” We have no grandmas( giagiades) in this community; you are the Church. ” This was my reply to a group of Cypriot students who, when faced with my request for them to build and decorate the Epitaphion for Pascha ten years ago, exclaimed ” but father our giagias do this in Cyprus.”
Meeting A… today took me back in time to those days when we had to build a church every week…
.. Then, we made our way to the Metropolis where his grace Bishop Nektarios of Kition afforded me more than 30 minutes of his precious time.
The time we offer to others is indeed a grace reflecting the time that God gives to us. We will find when we allow the Lord into our schedule and daily agendas, time is stretched.
We must not think that time belongs to us or even that we can manage time. If we are not interrupted then we are of no use to God or humans. We only have to look in the Gospels to see that our Lord Jesus Christ was continually interrupted in His earthly ministry. Time belongs to God alone.
Metropolitan Philaret writes: “In unforeseen events let us not forget that all are sent by God.” When we seek first the kingdom of God, everything falls into place and time(kairos).
I recall trying to persuade some anxious students to come to church during their exams. I said : Don’t worry God will give you more time, a clear mind and a peaceful spirit for your revision!”
A day of rest and adjustment. Adjusting to the heat of a Mediterranean country takes an englishman by surprise. It is 25c first thing in the morning without air conditioning( it was faulty, now corrected).
Acclimatisation is not just about the weather it is about culture and faith too. Our colder climate often means we british are more reserved; we need more outer clothing, live indoors and thus become less sociable. We need to become acclimated to God too.
I feel better in a hot climate. Perspiring toxins as one adjusts brings a certain sense of well being. So that’s why they have saunas in cold countries!
There is a temptation to eat more on Holidays.
Actually holy days often require fasting. Whilst it is difficult to avoid hospitality the body benefits from restraint and exercise. The Church is a gymnasium.
St. Basil the Great says “one who truly fasts abstains from anger, rage, malice, and vengeance. One who truly fasts abstains from idle talk, empty rhetoric, slander, condemnation, flattery, lying and all manner of spiteful talk.”
The old men sit and drink lots of coffee, the cleaners work so hard in the hotels. Rest and ascesis are found as neighbouring realities.
I say my prayers and visit St lazarus asking his intercessions. As I leave the supernatural brightness of the church and go once more into the natural brightness, words of St John of Damascus come to me:
“The Father is the sun, the Son is the light and the Holy Spirit is the heat.”
If I believed in purgatory (which I don’t) I think airports come close to the image. Souls coming and going, carrying their baggage, waiting and hoping for a better state of being somewhere else.
The final checks completed, the aeroplane takes off to another place and time, two hours ahead. After a short while, we seem not to be moving in the air but we are being moved all the same at some considerable pace; rather like life in the Holy Spirit. The clouds disappear as we leave Manchester and the beautiful patchwork of fields open up below like Joseph’s coat of many colours or a court jesters costume displaying the truth of God’s abundant creative power and mocking the insanity of war on His sovereign soil.
Arriving in Cyprus my phone goes to roaming mode as I switch to my faltering spoken greek.
The taxi driver is quite silent which whilst strangely surprising is also a relief.
I have a most beautiful room overlooking the harbour, the serenity broken incrementally by the increasing noise from families in cafés, rather like refreshments after the Holy Liturgy.
Off to St Lazarus church to pray for the faithful. Prayer in a holy place intensifies the memory and promotes good thoughts. Meanwhile, two Russian ladies with heads respectfully covered seek a blessing from me which the unworthy one duly gives. We exchange icon cards. The saints like to be shared amongst the faithful it seems!
Everything within me and around me, both the small and the great, things past and things infinite, the simple and the puzzling, the dark and the bright, the visible and the invisible, the mortal and the immortal, the good and the evil, all things and everything in all worlds that I know and feel, they motivate me to blatantly pray: Lord have mercy!
Our pain summarizes all human words in one prayer and cry: Lord have mercy!
Turned toward You we are found to overflow within our whole being only one sigh: Lord have mercy!
We would like to speak of ourselves, but our tears are pouring and we tell You of our entire soul within these two words: Lord have mercy!
Every creation has its heart, and the heart is with this heart because it sighs and tends towards You: Lord have mercy!
In this sad world, man has no greater need than to be granted mercy primarily from You: Lord have mercy!
And together with You and behind You that all things and all creation grant him mercy: Lord have mercy!
“The Temple is but a piece of Heaven on Earth, Earth becoming Heaven, a haven of immortality, a haven of Paradise in the sea of Hell on Earth“
Such powerful words of consolation! Such boldness of vision! They also felt like precisely describing my experience here on Earth, especially over the last few months: “A sea of Hell on Earth!”
“By reading the Bible you are adding yeast to the dough of your soul and body, which gradually expands and fills the soul until it has thoroughly permeated it and makes it rise with the truth and righteousness of the Gospel.”
This Saint set himself the rule of studying three chapters of the New Testament every day and continued to do so throughout his life! And I barely make a chapter every day with my busyness… I wish I could follow his example with his prayers!
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“If you are suffering for your faith in Christ, the Lives of the Saints will console you and encourage you and make you bold and give you wings, and your torments will be changed into joy.
If you are in any sort of temptation, the Lives of the Saints will help you overcome it both now and forever.
If you are in danger from the invisible enemies of salvation, the Lives of the Saints will arm you with the ‘whole armor of God,’[1] and you will crush them all now and forever and throughout your whole life … feeling with all your being that your life is in heaven, hidden with Christ in God, wholly above all deaths.[2]“ + St. Justin Popovich,” Introduction to the Lives of the Saints,” Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ
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The more I study his work, the more I am astounded by his holiness and his compassionate, yet bold, uncompromising revelation of Truth! A real treasure especially for the Orthodox Christians living in the West! “A way out of its innumerable humanistic hells!” “Is there a remedy for those innumerable deadly sicknesses? There is, there certainly is: repentance. … (+ St. Justin Popovich, “Reflections on the Infallibility of European Man,” Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ)
Our Father St Justin amongst the saints pray to God for us!
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE 