The Obligation that Saves Us

With this letter I first want to thank all of you again, from the bottom of our hearts, for your generosity to Liz and me in the Spirit of our All-generous God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in your prayers and in your providing meals for us while Presbytera Liz convalesces from her surgery. The Lord has heard your prayers, and the biopsy detected no spread of cancer beyond the tumor growing. Thanks to God, the surgeon got that out and the margins were clear. Now we wait to meet her doctors next week to find out what kind of chemotherapy she may need.

I also want to share with you all a catechetical exhortation and encouragement of sorts, especially in the light of recent tragedies in the Church and in the world showing the work of evil spirits in our days.

With this September’s start of a new Byzantine Church Year upon us, with our encouraging growth in Liturgy participation over the past year/s and new members welcomed into our fellowship, and also in anticipation of further maturing in the Lord in the coming years (and growing pains we must expect, of course), let me encourage you all the more confidently to re-dedicate yourselves, each other, and your whole life to “fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12)!”  Continue to remind one another in the Holy Spirit that you have been made God’s beloved children in Jesus, and therefore heirs of His kingdom in true freedom and love, just as St. Paul tells us: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore… Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another…. (Galatians 5:1 & 13)!” 

Be watchful for each other then, recalling that with each advance in our individual and Churchly growth and our enjoyment of God’s blessings there will inevitably come trials of temptation by the spirits of envy opposing our salvation and growth in Christ. One such temptation is the want to “rest on laurels” and think we’re “doing well enough”. This comes from spirits opposing us against whom we must “fight the good fight of faith” in Christ. As St. Paul teaches us: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, the powers, the cosmic rulers of this present darkness and against the spirits of evil in the spiritual realms (Ephesians 6:12)!” … And St. Peter: “Be sober-minded! Be alert! Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whomever he may devour! Resist him steadfastly in the faith, knowing that the same trials are suffered by your brethren throughout the world (1 st Peter 5:8-9)!” …And finally, St. James: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore submit to God! Resist the devil and he will flee from you! Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:6-8)!”

One of the biggest ways the fallen spirits tempt us into misusing the freedom God has given us is to trip us into taking for granted all God’s goodness to us; into forgetting our high calling and all that His Holy Spirit can and wills to do within us. This is why our Orthodox Catholic faith obliges us to gather regularly for Liturgy, to train us to become more and more obedient to God, for it is really the Holy Spirit who calls us to gather at the Father‘s Table to be cleansed from our sins, fed, and re-strengthened to keep striving for growth in holy innocence regularly, through His “family Supper” given us in Christ Jesus’s Sacrificed and Risen Presence, every Sunday Liturgy/Mass, and each sentinel commemoration of our Church Year. Yet, Oh! What an inconvenient burden we so easily feel this to be with our busy, active lives in this very contrary, competing world!

The devil’s tempting of us to take lightly our gathering for worship has plagued believers from the very start, so that even in the Apostles’ day the Epistle to the Hebrews had to warn us: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope and not waver, for He Who promised IS faithful. Let us be concerned to stir each other up to love and good works, not neglecting the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting each other; and all the more as you fore-see the coming [Judgement] Day. For if, after we have received the knowing of The Truth, we willfully choose sin, we no longer abide in the Sacrifice for sin, but certainly must expect only fearsome judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the opposers [of God] (Hebrews 10:23-27)!”

In this regard, the fallen spirits start working their temptations against us very early in our lives, for as kids we so easily get distracted and “bored,” and through our childish complaining the divisive spirits work to wear down our parents. After all, we kids have such short attention spans, and we adults have so many weighty things on us that we need a break from. These two factors make it so hard for us to discipline ourselves to consistently disciple our youth (both the youthful spirit within ourselves, and the young of those who have children to raise in the Lord). In the balance with such emotionally heavy experiences, it is simply easier to take lightly our gracious Heavenly Father‘s calling us to gather each week at His Feast He prepared for our salvation by the loving Self-sacrifice of His Only-Begotten Son. Since God is so patient and all-merciful towards us, our “path of least resistance” is just the habit of thinking it no big deal to therefore purposely skip a Sunday or a Feast Day Liturgy for the primary reason of self-ease—to instead give time to ourselves to pursue any kind of “extra” from all the other abundant blessings God gives, whether relaxations, or recreations, or opportunity for extra gain (not true emergent needs, illness, needful travel, work schedule outside our control, etc. …) and thus to be stingy with our time towards God, forgetting that God is the One Who has so graciously gifted us our time. By this the demons desire to trick us into following their image and likeness, for they are the original ungrateful takers and abusers of God’s gifts to them.

It was exactly at such thinking that Jesus aimed his parable about those who refused the King’s invitation to the wedding banquet in Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:16-24 (good warnings to read and heed).

Let us, therefore, give a reality-check to our adult angst being overrun by our childish boredom: for in His Wisdom God has designed our frail human nature to keep growing, moving, and changing through time and space—indeed, this is where much of our restlessness comes from. Yet He has made this growing “movement” within us to need firm grounding in disciplines of repetitive patterns, rhythms, and routines (think heartbeat, breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, waking, brushing teeth, etc…ah, perhaps even prayer too? Yes, indeed!). Life without such disciplined, repeating patterns and routines is unhealthy and ultimately breaks down on every level, good growth stops, and growth of unhealthy disorder occurs in us (even cancer shows this is true in us whenever normal cell development rhythms go wrong). Through good rhythms and the timely routines that we so easily take for granted and get “bored” of, the Holy Spirit calls us to intentionally embrace continually moving and growing towards more and more willing, thankful and joyful receiving of His all-gracious will for our forgiveness and benefit, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, day by day, and Feast by Feast of our Lord’s Life Given and Present for us to keep renewing, cleansing, feeding and strengthening each of us in our personal union and membership in Him, and with one another in His Body, the Church.

As we learn to value and embrace this will of God’s Wisdom for us, let us remain alert and intelligent to our fallenness clinging to us in our mortal weakness. Let us guard against our spiritual enemy’s cunning whispers of deceit into our anxious thoughts to make us distrustful and complacent towards God and the awesome yet humbly veiled gifts of our Salvation He freely lavishes upon us—Who always gives Himself freely to us in every good gift of our lives, our relationships, our opportunities, our freedoms…yes, even and above all our freedom to gather and receive Him in our worship that He blesses us with!