the true legacy of St Alexis

If one reason why parishes and dioceses and local churches sometimes
do not grow is because they are comfortable in simply ministering to
'their people', another is because when they actually have the
opportunity to welcome people into the Church they become nervous and
worry about the risks. And it seems that there are any number of
risks. There is the risk that people who express an interest
in Orthodoxy will eventually lapse. There is the risk that they will
bring with them experiences and ideas and customs that we don't fully
understand or appreciate - that we do not even have the imagination to
welcome and embrace, let alone permit and encourage. Perhaps the most
fundamental risk is that we cannot control outcomes.

But all the great and wonderful things of life have a degree of risk.
Love is the very best example of this. A commitment to love someone
is an absolutely enormous risk. There is so much potential for pain
and failure! Nonetheless, Tennyson gave voice to a deep wisdom when he
wrote that: 'tis better to have loved and lost / than never to have
loved at all....( In Memoriam: 27).

The fact of the matter is that we cannot - we simply cannot - control
outcomes. We have to do what is right - with a certain measure of
prudence of course, for it too is a virtue - and do it with prayer -
that is, do what is right and leave the outcome to the Lord. This is
actually a win-win situation, because on the one hand, in taking the
right sort of risk we are doing the right thing - and if it works,
brilliant! thank God! - and if it fails - well, thank God still,
because all things actually work together for good for those who love
God. Isn't that good news? That even if we seem to fail - even if we
fail - and even if the outcomes of our best intentions are not great -
or even make things worse - they will ultimately work for our good -
for our salvation - if we love God. Yes - this is true and the
experience of all the saints - if we love God! But if we are
practical atheists, if we in reality only give lip service to Lord but
do not in fact trust Him and do not accept this path - to take up the
cross and follow Him - how truly tragic and pathetic our failures will
be !

So: we may not get what we want, but we will get something that will
further our salvation. Should we be friendly? Should we be kind?
Should we be generous? Should we forgive? Should we show mercy? Should
we forget? Should we give? Should we inconvenience ourselves? Will
failure, rejection, repudiation ultimately hurt us? Is it worth the
risk to suffer? Of course these things will hurt... but through that
hurt, if there is hurt, will there not come abundant grace?

I mention all of this because we are about to celebrate the
Anniversary of the Repose of St Alexis (Toth) on May 7. In many ways
he was the founder - and certainly the facilitator - of the reception
into the Orthodox Church of our community. When the Russian
Orthodox Church accepted the Greek Catholics in Minneapolis, freely
and generously and without demands, because it was the right thing to
do, the Church took a very great risk. But the Church at that time had
courage, optimism, hope. It was willing to reach out, to bless particular
customs and practices, to integrate and celebrate cultural diversity and
traditions to the greater glory of God and His Church. It did this in
Alaska, in Korea and China and Japan, in eastern Europe.... and here
in America, starting in Minneapolis! This is the example that our
Orthodox Church in America should cherish - a evangelical and
optimistic missionary openness, a willingness to take risks, a
willingness to leave outcomes to God. This should be the true legacy
of St Alexis for Orthodoxy in America!

Delight

Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and
liberality....

Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature's provisions
epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch
with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation
and sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop
is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while
it lasts and conserving part of it for future use. It also leads to
periods of fasting and feasting, which represent the extremes of the
artist's situation as well as the Greek Orthodox approach to food and
the Catholic insistence on fasting, now abandoned.
....

It sometimes seems as if I have been rescuing a few strands from a
former and more diligent way of life, now being fatally eroded by an
entirely new set of values. As with students of music who record old
songs which are no longer sung, soon many of the things I record will
have also vanished.
.....

Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true
significance.
....

Cooking always is and always has been a partly scientific operation -
in the sense that specific actions under particular conditions lead to
foreseeable results. But it also presupposes aptitude, discernment and
an appreciation of the intrinsic nature of different foodstuffs and
awareness of the speeds at which they cook. Aptitude implies a certain
skill and not a little patience and is the ally of the wish to impart
to others something more than satisfacation, which can be called
delight.

- all from the Introduction of Patience Gray, Honey From A Weed

long periods with no prospect of gain

Artists have something in common with shepherds in that their means of livelihood is not apparent - they work for long periods with no prospect of gain, and others regard this as disreputable.

- Patience Gray, Honey From A Weed

quite innocent, merely human

.... At the Solemn Requiem for David Jones held in Westminster Cathedral, the poet Peter Levi delivered a sermon that began as follows: ‘David Jones understood better than the rest of us the sacrifice of the lamb. His experience in the 1914 war was terrible and it was deep. He understood and he needed what is offered at the stone of this altar and what is shared at the table of this altar and what is said and what is sung in the petrified forest of this church. His need was quite innocent, merely human, to do what has already been done once and for all on another hilltop, outside a different city, and also done many times from the beginning of mankind. In its reality and in its meaning that long series of sacrifices has not ended.’

- Andrew Lambirth, Sacramental vision (The Spectator, 7 April 2012)

.........................................................................

From the Liturgy of St Basil the Great :
Prayer of the Prothesis, after placing the divine Gifts on the holy table:

O Lord our God, who hast created us, and hast brought us into this life, who hast shown us the way to salvation, and hast bestowed upon us the revelation of heavenly mysteries: Thou art the One who hast appointed us to this service in the power of Thy Holy Spirit. Therefore, O Lord, enable us to be ministers of thy new Covenant, and servants of Thy holy Mysteries. Through the greatness of Thy mercy, accept us as we draw near to Thy holy Altar, so that we may be worthy to offer unto Thee this rational and bloodless sacrifice for our sins and for the ignorance of Thy people. Having received it upon Thy holy, most heavenly, and noetic altar for an odor of sweet spiritual fragrance, send down upon us in return the grace of Thy Holy Spirit. Look down upon us, O God, and behold this our service. Receive it as Thou didst receive the gifts of Abel, the sacrifices of Noah, the whole burnt offerings of Abraham, the priestly offices of Moses and Aaron, the peace-offerings of Samuel. Even as Thou didst accept from Thy holy Apostles this true worship, so now, in thy loving-kindness, accept from the hands of us sinners these gifts,O Lord; that having been accounted worthy to minister at Thy holy altar, we may receive the reward of wise and faithful stewards, on the awesome day of Thy just retribution.

.... we have time To misrepresent, excuse, deny, Mythify, use this event

NONES

What we know to be not possible,

Though time after time foretold

By wild hermits, by shaman and sybil

Gibbering in their trances,

Or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme

Like will and kill, comes to pass

Before we realize it: we are surprised

At the ease and speed of our deed

And uneasy: It is barely three,

Mid-afternoon, yet the blood

Of our sacrifice is already

Dry on the grass; we are not prepared

For silence so sudden and so soon;

The day is too hot, too bright, too still,

Too ever, the dead remains too nothing.

What shall we do till nightfall?

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.

The faceless many who always

Collect when any world is to be wrecked,

Blown up, burnt down, cracked open,

Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,

Have all melted away: not one

Of these who in the shade of walls and trees

Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,

Harmless as sheep, can remember why

He shouted or what about

So loudly in the sunshine this morning;

All if challenged would reply

-'It was a monster with one red eye,

A crowd that saw him die, not I.-

The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;

We are left alone with our feat.

The Madonna with the green woodpecker,

The Madonna of the fig-tree,

The Madonna beside the yellow dam,

Turn their kind faces from us

And our projects under construction,

Look only in one direction,

Fix their gaze on our completed work:

Pile-driver, concrete-mixer,

Crane and pick-axe wait to be used again,

But how can we repeat this?

Outliving our act, we stand where we are,

As disregarded as some

Discarded artifact of our own,

Like torn gloves, rusted kettles,

Abandoned branch-lines, worn lop-sided

Grindstones buried in nettles.

This mutilated flesh, our victim,

Explains too nakedly, too well,

The spell of the asparagus garden,

The aim of our chalk-pit game; stamps,

Birds' eggs are not the same, behind the wonder

Of tow-paths and sunken lanes,

Behind the rapture on the spiral stair,

We shall always now be aware

Of the deed into which they lead, under

The mock chase and mock capture,

The racing and tussling and splashing,

The panting and the laughter,

Be listening for the cry and stillness

To follow after: wherever

The sun shines, brooks run, books are written,

There will also be this death.

Soon cool tramontana will stir the leaves,

The shops will re-open at four,

The empty blue bus in the empty pink square

Fill up and depart: we have time

To misrepresent, excuse, deny,

Mythify, use this event

While, under a hotel bed, in prison,

Down wrong turnings, its meaning

Waits for our lives: sooner than we would choose

Bread will melt, water will burn,

And the great quell begin, Abaddon

Set up his triple gallows

At our seven gates, fat Belial make

Our wives waltz naked; meanwhile

It would be best to go home, if we have a home,

In any case good to rest.

That our dreaming wills may seem to escape

This dead calm, wander instead

On knife edges, on black and white squares,

Across moss, baize, velvet, boards,

Over cracks and hillocks, in mazes

Of string and penitent cones,

Down granite ramps and damp passages,

Through gates that will not relatch

And doors marked Private, pursued by Moors

And watched by latent robbers,

To hostile villages at the heads of fjords,

To dark chateaux where wind sobs

In the pine-trees and telephones ring,

Inviting trouble, to a room,

Lit by one weak bulb, where our Double sits

Writing and does not look up.

That, while we are thus away, our own wronged flesh

May work undisturbed, restoring

The order we try to destroy, the rhythm

We spoil out of spite: valves close

And open exactly, glands secrete,

Vessels contract and expand

At the right moment, essential fluids

Flow to renew exhausted cells,

Not knowing quite what has happened, but awed

By death like all the creatures

Now watching this spot, like the hawk looking down

Without blinking, the smug hens

Passing close by in their pecking order,

The bug whose view is balked by grass.

Or the deer who shyly from afar

Peer through chinks in the forest.

- from W. H. Auden, HORAE CANONICAE IMMOLATUS VICERIT

Washing the Holy Table

In former times on Great Thursday, during the time of the Hours, before
Vespers, the Office of the Washing of the Holy Altar Table took place. The most
ancient witness for this custom goes back to the 7th century and belongs to the
western writer, [Saint] Isidore of Seville. Witnesses for the existence of the same custom
in the East go back to the 10th - 12th centuries, but they refer back to a more
ancient period.

In the Russian Church in the 12th century there already was a Slavonic
translation of the Office of the Washing of the Holy Altar Table. In the 14th
century this office is already frequently found in our hand-written Book of Needs.
According to the ancient printed Book of Needs of the 17th century, the full
Office of the Washing of the Holy Altar Table consisted mainly of two prayers,
one of which was read before the unvesting of the Holy Altar Table during the
time of its initial censing, and the other after the washing and the revestment. The
Book of Needs presents two rules covering the actions occurring between these
two prayers and then their ending. After the first of them, except for the appointed
two prayers, the celebrant says nothing. After the second, observed "nowhere in
the great cathedral temples" except for saying the two prayers, during the time of
unvesting the holy altar table the 50th, 25th and 83rd psalms were appointed to be
sung, but during the time of pouring the basin with wine and oil on the altar the
hierarch should say: "the Holy Altar Table in the church, name, is washed with the
oil of gladness in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit".
The reading of the second prayer is followed by the Litany: "Have mercy on us, O
God", "More honorable" and the dismissal.

So the office of the washing of the table is in the anciently printed Book of
Needs of the year 1625 and the year 1639 and others. In the same Book of Needs,
besides this, the instruction of how to perform this office "if there is no cathedral
church there" was printed. "Canons, it is said in this instruction, do not require the
holy altar table be revested, unless the priest removes the covering, and powder
falls from the altar table, and wetting his lips with warm water he also wipes the
holy table cross wisely, and then says the first prayer... And the three psalms... and
gathers the holy oil and spreads it on the corners of the holy table cross wisely,
and the entire sanctuary, and the entire church, and puts a covering over the holy
table and sprinkles it with water and says the second prayer... and he censes the
holy altar table, and the Litanies..., Also "More honorable than the Cherubim" and
the dismissal. This will be done even if there is only a priest".

The office of washing the table complies with this instruction and according
to this in the detailed view in the 17th century it was possible for every parish
priest to do this office in each parish church, only without unvesting the holy altar
table.

This office was especially solemnly performed in Moscow where the
patriarch presided over the services. At the beginning of the 18th century the
Office of Washing the Table was also done. But it is not printed any more in the
contemporary Book of Needs. Undoubtedly, at first this rite had the meaning of a
simple cleaning, usual before great feasts and in private homes. The cleaning of
churches and the divine service accessories before Pascha, the greatest Christian
feast, administered by ancient Christians at the beginning of the year, is rather
natural and was the custom from of old. The Ustav (Typikon) required it for
monasteries. Walls, floors and those accessories of the temple which the lowest
church servers could touch were cleaned without special solemnity, but the holy
altar table is the most sacred accessory of the temple consecrated by the bishop
and is why the unvesting and its new vestments should naturally be done by the
bishop and with special solemnity.

- from Bulgakov's Handbook for Church Servers, translated by Archpriest Eugene Tarris

He had a vision of himself writing a book in which he justified his life, a book in which everything turned out for the best after all.

- Breakfast at the Hotel Deja vu: A Novella (Paul Torday)

because you never bothered to know me

For that is the whole point of the parable: some day, late or soon, it will be too late even to believe. We become what we do. If we trust, we become trusters, and we enter into the sure possession of him whom we trust. If we distrust, we become distrusters and close out the only relationship that reality ever offered to us.

That closure is the note on which the parable ends. "While they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut. Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, 'Lord, lord open to us!' But he replied, 'Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.'" The shut door is God's final answer to the foolish wisdom of the world. In the death of Jesus, he closes forever the way of winning - the right-handed, prudential road to the kingdom, the path of living as the path of life. All the silly little girls with their Clorox bottles - all the neurotics of faith, all the wise fools who were willing to trust him in their lastness, lostness, leastness, and death - have gone into the party. And all the bright, savvy types who thought they had it figured are outside in the dark - with no oil and even less fun. The dreadful sentence, "Amen, I say to you, I never knew you," is simply the truth of their condition. He does not say, "I never called you." He does not say, "I never loved you." He does not say, "I never drew you to myself." He only says, "I never knew you - because you never bothered to know me."

- Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Judgment