Descent of the Holy Spirit

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A Christian Understanding of Freedom: by His Eminence, Archbishop DMITRI (OCA Diocese of the South)

People generally use the word freedom in order to describe two things: the first and perhaps most persistent meaning of the term is simply lack of subjection to any kind of ownership or tyrannical authority, the lack of restriction of one’s actions, the absence of obstacles to self-determination or personal choices, the right to make up one’s own mind with regard to occupation, speech, assembly, religion and so on. Naturally, this kind of freedom is entirely desirable and, in many ways, our very nation came into being out of a deeply felt need for this. Although our democratic system of government has experienced many pitfalls and defects, and throughout the course of our history we have not always been able to achieve perfect freedom in the sense just described, it is none the less true that few would question the desirability for such freedom. Men are still willing to make enormous sacrifices - their very lives at times - for the ideal of freedom.

Christian teaching lies at the very heart of such an ideal. And in spite of the ups and downs of Church history, wherein even the Church has seemed to be an accomplice to agencies and forces that would deny this kind of basic right to the human race, it would be inaccurate to say that the Christian Church in most of its classical forms teaches that men are not destined to be free in this very sense. It is incompatible with Christian teaching to maintain that Man should be shackled with restrictions against his personal freedom to pursue a way of life to his own choosing. At the same time it appears also that freedom is being increasingly applied to a kind of license which says that man is not to be subjected to any kind of restriction that is not to his liking. Even when the common good demands the contrary he is somehow to be free to "do his own thing." The blame for much of the disorder and confusion of our own times could perhaps be laid to this concept of freedom: the near capitulation of our legal system in face of demands for freedom to peddle pornography, to sell drugs, to defy the law enforcement agencies of the cities, etc. In this particular article it is not our intention to dwell on the matter of freedom as described above, making this a plea for law and order. Rather, we wish to present a general account of the Orthodox Church’s understanding of freedom, in light of Christ’s work of redemption, His "breaking the chains of hell and overthrowing the tyranny of hades." Jesus said, "If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed; And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" And those who heard Him said, "We are Abraham’s seed, and we were never in bondage to any man, how sayest thou, you shall be made free?" And He answered, Verily I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." (1 John 8:31-34) He said in another place, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you should have known my Father also; and from henceforth you know Him, and have seen Him." (John 14: 6-7) Jesus Christ is the truth about God and the truth about man, since He is both God and man. God’s real nature is completely revealed in the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, and the whole truth about Man, his worth, value and dignity, are realized and made manifest to man in the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth. And since Man’s fundamental sin was and is godlessness or atheism, we then understand what is meant by the statement that "Christ came into the world to save His people from their sins." An author once pointed out that, "Mankind is in bondage until Christ sets men free." St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans says, "For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what fruit had you then from those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now set free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and as your end, life everlasting." (6:20-22) The deepest and most fundamental of the Church’s understandings of freedom is simply the freedom from sin and its wage or consequences. The understanding that Christ has given to men a freedom that cannot be taken away, no matter what the external circumstances of life may be, has provided the strength, the dynamism, the very life of the Church in the different periods of her bondage, her restrictions. There was the long three century persecution of the Church by the Roman Empire, and the very martyrs were witnesses and advocates of their freedom in Christ. The Moslem conquest and domination of much of the world that had been Christian, and the reduction of Christians to second-class citizenship, the restrictions against their proclaiming the Gospel, brought no despair to those who knew Christ and His truth. This lasted well into the nineteenth century in certain places. And in our own twentieth century, restrictions and persecutions, perhaps heavier and more severe than in any other time, in Communist lands failed to extinguish the light of Christian truth, and finally the most essential Christian freedom.

It is in Christ, as perfect Man, that man comes to the full realization of what it means to be in the image and likeness of God. For man’s freedom is an Icon, an image of the Divine Freedom itself. It is just when our freedom lies within the "opus Dei," the work of God, that it does not cease to be true freedom. The "Let it be to me according to thy word," of the Virgin at the Annunciation does not come from a simple submission to His will, but that very acceptance expresses the ultimate freedom of her being. In this sense, she was the first fruits of the intervention of God into human time and history, the first product of the Incarnation. She is the image of the Church, those who receive the Word of God and keep it, of those who would lose their life and gain it.

Christ, in becoming Incarnate, has permitted us, not to imitate, but to relive His life, to conform ourselves to His essence. In each Christian’s response to God, in saying, "let it be to me according to Thy will," he identifies himself with the God-Man Christ, and in this way, the Divine Will, freedom comes as an expression of one’s own will. The will of God, His work, His freedom have become one’s own. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me," says St. Paul. (Galatians 2:20) None of the foregoing is said to diminish or to negate in any sense the validity and importance of all human beings, especially Christians, to seek, to work for freedom in the usual earthly, if you will, sense of the word: social justice, equality, and the right to pursue, unrestricted, a better life here and now for the human race. The Christian, if he takes his commitment seriously, can never be guilty of putting restrictions in the path of others, of coercing, of forcing. On the other hand, what has been said is conceived as a reminder that much of the Christian world, my own Church, has a long experience of this, has lived under repression in places where freedom, justice, equality, and the right to differ, were given lip-service, but were not realities. The hope of Christians, their consolation is based on a higher freedom, which only God can give, which our Lord Jesus Christ showed us.

By His Eminence, Archbishop DMITRI, OCA Diocese of the South

 

By readers' request, the entire sermon:

“Shepherd of the Flock: not Butcher”
by Father Lawrence Barriger

There is a story told about a group of pilgrims who were touring the Holy Land with a guide who was native to the place. The guide was explaining how since time immemorial the shepherd did not walk behind his sheep but rather in front leading them and they followed him, just as the Lord describes Himself as the good shepherd: “...the sheep hear His voice and He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When He has brought out all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice” (John 10:3-4).

As the guide finished this explanation, the group laughed when they saw a man walking behind a flock of sheep and driving them along with a stick. Someone commented to the guide, “I thought you said the shepherds here always lead the sheep. Why is that man walking behind and driving them forward?” The guide answered, “Because he isn’t the shepherd, but the butcher.”

“I am the good shepherd: I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). The English word pastor is borrowed directly from the Latin word pastor meaning a “shepherd.” Bishop John (Martin) of blessed memory once stated, “There are too many pastors for the work that is being done and not enough for the work that needs to be done.” What is the work that needs to be done?

“So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Feed My lambs.’ A second time He said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Tend My sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love Me?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep’” (John 21:15-17).

The Lord did not say to Peter, “be a great liturgist, discuss theology, rule over the faithful, be a great scholar, dress strangely, have long prayers or shun the world,” nor any of the other things that often typify the “work that is being done.” He says simply, “Feed My sheep.”

It is easy for all of us to forget that the task of the priesthood is to nourish the faithful of the Church — to “Feed My sheep.” There is simply no other way for the priest to show his love for Christ than to begin by showing it for the people for whom Christ died.

Frustration with our own failures in the spiritual life has led us to the delusion that if we look authentically Orthodox, that if we have the correct icons, singing, fasting and services, then God’s grace will somehow enter into us. In this scheme of things the services of the Church and prayer itself are reduced to magic formulae to grant us — not what God has desired for us — but what we have desired for ourselves. If we fail we believe that it is simply because we have not yet found the right formula to unlock the door for us.

The great temptation for clergy today, in our times of spiritual emptiness, is to look romantically at the great elders and spiritual fathers of times past and imagine what it would be like if we could only have the gifts that they had. What we fail to realize is that [these fathers and mothers] received these gifts after long periods of intense spiritual prayer and longing with virtue and they knew the gifts that they had were of the Holy Spirit and not in or from themselves.

We often give to ourselves, in our imaginations, a cheap and easy grace, which springs from a desire to imitate not the lives and works of these saints, but simply their appearance.

The ministry of spiritual direction in the Orthodox Church is one that proceeds not from the grace we give ourselves but from the Holy Spirit: "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).

No one can study to become a staretz or elder or even a “spiritual father.” Those who announce that they are such and seek to impose their will upon members of their parish, intruding into personal lives and demanding an accounting of absences from services and so forth have fallen victim to the “lust for power” that St. Ephraim speaks of in the Lenten Prayer.

It is the butcher who drives the sheep; the shepherd who leads them.

A brother asked Abba Poemen, “Some brothers live with me; do you want me to be in charge of them?” The old man said to him, “No, just work, first and foremost. And if they want to live like you, they will see to it themselves.” The brother said to him, “But it is they themselves, Father, who want me to be in charge of them.” The old man said to him, “No, be their example, not their legislator” (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers).

The tradition of our Church teaches the importance for each of us to have a helper in the spiritual life, but the idea of blind obedience or domination is foreign to the life of the Church. [Please, please note this, all women who are exploited and over-directed by cultish priests.] Those who would feed the sheep of Christ must do so first by example and only secondarily by their words.

In North America the person who will serve as a spiritual father most often will be our parish priest. [However, this is left to our personal decision under God.] St. John of Kronstadt, the famous “pastor of all Russia” expressed his view of the pastor in these words that carry a message for both priests and faithful today: “A priest is a spiritual physician. Show your wounds to him without shame, sincerely, openly, trusting and confiding in him as his son; for the confessor is your spiritual father, who should love you more than your own father and mother, for Christ’s love is higher than any natural love. He must give an answer to God for you.”

The Lord commands Peter and all who follow in his footsteps, “Feed My sheep.” Those who are called to be the pastors or shepherds of the Lord must lead the flock of the faithful by being witnesses in their own lives of the Good News of forgiveness in the Cross of Christ and the hope of the Resurrection to all who seek the Lord in repentance and love.

“The Shepherd...goes before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice” (John 10:4).

[Editorial comments added in brackets]

Article reproduced with permission from the website of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Monastery

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Article 4 St. Symeon the New Theologian [Discourse VII par. 3] How to Cure Those who have Become Rooted in Evil: With such treachery,..[the Devil] inspires...souls with despair..in so far that they believe that...those who tell them of [Holy Scriptures and guidance from the Holy Spirit] such things are unfit to be trusted. They put their own opinion ahead of everything else--or rather, their own folly and senselessness; they feel no pain from the lasso around their necks, which is even worse than despair [over sin]. It is one thing [to]despair...after falling into a multitude of evils, and another if the person practices evil as though it were good and is convinced that he or she is doing right. In the former case [the one despairing] if he is taught about...God's loving-kindness and learns that there is no amount of sin that repentance cannot wipe away, and that where sin abounded, grace abounded even more" (Rom. 5:20) ..he may perhaps..come to himself and repent. He may be touched with sincere compunction and want to be rid of those many faults..and be freed from that intolerable burden...The other [the one who does evil as though it were good] is harder to recall from wickedness, and one must give up resorting to such remedies. How will he be willing to be cured when he does not at all believe that he or she is sick or wounded?...We must, however, to the best of our ability instruct and show them by means of the Divine Gospel and Holy Scripture how they have been led astray...after beginning on the straight path; how the enemy, when he found them alone, deceitfully caught their necks in a noose and has led them off to precipices and pits of sins. After that we will show them how he brought them into hell..and [that they] are unable to loose themselves and to return..

[Paragraph 4] St. Symeon's Prayer: Invocation Before Beginning His Exposition:...Though I lack eloquence and learning, I ask you all to pray with me. Pray that the grace of the all-holy Spirit may shine more brightly and enlighten all my thought and mind,...that you may benefit...May [He] speak to us, as it were, and say, "This is the way, see how one loses it, see the enemy, see his rope [to catch us with]. See how the brother joyfully accepts his bonds, and where the devil drags him along and takes him away."..Do not then grow weary, for to the extent that God inspires it, our discourse will be profitable, for as the wise man has said, "We and our words" and even our very breath "are in the hand of God' (Wis. 7:16; Dan. 5:23) [to be continued; editor]