Category: Spirituality

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Who Do You Pray To?

 When you pray, to whom do you pray?

 I am not talking about the theological description of God here, but the personal one. When I write a letter or an email to someone, I hold in my mind an image of the person to whom I am writing. That image may include things like an image of their face, a memory of the way they laugh, an emotional attitude towards them. This personal image is often far more important in guiding what I write than any purely rational facts or knowledge about the person, such as their age or address.

 So in the same way, while our dogmatic knowledge about who God is, His nature and characteristics, is important in so many ways, but when it comes to actually talking to Him, it is often thrust into the background. Rather, it is our personal, individual, idiosyncratic image of Him that most determines the quality of our prayer life (I think something similar may also be said of how we read the Bible, but I won’t go into that now).

 So when you pray, what is the image of God you hold in your mind? Who is the One you talk to? What emotional ‘colours’ does He appear to you with, and what is His personality like? Continue reading “Who Do You Pray To?”

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Biography of Crucifixion

 Golgotha

At the threshold of Passion Week, I present an excerpt from an archaeological article written in 1985 by Vassilios Tzaferis. He reported on the first ever finding of the remains of a victim of crucifixion, although of course, there is a great deal of written evidence that the practice of crucifixion was by no means uncommon in the ancient world. Here he presents a brief history of Crucifixion. I warn you, some of it is not very pleasant reading.

Many people erroneously assume that crucifixion was a Roman invention. In fact, Assyrians, Phoenicians and Persians all practiced crucifixion during the first millennium B.C. Crucifixion was introduced in the west from these eastern cultures; it was used only rarely on the Greek mainland, but Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy used it more frequently, probably as a result of their closer contact with Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

During the Hellenistic period, crucifixion became more popular among the Hellenized population of the east. After Alexander died in 323 B.C., crucifixion was frequently employed both by the Seleucids (the rulers of the Syrian half of Alexander’s kingdom) and by the Ptolemies (the rulers of the Egyptian half). Among the Jews crucifixion was an anathema. (See Deuteronomy 21:22–23: “If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale him on a stake, you must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.”)

The traditional method of execution among Jews was stoning. Nevertheless, crucifixion was occasionally employed by Jewish tyrants during the Hasmonean period. According to Josephus, Alexander Jannaeus crucified 800 Jews on a single day during the revolt against the census of 7 A.D. At the end of the first century B.C., the Romans adopted crucifixion as an official punishment for non-Romans for certain legally limited transgressions. Continue reading “Biography of Crucifixion”

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Body Contact Spirituality

 

 We often speak of our spirits, our thoughts or our feelings being in contact with God. But in Eastern Christianity, we also pay attention to our body being in contact with God. What exactly does this mean?

 Church tradition teaches us to pray as a whole person, body, spirit and mind together. Contact with God is more than a purely rational experience. This is also true of most things in life that really matter. For example, the bond between a mother and child is a physical one. There are lots of hugs and cuddles and kisses going on all the time. There are smiles and frowns, coos and gurgles, friendly pats and gentle caresses, and the occasional bitten finger when baby mistakes Mum’s thumb for a teething ring.

 On a deeper level, there are hormones and nervous system mechanisms that are activated by the mother-child relationship. Mothers of newborn babies have a lot of the hormone oxytocin circulating in their bodies. While this hormone contributes to the changes in their bodies that prepare them for breastfeeding, it has also been shown to have the effect of strengthening the emotional bond between the mother and child. God’s own natural love potion!

 When we commune with God, we feel emotions towards God. Emotions are always associated with powerful physical changes. Continue reading “Body Contact Spirituality”

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Follow Me

www.thebricktestament.com

 

There are certain core principles at the heart of Christian life. There is a Latin term that summarises their importance: “sine qua non” or “without this, it is not”. Without living these principles, a person is simply not a Christian.

 The calling of Levi (St Matthew) to be a Disciple of Christ is an example of one of those principles. It illustrates the kind of trusting surrender without which no one can truly be called a Christian. Others, more advanced in religious life, like the rich young man (Mark ch.10) failed in this principle and could not follow Jesus. This brought sadness to His heart.

How much did Levi know about Jesus when he accepted His invitation? Had Jesus ‘proved’ Himself to Levi by healing him or working a miracle for him? Neither the gospels nor Church tradition suggest any such thing. The mystery of Levi’s immediate, unquestioning obedience to what amounts to a stranger is the mystery of the human spirit’s surrender to Christ. It is not based on pure logic and appears even to be irrational. It does not grow out of experience alone, nor does it result from the cajoling of others.

True and complete surrender of one’s life to Christ arises out of Continue reading “Follow Me”

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Lent Generously

As Lent fasting begins once more and we settle in to that lovely atmosphere that comes with it, I am reminded by the traditional threefold focus of Lent in the Coptic Church: Fasting, Prayer and Charity. In Arabic, this triad is a delightful alliteration – “Soam, Salla, Sadaka”, but all my efforts to come up with an English version have failed. The best I could do was Abstinence, Adoration, Almsgiving, which of course is a terribly inaccurate translation.

This triad actually comes from the Gospel for the preparatory Sunday of Lent (which we read last Sunday)…

Matthew 6:1  “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men…

Matthew 6:5  “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites…

Matthew 6:16  “Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites…

The emphasis, as is clear from the snippets above, is to practice these three things sincerely. If you wish your gift to God to be acceptable to Him, then it must come from the heart. How I yearn that we could banish ‘routine’ spiritual practices from our lives!

No doubt the dear reader will find a wealth of appropriate spiritual guidance regarding their prayers and fasting from their confession fathers. Our charitable deeds of course includes donating our tithes on a regular basis, but that does not mean we shouldn’t give over and above that where we see a need.

People sometimes ask for advice on where to pay one’s tithes and charitable donations. Continue reading “Lent Generously”

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Open Your Heart!

 

Open your heart to God.

When you come to pray, do not hide in words of rote. Do not think that He will be impressed by mountains of words, whether they are your own or those of saints. He sees all and knows all. Do not hide in the false security of ‘duty’, nor imagine that He will be satisfied with boxes ticked off: ‘there, I have said my prayers, what more do You want from me?’ Do not hide behind a mask of piety, that mask you put on when you come to meet Him, then take off when you think you have left His presence. You forget that everywhere is His presence!

Open your heart without reservation. What is there in your heart that you think you can hide from Him? The deepest secrets you have kept from all others for so long were always visible before Him. Did you think He could not see? Even those things you have tried so hard to hide from yourself, things too awful to face, things that plunge you into despairing of your soul; there is nowhere to hide them where He cannot see them. Did you think He does not know? Did you think as Adam and Eve thought; that a few leaves or branches could hide their nakedness from the God who knows all things?

Open your heart to God and stand before Him as one naked. Does this discomfort you? Good! For that is a step towards a true relationship with Him. Know this: you are always naked before God. No worldly clothing, no royal vestments, no finery or decoration can hide the nakedness of your soul before God. Live no longer in that pleasant, false dream!

Open your heart before God. Not because He is unable to enter if you bar the way, but because He is unwilling to enter unless He is welcome. Know this, that when you throw open the door of your heart without reserve, He will not crash His way in. No, it is then that you discover what gentleness really means. His tread is light, His voice, sweet and low. His gaze touches your eyes like the tiny snow flake that sends shivers of excitement down the spine.

Open your heart to Him without fear. Trust in his love and abandon all trust in your own righteousness or talents. You have no worth except the worth of being His child. Cast aside all talk of ‘rights’ – you have none, for your sins have forfeited all your rights. There is only grace; abundant, overwhelming, undeserved, life saving grace.

Fr Ant

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The Many Masks of Pride

 The sin of pride is considered a little old fashioned in today’s western world. Society virtually celebrates the boasting and hubris of the successful, finding in it an appropriate expression of the value of winning.

 But the genuinely Christian attitude to pride is of course very different.

 The interesting thing about pride is that it can don so many different guises. Like an epidemic virus, it changes its appearance in order to avoid detection and resistance, and by so doing, it creeps beneath our defences against it. The human body fights such viruses by recognising every new disguise of the virus and continually creating new antibodies to fight it off. The spiritual person needs a similar strategy.

 In the hope of helping the reader to strip away the disguises, I present a small survey of some of the many masks pride can wear. Readers are invited to add their own ‘masks’ to the list by clicking on the Comments link above right.

 I offer the warning that I myself am susceptible to all the forms of pride listed below (how else could I know so much about them!) and struggle with them daily. Identifying a problem is only halfway to fixing it.

 Mask #1: Praise Magnet

You tell people how awful you are in order to make them feel compelled to disagree with you and tell you just how good you actually are. Very clever disguise that masquerades as humility. Continue reading “The Many Masks of Pride”

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Free Will?

 

Or: “Did the Devil Really Make You Do It?”

 One of the (many) things I find very confusing in life is the question of Free Will. I have yet to find a satisfying explanation for how free will works. On what basis does a person make his or her choices? And if one’s choices are determined by those factors, where is the freedom? And yet, we experience this strange freedom that we cannot explain every day. When Samuel Johnson was challenged to defend the existence of free will, his answer was typically pithy yet profound: “I know I have free will, and there’s an end to the matter!”

 On a more practical level, we grapple with free will. In confessions, “I couldn’t help it Abouna,” is a phrase I have grown accustomed to hearing, usually followed by something like; “He forced me to swear at him!”

 “Hmmm” I will answer if I am in a sarcastic frame of mind, “so he reached into your mouth, grabbed your tongue, and forced it to produce a swear word?”

 The most common response I get is a stare that is usually reserved for inmates of mental hospitals. The question of my sanity notwithstanding, personal responsibility is a deeper issue than I once thought. How much of what we do is conscious choice and how much is ‘mechanical’? And if mechanical, then how are we to be held responsible for it? Continue reading “Free Will?”

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God of my Silence

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 “Silence your lips that your heart may speak…

Silence your heart that God may speak…”

– The Spiritual Elder

 

How I miss the silence.

 

It was pleasant sunny winter’s day in ancient Wadi Natroun, the ancient desert abode of the Christian monks of Egypt. I was a newly ordained priest halfway through my 40 day retreat before returning to my family and my home to begin parish service. I spied out the little doorway in the wall of the monastery and found it unlocked. Through some barns and fields ebbing with the sounds and smells of cows and goats, down a little path and I was out in the desert. Continue reading “God of my Silence”

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Lettermania (pedantitis)

Today, an entry from a book in preparation: the Textbook of Spiritual Diseases. The introduction to the book includes the following warning:

“This book is intended more for self-diagnosis than for diagnosing others. Failure to keep this mind when using it may result in serious spiritual harm.”

 

Lettermania (pedantitis)

An inflammatory case of hypocritical pedantry. Hence, ‘pedantitis’ from ‘pedant’ – one who cares excessively for tiny unimportant details; and ‘-itis’ – inflammation. See II Corinthians 3:6

The patient is afflicted with an obsessive interest in following the very letter of God’s Law, whilst neglecting the spirit of it. Some very famous defining cases are recorded among the Pharisees in the Gospels, although there is strong evidence for the existence of this disease many centuries before that.

 

 

Symptoms

Characteristically:

  • Disregard for the genuine welfare of others (although a superficial appearance of compassion is often exhibited)
  • A cancerous growth of pride in one’s piousness.

 

Also:

  • There is an obsessive attention to details such as eating precisely the right foods, fasting to the second, carrying out one’s daily prayer canon and meticulously preserving Church traditions.
  • A narrowing of the visual field and the emotional field so that only one point of view is visible. The patient refuses to seriously consider other points of view.
  • Self-confidence well above what is generally considered normal
  • Constant desire to teach others and exercise authority over others
  • An inflated estimations of one’s own self-worth, e.g. the patient insists on others according appropriate respect to the him; being overly sensitive to insults etc

  Continue reading “Lettermania (pedantitis)”