“For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
As Orthodox Christians we understand that we were not put on earth, nor was our Lord Incarnate, to maintain some sort of comfortable status quo. The Lord changed the world through His ministry. A book we are reading for our Teen Youth Group puts it this way: “The gospel of Jesus Christ is, in essence, an assault on the kingdom of the demons.” (Arise, O God, p. 34) Nothing about maintaining things as they are or small changes. Nothing about being good, or nice, or affirming the feelings of others. The Gospel is about blowing up the existing order (the demonic occupation of the world and control over humanity). As His followers – those that bear his name – we too are called to continue His ministry to the greatest extent possible through the talents He provides us for this very purpose. This is a great calling, and one we must answer with our sincere efforts and hoping in God’s blessing of these efforts.
Now, any one of us alone is very unlikely to change the world. But if we can break this thing down into digestible pieces perhaps we can get a better feeling of how we, as Orthodox people, can indeed change the world in our generation and prepare the ground for the next generation to change it even more, and so on and so forth.
As Orthodox Christians we see ourselves as both individuals and members of the group called “Orthodox Christians”. We work out our own salvation, as St. Paul writes, “with fear and trembling”. But we understand that the general rule is that we indeed perish alone, but are saved in community. That is, the usual method of life for Orthodox Christians is in a community: whether that be a parish or a monastery. But to live truly alone, as a hermit, is a rare feat that only a few saints have perfected.
As Orthodox persons we have as our first job to work on ourselves. Not to spend time judging others, but to judge ourselves, while at the same time we actively serve others and struggle against our sins. We serve others because when we serve other humans, made in God’s image and with a potential to attain to His likeness, we serve the Lord Himself:
“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40)
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First – we work on ourselves. Our job is to be transformed into the sons and daughter of God. Not only to “be good”, but MUCH more than that: to be transformed. We are first and foremost in charge of the space that we can call “ourselves”, and spiritually we will answer for our efforts in this regard. Transformation can only take place according to our cooperative efforts with God. We’ve got to work hard and follow the Lord’s teachings as taught to us in the Church, His Body, which He founded for our salvation.
OK – that part is clear I think. Most of us understand our first job is to work on ourselves. Next – we get to the serving part. Our neighbors – however one defines that. You are welcome to define “neighbor” however you like of course. You have free will. But the Lord gives us a definition, so although we certainly have the “right” to reject this definition, why would we? The parable of the Good Samaritan, read just a few weeks ago in the church, guides us. These are the very words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself:
“And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37)
This is good! Not only do we get the definition of “neighbor” from this parable, but we get our marching orders too: “Go, and do thou likewise.” So we can probably say that we have some pretty clear responsibility to at least serve our neighbor, and hopefully through serving our neighbor with the light of Christ burning in our hearts (since we are also working actively on our transfiguration into the sons and daughters of God) our neighbor will want some of that light. Or in other words, will be attracted to the love of God that we are exhibiting by serving our neighbor.
We are making progress here! We have established that we need to work towards sanctification in ourselves, and also work on sanctification of our neighbors. That is starting to cover a lot of people all of a sudden. And when we understand that our priests will answer for all the people in our parish (probably that really means the geographical area of our parish rather than those who just come to church), then we understand that we need to work on the sanctification of our “area”, at least Washtenaw and Livingston counties, maybe even more. So now we are talking about spiritual work on ourselves, for our neighbor, and in support of our St. Vladimir parish.
Then we also need to take into account that I am the Dean of Michigan parishes. So following the same logic I probably need to answer for the souls of all the people in Michigan. And as part of our parish family you no doubt would like to help me with this task for the sake of love, so we are now talking about a pretty big responsibility and a pretty big space. And we have probably defined pretty well the maximum area of our work and where we will focus our efforts towards the destruction of the “kingdom of the demons”.
Now when we say that I am the Dean of Michigan that might be a pretty easy place to point a finger and say “yes – you Fr. Gregory are responsible!” But remember, when we point a finger at someone we have three pointing back at ourselves. We are all, to a great or lesser extent, responsible to sanctify the place that God gave us. Let us concentrate on our Michigan for the sake of taking on something challenging, but not unfathomable.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit has 224 parishes. That diocese makes up about half the Catholic population of Michigan. These are rough numbers of course. So if we double that number of parishes we get 450. Because the rest of the state is mostly quite rural we should probably tack on about 50 more parishes to cover the spaces of rural Michigan where a parish would have to survive with fewer parishioners than one would be expected to have in the Detroit Archdiocese. I’m going to use the Catholic Church as a surrogate for having adequate coverage for the Catholic people in Michigan. Everyone who knows Roman Catholic folks knows this really isn’t true. They need more parishes. But let’s just go with 500 as a nice round number.
So if we are going to sanctify our Great Lakes State we are going to need something like 500 parishes. Roughly. Since the growth of Orthodoxy will necessitate some pretty big parishes in the urban areas that will serve Liturgy every day and need 3 priests as a minimum to do that (that is the standard pretty much – to do all the services every day you need 3 priests in your parish at the very least), and we’ll need some priests to cover sickness and vacation for other priests, then let’s say we’ll conservatively need 600 priests. Just for Michigan.
In our Diocese of Chicago & Mid-America right now we have 50 parishes and 75 clergymen approximately. There are 16 states in the diocese. Two of them do not even have one parish: Nebraska and South Dakota. Several only have one parish. We have three of the largest metropolitan areas in America in our diocese: Chicago, Dallas, and Houston. Chicago has three parishes. Dallas has one. Houston has two.
Clearly we all have a great amount of work to do to sanctify our diocese. Certainly we need thousands of priests to lead the Divine Services. And yes, we aren’t the only Orthodox folks in America, but it isn’t like the OCA and the Antiochians have hundreds and thousands of parishes in each state to make up for our dearth of physical presence. They are doing their best too, unquestionably, but we can’t sit back and count on someone else to do the duty that we are called to do. We know that they will do their best, but that is not code for “if they start doing more then we will too”. Nope – the only person that can change this situation is the one you see when you look in the mirror.
Let’s start by controlling what we can control. By influencing that which we can influence. In the broadest terms that is our Michigan. I think it is unlikely that our Lord will ask us about what we did, at least in any specific way beyond prayer, to foster the growth of Orthodox Christianity in Texas, for instance. But here in Michigan, I fully expect to have to answer. And I think it won’t just be me either. So what have we done to sanctify our state?
What we have done is begin to lay the foundations of the future. That is important! Every journey begins with the first step and our fathers and forefathers made huge efforts to found parishes and nourish them so that these parishes would be there to in turn nourish us. But what matters even more than what we have done is what we WILL do. And this is the point of this note. We need more priests. Lots more. Everyone needs to contribute to that. How? That is crazy talk! If half the people that read this are women they can’t serve as priests! And some of the men are already in their second marriages – they are not eligible! Fr. Gregory is talking nonsense – again!
Now that we’ve yelled at the screen let’s take a step back. We can ALL make a difference here. We can seriously encourage and seriously pray for our young men to consider the ordained ministry as a vocation. I mean seriously. Not like “oh yes – I considered that for 30 seconds and now we are moving on.” Real and loving encouragement and prayer. And we can have more children with the hope that at least one of our children will serve the Church in the clerical or monastic life – and it seems that is something reasonable for which each Orthodox family should be striving. To give at least one child back to the Lord, who has, frankly speaking, loaned us all the children we have for the sake of our salvation. And this is a challenge not just for this generation of Orthodox Christians either – each generation should strive more and more to serve and strengthen the Church (both in ordained and non-ordained ministries – this post is principally about the ordained ministry, but everyone is called to serve by the Lord – not just the men in cassocks). And those who are eligible, who could take up the life of an ordained clergymen, must really challenge themselves. Not just laugh this off as an impossible fantasy, but make a serious reflection and ask the Lord for real discernment. The Lord calls us to something great – to change the world – not just to be the most Christianized pagans in our society.
I remember when the idea of the priesthood was first proposed to me. I laughed. Right in Fr. Paul Karas’ face. Not out of spite, but because it was a nonsensical concept to my little selfish mind. I came to him asking for a recommendation for the University of Michigan School of Education. He was a teacher after all, and he served his entire ordained ministry while working full time as a teacher to support the Church. “If you would like to be a teacher why not be a priest – priests are teachers too.” My answer: “Ha!”. Or something equally erudite. I don't remember exactly the words, but I remember very much the sentiment. And if someone like me, who started with that mindset, can manage to get from “Ha!” to seminary to ordination, then the mature and wise men of our parish and deanery can surely find a path too. At least some of them. Perhaps most of them. Because it is important to understand: YOU ARE NEEDED! We have a great work to undertake! To sanctify the two peninsulas of our state.
It will not just be the ordained clergy who do this of course. Much more important in many ways will be the prayers, the service, the Christian Love, and the examples of those who do not or can not heed the call to serve the Church in the clerical or monastic order (and when we say monastic order we are very much including women here too – women’s monasticism is crucial to an authentic Orthodox Christian witness, and historically there were always more women monastics in the Church than male monastics). But someone has to serve Liturgy. We aren’t going to accomplish this gargantuan task without a robust liturgical life. And for that we need priests.
I heard a very interesting sermon on the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God that inspired this post. About how the people of the Old Testament exhibited the greatest love not for themselves, but for their future generations, and even for us Gentiles, by striving to have children so that the Messiah could come into the world. No one then was so self-obsessed that they thought THEIR child would be the Messiah. But they understood that the Messiah would only come into the world through the Hebrew people, and so they needed to prepare the next generation to receive Him. They knew it was virtually impossible that they would live to see Him themselves, but they knew He would come – they trusted God’s promise.
We don’t look to the Old Testament for a lot of personal examples. The life then was difficult and very different. The people were rough. Their lives were not for us to emulate because we live in a new epoch of the Incarnation of that very Messiah they so longed for and strove for. But here I think we have to see their love for their progeny and do our best to emulate it in a New Testament way. For the sake of the Love of God and the love of our fellow men we have to work for the sanctification of more of the people of our state in this generation, in the next generation, and in all subsequent generations until the Lord comes again. This is a radical departure from the status quo of our mostly satisfied and selfish lives. Yes – we have some problems: personal and societal. But we need to refocus on what is most important. Not the newest iPhone, not the latest political distraction, but salvation. Our salvation. Our neighbor’s salvation. Our family’s salvation. Our parish family’s salvation. And the salvation of the people of our state. And for all of these categories: the salvation of those alive now, and the generations to be born until the coming of the Lord. And I suggest that we need to do approach this with a heart set to take action, not just bemoan the present and its challenges.
I am guessing few of us have ever considered this idea previously in just this way. Honestly I hadn’t really either – until I heard that sermon on the Nativity of the Theotokos. But if you think it through it is obvious – we can’t just live for the present if we love God – we have to think about forever. We can’t just think about the gospel as the destruction of the kingdom of the demons for one generation and let them come back for the next.
Let us embrace this radical call: to change the world. Not just to focus on ourselves, but to focus on our neighbors, our parish, our state. Not just to focus on this generation, but all subsequent generations. If we all do this, then within a few generations our Michigan and our country will be substantially made up of Orthodox Christians. We will have given the greatest gift we can to anyone and everyone: the Pearl of Great Price. The True Faith. Eternal life. We can do this – but only by hard work and God’s blessing. Or we can do nothing – and nothing will happen. Of course, if the Lord so wishes He can make everyone in our state show up at our few parishes here tomorrow to be baptized. But it has never worked that way in history, so there is no reason to think it will this time either. Rather, we’ve got to get off the couch and get to work. And if we all do this – not just the ordained ministers – but ALL of us – we can do it indeed.
The Lord has shown that He will bless efforts for His glory and the salvation of others time and time again in the history of the Church. Think of the spread of Orthodox Christianity across Asia and into North America. Was that "possible"? Of course not - it was a total fantasy by the standards of "reasonable" people who were comfortable with the status quo. But the missionaries kept working, generation after generation, until they reached the Pacific. And then they went to Japan. And Alaska. And California. And the rest of North America. As Orthodox people here in a non-Orthodox land we are missionaries, and we must adapt this very paradigm to do the work that we are called to do. And thank God that we have our Ann Arbor Orthodox Classical Academy and our Pastoral School to help us to prepare ourselves and our future generations for this work! These institutions need our prayers, time, talent, and treasure to continue their labors, but that is another post for another time. The point is that we have resources to get started, and we should utilize of those resources!
This spread of the faith across Asia to North America was "impossible", but it happened. Why? Not due to a desire to conquer, but to love. To share Christ's Love. This is not even to mention the incredible spread of Christianity immediately after Pentecost. And since this is the way it has always worked, we should have firm hope this it will work that way again. Will we see the end product? No – we have to be honest that we will not. But like those people of the Old Testament that loved their progeny enough to work as hard as they could to see to it that the Messiah came into the world, or the missionaries in Russia bringing the True Faith to the people of Asia and North America, or the Apostles who began to preach after Pentecost, we too must love our neighbors and their progeny enough to be willing to put in the work now, trusting that the Lord will crown those efforts in the future, and that He will not forget our efforts on the Last Day.
The bottom line and the end of this post: we need to trust God's promise for the New Testament people just as the Hebrews trusted His promise that the Messiah would indeed come. This is His promise and His radical charge for us, directly from the Gospel:
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
I am suggesting here that we just have to do MUCH LESS than this, and only take care of the Michigan part of “all nations”. May the Lord motivate us and bless our efforts!
Asking Your Prayers,
Fr. Gregory
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