Category: Life

There's an Attraction…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

to all the canons, creeds, texts, rubrics, and services of Orthodoxy. This is probably more so for people coming to the Faith from the stripped down world of American Christianity. The richness, the possibilities, the guidance, even the sense that there’s more to faith than repeating songs on a television screen can be quite alluring.

Yet at best these are tools, not ends in themselves but helpers along the journey. They are essential and indispensible in some ways but not the end of the matter. The end of the matter is to be like Christ, to be joined to Him. Better, I think to strive to be like Christ because as you do all the canons and creeds and things that matter will be fulfilled and you lessen the risk of getting lost on your way Home while you were wandering through the books.

The Truth Is…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

that the Christian life is strewn in, though, and about, with blessings. The vast majority of them are of the small but substantial kind. In some cases they are the same as an earthly blessing. Most of them will be unseen to eyes without illumination. All of them, even the smallest ones, are either eternal in and of themselves or setting us on the path to things eternal.

Why Do I Work?

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Well, for the money I suppose. Is that all? There are other things. The idea that I’m helping people have better lives. A kind of joy in service. The idea of my particular work allowing me to develop and share creative energies. It all matters.

I suppose that if human sin hadn’t become part of the equation there would be little that we would call “work” in the world. Perhaps a little pruning here or there or some basic gathering of edibles. Maybe building shelters. None of the nine to five and beyond that marks the world of work these days. No need of the constant competition to get our share.

Yet the world is not that way. At best we can hope that our work allows some of what is higher, better, and holy be expressed. We will sweat and push and shovel and move, each in our own way, until the end of our lives. Most of us will place ourselves in cubicles with little meaning except for paychecks and spend our years looking out the boss’ window seeking the sun.

In the end at least part of this is our own choice. The person who works only for money may be the poorest one of all.

The Backlash…

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What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity.  Collectively the Boomers continued to follow ideals they associated with youth and individualism: fulfillment and “creativity” rather than endurance and commitment.  Boomer spouses dropped families because relationships with spouses or children or mortgage payments no longer “fulfilled” them; Boomer society tolerated the most selfish and immature behavior in its public and cultural leaders out of the classically youthful and immature belief that intolerance and hypocrisy are greater sins than the dereliction of duty.  That the greatest and most effective political leader the Baby Boom produced was William Jefferson Clinton tells you all you need to know.

Read more here…

Pondering…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

the story of the Last Supper in John’s Gospel and came to the passage where Jesus identifies his betrayer by giving him (Judas) a piece of bread. On receiving the bread the text says that the devil entered into Judas. Later, of course, the remaining disciples would also receive bread from Jesus’ hands, but this time the bread filled them with his presence. Two breads given by the same hand with remarkably different results. Jesus grant me the bread that fills me with your life.

On Love…

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“True Christian love is not just a feeling or a pleasant disposition of the soul. It is a self-sacrificing, ceaseless, life-long act of heroism unto death. It is fiery yet dispassionate, not dependent on anything, not on being loved in return or having a kinship of blood. One no longer thinks of receiving something for oneself. One can be spat upon and reviled, and yet in this suffering there is …such a deep, profound peace that one finds it impossible to return to the lifeless state one was in before the suffering. One blesses life and all that is around one, and this blessing becomes universal. Such love can only come from God. This is the only love that Christ is truly interested in, the love He came to earth to show and teach humanity. With this love He gave up His Spirit on the Cross.”

Fr. Damascene Christensen of Platina

Thoughts on the Fast…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment
What we gain from fasting does not compensate for what we lose through anger. Our profit from scriptural reading in no way equals the damage we cause ourselves by showing contempt for a brother. We must practice fasting, vigils, withdrawal, and the meditation of Scripture as activities which are subordinate to our main objective, purity of heart, that is to say, love, and we must never disturb this principal virtue for the sake of those others. If this virtue remains whole and unharmed within us nothing can injure us, not even if we are forced to omit any of those other subordinate virtues. Nor will it be of any use to have practiced all these latter if there is missing in us that principal objective for the sake of which all else is undertaken.
 

Wise Thoughts…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were 
not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again, 
but our imitation was but a figure, while our salvation is in 
reality. Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and 
truly rose again; and all these things have been vouchsafed to us, 
that we, by imitation communicating in His sufferings, might gain 
salvation in reality. O surpassing loving-kindness! Christ 
received the nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and endured 
anguish; while to me without suffering or toil, by the fellowship 
of His pain He vouchsafed salvation. 

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, On the Christian Sacraments.