Homily, March 28, 2021

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

March 28, 2021

Some thoughts for the younger people in the spring of life and worth the consideration of those of us in our autumn as well.

You’ll be amazed, when you reach 60 or more, how fast the years have passed. In the spring and summer of youth time can seem to stand still.  There’s s so much to experience, to know, to absorb, and to live, and everything seems to be in the moment. It’s an amazing time of life with the potential for adventure, romance, and horizons extending beyond the sky.

Somewhere in your 30’s, though, you’ll start to notice that when you were young and ambitious and busy time was also moving at that same pace. You’ll first see it in the face that looks back at you in the mirror, and then, perhaps in the realization you have children and are more like your parents then you could have ever imagined. When you look up from your work you’ll start to notice the carefree days have slipped into responsible adulthood and your body will remind you that just exercising without warming up is not such a good idea. These are the days when you discover the necessity, and the pleasure, of an afternoon nap and sometimes you may look out your window and wonder where all those kids you hung out with are now, what they’re doing, and if they’re happy.

Those introspections often don’t last too long. After all, there’s soccer practice and extra paperwork from the job, and a lawn needing to be mowed. Someone must pay for that boat you just bought, and the season tickets and that someone is you. As quickly as you begin to ponder about life, the journey, and the deeper meaning of things the thoughts are snatched away by a whirlwind of tasks to maintain everything you have and ensure there’ll be more in the future. Your mortgage is infinitely more effective in getting you up in the morning than any alarm clock. So in to the car you go and off to the office you race and every time you almost get the carrot you discover someone else further up the flow chart has just made the stick a little bit longer.

Over time a kind of world weariness can set in, the adventure begins to dim, and somewhere, in a place you dare not admit exists to even those closest to you, you’ll ask “Is this what it’s all about, is this life?” Is this why I’m here to work and pay and buy and work some more and maybe get a weekend at the cabin every so often? And the possibility the answer is “Yes” can leave you empty inside or even scare the hell out of you because so much has already been invested, so much energy given, so much time spent, so many inevitabilities taken for granted even as we discover a restlessness within, the caged animal feeling of being trapped in a space that tires us even as we feel bound to it hand and foot, body and soul.

Yet within each of us is also a quiet place, a sacred garden, the remnants of a lost Eden, a place of quiet, of peace, a holy ground where God, if we wish it, can walk with us in the cool of the evening and we can be naked and unashamed. And in many moment of solitude, of quiet it will call to us like a distant homeland or the breaking of a morning’s dawn.

This is the place which was washed clean, set right, and returned to its primal holiness in our baptism and filled with the Holy Spirit in our chrismation. It is our heart and soul, a sacred garden and  the true home of the person God meant you to be, the deified body and soul God breathed his life into at the dawn of time and the one your destiny when time gives way to eternity.

Alas, the busyness of life too often takes over. The brokenness, the tasks, the sins, the good things twisted into darkness, and the noise of the world have left our sacred gardens unvisited, untended, choked with weeds, and a remnant of their former beauty. And in the quiet moments, the time away from chasing carrots on sticks God allows us to get a glimpse of that place, and as we do we may, in a moment of sanity, despair at its disrepair even as we long for its glorious holy presence.  We know there is an Eden within and when we come to our senses we weep because we ourselves have chosen to wander away from its pleasantness for the sake of an illusion, a mirage in the desert, a dream that wakes us up shivering in bed.  In the busyness of life we have neglected our salvation, the promise given by angels and reality revealed when Christ walked among us.

Yet all is not lost.

Even in the busyness of life we can, if we wish, return to that sacred garden within. We can still ourselves, our lives, our thoughts, and, in those moments when we reflect only on God, and our life turns from noise to holiness, begin the journey back to what is both our ancestral and heavenly home, the normal that should have always been.  In our Liturgy, before we receive the Holy Gifts we ask as Priests on behalf of you all God’s help in laying aside all earthly cares so we can receive the king of all who arrives on angelic wings and becomes the bread of life. This great grace is not just for the moment of sacred liturgy but also for every day of our life.

We don’t have to be a monastic to seek out and live in the presence of God, to reside, again, in the sacred garden.  We can do so now if we choose, but we must choose, to be still, to set the present aside for a time and to look at ourselves as we really are, how far we’ve come and how far we need to travel, and resolve to become not what the world has told us we must be but rather what a loving God has called us to be in the still, small, voice we can hear even in life’s chatter if we are ready to listen.

We marvel at the words, the lives, of great saints, mothers and fathers of our spiritual life and yet we’ve forgotten these gifts were given to them because they chose to seek them, these miracles were part of their lives because they were open to the possibility, and they could hear the voice of God because they chose to be quiet and listen. They did not neglect their salvation and in return they were lit from within by a holy light.

As we travel through this Lent please understand it’s not the giving up of food and drink so much as making space, again, for God in our lives, to return to the sacred garden within and having a vision of its possibilities and perfections, commit ourselves to pulling out the weeds, watering the ground, and rejoicing in it’s beauty.  One can follow the diet to perfection and if there is no time or place to be present with God it’s futility at best. That time with God, without agenda, without any other purpose than to be with and in Him is Lent’s object and the source of all holy endeavor. Without it even the good things we do are just that, things.

And the truth is, once having returned to our inner sacred garden everything else finds its perspective.  The things we often thought so important because the TV told us they were will lose their value. Every bauble that once caught our eye will fade as we gaze on the face of our Savior. Yes, we will live in the world as we must but we will live differently because we’ve already found our place, our destiny, and our home. The world may scream and holler at us but in the quiet holiness of our recovered Eden the power of those voices will dissolve. We may labor for our daily bread but that labor will be filled with joy as it becomes absorbed into the greater heavenly labor of prayer, worship, stillness, and the holy. We may question the meaning of our lives because this is a human thing to do but within our hearts we will know we need no longer be restless because we have found our rest in God.  We may wonder sometimes who we are but in that sacred garden our Lord will tell us the only words we need to hear on the matter, “You are mine and I am yours, forever.”

Those who seek will find. Those who ask will find answers. Those who knock will have the door opened. And those whose only and basic desire is to know and love God will find themselves and eternity as well.

When You’re a Young Man…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

you want to love and be loved but to find someone to teach you how requires wading through a world of rock stars, pornographers, and people as clueless as yourself. Under their twisted supervision earnest seekers become victims and then victimizers as everyone is doing what the movies, songs, and buddies tell them they’re supposed to but no one is really happy and more than a few are broken in the process. The only escape seems to be more of the same, the illusion that the next one will be the real one yet it never seems to be ever happen that way.

If I could speak back through time to my younger self I would tell that person the hunger to be loved, to be touched, to encounter another, is perfectly real and good. Still, great care has to be taken with that fire so that it warms without consuming everything in its path.

I would say do things in the reverse of what the rock stars, pornographers, and clueless tell you. Seek out the spirit of the other, their goodness, all the qualities that attract you to them. Seek that first and let the physical, no matter how demanding it may be, rest, for later, for better. Any two can, in any moment, produce an ecstasy but there is so much more to love than that and becoming the soul mates you want, you need, takes time, takes genuine engagement with the other, and a willingness to build a life, and not just a moment, together.

I would also say “Look for the beauty of the soul” because the time of smooth skin and youthful vigor is very short indeed while a good heart lasts well beyond those days. If all that matters is physical charm your days of “love” will be very brief. Aim, instead, for everything that matters, everything that lasts.

Finally, find the “sweet spot” and let your teachers in all of this be somewhere in between those who are obsessed with exploring and engaging every possible passion and pleasure and those who see love and sex as necessary evils. A wise person is somewhere between a prude and a pervert, someone who understands the great gift of love, of sex, but also sees a much larger picture, the goodness of it all and, indeed, the holiness that is possible. If your teachers are those who truly seek out the Creator, the God who created us to love and touch and be sexual they will often naturally be in that “sweet spot” and their knowledge can save your heart, your soul, and your life if you are willing to accept it.

This, I would say to my younger self, will help you find not just what you want but what you need.

If I could…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

go back I think I’d only wish to change the times I did hurtful things to others or said unkind words. Everything else could stay the same.

The difficulty with that, of course, is the impossibility of it happening. Hard things done and hurtful words said are released into lives and can never truly be retrieved. Three things, though, provide some hope.

The first is that from time to time a person actually does get the opportunity to apologize and at least try to make things right. Seize those moments whenever you can.

The second is that time, the medium into which hard deeds and hurtful words is cast, is also a potential healer. Time gives people, even the hurting, a place to reflect, to understand, to grow, and to overcome. Time does heal, not always, but it can.

The third is heaven. For those wounds inflicted for which there is no possible apology or those which time cannot heal there is a place where, as we often say, “All sickness, sorrow, and sighing have fled away…” If life takes those I have hurt beyond my reach and time cannot heal I, at least, can pray fervently that those who I, in my own brokenness, have inflicted myself upon could at know and find heaven after the brevity of this life and perhaps there we both can find what eluded us along the journey here.

The Truth Is…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

most of us, almost all of us, will eventually be forgotten.

We’re born into a moment of history in a place and a time. Things happen to us and we change things ourselves in ways large, sometimes, but mostly small and then, when our time is done we exit. We go one way and the rest of the world another. The dead rest and fade away, even the tombstones will one day crumble to dust, and the living keep on living until their turn comes.

For a while we’ll be remembered and missed. But as the years march on the people who recall us will themselves be recalled and each generation that fades away dilutes the recollections. A fortunate few will leave something behind but most will not and all of us will become anonymous as time does it’s inevitable work. Even the Beatles will one day be forgotten.

We humans know this somewhere inside, in a place we don’t often visit and basically never want others to see. It makes us afraid, sometimes, to think of being extinguished or sorrowful in the recognition of our, sooner than we can imagine, disappearance. Indeed we rage against the dying of the light.

It would overwhelm us, it does overwhelm us, except for the possibility of Pascha, of something more, of resurrection. One can choose, I suppose, to be outrageous, to be affluent, to be infamous, to embrace celebrity even at the cost of our soul for the sake of being remembered, of being something more. Yet there may be more.

What if our memory, everything we will ever be, could be placed not in the human hands but God’s? What if our treasure, everything we could accomplish, could be stored away in a place currently invisible but most certainly real? What if this is just a beginning, this life, and not the sum total of everything there is? What if Pascha, resurrection, was not just an event of the past or a hope for the future but a way of life where existence is not measured in months and years but in eons and stages and everything we are, if its given to God, remains in His memory forever?

Tonight it will be Pascha again. Easter. For those who understand the Sun will rise at midnight and for those willing to grasp it comes the truth that there’s so much more, so very much more indeed.

January 23

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Only you, Lord, do I seek,

My haven, my rest, my constant in change.

Only you, Lord, do I seek,

My spring in the desert, my gentle snow.

In the night when my soul is tired I find your rest.

In the day when work encompasses me I know your strength.

In my broken moments you are oil and wine

When I am deceived you lead me home.

Only you, Lord, do I seek,

My calm on the ocean of life.

Only you, Lord, do I seek,

My life stronger than death.

Adios Facebook!

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I’m weary of the noise, weary of the half baked conspiracies, weary of the anger, and thinking about how much of my life was wasted has wearied me even further. It’s time for some detox, time for pure water from the Scriptures and the Saints to wash over and through me. Time for rest. Time to do good things. Time to exchange meaninglessness for grace.

Adios Facebook!

2021

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

It is good to be here, dear friends, despite the world, the politics, and the general hysteria and anger.

Everything around has been reduced in the knowledge that almost everything can be taken away and all we have now is our faith, our prayers, and our belief to carry us on and through.

Therefore we have all we need.

These are interesting times

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 4 Comments

in the United States.

Those of us who’ve lived long enough have, of course, seen these before, more than we can count and, of course, each presents itself as “the” crisis of our times as if there was no before or after. For those who are younger without that history it must surely seem that way.

The genius of the American experiment is not that everything has always been perfect. In over two centuries there have been injustices, crimes, scandals, and any number of cringe worthy moments. It’s as historically blind to say these never happened as it is to say everything has always been riddled with them.

Rather, the wisdom of this Union lies in its capacity for self correction. Within its mechanisms has always been the means to face and correct what has gone astray, even if those mechanisms are, in and of themselves, riddled with human frailty. Of course, some things took too long, decades too long, but the point remains; they did happen and they still can.

Contrast this with the experience of those states where totalitarianism, of the Left or the Right, has been proposed as the avenue of utopian social change and been implemented on the promise. The record is clear, massive human rights abuses, a complete lack of respect for human persons and property, wealth for those in control with poverty for the masses, and death on an industrial scale.

Is our Union perfect? No, there is perfecting to be done. However the mere understanding that such perfecting can be done is why this Union, its constitution, its laws, its customs, and its potential for improvement, should be preserved if for no other reason that, even flawed, it is still the better alternative to any other and especially to those proposed by people who believe they can create the future by vandalizing the present.