I have a new cell phone, a Palm Centro, attached like the last one surgically to my hip. But the old one is still around and I’m not ready to let it go quite yet.

It’s not the phone, that’s just the cheap LG they give you when you sign up for two years. But the phone has a camera and of the pictures taken is one of my brother, Paul, now with God for what seems like forever. The smile is typical, just a slight grin but it was taken in better times, one of those impulses of mine when we were all together. And I can’t let it go.

Of course there are better pictures of Paul that exist but there was something about knowing it was there with me and the possibility of losing it when the signal goes dead that makes all the difference. In our adult life we traveled in two different worlds and this was the memory that was mine, the slight smile at a birthday or some kind of event when we all left our little universes and were a family again, a grainy picture on a cell phone.

I followed the instructions carefully, and sent the message to my new phone. And I will wait until morning to go on line and see if it is where I sent it. And when its firmly mine, and only then, will I take the phone off line. For some odd reason as long as that picture is with me, and no other picture will do, Paul somehow stays real and alive. The whole thing probably sounds stupid and corny but as the years pass and everything changes and we all end up wherever fate takes us I don’t want to forget his face, not now, not ever.

The rain stopped for some hours last night but the wind was cold and raw diving through the river valley and swirling around the church. As the sounds of traffic and wind flowed around us the inside of our little parish was candle lit and warm. A good number for St. Elias were gathered around the bier and we began to sing the ancient songs of lament.

I cherish Holy Week, always have, even before I was Orthodox and just a guest sitting in the middle of things trying to make sense of it all. There is no feeling like being in the presence of holy things in these holy days and I understand why some Orthodox simply take the whole week off to immerse themselves in it. And to me there is no service to compare to the Lamentations.

It’s technically an Orthos or morning prayer of Saturday and we celebrate it on Friday as the sun sets and liturgical dawn arrives. The melodies are haunting and the words profound as we stand about our little representation of Jesus’ tomb covered in flowers. The cross is empty, the grave, for now is full, and we are carried back to that time of waiting.

One can imagine the pain, the struggle, the unanswered questions that must have filled these hours for those who loved Jesus. The sheer impact of things erasing everything he said about resurrection and hope and replacing it with loss and fear. Doors are locked as they wonder who is next. Women weep together as they gather items for Jesus embalming. If they could not change these events at least there was that one final act. The Virgin Mary, a sword piercing her heart as prophesied, in the care of John but torn by the loss of her only child.

We have the advantage of knowing the rest of the story. Even as we sing we know what is to come and so there is a certain melancholy joy in our voices. But they had no such hindsight, only the swirl of events over which they had no control. How lonely it must have been and how difficult to reach beyond themselves or even remember what Jesus had said. And with what wonder and sadness the angels must have watched these dear to Christ, his followers, as they huddled in the dark.

Yet even at the very moment of their darkness Christ himself was harrowing hell, revealing his glory to those who had died and taking with him all who would respond. Even as the faithful women prepared spices the body of Christ was resting intact because it was not possible, as the liturgy says, for the author of life to be held in corruption. And how different it would have been if they had known that undescribable joy was just two days away?

Beyond the beauty of the hymns that we sang there was a lesson for me. To often in my dark times I see only the darkness and my life becomes focused on just what I see. My vision is limited and because of it my struggle is magnified. If I could have been transported back to those times from the present I would have said to those people hiding behind closed doors, “Remember what Jesus said, he will rise in just a few days, so don’t be afraid.” Yet in the service of Lamentations the saints of those days have come to me, hiding behind my own locked doors, with that very message of hope.

So now on to Pascha.

It’s been raining off and on, mostly on, for the last two days. The services go on but the attendance has been small. Four last night for the Passion Gospels, one left early, and then a handful today for Vespers. A part of me understands because travel can be tricky around here when the rain falls, and fall it has with flood watches up and down the river. A part of me is sad, though, that these wonderful services are being missed. I think and pray and wonder what can be done to help people see the significance of this week and why taking time out for holy things is important.

I have this feeling that if I’d been giving out Packer’s tickets I would’ve had people crawl through ankle deep mud and stand in the rain to get them. Compared to that two hours of Passion Gospels doesn’t seem that exciting. Now I have no intention of jazzing things up a bit, doing one of those rock concert church services, a mile wide and an inch deep with the nurtional value of sugar water, because those things don’t work in the long run. But this Holy Week has helped me understand one thing.

Before we Orthodox can expect people to want what we’ve undeservedly been given we have to want it ourselves. I can remember when the only people outside the chanters at Matins were visitors sitting in a basically empty church. What must be going through their mind as they are searching for a sustenance of soul that even those who “belong” don’t seem to want? If all of this is not important to us why should it be important to them? The sad truth is that many converts come to Orthodoxy not because of but in spite of the lethargy of the Orthodox.

This all, of course, sounds pretty bleak. But I’ve not given up hope. So many Orthodox were horribly catechized and so many have learned the motions of their faith without any of its spirit and joy. They’ve been accustomed to going through the rituals but the spark of life inside is dim. In a small parish that’s spent years in struggle it’s even tougher because one could at least justify on asthetic grounds the value of coming to a full church with a full choir and all the smells and bells. But when the rain falls something else must provide the impetus to slog through the wet to gather with a handful of people. And I believe that something is coming.

I see it in the tiny groups of people who do come. They really do want to be there and to sing and serve and worship. There is, within them, that intangible flame in various degrees that gives them grace and energy and hope. And its what I pray for when I think of St. Elias. Everything a church need to grow can be taught, there are libraries of books on evangelism and outreach and finances and strategy. One thing, though, needs to be caught, that undefined and real presence of God that touches hearts and transforms people from within.

Every Sunday before I leave I ask God for revival in the hearts of the people of St. Elias. That is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift given like, as Jesus describes it, the wind which blows from one place to another. All we can be is open to it and ready for its arrival.

Soon, Lord, soon…

Tomorrow I drive south and Holy Week begins in earnest. Busy times ahead.

Of course I’ve made the usual mental checklists. Book? Candles? Vestments? Anyone I need to call? But the truth is this week takes on a life of its own and carries you, like the Liturgy, by the sheer power of momentum. Whether every “i” is dotted and “t” crossed, whether we sing well or just get by, or whether every rubric is met with perfection matters, but not all that much in the larger scheme of things. We’re together to pray through this Holy Week and celebrate the joy of Pascha when most of the rest of the world is still asleep.

It’s been a fidgety Lent, one where I never seemed to quite get in the flow. Like New Year’s I always seem to start out with a list of resolutions that somewhere along the line don’t get met, at least not in their entirety. There are always things in Lent that are left undone and part of me would like to, just once, have a “perfect” Lent, whatever that is. Maybe, though, that’s the point, there is no perfect Lent, just me trying to wade through a lot of stuff to get some place closer to Christ.

The good thing, of course, is that Lent is a concentrated form of what we should always be doing, living a life of repentance. If I didn’t do everything I thought I need to in Lent I still have a new chance every day to get back on track. We Orthodox seem to be people who have the sheet music in front of us, know the tune in our head, but continually struggle to get our voice to match the notes. When we do its beautiful. Lately my voice has been, as they say on American Idol, “pitchy”.

However, I hope to finish strong, serve well, and if I have not run the race with skill at least cross the finish line. I look forward to the days ahead when all the world seems filled with hymns and smells of incense. I love those services in the dark full of anticipation’s light. I cherish that time when all is said and done we gather together with our little church is full of joyful conversation, the smell of food, and hope. And yes, that wonderful tired sleep of Bright Monday when everything seems new, that, too, is one of life’s pleasures.

As you browse through this blog I hope that your Holy Week is blessed and you would find new joy, faith, and strength in the risen Lord Jesus. Time may not permit me to blog until all is done so until then may your Holy Week and Pascha be filled with grace.

There was a reunion in LaCrosse yesterday and like so many it was a reunion at a funeral.

For the largest part of its existence St. Elias has had no resident Priest. Although founded by Saint Raphael of Brooklyn, the parish of Middle Eastern and Greek immigrants in the early 1900’s never seemed to be able to take the leap from mission to church and the small body of believers sank into that horrible catch 22 where there was no support from outside to help them obtain a Priest and so no Priest could help them stabilize and since they were not stable they could not get a Priest…

In those days mission policy seemed to be all about gathering a group of people from the old country, sending them a Priest, and then stepping back to see if they sank or swam. St. George in St. Paul, Minnesota had the people to swim. Down river in the much smaller LaCrosse, they sank.
For decades after the founding of the church the only services at St. Elias were whatever could be provided by traveling Priests serving an occasional liturgy, celebrating marriages, and burying the dead. It was often too much for the small group of Orthodox to endure. Numbers dwindled.

Many of St. Elias first American born generation became Episcopalians. Before the ravaging flames of heresy burned through the Episcopal Church it was not uncommon for Orthodox to, in the absence of a local Parish, seek some sustenance from the Episcopal Church. And many of the first generation of American born Orthodox at St. Elias attended and then joined the Episcopal Church. It would be hard to blame them. People need a regular church life and there was none to be had at St. Elias. Had there been a plan. Had there been outside support to help the mission along in its earlier years. Would have, could have, should have.

And so now we have reunions at funerals, reunions where the scattered children of St. Elias come together, people from the same town, with the same names, and often the same baptism but a community sundered apart by the ravages of neglect. My heart aches. It aches for what could have been if just one person or group of people or Hierarch would have said “We need to make this Parish work, we need to help, we need to find a way.” At every funeral I meet dozens of people who had been part of St. Elias but who are now lost to us, perhaps forever, and their children, because there was little for them in the years that followed the Parish’s founding.

To the extent my heart aches for what could have been I admire the people who stuck it out, those who stayed Orthodox through it all. The people that restarted the Parish in the middle 1970’s are warriors although they would probably not describe themselves that way, and martyrs of a kind, bearing witness to the Faith alone on the far edge of the diocese sustained only by faithful Priests who took precious time from their overwhelming schedules to bring life giving sacraments. May their memory, if just for that, be eternal!

And what can we do? For some the mission field is a far off land where people have never heard the Gospel but one part of our mission at St. Elias is to pray for and reach out to, those, who for whatever reason, have been lost to us over time. They are many and there will be things that cannot be undone. But in a way they are still a part of us, dear to our hearts, near to our prayers, our own flesh and blood.

Who knows what can happen in God’s timing and will?

I try to imagine, sometimes, what it must have been like to be Jesus on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday. What must have been going through His mind as He was surrounded by the crowds cheering Him on?

Who knows what the people in the throngs along the road to Jerusalem thought? Some were looking for a king. Some perhaps were full of religious fervor because of Passover. Others had seen the miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection. Perhaps more than a few were just curious about what the noise was all about. There were probably as many reasons for people to be there as people themselves.

But Jesus’ perspective must have been remarkably different. He understood what was going to happen. He knew that more than a few of the faces in the crowd, filled with hope or joy or the sense of pending victory, would turn dark and threatening in just a few days time. Those who were praising Him now would be mocking Him later; enjoying the fall of the famous has been a human occupation centuries before the National Enquirer. And His friends, those who had followed Him over the years and shared the closest moments, the people who walked beside Him and pushed the crowds back even as they basked in some of the reflected glory; one would betray Him, one would deny Him, the rest would scatter in fear. Jesus knew this would happen even as the rhythmic cadence of His donkey drew Him closer to the city gates.

If Jesus’ had been deceived one could make sense of why He continued on. How could He have known what was to happen? But He knew, every detail of every moment to come, how the people He served and healed and taught would turn on Him, how His friends would leave Him at His most critical time of need, and how He would suffer and die. One could have never faulted Him, knowing what He knew, if He had, with a touch of His hand, steered His animal off the road and away from Jerusalem into the wilderness.

But He kept on and I presume the only answer is that something larger motivated Him, some greater force allowed Jesus to transcend those usual emotions of fear, sadness, anger, or despair that would have overcome even the best of us if our places were changed with His. I believe it was love.

Jesus saw the crowds surrounding Him, those sheep without a shepherd, the thirsty of soul craving living water and saw through their fickle praise and their brokenness to the very core of each one’s soul and loved them. Jesus saw his disciples and even though He knew they could not endure the hard days to come He craved their salvation. In a mystical way He saw us too, each human that had been and each that was yet to be born, fragile, prone to sin and self destruction, captured, as our Liturgy says, by the delusion of idols. Love inspired the hope that some would be saved and set free, and because of love He chose to go ride on, even knowing that we would be in so many ways exactly like the crowds that surrounded Him on His journey to Jerusalem.

Our human ways of loving have no way of making sense of this, of love for its own sake, of love that reaches out infinitely beyond self interest for the eternal well being of another. It defies our categories, makes foolishness of our common sense, and the best of us can only develop of tiny fraction of it in our own lives. Yet it is real and today we’re faced with the full beauty, truth, power, and magnificence it all.

This love of God that we see in the Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, in His willingness to bear our darkness, pain, and death despite our unworthiness and betrayal is the truest love of all and the seed that can transform us. It can warm our cold hearts and turn them to God. It can grant us vision to see all that matters and lay aside what is less. Properly nurtured it changes how we see each other and the world around us, provides rest for our souls, and makes worship natural. To the extent we respond to it in kind we are made more human in the best sense of the word and eternity lives in our hearts. And as we see Jesus unflinching love in the face of death we begin to contemplate the meaning of the word Christian.

There is something terribly unsettling about death.

No matter how we look at it, whatever façade we create within ourselves to try to make sense of it all, in the end it is still an enigma. We know we must all die at one time or another but that inevitability does little to help us make sense of it all. Most of us just put it out of our minds and hope that when death comes it arrives quickly without giving us much chance to ponder its implications.

But the thought of it doesn’t go away. It’s why the cosmetics business is a multi-billion dollar enterprise and gyms are filled with crowds of sweating, puffing, people. It’s why we all seem to be on an endless quest to cram as much experience into our time as possible and work feverishly to acquire things as if things were life. Timor mortis conturbat me, the fear of death confounds me, and this has been the lot of humans since the beginning of time.

Into this primal anxiety our Faith speaks words of truth and comfort.

The truth is that our anxiousness in the face of death is real because it reflects something we instinctually know. Death is not normal or natural and feels alien to us despite our feverish attempts to come to terms with it and that feeling is correct. We were not designed to die, we were not created to live mortal lives that end. We inherently know something is wrong with the idea that a being with the capability to ponder eternity lives for such a short time.

Our Faith tells us that this twisted reality is because sin, the human choice to reject the life of God came into the world through deception and the perversion of a primal innocence. Because of it humans are broken from the life of God and have become mortal, subject to the ills of a creation in pain. Death is everywhere and we do not escape it ourselves.

Yet on this Lazarus Saturday a greater truth emerges and in that truth is comfort. God, in mercy, chose not to leave us permanently in this despair. In the Liturgy of St. Basil, which we have been serving these past weeks, it is stated that even though our sins have banished us from that place of primal innocence and taken us from paradise into this present world where death exists God still has, in love, provided us with the salvation of regeneration.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has come into the world, God taking on humanity and bearing all of its ills, including death, but never being overcome by any of them. In doing this the ultimate power of death was broken. In union with our Lord we die, but we also rise again by the same power that Jesus exhibited in his own death and resurrection. The resurrection of Lazarus we call to mind today was a foretaste of this, an act of our Lord to demonstrate to those who have the eyes to see that He truly has the power to overcome death and that those who are joined to him share in this.

Knowing this, even though it is our lot to be apprehensive about our mortality and death, we still have hope. Death is an adversary but it’s a foe whose power has been broken. Death is not natural for us, but it is not final either. And in the week to come as we face the sufferings and death of Christ, and by doing so face our own struggles, mortality, and death, this day has been given to us as a preview of the resurrection to come, a ray of hope allowing us to face this ultimate challenge with a calm assurance of salvation.

Holy Week is just a few days away and the rush is on. So many things to do in such a short time. But what a wonderful, holy, special, and exciting time it is. The next days will be spent in busy preparation, going over texts, cleaning, making bread, buying candles, and the challenge of praying well as once in a year liturgies are served.

Since I work and commute to St. Elias this time of year is a taste of things to come for me, the day when I can move down and be there and do what I need to do full time. I enjoy just being there and being not just John the Programs Coordinator, but Fr. John.

Come Bright Monday there will be a holy tired over our house.

An interesting article on the topic…

Russian Orthodox Priests celebrate Liturgy at the North Pole.