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Weakness

Weakness - A personal defect or failing. 1. A special fondness or inclination: has a weakness for fast cars. 2. Something of which one is excessively fond or desirous: Ice cream is his weakness. "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Matthew 26:41. In our post enlightenment era, we have exchanged reason and good intentions with action. The thought that as long as I accept Christ intellectually that I will be fine, is a colossal temptation of our time. The fact of the mater is that we are all weak, but pride covers our real weakness. We glide over our weakness and point to only our strengths. Our will tell us we are fine and ok, but in reality we are becoming more attached to the flesh and weakness, and lack growth. The more we are attached the more we are in want, and the weaknesses burn with lusts until satisfied. If we continue to live in weakness then we will never be able to become like God. We will be exactly like the Apostles in the garden of Gethsemane, asleep. The flesh is weak, but it can be converted into an ally, through discipline. Here is the commentary on this section from “the Orthodox Study Bible”: “Watch and pray is key to Christian spirituality and our struggle against temptations. Hereby Jesus’ soul is strengthened and He faces death courageously. For, while the divine will of the Father and the Son is one, the Lord becomes obedient to the Father in his humanity. In contrast to Jesus’ vigilance, His disciples sleep. Since body and soul are united, the spirit is paralyzed by a lethargic body. A willing spirit, recognizing the weakness of the flesh, knows it needs God’s presence and power. True faith is nourished by ardent, vigilant prayer.” The four obvious ways to cure our weakness is vigilance, obedience, prayer, and faith. Vigilance is needed to see the weakness and to recognize that we need God’s Grace to be victorious. Obedience is needed because seeing and knowing we need God’s Grace is different from actually participating in it, which is what we must do. We are obedient by praying because prayer links our weakness to God’s strength. We have faith that God will be able to deliver us "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men". 1 Corinthians 1:25. Finally our weakness should expose our need for God. It should lead us even deeper into true repentance and humility. For who can be prideful if they are weak, and who can gloat if they are repenting. May the Lord help me and have mercy on me for my weakness! My dear brothers and sisters in Christ let us all find our weaknesses in life and have God transform them into strengths and live in Him.

This Temporal World

What is this world? Jesus has something interesting to say about life in this world: "He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." John 12:24. Here is a verse that is completely contradictory to the American way. Our society today breeds and lives off fun, indulgence, pampering, and the easy life. Our economy relies on the fact that we live for this world. Of course I'm not asking you to never buy anything from the store again, but we need to pay attention to how we are living our lives and where our hearts truly lie. I remember my grandma use to say to me (this was in high school, some of my darker days and way before I even knew about Orthodoxy) "Steve how many hours have you spent playing video games this week?" "umm... I don't know, maybe 30 hours" "And how many hours did you spend praying, going to church, or reading the Bible?" "I went to church on Sunday, that’s it" I remember I use to feel so guilty after these phone calls, but just forget about it and continue "living it up".

So the question is do we love this world more than God? Can you not bear the idea of parting with this world or something in it? It is so critical to answer this question honestly because salvation depends on it. If you cannot survive without things of this world, then how would you survive in heaven? Think about it, if you HAVE to watch a certain TV program or play video games to get by in life then you have become dependant on something other than God and you draw your life from the temporal, not the eternal. What do you think would happen when you come face to face with Jesus in heaven and you were to ask Him "Oh do you mind if I watch "Friends" every Wednesday night? It's my favorite show and I would die without it." I bring this issue up because I need to uproot so many passions (something a person is enslaved to) that have been rooted in my heart.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.” Matthew 16:24-28

I would like to add what my Orthodox Study Bible has in the commentary as well: “Here Jesus states the central (central, not peripheral) paradox of the Christian faith. In grasping the temporal, we lose the eternal; in sacrificing everything we can know, we gain unimaginable riches. In dying, we live. When the Son of Man comes in glory to reward each according to his works, it will be shown that absolutely nothing exceeds the value of finding true life, the salvation of one’s soul.”

I know you hear “deny yourself” all the time, but are we really doing it? Do you deny yourself what you really want, or do you just do things that don’t matter that much to you? I again am guilty of this.

If you think you don’t have anything you are to attached to, then I present you with a challenge. Find the thing you love most and give it up for a week or a month. You will then know if you are too attached to something.

My dear brothers and sisters let us all be ever vigilant for the sake of our souls and truly deny ourselves and pray that God will aid us and grant us that which desire, eternal life.

Why is it so hard?

Tonight I was thinking about why it is so hard to focus on God and effortless to put all our energies into frivolous activities. It seems contradictory to me that I can remember almost every detail in a 150 page video game book, but memorizing a Psalm takes enormous effort. As I contemplated the “why” I thought of one possible answer. When we are not focused on God and are caught up with the cares of this world, the evil one has nothing to worry about, we are already losing the battle. This is why it is easy for us to get caught up in anything (except God of course); Satan has us exactly where he wants us, drifting further away from God. In addition, the more time we spend on something the more likely it is going to become a passion (I know from experience). Then not only do we have to struggle against the evil one but against ourselves as well because we have become dependant on something other than God. The moment we focus on God the evil one (and our passions) attacks us, causing us to struggle to get to God. Lord help us! This would explains why I could play video games easily for 8 hours straight, but have a hard time praying attentively for even 15 minuets. It still mystifies me that the most important thing in our life is the hardest to strive after. Here is a quote from St. Theophan’s The Spiritual Life that sheds more light on the subject: “… Abandon a certain wrongful activity that often strikes and afflicts almost everyone: That is, the fact that we spare no labor on any matter except when it comes to that of salvation. We want to think that we have only to contemplate salvation and desire it, and everything is all set. That is not how it happens in reality. That matter of salvation is the most important thing. Consequently it is the most difficult. This is by virtue of its importance and by the labor required. Labor then, for the Lord’s sake!” Brothers and Sisters in Christ let us take up our cross daily and strive for salvation in Christ.

Complacency to Zeal and back again

I have been exposed to Orthodox Christianity for about 2 years now and I have dealt (and are dealing with) the ups and downs of the spiritual life. I have noticed in my spiritual walk that their are definitely times when you are more motivated then others. Bouncing back and forth between zeal and complacency is something I feel is not very healthy. This reminds me of people who jump back and forth between dieting and over eating. By taking it to the extreme they lose weight quickly and then they quit because it is to hard to maintain, in which they gain the weight back. As we know shifting from overweight to underweight repeatedly is unhealthy for heart. This is the same in the spiritual life as well, except it is our soul that pays the price. I only speak of this because I have done both, numerous times in fact, and will probably continue until I find the right balance. I guess the thing to remember is that this struggle we are in is a journey. Many people also use the analogy of the spiritual life as a race or marathon (thank you St. Paul), so I’ll try and not make up any more witty parallels. What I want to point out is the practical, are we really running the race? To answer this question we have to both know ourselves and look at our lives. We have to first off know how much we can handle. For example, if someone is not keeping up with their daily prayer rule, then they should probably not try to follow extremely difficult cannon laws. Hopefully we all can be honest with ourselves and know how much we can truly do and what we can't do (of course our spiritual father can help us as well). Next we have to look at our lives. What are we doing with it? Are we killing ourselves to do absolutely everything the Church tells us or completely ignoring everything that we learn from the Church? This is different for every person, which is why we combine this with the first point to see if we are be complacent or over zealous. The goal of course is that we have enough zeal to make good progress, but not to burn out or slack off. May the Lord have mercy on us all and help us find the balance.

Repentance Part 1

In today's world saying you’re sorry or acknowledging you have done something wrong is pretty rare. Many factors play into this, but three in particular stand out to me. The first factor we owe to our relative thinking and the thought that their is no true right or wrong. Anything can be good or neutral if argued the right way and if it sounds logical. Sad to say I know someone who was very caught up in philosophy and left Christianity partly because of rationalization. Without a standard of morals (something the American culture is debasing more with each passing day) to judge things against and no clear answer to a situation, we turn to whatever the crowd is doing and base our decisions on that; Majority Vote rather than Truth. Next we have the lack of understanding spiritually. I’m no guru on spirituality by any means, but when I look at our civilization I see a complete ignorance of the spiritual life. Without any clue of the spiritual arena we rely on what “feels” good at the time; Emotional rather than Truth. Finally, we don’t care if it is right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if is wrong, just as long as I don’t get caught; Legalism rather than Truth. Before I continue I had better define Truth. The Truth I talk of is the principals brought forth through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and His Church. Without this foundation there is no way to determine what is wrong or right. Without Truth, we turn to the 3 alternatives above or anything else other than Truth to decide if we have done something wrong. Thus we can justify any action allowing us to disregard repentance. Being void of repentance however, feeds pride and selfishness causing walls to be place between people. In my life I have found that when I humbled myself and say “I’m sorry” it has always brought me into a closer communion with whomever I had done the wrong against. The fact of the matter is that we need repentance to be in communion with anyone and to have a loving relationship. Repentance leads to love by acknowledging our mistakes, which destroys our self-love and replace it with selfless love for others. I will elaborate on this on part 2.

What to say...

Throughout the last few days (and all my life) I have found that I have a hard time communicating exactly what I'm thinking to people. This also seems exceptionable challenging when trying to give advice to people or help them figure out solutions in a hard situation. I always know what I'm thinking, but getting that across in a version is always the hard part. Of course this is not always the point, but it seems when critical moments occur I don't know what to say. For example, just writing this post is hard for me to find the exact words to explain my thoughts and I find myself getting frustrated because it is not coming out how I would please. This inability to offer help to people is very vexing to my extreme desire to help others. When it comes down to I wish people could just see right into my mind to know exactly what I want to say to them. The only good thing I can harvest out of these situations is a humbling experience, which of course I am grateful to God for. Perhaps the reason I am not a good communicator at crucial moments is that people just need someone to listen to what they have to say. Also perhaps deep down I know what I could say wouldn't help or could cause either of us to stumble. Either case could be true, but try telling that to my overactive need to help. I guess the two meanings for this post is to help people understand me (more to come on this) a tad better and to say to all the others out their who struggle with communication that your not alone.