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Fr. Stephen has a wonderful post on personal salvation and Orthodoxy (from Jason’s blog) . I have to quote his article here because it is very good. From Fr. Stephen’s post (my thoughts follow):

Perhaps the most difficult theological truth to communicate in the modern world is that of personal existence. Modern English has taken the word person from the realm of theology and changed it into the cheapest coin of the realm. Today it means that which is private,merely individual. As such, it becomes synonymous not with salvation but with our very destruction. Life lived as a mere individual is no life at all but a progressive movement towards death and destruction.

Thus there is always something of a hesitancy when someone asks (in newspeak), “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” If only we would, it would be truly significant. But in our modern street-wise theology, Christ as personal savior becomes synonymous with Christ as private savior, and as such is no savior at all. For no one and nothing can save the false existence we have created in the privacy of our modern existence. We were not created for such an existence.

In the story of Genesis - the first appearance of the phrase, “It is not good,” is applied to man - in an existence that is private. “It is not good for man to be alone.” We do not exist in the goodness which God has created for us when we exist alone. The most remote hermit of the Christian desert does not live alone, but lives radically for others and to God. Of all men he is the least alone. No one would take on the radical ascesis of the desert for themselves alone: it is an act of radical love.

And thus the personal God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, determined that salvation for humanity could only take place as we lived fully and truly into the existence for which we were and are created: the Church. In the Church we do not exist as mere individuals but as members of the Body of Christ. My life is the life of Christ. What happens to me is essential to what happens to all the members of the Body and what happens to the members of the Body is essential for what happens to me. Their life is my life.

Thus when we approach the cup of Christ’s Body and Blood, we never approach it for our private good but as members of the Body. We are thus enjoined to be in love and charity with our neighbor and to forgive the sins of all - otherwise the cup is not for our salvation but our destruction.

The salvation into which we are Baptized is a new life - no longer defined by the mere existence of myself as an individual - but rather by the radical freedom of love within the Body of Christ. To accept Christ as our “personal” savior, thus can be translated into its traditional Orthodox form: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?” And this question is more fully expounded when we understand that the Christ to whom we unite ourself is a many-membered body.

After the resurrection, Christ appeared to the Apostle Peter. Their dialog must have been the most profound dialog ever to take place between man and God. “Do you love me?” Christ asked Peter. Peter hedged his answer. But Christ responded, “Feed my sheep.” For to love Christ and to feed His sheep are not two things but one. For Peter to finally know this was indeed his personal salvation. It is ours as well. Glory to God.

This is what really struck me: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?… We understand that the Christ to whom we unite ourself is a many-membered body.”

What a radical departure this is from the theology of salvation I learned as an evangelical in bible college. I was very familiar with St. Paul’s statements about being “in Christ” and being “seated in the heavens with Christ” but we understood these to be “spiritual” truths. These were statements of faith about who we were in God’s eyes, not who we were in a real, holistic, and tangible sense. These were spiritual, as opposed to actual, real, this-worldly, truths.

If salvation is being united with Christ, and being united with Christ is being united to his many-membered body, then being in Christ is a very real, this-worldy thing. To have this view of salvation, and to reject the false doctrine of private salvation, is to have an ecclesiology (theology of the church) that is catholic. That is, to believe that the Church is a real, visible entity established by Christ and preserved in the Holy Spirit even today.

I cannot be united to Christ’s invisible body. I cannot be in communion with people invisibly. I cannot be saved with people I do not know and do not interact with in the real world. The gospel is about what is real. Salvation has to be about my communion with the visible body of Christ. This cannot be actualized at the local level only. I cannot be united to Christ with a group of people (and a bible) who are disconnected from the rest of the believing world. My faith community cannot exist as an individual. I must be united with Christ’s many-membered body at the local level, as well as the global and historical level. To be “in Christ” is to be in communion with Christ’s body: the Church.

Fr. Michael gave a wonderful homily the Sunday before last on three stages of Christian life. He would want me to give proper credit, so I should say that this came from Father Zacharias (Zakarou) who is the spiritual child of Elder Sophrony, the spiritual child of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos.

I don’t remember what he called the first stage but it is usually the shortest of the three. This is the “just got home from a retreat/camp and I’m really ‘on fire’ for God” stage. This is the stage that we often mistakenly think is the stage we should be in. This is a trick the devil likes to play on us to make us miserable all the time. 

The second stage is the stage that most of are in. It’s the stage where we stand before God in faith and often times there is no emotion or feeling to give credence to our faith in Him. We go through the ups and downs of life, spiritual fervor comes and goes, but we continue to pursue the Kingdom of God because everything else is just insane. The devil lies to us and tries to make us think that we need to go back to the stage one, when we were on fire for God, but the truth is that we can’t go back and we shouldn’t. In other words any emotional confirmation that comes along with our faith is simply grace and we shouldn’t pursue it because it will become an idol. We should simple try to believe what we believe.

But there is a third stage. It is the stage that few people make it to in this life. This is the fullness of salvation where God’s will is totally and organically our own will. Isn’t this what salvation is all about? It is us becoming by grace what Jesus is by nature. We become participants in the life of God. I struggled for so long to understand what salvation was all about. It finally clicked for me when I realized that salvation is not about God pretending that we are something we’re not so that one day we’ll get into heaven. It clicked for me when I realized that God becoming man means that He has raised us out of our tombs and enabled us to become what He is; truly human. So salvation is that process by which I am transformed into the image of God and I discover that this is the truest image of myself. 

This is what got me the other day. I was thinking about what being saved, becoming a saint, really means and I asked myself if I really want it? Am I cooperating with God in this process of transformation? If I’m not then I am not being saved. Do I even want my will to be God’s will? Just questions I was asking myself. All I know is that I want to want that. I want to want to cooperate with God to become who Jesus is. Lord Jesus have mercy on me. Blessed Theotokos help me to be someone who wants to say yes to God’s will.

Our wonderful beagles.

Jason Zahariades has a great post that is the first in a mini-autobiography on his family’s faith journey. What a lot of people don’t know about Jason is that he has written many articles and was a contributing author to several books on the “emerging church” and “spiritual formation.” It’s so cool to be a part of his story and see something as unexpected and wonderful as Orthodoxy become the home he is journeying towards. Check it out: Journeying Home (1) — From Evangelical to Emerging Church

 

I have to bring something out of the comments because it strikes a chord with me. From Debbie’s Khouria friend (arabic for priest’s wife):

“I think that is the best possible way to come along together in this great adventure of finding out about our full Christian inheritance - because that is what I think the Orthodox church is. Some of what you know from your past is God-given and you keep it. Some of what you know from the past is probably just wrong, and you leave it behind. But mostly, I think, Orthodoxy fills up the empty spaces and makes a whole fabric out of what used to be patches.”

Debbie Says:

That makes so much more sense to me than just reject what we have learned, completely. We are actually finishing a big quilt or puzzle that has had some missing pieces. Some of the pieces that we did have in, are not quite right and need to be replaced but some of the pieces are just as rich as the new ones we are receiving. Does that make sense to you? I like to talk in picture form. It helps my mind grasp concepts.  I just love the way that she put it.

Don’t they say it beautifully? I totally agree with them. Of course I could have never worded it that way. I have this terrible tendency to say things as directly and harshly as possible. In my mind I am trying to make sure that there is no mistaking what I am trying to say. But people react to the directness and are often offended (and rightly so) by my over zealous (and often over exaggerated) attempt at clarity. : )

I love how Debbie likes to talk in picture form. Isn’t that what Jesus did? Christ is Risen! And maybe I can do a better job concerning myself with what people hear rather than what I want to say. Lord have mercy!

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

I am really excited because our good friends, the Zahariades’ along with my Dad and Step Mom, are taking steps toward Orthodox Christianity. Please take a few minutes to check out their blogs:

Mark Feliciano
Barbara Feliciano
Jason Zahariades
Debbie Zahariades

Their experiences are causing me to think more deeply about the possibility of other friends and family taking similar steps. Let me explain…

When I began looking into Orthodoxy myself, I was surprised to find out that my fellow Evangelical/Protestant friends and family weren’t upset by it. I thought to myself, I am coming to the point where I will need to reject the Christian tradition I was raised under (to see it as deficient) and embrace something that seemed very foreign, if not opposed, to my former faith tradition. But it seemed that friends and family did not make this connection. Let me explain…

When my best friend Rico told me that he was going to “convert” to Eastern Orthodoxy, I was offended. I was offended that he thought he could convert without upsetting all his Protestant friends and family. Because if he felt he needed to convert, then he must have felt that we needed to do the same (at least that’s what I thought). Rico’s response was very gracious as he simply tried to communicate why he believed God was calling him to take this step. I still took Rico’s decision very seriously and of course Nicole and I eventually followed Rico in conversion. 

As I told friends and family about our own decision to convert they did not react the same way. And even though this surprised me a bit I began to feel that Orthodoxy may not be for everyone. That is, maybe they just weren’t dissatisfied with their Christian tradition like I was. Maybe Orthodoxy is just too foreign for some people. So this leads me to my reason for writing this post…

What if my initial reaction to Rico’s conversion was right? Maybe it was something that should have been offensive to me as a Protestant Christian and maybe his conversion (or any Orthodox conversion) should be interpreted as a call for others to do the same. I don’t want to go too long with this post, but I’d like it to be a spring board for more posts to come. The point of all of this is to say that I have experienced such joy in Orthodox Christianity, in a way I am not able to explain, and now my family and friends are experiencing that same joy (and blogging about it!). My own experiences and beliefs about this living and ancient faith/tradition is that it IS for everybody. It is only foreign in the sense that it is radically Christian and holy, and I believe that it truly is the fullness of the gospel (i.e., the fullness of Jesus’ message and tradition).

That’s all I have for now. I will follow up on this soon.

Christ is Risen!

This past Sunday was our fifth Easter as Orthodox Christians. Now we are in Bright Week and I am left with this “bright sadness” because lent is over. Over the past month or so we have spent more time in church than we have at home. I love this time of year. I love to be in church. I am left exceedingly full and grateful every year. I am grateful to be a part of this living Tradition and I am grateful that I have journeyed with Christ and my friends to the cross and to the empty tomb. 

Each year I look forward to St. John Chrysotom’s homily. Here’s my favorite part:

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.