The Communities of New Skete

Scripture Reading: Is 7:13-17; Heb 9:1-11; Mt 1:20b-23

Reflections from a Monk

Happy Mothers’ Day! So, you say this isn’t Mothers’ Day according to the civil calendar? So maybe I should say: Happy Feast Day! But today isn’t the Feast of the Icon of the Theotokos of the Sign on the Orthodox Calendar either. So what’s going on here, you might ask. Good question. The usual celebration of the Feast of the Icon of the Theotokos of the Sign falls on November 27th and we used to celebrate it on that day. However, the texts for the feast on that day are about a particular event in Russian history and do not relate to the meaning of the icon per se but rather to a miraculous event associated with the icon. This is not unusual in our tradition, and indeed we could still celebrate that feast on November 27th since it is also not unusual for various festal celebrations to occur on more than one day during the year if several events associated with the theme or individual are particularly note-worthy. Take for example saints Climacus, Mary of Egypt and Palamas, who are remembered on the Sundays in Lent and also on particular days during the year. Also Saints Herman and Innocent of Alaska, among many others, have more than one feast day.

We moved the Feast of the Theotokos of the Sign to the last Sunday in October for a number of reasons. First, the November date is close to Thanksgiving and to the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple. We often found ourselves combining those events which in a sense lessens the celebration of each one. Since the Feast of the Theotokos of the Sign is the patronal feast of our Sisters’ Monastery we decided to find another date for that celebration so it could stand alone and serve more effectively as a community celebration. We ultimately settled on the last Sunday of October. By doing this it also allows us to focus on the intrinsic meaning of the icon without diminishing the significance of that particular event in Russian history remembered in November.

So what is the intrinsic meaning of this icon? If we look at the image in the nave dome, or on the icon stand at the entrance of this temple, we see an image of the Theotokos and superimposed in the center of that image is an icon of Jesus Christ. The icon of the Theotokos of the Sign depicts the centrality of Jesus Christ to the life of the Theotokos. It also serves as a model for us by showing us symbolically that for a Christian, Christ must be at the center of our lives, just as he was the center of Mary’s life. The message we can draw from this image is that we are to live as Mary did, with Jesus Christ at the center of our lives.

But this is not the only message of this icon. The Divine Liturgy contains a phrase in the Anaphora addressed to God that is based on the Gospel of St. John (3:16): “You loved the world so much that you gave your only Son, so that those who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.” This is the centerpiece of our Christian faith, however, understanding and identifying with God’s love can be difficult since it is beyond our human experience. The incarnation breaks down that barrier. This is what makes our Christian faith so special, it is based on the incarnation, God becoming human to experience and identify with our human condition so that we can come to understand better his love for us. Jesus Christ shows us the face of God. This was made possible because Mary so loved her son that:

She gave him life.
She nurtured him.
She guided him as he was growing up.
She followed him and his teachings.
She stayed true to him even though she may have felt rejected.

Remember the incident when Jesus is teaching and a message is given to him that his mother and brothers and sisters wanted to see him and he responded: who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who hear the word of God and do it. Maybe Mary could be forgiven for possibly feeling slighted and dismissed by that comment. But when Jesus was hanging on the Cross, who was there? Not all the disciples nor all those he taught – No it was Mary his mother.

The image of this icon, and many other icons of Mary and Jesus, shows us God’s love in human terms so that we can understand it and live it ourselves. A Mother’s love for her son (or daughter) is special. Its not about sex, its about an intimacy that is so deep that it can defy description. But we can witness it and feel it and know it and thus give it also. God so loved the world that he gave us the example of Mary to teach us about his love. And we have near us our own mothers to also teach us this. What better way to express the joy of this feast than to exclaim: Happy Mothers’ Day!

Most Holy Theotokos, pray to God for us that we may learn from you and from all our mothers what the human expression of God’s love looks like and strive to emulate it. Amen.

Scripture Reading: Is. 6:1-8; 1 Cor. 15:39-44, 47-58; Lk. 5:1-11

Reflections from a Monk

Glory be to Jesus Christ!

One afternoon many years ago in another monastery I heard a distant crash & whirring of a motor or an engine, and after a few minutes I noticed it did not stop. I felt a pit in my stomach and told one of the others and then ran across a large field to the main country road. With all my senses alert to say a prayer for whoever was there, I began to approach a red pick-up truck with its doors flung wide open. By this time, the Emergency Medical Team arrived to take care of the driver lying on the ground motionless. A good thing, too, because even though I had some training for this, I was pretty terrified.

Doctors and nurses deal with similar situations every day, and though this young fellow survived, often those in attendance when someone is seriously injured or actually dying have a glimpse into a world none of us has yet seen but all of us one day will enter. The patients many times try to explain and describe what they are experiencing, if someone is there to listen. To be present during these moments is to be in a sacred place.

We rarely think of these things and usually are afraid to, but in today’s epistle St. Paul explains that the true goal of our life is to emerge into a new reality of body and soul, a new way of being human. And the final scary threshold to this great resurrection is for each of us to pass through the experience of dying.

By his own life and death and rising, Jesus personally has pioneered and perfected the path for us, the steps to take into the fullness of union with God. As St. Paul says elsewhere of his own strange experience, eye has not seen nor ear heard nor can words describe the wonderful things that are prepared for us. We will become totally whole and healed of the weakness and corruption that is the lot of our lives now.

So now we are only seeds, so to speak, of this splendor, or glory as it is usually translated. Just think of a tiny apple seed, hard and dry: it already contains invisibly within it countless orchards of apples.

What would happen, Paul asks, were we now to begin living every single moment with this hope, with this knowledge, with this faith given to us through the gospel?

A glorious and powerful energy would gradually take charge to liberate us from the fog of fear and guilt that depletes us, and the mind of Christ would begin to reshape us. We would see the earth and ourselves as a temple, and maybe even a womb or crucible or garden for the seeds of divinity sown in our present circumstances. We would also see each other as members of the same human species all sharing in this same challenge and destiny.

Even now we can steadfastly hold onto this insight and channel what moments we have into nurturing this new heaven and new earth in our own minds and hearts. Then the Lord can really work in and though us. Yet someone might object—who is really able to do this, to be in a habitual state of unceasing prayer, attention, focus, awareness, watchfulness, and wakefulness, in the midst of our daily chaotic distractions, concerns, and burdens? The great saints have shown this.

We see in today’s Gospel that Peter was given the means and the path: As a skilled fisherman he was so struck by the sudden overwhelming catch that he fell over with terrified surprise, fear, and awe. He was shaken to the depths of his soul and realized he was in the presence of an event and a person and power so much greater than he had ever witnessed, just as again later on Mt Tabor or back in history as Moses was on Mt Sinai, or even as we might be in the presence of someone critically injured or dying. He then stood up as a different and beautifully humble person filled with the clarity of truth and the splendor of reality. He was now poised to make that life-changing decision to leave the nets and follow Christ.

Jesus said to Peter, “I want you to be someone who nets people instead of fish.” Later, he looked out on the fields ripe for the harvest, at people hungry for the liberating word of healing and salvation. Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and wept with compassion, as a hen wanting to gather her chicks to herself.

Our failure to consider and recognize this truth of life is tantamount to allowing the advance and temporary triumph of ignorance, weakness, war, sickness, corruption, greed, violence, inhumanity, and of evil and wickedness itself. As St. Peter said at Pentecost: Save yourself from this wicked generation. In his resurrection Christ has shown us the victory over these destructive elements. He shows us in himself what the new life would look like.

When someone is confronted by any destructive mentality, if it is malicious, flee from it! If from human failing, we will know what to say or do through the Holy Spirit—only if we are living habitually in that realm of faith, and the knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

In the early 1940’s Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, and later he was arrested during World War II for his resistance work. The Nazi officer charged with executing him in prison was astounded when he heard Bonhoeffer’s last words of vision and joy there facing a violent death.

When we experience like Peter, on the other hand, something wonderful like that abundance of fish, we might cynically chalk it up to coincidence, beginner’s luck, good eyesight at the shore, or our imaginations. What a great way to plug your ears and ignore the miracle of life. The writer Bernie Siegel said, “A coincidence is a way of God remaining anonymous.”

The more we allow ourselves to see and hear, the more will come our way; the more we allow God to work through us; and the more we will go from strength to strength, grace to grace, to be prepared and to taste and see beforehand the coming resurrection and new life. So much already has already been given to us individually and as a community—and so also now, so much more is being asked of us.

Christ is in our midst!

New Skete Monastic Communities of held their third annual Blessing of Animals last Saturday,the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, in the meditation garden between their two churches. Over forty dogs and their human companions participated. Perry’s Orchard Cider and apples, along with the nuns’ cheesecake were served after the ceremony.