thanksgiving

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Eucharist {thanksgiving} is the state of the perfect man.

Eucharist is the life of paradise.

Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God’s creation, redemption and gift of heaven.

Father Alexander Schmemann of Blessed Memory

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His mercy endures forever. (Psalm 118:1)

Eucharist – comes from the Greek word eukharistia.  Do you see the word kharis rooted right there in the middle of it?  The tenor of kharis resonates “grace” – “favor”.  It is gratitude abundant and well.  Grace and favor – so freely given by God – which is swaddled, nestled and bound up in the thanksgiving we offer graciously in return to Him.  

Thanksgiving is paramount to life – not just a national holiday contemplated once every November.  Father Alexander Schmemann said, “The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life, in a noneucharistic world.”   In a noneucharistic world we’ve forgotten to love God with our whole heart and our whole soul and our whole mind.

There must not be a word adequately describing the lament of a noneucharistic world.

But for Orthodox Christians, every day is one ablaze with the promise of Thanksgiving : for blessings small and large, those that bring tears and those that warm the heart.

Eukharistia – it is not resevered for one day of the year or even one day of the week but celebrated in our hearts – each and every day.  The thanks rendered by each person is born of their own season and circumstance of lives lived in the Church.

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With the breaking dawn – the hope of each new day, we give thanks.

Thanks for family, and friends, near and far and for friends who walk right in the house, rather than knock.

For illness and the times we stumble and fall, we give thanks.   For crosses we bear and those who’ve  helped us to lift them up – eukharistia.

For Faith that requires everything and for marriages and love enduring and strong – eukharistia.

Thanksgiving buds and sprouts during seasons of plentiful blessing, but blooms and flourishes through our times of trouble and want  – in all of it, we lift up our hearts and render thanks to the Lord.

Eukharistia : We love Father Son and Holy Spirit : the Trinity one in Essense.  We treasure the tender hearted Theotokos, and so great a cloud of witness.  We cherish the harbor of the Church – a respite where earthly cares are laid aside.  We give thanks for the God who first loved us and  for all of His gifts, showered upon us :: gifts so freely given, unprofitable as we are, and we graciously offer to Him in return – hearts of thanksgiving.

Eucharist is the cup of salvation.  Our thanksgiving is trust in the Lord and the spacious expectation and surprising joy of the present moment. Eukharistia says Thy Will be done and glory to God for all things.  It is a new song unto the Lord (Psalm 96:1).

Eukharistia unearths love, forgiveness, peace and unity in the face of adversity, temptation and trial.  It is the antidote to jealousy, bitterness, criticism, anxiety and resentment.  The way of eukharistia allows us to endure the fatigue of the day and bear our part in all it’s passing events – resting in the assurance that it’s all for our salvation.  It nourishes and uplifts, and where one is uplifted, all are uplifted.

Eukharistia allows for the mystery.  It bursts forth and births into spiritual joy, softening hearts and making room for the coming of the Lord.

In this season of the Advent  eukharistia is the bright shining star on a still still night guiding us toward the Nativity.

Blessings on this Thanksgiving Holiday.

Resources:

Eukharistia : http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Eucharist

love is made known through the Holy Spirit

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Christ - Begotten of the Father before all ages

“Love is made known through the Holy Spirit.” – Elder Sophrony

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“Our love is a series of concentric circles like those caused by a stone dropped into the center of a pond.  The waves begin at the point of impact and they spread out until eventually they have covered the whole pond.

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Our love is like that.

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It begins in our own life, it spreads to our immediate circle, our family, and then includes an ever increasing number of friends and eventually all men, for our love should be a perfect imitation of God’s love which is all embracing, which excludes no one.”

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Father Vladimir Borichevsky

Fast Action : A Lenten Theme

lasting tranquility

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The human soul can never be satisfied with material things; we have an infinite desiring capacity, in the face of which nothing finite can ever satisfy us…

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We live in a time of rapid change, when every innovation is presented to us as progress, but before real change, real progress can take place, something must first change within us.  And for this to happen, we must become completely estranged to all things earthly and human, to all human logic, to all human ways of thinking and to every so-called material good.  We must be indifferent in the face of all things.

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And only then, when we have become strangers to all, can God become all things to us, as if there existed nothing else in the world for us except God.

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It is this alone than can grant us true and lasting tranquility.

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Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra

everything is simple

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everything is simple

“Everything is simple. Begin gradually and you will be able to do everything. Even if you are not able to do everything as you would like. Do what you are able to do. The Lord is not strict about minor details. He values diligence and purpose.”

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Saint Theophan the Recluse

heart of humus

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a heart of soil

“The sowing, germination and development of the Christian life differs in essence from the sowing, germination and development of the natural life. The difference is the result of the special character of the natural life and its relationship to our human nature. A man is not born a Christian, but becomes such after birth.

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The seed of Christ falls on a heart that is already beating.

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Since the natural man is fallen, he is opposed to the demands of Christianity. In a plant, however, the beginning of life is the stirring sprout in the seed, an awakening of dormant powers.

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The beginning of a true Christian life in man is a kind of re-creation and rebirth, an endowment of new powers and of new life.”

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Saint Theophan the Recluse

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eternal joy

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God is the one who gives us joy, and we should ascribe all our joy to Him.  But what about those times when my life is not joyful?  In a word, I am miserable.  We should pity the man who does not feel this joy and this celebration.  He loves only the earth.  He is in love with only rubbish and dung.  He gives God his debris, and when our heart produces only rubbish, it receives very much the same in return from God.

The soul that thirsts for God, on the other hand, is continually bathed in Divine Light.  The face of such a person becomes divinely luminous.  You see him and you ask yourself, could this man be Christ?

Thus the Christian becomes a strange spectacle, a Christ-bearer, a God-bearer, and a Spirit bearer.  He or she reveals the unsurpassable beauty of Christ.  And when Christ suddenly appears, resplendent in all His beauty, He fills one with joy, gladness and sweetness… Something strange takes place within us, something which cannot be grasped by human thought  And how could it be otherwise?  For our “desire for God transcends our desire for the world, and thus it cannot be satisfied by anything in the world”.

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Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra Monastery

sweet praise

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Psalms and Hymns

 

Psalmody is the ABC for beginners, progress for the more advanced, confirmation for the perfect, the voice of the Church. It makes festivals radiant; it creates mourning that is in accordance with God, for psalmody draws tears even from a heart of stone.

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Saint Ephraim the Syrian

 

Blessings as we usher in the Nativity Season

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Praise the Lord, for a psalm is a good thing;

Let praise be sweet to our God.

The Lord is building Jerusalem,

And He shall gather together the dispersion of Israel;

He heals the brokenhearted

And He binds up all their wounds.

He numbers the multitude of stars

And calls them all by name.

Great is our Lord, and great is His strength;

His understanding exceeds every measure.

The Lord raises up the gentle,

But humbles sinners to the ground.

Begin with thanksgiving to the Lord;

Sing to our God with the harp,

To Him who covers heaven with clouds,

Who prepares rain for the earth,

Who makes grass grow on the mountains

And the green growth for the service of men,

To Him who gives the cattle their food

And who gives food to the nestlings of ravens

When they call upon Him.

He shall not take pleasure in the strength of a horse,

Nor be pleased with the legs of a man;

The Lord is pleased with those who fear Him,

And with those who hope in His mercy.

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Psalm 146

 

walk with Christ into the Nativity

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-psalter-groupThe Psalter Prayer Book

Psalmody is calm of soul, author of peace.

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Psalmody is convenor of friendship, union of the separated, reconciliation of enemies.

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Saint Ephraim the Syrian on Psalmody

Tomorrow, November 15, ushers in the period of the Nativity Fast for Orthodox Christians.  This is a 40 day period leading up to the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Aside from amending and curtailing some of our physical nourishment, we also increase our spiritual nourishment, in the form of almsgiving, prayer and worship.  This is our time of preparation.

For more than a decade, I have been a part of an incredible group of women, who pray the psalter during the seasons of the Nativity and Great Lent.  It is a time of year, toward which we always look forward.  If you have never participated in a psalter prayer group, it is very easy to get one started.

The Psalter is the Book of Psalms broken into twenty groupings of psalms, called Kathisma’s.  It is not necessary to have twenty members in a psalter prayer group, but if you do, then the psalter is prayed in it’s entirety every day by the group.

It’s about twenty minutes to pray a Kathisma, but it is wonderful time to reorient oneself from the constant droning of what often becomes a hectic season of Christmas shopping, dashing here and there to holiday parties (which are no doubt fun times to spend with friends), and the overall commercialism of a season which no longer wants Christ in the midst of it.

So each day of praying the psalms becomes a twenty minute respite for calm of soul.

In praying the psalter, each woman also prays for one another and so psalmody within a psalter prayer group is absolutely the conveyor of friendship and union of the separated, because though we pray each in our own homes, we pray with oneness of soul uniting us in prayer.  Some members have moved out of the area over time, and so that makes these occasions of the year when come together again through the Psalms, all the more special.

By the end of the Nativity period, each woman will have prayed through the psalter twice and that is both a sober grounding and a blessing.

“It is the profound Christian persuasion that Christ walks within the psalms”(1)  and so it is a great joy to pray the psalms, as we walk with Christ on this journey toward His Incarnation.

Have a Blessed Nativity Season.

(1) Father Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms