Spiritual Contemplations for those who serve the Lord |
In this post, there are thirty sayings concerning service. Read every day one saying and make it the subject of the whole day's meditation:
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We are able to change and distort the meaning of the words making their meaning matching with what we want them to mean. The most obvious example on this is the word peace. Communists used to call themselves “The countries that love peace”. The church also calls for peace. Yet, there is a great difference between the meaning of peace sought by communists and the peace the church calls for. Peace built upon piracy, fighting against God, and killing one another is not a peace. Therefore, words mean for them what they want them to mean! For them, freedom means piracy, peace means war, and democracy means slavery. One of the well-known psychiatrists wrote in one of his books saying, “We invented some good respectful words instead of the bad words of some life circumstances. We called the drug addict or the alcoholic a chemically dependent person, the harlot a call girl, and adultery is considered to be a personal freedom. They also called the unclean relationships living together, homosexuality a reciprocal life style, stealing a white color crime, and killing babes abortion that is widely practiced in hospitals! This is one of the deceptions of the devil, who is the great deceiver, to not give sin its real name but giving it a nice innocent name. Yet, we cannot achieve salvation unless we confront our sins saying with David, “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight”. I will mention here some example on the distorted meanings of some words: The word God : A student came to priest saying, “I decided to believe not in God”. The priest asked him then, “What is the reason lying behind this?” He then explained to him: this God Who kills nursing babes and bring illnesses upon people, then He prepared for them a place called hell to torture them in it. How can I believe in Him? The priest replied saying, “I too do not believe in this god”. How many people grew up carrying the same concepts of children about God?! We must talk about the real God, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). Jesus Christ is the One who is in the bosom of the Father and He said to us, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”; “I and My Father are one”. For we look at Christ as if from a window from which we see the Father. I mean that we see God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are saved by the will of the Father, through the merits of His son and the grace of the Holy Spirit. The word Happiness : What is happiness? Happiness is not found in money, sex, drugs or alcohol. It is neither found in a cruise in the Caribbean Sea. Indeed, the way to happiness is full of erroneous goals. The only way to happiness is that people should know God, love Him and serve Him. Happiness is achieved when you know that God loves you. A Christian said once, “If I look at the past seventy years of my life, I get sure that my present happiness is because I am sure that God loves me. He loves me personally with an eternal love. Nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ”. The word Love : The true love, Agape, means to deeply care for serving, to give your life, when necessary, to the one whom you love. The greatest example of love is the Lord who loved the world to the end up to sacrificing His only begotten Son!! Love can be misunderstood. It can be taking rather than giving! It becomes no more Agape but lust i.e. abusing the other to fulfill your desires. If God is not present in your life, then the word love will be totally lost. How can you know love in the absence of God who is love? Only in Christ love finds its real meaning. The word Sex : This word was used by the devil and then defiled and lost every good meaning. Yet, this word belongs to God Who created sex. After God created man as male and female, he said that He saw everything very good, very beautiful, very holy and worthy of Him. God created sex for an important thing, which is marriage, and blessed it. Sex is successful when we follow God’s conditions as He is the Creator of sex. Sexual love is a sign and seal of full commitment for absolute giving to the other beloved person. It is a perfect trust and union. Sex is a natural expression of a deep spiritual thing. It is an expression of a full giving to the other beloved person. It is loving the other with all the mind, heart, soul and power. It is a real icon on earth that expresses God’s love for us. If the natural work of love is not an expression of perfect giving from the side of the loving person to the beloved one, then it will be fake. It is a corruption of a holy thing. There is no meaning in a relationship that is not built upon complete commitment and love. Therefore, sex outside the frame of marriage is considered to be a sin. If a sexual relationship loses its holiness through pornography, how can then one express a perfect remaining relationship of love?! Thus, pornography is the death of love, and losing the sound meaning of sexual relationship. Love forced and guided by God must be the greatest and the most precious love in the world. Sex cannot achieve its meaning that God created it for unless it is achieved through God. Sex will neither be pleasurable, satisfying, nor meaningful unless it is according to God. Therefore, marriage became a sacrament in the Orthodox church. Thus, if we succeed to establish a relationship of sexual love built upon full giving, it will be then an icon on earth that expresses God’s love for man. The responsibility of the servant is to refer the word sex to God Who gave it its original definition. It must be purified and referred to God. Marriage is a sacred word that denotes a sacred love and a sacred relationship. The word Church : Many outsiders use the words Jesus and Church freely. They call themselves Jesus followers or the church followers. But what is the historical relationship that connects them to the Apostles or to the early church? In the Orthodox church, the word church means the live body of Christ Who works in the world today. It has a live history connected with the church of the Apostles through the Clergy. We thus talk about the apostolic Tradition. The church does not teach what one thinks about faith but teaches the whole Tradition handed to us by Christ Himself through the Apostles. How can I know if what a certain community teach is a real apostolic Tradition and not a mere personal interpretation of the meanings of faith? We are in great need to be connected historically with the early church to be sure that the Apostles’ teachings have not been reformed or altered but were handed to us unaltered. The word Jesus : There is no a name that is more precious than the name of Jesus for Christians. Jesus is the Lord, the eternal Son of God, the beginning and the end, the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, Who was in the beginning with God and all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men (John 1:2-4). Jesus was neither a man only nor a God only. He is a man and a God in one person. God in the body of man. He approached man because he loves him, wants his salvation, and wants to lift him up and make him a partaker in the divine nature. Indeed, there is no other name under heaven given to people to get saved other than the name of Jesus Christ that at His name “every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth, and of those under the earth” (Philippians 2:10). Let us name things with their real names not with mere innocent acceptable ones. Glory be to Our God. Amen. *Adapted from HGBY monthly Clergical letters
The importance of the ministry comes from its strength, depth, love and giving. The way it affects and changes people! The Effective Word This was clear in the Lord Christ’s service, Glory be to Him. We should take notice of the Lord Christ’s invitation to St. Matthew, “And as He passed by, He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector’s post and said to him, “Follow me”. And he arose and followed Him” (Mark 2:14), (Mattew 9:9). It was just a word said to a person responsible for tax collecting. As a result, he left his job, arose and followed Him without even asking where to? The same powerful invitation was used when calling the four fishermen disciples. As it is written, “And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then Jesus said to them, "Come after Me, and I will make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed Him. When He had gone a little farther from there, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending their nets. And immediately He called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after Him.” (Mark 1:16-20). Through the power of the Word, they left everything and followed Him immediately, without any hesitation, delay or argument. They left their father, their nets, and everything. St. Peter summarized it all by saying ..."See, we have left all and followed You." (Matt 19:27).
His words had the power of convincing even those who argued with Him. When He explained to the scribes and Pharisees how a person is allowed to do good deeds on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-12) and about the Resurrection, it was written “......He forty had silenced the Sadducees” (Matthew 22:34). Also, “...no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.” (Matthew 22:46). His words also influenced others because of their warmth and love. When he said to Zacchaeus, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house." (Luke 19:5). A word, so deep and warm, led this person to repentance, so that he said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house” ( Luke 19:8, 9). All this because of one strong, warm word spoken by the Lord. The same powerful words characterized the ministry of our Fathers, the Apostles. A sermon said by St. Peter the Apostle on Pentecost, attracted three thousand people who were baptized that same day (Acts 2:37-41). The strength of the word also appears in St. Paul’s ministry, even when he was captured and judged before Felix the governor “Now as he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid...” . (Acts 24:25). Also, King Agrippa said to St. Paul, "You almost persuade me to become a Christian." (Acts 26:28). The Power Of Giving Some servants like the easy service, with no troubles or effort, but the power of the ministry appears in bearing its hardships, in love, giving and rejoicing. An example of this is St. Paul the Apostle’s ministry “...in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness (2 Cor 11:26, 27). * Adapted from HH Pope Shenouda III's The Spiritual Ministry - Chapter 4
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