beauty. We walk in the footsteps of Christ, and in the footsteps of those who walked in His footsteps – St Anthony of the Desert, that noble spirit who blazed the path of quiet contemplation; Pope Peter the Seal of Martyrs, the scholar, the profound philosopher who was martyred with his people; St Athanasius the undaunted spirit who could not accept that evil should dominate the Church … the list goes on.

In these examples and the many thousands more whom history has not recorded lived the spirit of the true follower of Christ. For them, the institution of the Church was the arena for living out the teachings of Christ, each in their own way, and sharing that way of life with others.

The Proverb says, “It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness”. The Church will be, for you, whatever you make of it. If the Church is the little seed that grew into a towering tree, seek then for the sweet sap of the Love and Truth of Christ within its heart, rather than being content to gnaw upon the dry outer bark of human institutionalism.

Fr Ant
www.stbishoy.org.au