Author: Fr. John Chagnon

The right tool…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been away from blogging for a few days because a project needed my attention.

In a small Parish like St. Elias every penny counts and there is always a need to find ways to do business that exploit technology and efficiency. In fact, one of the gifts of a small Parish can be the kind of “edginess” required to make things happen that may not be possible in a large Parish with less nimble structures and systems.

In our specific case the issue is the development of a Parish newsletter as a way to connect people from some distances and share information. The normal process is to create a mini-newspaper with columns and calendars and send them to as many people as possible, even people who haven’t asked for them, in order to comply with the requirements of the Post Office regrading bulk mail. (To qualify for a bulk mail permit there must be a minimum number of mailed items).

I’ve been pondering this for several months and a few days ago it occurred to me that it’s possible to adapt a blogger.com site for use as an “e-newsletter” that is easy to produce, easy to update, inexpensive, self storing, and widely available. I’ve made a rough copy of such an item here. I presume I’m not the first person to contemplate this but its potential for small parishes and missions could be significant.

I’m still trying to work out how I could adapt the site to hold a calendar of events but I’ll figure it out. Regardless if you drop by and have an idea or comment I would appreciate it.

The Loggers…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Through the kindness of parishioners I had the chance to attend a baseball game following Vespers on Saturday night.

Although I never played it much as a kid (I grew up in a football town) over the years I’ve come to truly enjoy baseball games. My wife and I basically bought our satellite dish just to get the Twins games in on Fox Sports North, and the XM Radio in my car is often set right to channel 175, the one with all the Major League scores. If somehow we won the lottery the one vacation we would take is the package where you can travel for a month and see all the major league teams play. This past winter I even followed the world baseball tournament with about, apparently, three other people here in the US.

The local team in LaCrosse is called the Loggers in honor of the fact that LaCrosse came to prominence largely through the timber industry. The team is an amateur team comprised of people from various colleges who wish to keep their baseball dreams alive by playing summer ball in a small circuit of similar teams. In lieu of pay they are housed with local families both at home and on the road and when the season is done they return to college.

That kind of team hearkens back to a day when many towns had a local nine and the pride of the city was often on the line when teams met. On this night, even for this level of play, over 3000 fans from LaCrosse came to see the Loggers play the Green Bay Bullfrogs. Cars filled the streets around St. Elias, less than a half city block away from the field, and some came for miles to see the Loggers play. Our seats were in the first row behind the home dug out, great for catching foul balls and so close you could hear the players cough.

But alas is was not to be. The introductions done, the national anthem sung, there was only time for a handful of pitches before the first drops of rain began to fall. Soon it was a torrent, a storm that rushed across the river valley from Minnesota without stopping until the field was soaked beyond repair for the night. It was a good rain, a needed rain, but I still felt a kind of an “Oh rats…” feeling inside as I walked toward my car.

I know there is scandal in the world, and trouble, and things that aren’t right. I’m a Priest and sometimes I have to wallow in it all as part of the job. I even know that baseball is sometimes messed up with chemically enhanced players getting obscene salaries to produce pumped up statistics. Even so there is something about a night under the stars with the sounds and sights and smells of a baseball game that’s like a tonic to me. And last Saturday I only got the slightest taste of it, but I do have a schedule in my pocket and with the best seat in the house costing just $7 I know I’ll be back. Soon.

This week's homily…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment
All Saint’s Sunday 2007

Do you have to have a miracle attributed to you in to be considered a Saint in the Orthodox Church?

The answer is no. Although it often does happen it’s not required to be considered a Saint.
Are Bishops the only ones who decide which people are glorified as Saints in the Orthodox Church?
Again, the answer is no. While Bishops make the final decisions most people venerated as Saints in the Orthodox Church are first venerated by the faithful.
We Orthodox live in a world also inhabited by Saints, luminaries of Christ whose lives serve as model, teacher, and encouragement in our own journey of faith. We name our parishes after them. We name ourselves after them. We read their stories and venerate their images. We ask them to pray for us and cherish the evidences of divine intervention in response.
But what does it mean to be a saint?
First it’s crucially important to understand that being a saint is the normal state of all Christians. The Scripture identifies all the baptized with the title “saint” and at its core the word implies one set apart by God, which all of us were at the time we were baptized and chrismated. Because we venerate saints we often think saintliness is for someone else, for monastics or clergy or some other kind of person on whom some kind of magic has fallen. But living a life of holiness is the call on everyone who names the name of Christ.
And although for a small number of people the living out of that life of saintliness is within the context of a monastery or some other kind of institution away from the larger flow of the world for most Orthodox the everyday world is where our holiness is realized. Christians sometimes speak of two different realms the sacred and the secular. For Orthodox Christians that distinction does not exist. By grace every aspect of our lives can be filled with holiness and the Christian life can be lived in saintliness and transform every righteous vocation of a person into something godly. It is quite possible for a person to be a holy saint of a plumber, a homemaker, or even a lawyer. When people seek to know the will of God for their lives they often believe that it must be some kind of great challenge but most often the answer is “Be a faithful and holy person right where you are and in doing so you will save yourself and others.” In other words be a saint.
So all who are baptized and chrismated are called saints, and called to be saints, and in a certain way this day, All Saint’s Day, is your day because it calls to mind not just those Saints who are commemorated by the Church in some official way but also all of us who live our call to saintliness in the hustle and bustle of the everyday world, and even those whose virtue is known only to God.
Yet from the beginning of the Church she has called to mind and venerated the memory of notable Christians, persons from many different walks of life who by the grace of God exemplified the highest qualities of those called by the Holy Spirit to follow Christ.
In the earliest days of the Church these were largely the Apostles, the Mother of God, those around them and those who had given their life for the faith, the martyrs. Later pious clergy who defended the faith were venerated, and then holy people from all walks of life. Even in the very dawn of the Church the lives of holy Christians were remembered by the faithful, their prayers were coveted and their bodies and graves cherished. The story of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp in the middle of the 2nd century records the local authorities desecrating his body in their misunderstanding that the Christians would worship his remains. Many of the earliest churches gathered where holy men and women were buried or used their graves as an altar for the liturgy a practice we continue by placing a relic of a Saint in our own altars at their consecration.
As the Church grew and eventually became a legal entity and then the State Church of the Roman Empire the procedures and the formalities changed but the basic core of reverence for holy people and exemplary Christians remained. In the West detailed procedures were developed for the cause of notable Christians to be declared Saints. There is paperwork to be done, various stages of inquiry, and public proclamations in regards to the person as they progress through a process which may take decades and whose final determination lies in Rome. In fact we get the word “devil’s advocate” from the person whose job it was, in the Western Church, to formally look for inconsistencies in the evidence presented for the cause of a person presented to the Church for canonization.
In the East the process is less formal. The canonization of a Saint (which we in the East call glorification) begins, as it did in the earliest days of the Church, with the faithful venerating the memory of a holy person. In time the accounts and evidences of the holiness of the person venerated by the faithful are examined by local hierarchs who, if they believe the person to be both Orthodox in faith and holy in life, present the evidence to whatever Synod or structure may be in place for final approval. The criteria is simple. The person must have been faithful to the Orthodox faith and possessed of a life of obvious holiness.
Unlike the Western Church where three miracles related to the person are often required no supernatural evidence is demanded to declare a person a Saint in the East. The holiness of life is a miracle in itself and can be deemed sufficient even though the lives of holy people often are interwoven with miracles. Yet it is not uncommon for signs of the person’ holiness including such things as apparitions related to the person, miracles at their grave or via objects blessed by contact with the person, the absence of the normal decomposition of their body over time, or a fragrance coming from their relics. Again, although these things happen they are not required for a formal finding that the person is surely in the presence of Christ, that is glorified.
When this happens a final memorial service is held with occasionally the moving and reburial of the holy person’s body. During the vigils and services which follow formal proclamation is made of the person’s status as a capital “S” Saint, their icon is unveiled, and various hymns to and about the new Saint are sung. We Orthodox do not have a central office, as it were, to keep the whole process in order, we simply accept the decisions of other groups of canonical Orthodox and practice a kind of local diversity in the Saints we venerate. We also share with the Roman Catholic Church all those Saints who were venerated before the 11th century. So, for example we venerate St. Patrick, Apostle and Bishop of Ireland, but do not venerate Francis of Assisi or any saint of any other church who lived after the Great Schism.
As a side point it’s interesting to note that although the Orthodox Church keeps a hagiography, that is the stores and accounts of the lives of Saints, those whom it believes are certainly with God in heaven, it does not have a list of the damned, those who are certain to be away from the presence of God in hell. We believe that the manifestation of holy people is a gift to us from God but never presume that any person is permanently lost from God.
But while knowing a bit of the process of identifying and glorifying Saints is a good thing, the true value of the Saints lies in something much more important. You, I, and we, are called to
be saints as well.
In the Epistle reading the author of Hebrews recounts the great deeds of saints past but never leaves the readers with the accounts for their own sake. The author tells the stories of these people as an encouragement for those now living the life of faith to live holy lives as well.
It is good to venerate the Saints but an Orthodox Christian may kiss an icon a thousand times and if they do not emulate the virtues, the life of Christ that made that person holy, in their own lives the kiss is an empty gesture. Lighting a candle before an icon makes little difference if the person kindling the flame does not also kindle a flame within themselves to imitate this Saint as they imitated Christ. The truest form of veneration is imitation and while we ask for the intercessions of the saints we are also called to act as saints ourselves in the here and now.
In this world that sometimes seems like it’s tearing apart at the seams the truth is that we don’t need more police, or soldiers, or politicians, social workers, or even preachers. What this world needs is more saints, more people who choose to live for God first, foremost, and always. That means you, and I, and we together need to live the lives we were called by God to live, endure the costs, and share the glory. When we do we save ourselves and change the world.

The routines…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I had the chance to take a group to from my work site for a tour of St. George Orthodox Church in West St. Paul. Although my assignment is at St. Elias there are times when I assist as services or otherwise get the chance to visit my “home” parish and this visit had a bittersweet quality to it.

The sweetness was the church itself, so beautiful and familiar. Even the smell says home and everything is in its proper place. The bitterness was in what I myself was missing as I watched the new Priest tend to his chores. It was the sense of belonging to a place, of having those ministry routines, the little things that sometimes bother us but are really tasks that identify the place as home.

For the time being I live in suspension, somewhere between being the Priest I was called to be and the Activity Coordinator I must be to keep a roof over my head. Each is a ministry of a kind and neither is to be despised but in life between the two each overlaps the other and both, in some ways, suffer in the divide. And I miss all those little things, the time to visit the sick, to really dig in and prepare good homilies, the freedom to keep ahead of the administrative tasks and stay in the loop, as it were, in the comings and goings of the Diocese. I miss being able to do all those “other” services like Kneeling Prayers that are so important even if hardly anyone shows up.

I sometimes tell the people at St. Elias that what we’re struggling for, what all our work is about is really just the ability to be a “normal” Orthodox Parish. And what I miss sometimes, especially when I visit St. George, is just being a normal Priest.

Some day. Some day.

Wonderful news…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

The Orthodox Study Bible will be out in a complete version, Old Testament, New Testament, and Deuterocanonicals in February 2008. You can go here to vote for your favorite cover and if you wish you can call Thomas Nelson and pre-order (or at least so I was told by a Customer Services Rep). If you do don’t forget to thank them for taking the risk, as a largely Protestant publishing house, of exploring the Orthodox market and supporting this work.

Dreams…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

The clock on my compter says its just a little past 11 at night and in the quiet of my hotel room I see an unvarnished image of myself, lit only by its screen, in the mirror over the desk. My wife is alseep and so I try to type quietly. It may be one of those nights when you get to sleep early in the hopes of rest only to wake up in the small hours of the night with no chance to get back to sleep. We’ll see.

I suspect I would still be sleeping if not for the football dream. I have them once in a while and the basic theme revolves around having an opportunity to play once again for my high school football team or wanting to and getting close but somehow something gets in the way. Its like the dream some people have when they’re waiting for something or have to get somewhere and find they just can’t catch the bus.

The root of it is in my own high school football career and perhaps in high school as a whole kind of archetype for frustration. Football was the sport of my childhood, the sport of my passion. In the weeding out process that comes when kids go from playground to organized ball I was probably destined to be somewhere in the middle of the pack had our family stayed in Wausau and I went to the very large Wausau West High School. But we moved to the small suburb of Mahtomedi, Minnesota in the middle of my eighth grade and I went from small fish in big pond to larger fish in a smaller one. By my sophomore year I was already on the varsity and slated for a back up role and the steady climb through the next two years to something better.

In a scrimmage in the summer of that year I came through the line on a very successful stunt, a play for the defense, and pressuring the quarterback tackled him just as he let go of the ball.In the twist to the ground my left ankle gave way. At first everyone thought it was a sprain and I walked on it for several days but when the pain finally became too much and I had to crawl up the stairs at home I was taken to the doctor and the break became apparent. I remember sitting in the stands the next week with my crutches and cast and crying while the game went on below.

Nothing was the same after that. I did make it back that year but by then the tide had already turned. It wasn’t like it is now in high school with doctors and trainers and all kinds of people to help rehabilitate things.Back then when you were out of sight you became out of mind and only a miracle could change anything. By next year I had been relegated to a kind of nowhere hell that was the lot of those who came out for football and truly had no chance but were allowed by the coach to suit up anyway. We called it the “burger squad” the place where teenage boys first learned what it was like to be a human tackling dummy for their superiors on the starting team. I couldn’t run fast enough, hit hard enough, or do anything to get noticed and escape. In the middle of my junior year there was a dance, there was Southern Comfort and nothing to lose so football ended and for all extents and purpose so did high school.

The next years were things to be endured, a perpetual sense of being dislocated from everything, of never fitting in, with the only the band room piano to help me through the most terrifying hour of all, the lunch hour when you have no one with which to sit. And everyone once in a while those times reach out over the years and touch me when I sleep, a dream where I realize I still have eligibility to play but something, a shoe that can’t be tied, the absence of a helmet, or like tonight the discovery that practice was already well underway and I was stuck watching from the fence outside the field, always got in the way.

Perhaps somewhere in the recesses of my life there is still a sadness for those lost days that has never been completely mourned. Perhaps it is only in dreams that this long ago pain is able to emerge and seek release as I sleep and my guard is down. Or maybe there is something in my life at this very time which is incomplete and the best way my soul can tell me is by drawing on the images of the time in my life when I felt the most unrealized.

Its now almost midnight here in LaCrosse and in less time than I think the sun will have emerged and the day will begin. Duty calls, the things I must do. How strange it is that a grown man, a man whos tired eyes and emerging wrinkles stare back from the mirror over the hotel room desk with the eerie glow of computer light, would be touched again by the ghost of those years. Stranger yet is the continuing mystery of what it all means, the secret codex in my soul that calls these things back from some deep part of me in the hope that one day the cause will be discovered and the dream will need return no more.