Mr. Banescu, your witness.
]]>Today’s Homily from the Prologue of St. Nikolai of Zhicha:
Homily
About the joy of faith in Christ
“Although you have never seen Him, you love Him, and without seeing you now believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible joy touched with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).
These are the words of the Holy Apostle Peter. He saw the Lord and loved Him. He looked at the Lord and believed in Him. Precisely because of that, he praises the love of those who have not seen the Lord and the faith of those who have not seen Him with their eyes. Our Lord Himself said: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (St. John 20:29). Blessed are they who have not seen the Lord as the apostle saw Him, but, nevertheless, they love Him with apostolic love. Blessed are they who have not seen the Lord as the apostle saw Him but, nevertheless, they believe in Him with apostolic faith!
O my brethren, even if we do not see the Lord, we see His works which have enlightened the entire history of mankind from one end to the other and have illumined every created thing under the heavens with a spiritual significance. Even if we do not see the Lord, we see His Holy Church built upon His All-holy and Pure Blood, from countless saints, righteous ones and numerous souls baptized in His Name throughout the ages of ages. Even if we do not see the Lord face to face as the apostles saw Him, we believe that He is among us in the Body and Blood by which we, according to His commandment, communicate and, in communicating, we rejoice with unspeakable joy.
Brethren, the Lord is alive and the Lord is near! That is our unwavering faith and that is the spark of fire which stirs our hearts in a flame of love for the Lord, living and near.
To know that our Lord the Creator, out of love, descended into the earth and appeared as a man for our sake and further know that He was dead and that He appeared alive what stronger foundation does our faith need and what stronger justification for our love?
Brethren, the Lord is alive and near. And even in our day, He is appearing to many righteous souls who serve Him with patience.
O Living Lord, You were dead and are alive enliven in us faith and love until our last breath on earth, that with faith and love, we may be worthy to see You face to face as did Your holy apostles.
]]>You are out of control, and I am ashamed for you. I believe Fr. Alexander Schmemann would be ashamed of your behavior and walk away: he never suffered obscurantists and he certainly had no time for people who insisted on their own persons and their propaganda at the expense of truth and Orthodoxy. GOD forgive you and have mercy on you. The Cross you must bear. You need to reread what you have written and understand that that is not how people communicate in civilized discourse.
Personally attacking me doesn’t elevate you or your erroneous position. You are wrong, and by your demeanor, you aren’t someone who is interested in anything but taking this discussion into the gutter.
Why, pray tell, would I want to discuss my personal life with you when you are already chomping at the bit and attacking me personally? Why would I do this and further hijack a topic dedicated to the Supreme Court ruling on the DOMA? Why would I further your cult of your own personality and your “bona fides” in slamming your shoe on the table while you scream “I KNEW FATHER ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN!!! I SPEAK FOR HIM!!! I T DOESN’T MATTER WHAT HE WROTE!!! HIS LIFE AND RECORD AND COLLEAGUES DON’T MATTER!!! YOU DON’T MATTER AND AREN’T ORTHODOX OR LEFTIST ENOUGH TO EVEN DISCUSS FATHER SCHMEMANN!!!” So, no, I won’t indulge your attempt at my character assassination.
You aren’t interested in dialogue. You are interested in establishing an echo chamber where life serenades you with your ideas and your platitudes. You are free to seek that out, but not at my expense. Be free. But not with me.
If there were a nation of people who were the last I would allow into my personal space, you would be its god emperor.
As a matter of fact, please stop addressing me: I want nothing further to do with you. Your behavior and presentation are disturbing and unhinged.
The very fact you can’t respect another point of view and attack people you ideologically disagree with like some Chekist tells the world that you have nothing to offer but Leftist indoctrination and half truths. Fr. Schmemann called your type “Orthodox Bolsheviks”. Leave me out of your ideological crisis. Celebrate your straw men and your agenda without accosting me or others (people respecting truth) who don’t and WON’T think like you. Thank you.
Please stop. Seek the counsel of an experienced priest.
]]>Rostislav,
If I was “embarrassing myself,” I would expect to feel embarrassed. I do not. I have been an active, primary discussant in this forum for two years, and while it is frequently a “heated” exchange, it is, generally speaking, a place to be heard. You appear here as the “Voice of Orthodoxy,” gangbusters, judgmental, ascribing to individuals labels and “agendas” as you see fit, outright offensive in my estimation, and insulting because of a typing error of your name! You are the one who stated “when I went to seminary…” You are the one who stated you learned of Fr. Alexander Schmemann from David Anderson, an apostate priest who left the Orthodox Church because of his own arrogance and pride. You are the one who gladly accepted Mr. Banescu’s offer to “publish” your rantings and fawned at his likening of you to a modern-day Mark of Ephesus without even asking who you might actually be. And it was you who insisted that your “insightful” comments should be published from simply “Rostislav,” – Suggesting what? The “humble? The meek?
My questions are neither insulting, inappropriate, nor attacking. Are you, in fact, an Orthodox Christian? Where did you attend seminary? What is your name?
]]>Please stop embarrassing yourself. Trying to turn this topic into a slew of personal attacks? Really? Enough.
Step back, take a minute and ask yourself if being disruptive and insulting is what you really intend. I forgive you and GOD forgives.
Please talk to a Priest and work it out. Thank you.
]]>Are you an Orthodox Christian? What seminary did you attend? What is your name?
]]>We have read all of this, and thus you feel you are rightly channeling Fr. Alexander Schmemann…
Again, you are wrong. What you have provided is nothing but your axe to grind. It is not Fr. Alexander. No amount of namedropping can undo the Truth.
I am moving forward. I don’t think you are offering anything more here, and it would be absurd to keep entertaining your false premises and objections.
Since this topic is the Supreme Court and the consequences of its ruling on the DOMA and since you offer no original material which isn’t contradicted by the quotes I have provided, I can only point out that at this juncture you are doing nothing but offering an irrational argument and doing so poorly.
May you be well.
]]>Personally, I do not need your quotes. I knew Fr. Alexander Schmemann personally. I sat in the front row in class and listened to Fr. Alexander Schmemann lecture. I was in the ridiculously small old chapel at SVS and listened to him preach, practically standing next to him. I confessed to Fr. Alexander Schmemann. We prostrated before one another on Forgiveness Sunday. Who do you imagine you are speaking to, quoting “articles” and an apostate former Orthodox priest, making accusations of supporting “gay marriage,” and recommending I go to confession? Yours is the “point of view.” I was there and I knew the man! Who taught you such disrespect and belligerence? You should be asking me what it was like to actually learn from and experience such fathers of our generation as Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, SS Verhovskoy, Thomas Hopko, Blessed Vladyka Basil (Rodzianko), Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein), Archbishop Dmitri (Royster), and many others you can only read about. Where did you go to seminary? And why is it you will not not provide your name? It seems to me Mr. Banescu has “anointed” you a “defender of Orthodoxy” without even investigating if you are Orthodox! I will be convinced by evidence, not by your attempts at bullying.
]]>First off, I am not your son. I would be offended by your tone if it weren’t so hurt and alienated. I am sorry, truly sorry, that you are going through what you are going through.
Secondly, you have been proven to be wrong in your representation. The readers can refer to the links and quotes I have presented. I have precisely used internet only sources so that they could verify my presentation for themselves.
Thirdly, I have no reason for “bravado”. That very insinuation shows that you are projecting me as an enemy and treating me with contempt instead of trying to advance a dialogue.
Fourthly, your unspoken agenda is pretty clear: you are promoting the Orthodox Church “shutting up” so that the Left can most easily transform all ideas of traditional morality and culture. That is the pathetic truth of why you continue in this. Because if what you say is established or accepted, that is the end result.
Fifthly, we all miserably learned with Al Gore that you can’t cherry pick outcomes. Likewise, redacted quotes, misrepresentations, decontextualizations, obfuscations contradicted by the actions and words and colleagues of Fr. Alexander Schmemann and his very outlook do not constitute truth. They constitute propaganda, half truths, YOUR “truth”. You are entitled to your point of view, but you are not entitled to call a mockery of reality truth.
This exchange is at an irrational impasse. There is no balance, no respect, no civility in your discourse. It is only personal, subjective, agendized, and dogmatic. It is harsh and disrespectful. You aren’t engaged in a dialogue. You are pounding your fist on a table and insisting you are channeling Fr. Alexander Schmemann. If you weren’t serious, this would be nothing short of ridiculous. I pray that you realize how disturbing your presentation has become.
Please go to Confession and seek some guidance from a Priest.
It doesn’t seem as if you are reading the material. But what you are illustrating is that you are desparately trying to preserve your outlook which has been discredited.
No, Fr. Schmemann would not endorse gay marriage. No, he does not believe in tuning out so that the atheist Left can turn the culture and civilization into an amoral cesspool. He fought ghettoization, the nominalism and schizophrenia YOU espouse.
I have proven that: the readers can READ what Father Schmemann wrote in my quotes, what his colleagues and friends wrote about his views, how my presentation is the truth, reality. You can have your revisionism and even say it is inspired by Fr. Schmemann, but your views are not his, and your presentation is precisely part of the problems he fought.
Whether you choose to realize this or not is immaterial, it is clear for all to read that you are wrong.
]]>January, 1975: “The rapport with Solzhenitsyn made obvious for me our essential difference. For him there is only Russia. For me, Russia could disappear, die, and nothing would change in my fundamental vision of the world. ‘The image of the world is passing.’ This tonality of Christianity is quite foreign to him.” “I know that S. himself does not hesitate to offend people right and left in the rudest manner. I personally think that to defend him would be to tell him the truth. I really do not want to take part in that struggle. . . . As for Solzhenitsyn, I will defend what I heard through his creative art, but I remain free of his ideology, which for me is quite foreign.”
“May, 1975: His treasure is Russia and only Russia; mine is the Church. He is devoted to his treasure in a way that none of us is devoted to ours. His faith, I think, will move mountains, while ours—mine in any case—will not. . . . A great man! In the obsession with his vocation, his mission, in the total identification with it—without doubt a great man. Truly, out of him flows strength!” Then this insight on the chemistry, so to speak, between them: “In these days spent with him, I had the feeling that I was the older brother dealing with a child, capricious and even spoiled, who will not ‘understand’—so better for me to give in (‘you are older, so give in!’) for the sake of peace, agreement, and in the hope that ‘he might grow up and understand.’ I am a student from a higher grade dealing with a younger one for whom one needs to simplify, with whom one has to speak ‘at his level.’”
While you seem to have garnered an audience here through your “boisterous” stance and your willingness to throw “buzzwords” and chum the waters with triggers like “gay marriage” & Patriarch Bartholomew – even comfortable insulting the other posters – I will not be intimidated by “bravado.” Attempting to tag me with some “agenda” is ignorant, immature, and foolish. You would have me casting myself as Fr. Alexander Schmemannn? Take a seat, son. Your bravado has gone to your head.
]]>TRUTH
…Fr Alexander also taught us – by his life and by his death – that this world is fallen. Evil is real. There is wickedness. There is the Devil. In fact, this year at the orientation for the new students, Father spoke about this. Father always came to speak at orientation and this year too he came. Of course he was very weak, but he came and said to the new students: “I came over to tell you just one important thing. You will learn many things here about God, and the Seminary, and life and prayer . . . But I came over tonight to tell you just one very important thing.” And he said to the students: “Remember always that the Devil exists.” The Devil exists to destroy what God in Christ has given, and the Devil will use every trick to divide, to conquer, to separate, to produce that “unholy trinity” of pride, fear, envy, with competition and enslavement; and the “ego” will always be ready to cooperate with the evil “Voice” that speaks. The world is fallen, and it is fallen because we all, like Adam our father, have refused to lift up our heart and to give thanks to the Lord.
Fr Alexander also taught us – by his life and by his death – that this world is redeemed, that this world is saved, that God has sent His Only-Begotten Son to give Himself for the life of the world, for the life not only of every human soul of which the whole world is not worthy, but for the life of all things: the whole creation, the plants, the animals, his beloved hippopotamus! All that God has made will be saved, resurrected, restored, renewed in Christ Who has risen from the dead, for death itself, in that restoration, becomes the instrument of victory. How many times he said, ” . . . through the Cross – and only through the Cross – has joy come into the world.” The world is good, the world is fallen, and the world is redeemed. …
…The first “no” was to what Father called secularism – any kind of explanation of this world as having its meaning in itself. He loved to quote the French poet, Julien Green, who said, “all is elsewhere.” All is elsewhere, and this world has its meaning from “elsewhere.” And any attempt to dare to explain this world except as from God must be rejected. The world has no meaning in itself. None at all. …
…But what is the one “yes”? Everyone in this Church knows what the one “yes” is. “Yes” to the fact that in the Church the fallen world which is redeemed in Christ and is going to come at the end as the Kingdom of God – eschatology – is here and now with us. “Yes” to what Father would call the “sacramental vision” – that the good world which is fallen has been redeemed and glorified, and whenever people gather and lift up their hearts and give thanks to the Lord, they experience this, and they know the Truth, and that Truth makes them free. “Yes” to the Church – the Church which, in Father’s own words, is:
. . . the entrance into the risen life of Christ; it (the Church) is communion in life eternal, ‘joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.’ And it is the expectation of the ‘day without evening’ of the Kingdom . . . the fulfillment of all things and all life in Christ.
And it is here that Father spoke about death, indeed, his very own death.
In Him (Christ) death itself has become an act of life, for He (Christ) has filled it with Himself, with His love and His light. In Him (as the apostle Paul has written) all things are yours; whether . . . the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s’ (1 Cor. 3:21-23). And if I make this new life mine, mine this hunger and thirst for the Kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine the certitude that Christ is Life, then my very death will be an act of communion with Life. For neither life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. I do not know when and how the fulfillment will come. I do not know when all things will be consummated in Christ. I know nothing about the ‘whens’ and ‘hows.’ But I know that in Christ this great Passage, the Pascha of the world has begun, that the light of the ‘world to come’ comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, for Christ is risen and Life reigns.
“Finally,” he said, “finally, I know that it is this faith and this certitude that fill with a joyful meaning the words of St Paul, which we read each time we celebrate the passage, the pascha of a brother, his falling asleep in Christ:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17). …
]]>TRUTH
…John Meyendorff…
… He became a pupil of A.V. Kartashev, whose brilliant lectures and skeptical mind matched Schmemann’s own tendency to critical analysis of reality around him. The result was a “candidate’s thesis” (equivalent to an MDiv) on Byzantine theocracy. …
…Actually, the Church itself always stood at the center of Fr Alexander’s spiritual and intellectual interests and commitments. His discussion of Byzantine theocracy, and his readings in Church History in general – as well as his initial dissertation topic – come from his concern with the survival of the Church, as Church, during the centuries of an ambiguous alliance with the State, and the survival of Orthodoxy in its medieval confrontation with Rome. But, perhaps, he lacked the necessary patience for remaining concentrated on the Church’s past: the existential today was that which really mattered. …
…Fr Schmemann became fascinated by the brightness of Florovsky’s theological mind, by his vision of the Orthodox mission to the West, by his criticism of accepted nationalistic stereotypes, …
…In the midst of his work as teacher and his involvement in the life of the Church – with lectures, articles, addresses and meetings all over the country – Fr Schmemann never lost another concern which he held since his youth: the fate of Orthodoxy in Russia. The opportunity he had for years to address a weekly sermon in Russian on “Radio Liberty” made his name known to many among the ghettoized and repressed Christians in Russia. One of them was Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, whose writings, smuggled abroad, were for Fr Alexander – as for many others – a breath of fresh air from the depressing flatness of Soviet reality, a witness to the spirit of “true” Russia and an authentic miracle of spiritual survival. About Solzhenitsyn’s attitude to Russia, Fr Alexander coined a great word: the author of the “Gulag Archipelago” and of “August 14” had a “seeing” or “lucid” love of Russia, as opposed to the “blind” nationalism of so many. Fr Schmemann was particularly indignant at those – Russian and Western – critics of Solzhenitsyn, who saw in him precisely that “blind” nationalism, which the criticism of pre-Revolutionary Russia in “August 14” refutes so obviously. …
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…A full biography could mention other aspects of Fr Schmemann’s career: his involvement, still in France, as Vice-Chairman of the Youth Department of the World Council of Churches, and his brief passage in the “Faith and Order Commission,” his lecturing as Adjunct-Professor at Union, at General and at Columbia; his later involvement with more conservative Christian circles (the “Hartford Appeal”). …
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http://www.schmemann.org/memoriam/1984.svtq1.meyendorff.html
]]>TRUTH
…Fr Alexander was possessed with an extraordinarily clear direct perception of the answer to this most fundamental of all questions, and this was based on his vision of the sacramental nature of the world.
All that exists is God’s gift to man, to make man’s life communion with God. It is divine love, made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and the means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation. ‘O taste and see how good the Lord is’. [. . .] The only natural reaction of man is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it – and in this act of gratitude and adoration – to know, name and possess the world. …
…Fr Alexander was born in Revel, Estonia, into a Russian émigré family in 1921. When he was seven years old the family moved to Paris, to share in the life of the large Russian community there. Never having been to Russia himself, and refusing on principle ever to go there under the communist regime, Fr Alexander nonetheless always felt himself first and foremost a Russian, with a deep and sincere love for his country, an unreserved detestation of the communist regime, and an unquenchable optimism about its spiritual regeneration. The emergence of Solzhenitsyn ‘from under the rubble’ was for him a moment of great joy, for he saw in him the confirmation of Russia’s rebirth. For many years he wrote and broadcast weekly sermons on Radio Liberty to the Soviet Union. …
]]>TRUTH
…In his beautiful book “For the Life of the World” Father Alexander speaks about the “sacramental structure of the world”, and in doing so he responds from within the Orthodox tradition to the cultural and spiritual problem of our time: secularisation, for him the “heresy of these days.” …
]]>TRUTH
…Father Aleksandr Schmemann never saw Russia. He was born in 1921 in Estonia to a Russian emigre family that eventually settled in France. Yet he did not neglect the land of his fathers. After coming to the United States in 1951, he taped a weekly Russian-language sermon for Radio Liberty for thirty years. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, while still in the USSR, of these sermons:
For a long time, with spiritual delight, I have been listening on Sunday evening, whenever possible, to the sermons of Father Aleksandr . . . over Radio Liberty. And I was amazed how genuine, how truly contemporary, and of what high order is his art of preaching . . . Never a note of falsehood, not an iota of rhetoric, without empty recourse to obligatory form and ritual which causes a listener discomfort . . . Always a deep thought and profound feeling. …
http://www.schmemann.org/memoriam/1984.02.10.nationalreview.html
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