You’re Not Worthy…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

to receive the Eucharist and neither am I. In fact, I’m not worthy to pray the prayers of consecration over the bread and wine and certainly not worthy to stand in front of the altar in the first place.

That’s just a plain fact because I’m a sinner and so are you and so are we all. We know it, and God knows it better than even we do.

So if you’re waiting for some perfect moment to receive the Eucharist forget it because it will never happen. You’ll never be good enough and neither will I. There is, however, freedom in that. It’s not the freedom to live any kind of life we want but rather the freedom of knowing that the one requirement is that we are penitent, that we are in a place where we recognize our sins and struggles and come to God seeking grace, which in the Orthodox Christian context is found in many places and in a remarkably deep and profound way in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is medicine for sinners and strugglers, the humble who acknowledge their need of God and seek wholeness that can only be found in Christ. For the proud and the self-righteous it is a chalice of destruction (although that destruction is still in the hope of enlightenment and change of heart)  but for the broken and humble of heart who come seeking healing it grants life.

I am a Priest. I am a sinner. If God has not consumed me but has been gracious beyond my deserving could He not also grant grace, healing, and forgiveness, to you, even with all your struggles, in the Eucharist? Crawl on your knees if you have to but come to the chalice of life with a penitent heart and God will grant you life, forgiveness, and mercy. Leave your earthly cares behind and come taste, even though we are sinners, the presence of heaven.

Perhaps…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

when we see all the sadness and struggle in the world we need to ask a very simple but clarifying question. “Where is the voice of God in all of this?”

I think it’s too easy to think apocalyptically about the world we live in because it allows us to give up on everything and hope that we’re going to be lucky enough to hide, or be taken away, from the world. We may even relish the idea that God will settle accounts, vindicate us, and destroy evil and evil doers. It also a ring of truth to it because we do believe, as Christians, that there will be a day when God will establish perfect justice and renew a broken world.

Yet could it also be true that the sin, struggle, and just plain craziness we see in the world  has within it a still small voice that too often gets unheard because we’re focusing on the storm? Could it be, for example, that God is trying to tell us, that the chaos and troubles of the world as we experience it are actually indicators for where we, as the people of God, need to be active and encountering the world? When a person is in pain we ask them where that pain is in order to help them become whole. Could it also be that what we see around us are the cries of a world in pain and we need to listen to them so we know where the hurt is and make healing possible?

Regardless, if we presume that God is the God of history should we not at least not give in to panic as we see the world around us but rather to look to see where God is in all of this? At the least we could learn from St. Peter and realize that if our eye is only on the storm around us, and not on the Master of the wind and the waves, that we will almost certainly sink.

It’s War You Know…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

this Christian life, probably always has been and probably always will be.  Advance, get attacked, fall, recover, rest, rejoin the fight. Every day, all the time.

Sometimes I wonder if people really understand this. Sometimes I wonder if I do. Imagine how things would be if we told people “Welcome to the Faith and be ready because sometimes all hell is going to break loose, literally.” Yet you know that when you try to live in one world while residing in another that sometimes things are just not going to be easy.

Strangely enough simple, straight forward, opposition is possibility the least difficult things to handle. It’s not pleasant but you know who and where its coming from and why it’s happening. The lines of battle are clear and the you know who has what flag. So much harder is when the push back against your life in Christ comes from the twisting of the good, the realm of shadows where things appear different from what they really are, and lies that sound sincere. That’s a different kind of struggle entirely and while the aim is the same as a full frontal assault the treachery involved makes it seem so much more difficult and dangerous.

In ways beyond counting the world we live in, although it has moments of beauty and wonder, is full of pathology and that pathology has become so normalized that health is perceived as an illness, light is considered darkness, and truth is a lie to be exterminated. In a world such as this we will struggle in the attempt to be a person of a different and better world. Sometimes we will fall, wounded and disfigured in the heat of this battle, this challenge to live as Christ in a world twisted by sin.

It can be very difficult to be vigilant all the time, to have our guard up, to stay awake on every watch in the night. Sleep can overtake us. Fatigue can get the best of us. Confusion can do its work and disorient us. Sometimes the pure shock, awe, and horror of things can leave us cowering under what ever shelter, good or bad, that seems close at hand. This, too, is part of the Christian life, the life of a Kingdom in time, a heavenly reality in a pained world.

What we have, though, in the face of all of this, is grace. We fall and God will lift us up again. We struggle and God extends, as it were, a hand to help. We doubt and God gives us faith. We are humbled and God meets us in our humility. We sin and God forgives and makes clean. We taste the bitter darkness and God finds a way to fill it with light. We die and God will raise us up again.

How I wish that I could be only a fraction of what I am called to be. How I desire not to fall in the heat of battle, to lose my head in the swirl of life, or to be caught in traps I’ve been caught in a hundred times before. As the Apostle says “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Yet, even in all my messiness, my sins, my self-inflicted wounds, and every moment when I am cut down on the field, I still come back. Grace, God’s grace, calls me back, picks me up, cleans my wounds, strengthens me in my weakness, and calls me to engage life as a citizen of a Kingdom not of this world. Until that day when I can finally rest from the strife this is all I have, this is all I claim, and this is all I need.

I Wonder Sometimes…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

that perhaps God is allowing the culture of the United States to become more and more like the worst aspects of the Roman Empire in the hope that His followers in this country may learn to become more and more like the best aspects of the early Christians?

The Problem is…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

that I sin.

Now I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish I had whatever it takes to live in such a way that the crazy stuff of the world doesn’t bleed over into my life to the point where I become part of it myself. Despite what you may see on the television, doing anything you want any time you feel like it is a kind of slavery, a life spent being trapped by perpetually changing desires. Those desires, for the most part, are easily twisted into dark things, love turns to lust, sustenance to gluttony, security to hoarding, the list goes on ad nauseam and giving myself to them makes me vulnerable to their captivities.  I wish I was immune. I wish my life was centered, whole, focused, and not so easily captivated by things that have the capability to enslave and destroy.

Holiness, in the best sense of the word, is a beautiful thing. True holiness, I think, is not so much about a list of do’s and don’ts as it is about a direction of the entirety of a person’s existence. I suppose that when a person’s life is directed towards God there will be things they will and will not do but the point behind it is not so much a list of laws as it is trading something less for something better. Purity is a better thing than giving in to every carnal temptation. Living a life not captured by the ever-changing demands of a consumerist culture is better than being a hamster in a wheel perpetually chasing whatever the world says is the next best thing. There is a witness inside all of us, I think, that affirms the beauty of this kind of holiness even if we ourselves see no way to achieve it. Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, this desire for the beauty of holiness is expressed in a deep discontent with the world as it has become. I share this discontent, this desire for something better, more true, more real, and more connected to the Source.

Yet I sin, I miss the mark. Sometimes its overt and I know exactly what I’m doing and how it will lessen and degrade me. Sometimes its something that catches me unaware, a fault so ingrained that it seems a normal part of my life. Regardless, each incident illustrates how far it is I am from being in the place I was designed to be, of being centered, whole, and focused in God. Each moment is a reminder that the pain of the world is my own personal pain as well. Each act or thought or desire that is less than holy is humbling and exposes me.

Now I suppose I could just give in and say the whole idea of being holy is impossible or perhaps even redefine my vices as virtues and my sins as simply “Who I am.”  It’s been done before and if I decided to follow this path I wouldn’t be alone. I could simply take that wisdom over time, those guidelines, the light that has lived in history, and relegate them to a quaint section of the museum like a horse and buggy. Perhaps long ago those things had some meaning, but in the face of my new enlightenment I can simply decree them of no further use and go on my way.

I could also give in to despair and, seeing the multitude of my own failings, decide there is no hope and nothing worth the effort. After all the evidence is in and if I have chosen to believe in the existence of things like “sin” and “holiness”   there is more than enough in my file to convict me of being a sinner. In the face of this evidence it would be easier to just give up and perhaps see life as just a few moments of fleeting happiness floating in an ocean of brokenness.

The truth is that I can’t do either. I’ve seen enough evidence in my own experience of the reality of sin and brokenness to know that simply denying or redefining it does nothing to change its reality. Sin, brokenness, human struggle, imperfection, all of it can be made legal, redefined, baptized, and turned into canon but the reality of it, and its consequences, will still be there. The degradation of it will occur even if we deny the existence of the cause and a lie often repeated remains a lie that will, in time, be exposed for what it is. I’ve also seen enough of holiness, small lights in the darkness, to know that it is a good and desirable thing even if I am so far away from it myself. Just as redefining my sins and struggles as “normal” does nothing to take away their reality or their consequences so, too, the reality of holiness and its value are not changed by the fact that I am often far from its essence.

I, then, have no choice but to struggle. The reality of my status as one who sins is clear and so is the eternal beauty of holiness. In my broken state I have an instinct for sin and yet, by the grace of God I also have an instinct for holiness. While I live I will struggle between the two, a sinner who desires to be something else. I will fall, often, and yet I also cannot give up on the idea that I could be something much more than I am at any given moment, something more like God. My hope is that God in His mercy sees me and understands this more than I can even imagine myself and in His goodness will lead me safely home.

Kristo Azukkide…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

And on this night
When hell is broken and withered
Where light ineffable pierces gloom of night
Angels sing, with choirs of saints beyond number
Those who wait in shadows
See sunlight with the break of morning

And on this night
I see Your grave, and mine to come
Without fear and without the eyes of shame
All things fade away and so will I
Yet Your grave is clean and bright and empty
and this will stay the same.

And on this night
I, dressed in joyful white and fatigued in grace
Sing Life at an altar made with mortal hands
My music awaits another place and time
A purer lyric, illumined words
At an altar transcending time itself.

And on this night
The dark has lost its peril
Across the world the voices call Your praise
In hope and  knowing Life itself prevails
Accept this gift of mortals who see in You their hope
and grant us Light which never fades away.

I Was Hoping…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

for a perfect Lent, you know, the kind where everything lined up just as it was supposed to be, the food, the services, the plans for doing this and that.

Then life intervened.

There was family to take care of, extra hours at work, health issues of my own, snow storms, the list goes on. In the face of it all it wasn’t long before my well thought out plans to make all the services, read all the ingredients on the food boxes, and spend hours in spiritual reading sort of fell away. Whatever it is I thought I was going to accomplish came with a big stamp on the box that now reads “Not This Year”.

In looking back at it, as I try to make of Lent what I can in the swirl of things, the operative thing seems to be “My” plans. Now I’m not saying that it’s not good to plan for Lent. One of the great gifts of our Faith is the two Sundays prior to Lent when we can ponder the time to come and ease into its life. What I have discovered, again, is, however, that if it’s about “My” plans then it’s probably not going to work out so well.

There are two errors, perhaps, in observing Lent. The first is to simply ignore it as some kind of anachronistic ritual with little meaning in the real world. The reality is our American culture is a gluttonous culture, gluttonous for everything, and we and I need the spirit and reality of Lent now more than ever. The second trap may be just the opposite, that is to make Lent an end in itself, to keep its technicalities and miss the larger picture.

In my case I wanted a Lent with no “mistakes” where all the required observances were met with precision and I could look back on things with a sense of accomplishment. What I got was a busy, crazy, world of people who just needed someone to help them, tired days and nights, swirls of events beyond my control, and the reality that I’m going to be one of those “11th hour” people mentioned in the Paschal Homily.

What I had hoped for, the “ideal” Lent, isn’t going to happen. What I didn’t want to happen, namely that I would fall into Pascha all banged up, tired, and in tatters, seems to be the current trajectory. Yet since God’s power is manifest in my time of weakness and His grace is sufficient for me I still long for the banquet to come and the joy of saying, as frazzled as I am, “Christ is Risen”.