Koinonia

Responding to My Brother Priests

First let me say how grateful I am to everyone who responded to my invitation!  One of the reasons I keep this blog is for the kind of insights reflected in your responses.  So again thank you!

What I would like to do over the next week or is offer my own responses to the various comments and questions that have been generated here.  Let me begin with the comments made by my brother priests, Fr James, Fr Alvin, and Fr David. 

Fr David, forgive me if I was unclear.  I don’t think that the growth the Church has seen in the last 20 years is a function of economic prosperity.  I do however think that this prosperity made it easier to do much of what we’ve done in these last two decades and I think that the down turn in the economy is going to bring with it new challenges for which I think we are not prepared.

Fr Al and Fr James have highlighted two related challenges: the continuation of our missionary work here in America and the moral, intellectual and spiritual formation of the next generation of clergy and lay leaders.

For example, when resources are plentiful it is (relatively) easy to establish new parishes and subsidize the training of new clergy.  If, as seems likely, those financial resources are no longer there then the work needs to continue but it will require more creativity and sacrifice from all of us.  This might mean that the next generation of priests–men either in seminary or considering seminary–may not be able to serve full time paid parish priests.  Priests with secular employment I suspect will likely become the norm.

This isn’t necessarily bad but it will mean not just smaller parishes (which I think is great by the way) but also more active lay participation in the pastoral life of the Church (which is better still).  For example, a priest with a full time job will not necessarily have as much time as we might want him to have to make hospital visits.  So at least some of our ministry to the sick will have to be taken over by the laity.  Again, this isn’t a bad thing at all.  In my last parish we had several people who were proactive in visiting hospitalized parishioners and shut ins.  Yes, when the person need to go to confession or be anointed I went.  But I depended on lay volunteers to help me know what was needed and this was I think to everyone’s benefit.

The pastor as coach is an important metaphor and one that I have used to great advantage.  When the ministry of the Church is limited to the sacramental work of the priest and the involvement of the laity to that of serving on parish council, singing in the choir and teaching church school, the whole parish, and indeed the whole of the Church’s ministry, suffers.  Mind you, none of this is meant to minimize the importance of either the sacramental ministry of the priest or parish council, choir or church school.  But it is to point out that we cannot limit the vocation of the parish, much less of the laity, to these four areas

For example, many (and I suspect most) of the oldest Orthodox parishes in this country were founded by the laity.  Often recent immigrants organized themselves, raised the necessary funds to purchase and remodel–if not actually built–an Orthodox parish.  If the priest had any involvement at all it was often relatively late in the process.

To sure this was not a wholly benign process.  Even today it is not uncommon for a parish (or at least a group within the parish) see the parish as the employer and the priest as their employee.  While this situation no doubt came about for a variety of factors, one was the lack of clergy guidance in the process of building the new community.

All of this is simply to affirm Fr Al’s observation that, whatever the cost, we the Church in America is a missionary Church.  From the earliest days of the Church in America, lay Orthodox Christians were missionaries.  The monastic witness to the native peoples of Alaska was mirrored by the missionary of Greeks and Russians (to name but two groups) to their own people in this country.  And both together highlight the future direction of the Church: Missionary and evangelism both to the growing number of Americans with no religious affiliation, to non-Christians, to un-churched (included lapsed and fallen away Orthodox Christians), and yes even to Christians in other traditions.

Witnessing to each group brings with it its own challenges and pastoral demands.  But if our history is any indication, the vocation of the American Orthodox Church is a missionary vocation.

Unfortunately, the Church in America has not seen itself as a missionary Church.  Historically, we have patterned ourselves either after mainline Protestantism or (in more recent years) an Evangelical parachurch group.  Let me be clear, this hasn’t meant adopting a Protestant ecclesiology as much as it meant adopting a Protestant or Evangelical sensibility.  But this sensibility rests uneasily with Orthodox ecclesiology even as it rests with Catholic ecclesiology.

Despite our differences, Catholic and Orthodox Churches both share a sacramental understanding of the Church as a catholic fullness.  This fullness is not simply ecclesiological but also soteriological and what is most important in the contemporary context, anthropological.  Again while we disagree on the details, but Churches would argue that salvation is not simply moral or forensic but a real transformation of the person that makes it possible for the person to become who is he.

Historical teaching, worship, morality, ascetical discipline all converge to make possible a life of true and lasting personal freedom and authenticity.  That is to say, a life of holiness where holiness is not simply moral rectitude but of participation in the life of the Holy Trinity or, if you prefer, love.

And this brings me finally to Fr James’ question about adult education.

The distinction I often make is between information and formation.  Typically, Orthodox education (both in the parish and in the seminary) stresses the former and rarely the latter.  Even when formation is addressed it rarely rises above the level of a consideration of a rule of prayer and fasting and a few general comments about the moral life.

But as I’ve argued here before, formation is all this and more.  Spiritual formation is the process of discovering and embodying evermore fully who I am and am called to be in Christ.  It is the process of growing in holiness to be sure, but holiness is not about mere imitation.  The saint not only reflects the glory of God but is the person who is most fully himself.  And how could it be otherwise since my life comes to me from God and I can’t be obedient to Him if I deny the gifts He has given me.

Whatever else we do in adult education, we must at a minimum help people come to understand themselves personally in light of the Gospel.  At all levels Christian education has as its primary goal the spiritual formation of the person.  We can have this as our goal because the tradition of the Church while it takes a historical and intellectual form is the collaborative work of the Holy Spirit and the human beings.

The Spirit that inspired the tradition of the Church also dwells in the heart of those who have been baptized into Christ.  If, as typically happens, we only look at the tradition objectively–in books and in history and as intellectual interesting questions–then we have failed to be faithful to the very tradition we are presenting.

We read in St Luke:

Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and He indicated that He would have gone farther. But they constrained Him, saying, “Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” And He went in to stay with them.

Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.

And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread. (Lk 24:28-35)

I would wonder if Fr David’s comments on the difference between the Church in Romania and in America doesn’t reflect the relative absence of the human heart from the American Orthodox experience.  There are times when Orthodoxy in American feels to me rather mechanical when it doesn’t feel superficial.

Objective teaching about the Gospel, the Church’s worship (especially the Eucharist), and the human heart, all converge in Jesus Christ and the fruit of that encounter is the desire to evangelize, to bear  witness to what we know personally.  All four of these elements must be present.  Where I suspect we have gone wrong is to neglect the formation of the human heart.

But more on that latter when I respond to some of the other comments.

Until then, and as always, your comments, questions and criticisms are not only welcome, they are actively sought.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory