Gladsome Light Dialogues Blog

Reflections on technology and communion

My name is Vasile, I am addicted to technology and I am not the only one. So it can start a group therapy session at Technology Addiction Anonymous. And this is no fiction because technology penetrates our daily lives with an unstoppable force pushing us in a place where only the toughest survive. If you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t use Facebook or Twitter you are not just old school but “seriously”, you do not exist! If your friends don’t know where you are and what you’re doing every other minute then how can you go on with your life?

The social networking technology reinvents the world and the communication between people. Our grandparents, less than a century ago had to wait weeks or months at a time to receive news from a friend on the other side of the world. Today doesn’t matter if you are in Japan and you talk with someone in America or Europe, it is all instant, broad band communication.

The recent Iranian election conflict is a perfect example of social networking at its best with reporters, banned to use cameras or computers, sending real-time news to the world via Twitter on their cell phones. Thing went so far that even the U.S. State Department had to contact the social networking service to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians using Twitter to send reports to the outside. Pretty cool isn’t it?

Along with the boom of social networking the virtualization of our lives takes also worrisome proportions. One can live today in a virtual world as a mighty warrior in World of Warcraft, an astute penguin on Penguin.com or a fuzzy pet on Webkinz.com. In corporate training there are now educational games where you can actually play a virtual character performing, guess what: precisely your real job! Moreover there exist now virtual religious communities, where people reinvent themselves as pious characters attending regularly an internet church that offers customized, computer generated, private “just for you” services that supposedly fit your needs. Just “google” it and you’ll see I’m not making things up.

The internet and all the new communication technologies were designed initially with the aspiration to bring people together, to enhance human interactions. Technically this goal was achieved with more and more people being connected to each other via informational hubs. However, along with this concentration on virtual encounters, the genuine face to face relationships continue to suffer. Many times people find themselves isolated in a dark room with a computer on, in contact with the virtual world but disconnected from one another. They are skilled citizens of their favorite fictional world where they are courageous, smart, attractive, even possessing super-powers; but many of them are clueless on how to use their God given gifts in the real world.

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As citizens of the post-modern world we got so used to relative truth that we are quick to label any one that supports a fundamental truth of any kind as a fundamentalist. But there is no shame in upholding a fundamental truth. Imposing it on others yes, this could be a problem. But there is no evil in standing by it with a solid moral backbone while respecting the opinions of others.

In a society obsessed with political correctness at all levels of life nobody dares to claim the possession of any truth that transcends material reality. This concerns religious beliefs in particular. Everyone is so scared to even use a simple “Merry Christmas” or “Christ is risen!” We don’t want any one to be offended. We therefore see centuries old greetings like “Merry Christmas” replaced with generic, one-size-fits-all, sayings of trite neutrality: “Seasons Greetings!” “Happy Holidays!” or even the contrived “Happy Quanza!”

As Orthodox Christians however, we know that the Truth we hold is not relative, but everything else is relative to it, depends on it, gravitates around it. Without this point of support, the Earth will collapse, and all our many and insignificant relative truths will be shattered with it. But what is this powerful and ultimate Truth?

David Brown offers “DaVinci’s code” and says: Jesus is a normal man, the Bible is a fake, the Church is a fraud. And the crowd listens and makes his book a bestseller. Can we call this “truth” or rather a sophisticated scam to sell more books? Then comes Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist. He claims that the disciples were members of a religious sect that administered to Jesus a psychotropic drug that induced a coma. Three days later he regained consciousness. No miracle on the cross. His proof: experiments on rats.

Episcopalian Bishop, John Shelby Spong, arrives with another version. All the so called miraculous events that happened in Jerusalem, are just a symbolic interpretation of some very natural facts, according to the Midrash Jewish tradition. Spong asserts that Jesus died on the cross and did not physically rise, but his disciples continued to spread His teachings, making His message of change, peace and love live forever. It really doesn’t matter if Christ is resurrected.

So where is the truth? Are they all variations of a relative truth? The short answer is no. I simply cannot admit they are all true. I cannot accept that Christ is risen and in the same time Christ is not risen! There is only one Truth and by this Truth only I will abide.

Jesus says: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me (John 14:6). Where is the relativism here? I believe in Christ and His resurrection or I don’t! How can we call ourselves Christians if we don’t believe Christ is the Son of God who rose from the dead? If this is not true every other single truth of faith falls down like a domino. Christ’s Resurrection is the One Truth that sustains our way of life, the corner stone of a meaningful existence.

I don’t need a scientist to tell me what happened on the Golgotha, I don’t need a writer to invent false stories about Jesus because I know, in my heart that Christ is risen, then and now and forever. He died on the Cross for my sins and is risen so I can follow Him in Resurrection. There is no science that can explain this because God’s reality reaches beyond the boundaries of matter.

It is enough for me to remember the supreme sacrifice of the Church martyrs to realize the power of the Truth we hold. They died in the world expecting to live forever in Christ: simple and sublime faith! Their martyria preserved this Truth unchanged, despite the odds, allowing us to be still called today Orthodox.

Therefore I choose to carry on their pure faith and to boldly proclaim the fundamental truth of my faith, the only thing that really matters: Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

It is always uplifting to see the multitudes filling the Church for the beautiful services of Holy Week and Pascha. At this time most of the Churches seem too small to accommodate all the people wanting to receive God’s blessing. There is however one question that arises naturally: where are these people during the rest of the year?

I think this question, as uncomfortable as may be for some, is legitimate, because as responsible members of our communities we need to understand the reasons that prevent people that are Christians, even Greek-Orthodox Christians, from attending Church more regularly.

If we would ask any of the enthusiastic participants at the beginning of the Paschal Service if they believe in Christ they will all respond without hesitation: yes, we do! But if we continue the inquiry and ask also why they don’t come to Church many will say I have Christ in my heart and I don’t need to come to Church to be a Christian.

These people are technically Christians, they are baptized and carry the names of some of our greates saints; but withour realizing it they are not actually living their faith. They are happy with a theoretical faith, with a faith that is acknowledged mentally but is not practically expressed in any outward form like Church attendance or participation in stewardship.

The roots of this syndrome lay in a coarse misunderstanding of the Christian faith. For many  faith is reduced to an intellectual acknowledgment of God, and, arriving at this stage, they believe they truly know God. They live with the idea that Christianity is a sort of philosophy or theoretical concept that once understood we can just toss it aside and maybe review it once or twice a year, for the sake of our grand mothers. From their perspective God can be anything: a generic supreme being, an energy, a force field, it doesn’t really matter because it is too distant anyway.

But nothing is more wrong than this. Christianity is not a sterile philosophy about life, but is the very accomplishment of life’s maximum potential. Christianity is lived not only acknowledged. Our God is not a concept or an obscure pagan energy, but is a personal God above anything else.

God is a Trinity of persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three Persons relate to one another and love one another in the most perfect harmony that one could imagine. As humans we are called to participate in this relationship, to partake in the love of the Trinity and adopt it as a model for our lives. We are called therefore to actively participate in life and to relate with God and one another, not just to passively conceptualize a dry code of laws imposed to us from outside.

Jesus Christ is the greatest illustration of this fact, because He is the One that in His great love for mankind emptied Himself of His heavenly glory and became one of us, bearing flesh and living in the world. He came down to our level to live with us so we can develop a true relationship with Him, so we can call Him our Friend and our Brother.

He did not wanted to stay in Heavens, watching implacably the predestined faith of humankind; He wanted to give us the opportunity to know Him, to understand Him and ultimately to love Him in return. He walked on the earth to be with us and will be with us forever. He established the Church that holds His Mysteries, the Sacraments, that keep us close to Him and the Father through the Holy Spirit.

In this way God made Himself easily accessible to us. One thing however is left for us to do: to simply come and meet Him. If we choose to stay at home the whole year how can we develop a relationship with Christ? Can we be friends with someone that we only see once a year for Pascha with so many other people around? We can at best be acquainted to Him, but we are far from being His family. We need many more opportunities to meet until we reach this stage.

If we want Christ to be our friend we need to start now to visit Him regularly, offering Him the best we can, our lives, because He already did the same for us: He gave His life so we can live forever.

Hristos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

An old man was asked, “What is humility?” and he said in reply, “Humility is a great work, and a work of God. The way of humility is to undertake bodily labour and believe yourself a sinner and make yourself subject to all.” Then a brother said, “What does it mean, to be subject to all?” The old man answered, “To be subject to all is not to give your attention to the sins of others but always to give your attention to your own sins and to pray without ceasing to God.”

An old man said, “Every time a thought of superiority or vanity moves you, examine your conscience to see if you have kept all the commandments, whether you love your enemies, whether you consider yourself to be an unprofitable servant and the greatest sinner of all. Even so, do not pretend to great ideas as though you were perfectly right, for that thought destroys everything.”

As abba Macarius was returning to his cell from the marsh carrying palm-leaves, the devil met him with a sharp sickle and would have struck him but he could not. He cried out, “Great is the violence I suffer from you, Macarius, for when I want to hurt you, I cannot. But whatever you do, I do and more also. You fast now and then, but I am never refreshed by any food; you often keep vigil, but I never fall asleep. Only in one thing are you better than I am and I acknowledge that.” Macarius said to him, “What is that?” and he replied, “It is because of your humility alone that I cannot overcome you.”

The old men used to say, “When we do not experience warfare, we ought so much the more to humiliate ourselves. For God seeing our weakness, protects us; when we glorify ourselves, he withdraws his protection and we are lost.”

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The “Mirror”, the fourth film in Tarkovsky’s line-up of 7 cinematographic wonders,  is not made for the casual observer. It has no classic plot, it is anchored in a society that is far, far away, and most of all has no happy ending. Despite all of the above the move has a magical attraction that makes you faithfully watch until it ends when you exclaim: what just happened here? Immediately you have the tendency to over analyze it and to try to read behind the scenes in symbols that are starting to dangerously spin into your head. It doesn’t make any sense…Of course, it is not meant that way, it is a movie that, although is not rationally fulfilling, it fills you with sentiments, with strange memories that suddenly become yours, like in a mirror.

I have decided not to try to understand the movie anymore but to experience it to the maximum. So I started to let myself rejoice in the moving poetry of the winf blowing in the Russian plains, to be enchanted by the verses of a father assisting his son to create a work of art, to live again a history that influenced so much my childhood behind the Iron Curtain.

Then I suddenly realized what Tarkovsky meant when he said: I should like to ask you all not to be so demanding, and not to think of Mirror as a difficult film. It is no more than a straightforward, simple story. It doesn’t have to be made any more understandable. The Mirror is about life, a life that can be the life of any Russian man, with its harsh and trivial reality  surrounded by a world changing faster than one can absorb.  The movie is indeed a mirror for every one that watches: Ivan can be Andrei, or Igor and why not Boris.

Living in an epic world, in which the story sells the ticket it is very hard to go back to poetry, especially Russian poetry. The Russians have a genetic predisposition to melancholy and sadness, totally opposed to the joie de vivre of the American movie-goer. We owe this to the rationality that demand an explanation and a story from everything we do. But life is not always about the story or the ending,  many times life is about the journey, about how we felt walking through this life as visitors.

A simple story always intrigues, always demands a search beyond the surface but many times is fruitless.  The true stories have nothing to hide. So is the greatest story of all.  A man was born in Bethlehem, he grew and preached of peace and love and the kingdom to come. He suffered and was buried rising the third day according to the Scriptures. This is all there is to this story, anything more than this is really not necessary.

Around us the world is moving in complicated pathways that lead nowhere. Let us experience, not over-analyze our very simple story: Christ is risen, He is risen indeed.

1.      Who are the faithful?

The faithful are all that have received the Baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity in the Orthodox Church and are found in good ecclesiastical order. As we saw previously the catechumens and the people that were not in good order were leaving the Nave after the Litany of the catechumens and staying in the Narthex for the rest of the service.

2.      What is the Structure of the Liturgy of the Faithful?

a.       The Preparation of the Eucharist (Introductory part): The Prayers for the Faithful, Great Entrance, The Litany of Fervent Supplication and the prayer of offering of the Gifts, The Creed

b.       The Anaphora (prayers and the ritual of the Holy Sacrifice): The introductory Dialogue between the Priest and the Faithful, The Great Eucharistic Prayer, Anamnesis - remembering the saving mission of the Son in the world, Epiclesis - the prayer of invocation of the Holy Spirit, The Megalinarion and the prayers for mediation

c.       Holy Communion: The preparatory  prayers (The Litany of Supplication, The Lord’s Prayer, The prayer for the bowing of the heads, The Prayers before communion), The preparation of holy Communion, The Communion of the priests, The Communion of the Faithful, The thanksgiving prayers after Communion

d.    The Apolysis - the final prayers of the Liturgy

3.      What is the Cherubic Hymn?

“We, who mystically represent the Cherubim, And chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, Let us set aside the cares of life That we may receive the King of all, Who comes invisibly escorted by the Divine Hosts.” The Cherubic Hymn is sung in the Church by the Faithful and is recited in low voice by the priest in the Holy Altar. In this moment we imagine, as the words say, how the Cherubims in the heavens are preparing to welcome Christ that will enter in our midst during the Great Entrance, represented by the Holy Gifts.

4.      What is the Great Entrance?

The Great Entrance has first of all a practical scope to transfer the Holy Gift from the Oblation Table to the Holy Table.

Symbolically the Great Entrance represents the last trio that our Lord made before His Passions and His Death, from Bethany to Jerusalem. And His triumphal Entrance in the Holy City.[1]^,[2]. Others interpret it as the transportation of His Holy Body from the place of the Crucifixion, Golgotha, to the place where His tomb was prepared.[3]

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1. What are the catechumens?

The catechumens are those that are preparing to become Christians.

2. Why during the first centuries the catechumens could not participate in the whole liturgy?

St. Cyril of Jerusalem explains the situations of the catechumens: „the divine words echoed outside of him; [...] he was a listener of the Christian teachings but they were not penetrating into his soul; were not understood and just echoed around him”[1] Therefore a long period of instruction  was deemed necessary, so when a catechumen receives Baptism he/she is ready to receive sanctifying grace that is imparted through the holy Sacraments. Plus the Liturgical Sacrifice is offered by the Church for the Church and the catechumens are not yet part of the Church.

3. What is the purpose of the Liturgy of the Catechumens?

The Liturgy of the catechumens has mainly a teaching character. It contains the readings from the Gospel and the Epistles and of course the Homily, usually immediately following the Gospel.

4. What is the structure of the Liturgy of the Catachumens?

a.       Introductory part (The three prostrations in front of the Holy Table and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit, The Great Blessing, The Great Litany, The Antiphons and the Small Litanies)

b.       The Small Entrance or the Entrance with the Gospel

c.       The Trisagion (Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal…),

d.       The Biblical Readings (Epistles, Gospel and the Homily),

e.       The prayers after the Gospel (the Trice Litany, The Prayer of the Fervent Supplication, the opening of the Holy Antimension and the Litany of the Catechumens.)

5. Why the Liturgy does starts with the Blessing?

Like any service the Liturgy starts with glorifying God: Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. After St. Nicholas Cabasillas any prayer should have 4 parts: first we give glory to God, second we thank Him for His great gifts he is bestowing on us, third we recognize our sinfulness and only then we can ask Him what we think we need.[2]
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