These are reflections from a Hermitage with standing in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. They are not intended for parish churches but are rather snapshots of the spiritual life as the hermits understand it. They are offered in friendship to those who also strive for Christian conversion. We take to heart St. Paul's words:
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And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Rom 2:12) |
And we follow the teachings of St. John the Theologian, having little contact with the secular world, only to the extent of ministry and farm business. The hermits do not participate socially, are not registered to vote, nor does the Hermitage have radio, television, or newspapers. The few people who do visit (mostly nuns, monks, and clergy) seek peace and sanctuary from the fever of the world. The Hermitage Farm, an enclosure of eight acres, is set apart for prayer and agricultural labors. The lives of the hermits revolve around our temple, Our Lady of the Angels, where our podcasts are recorded.
Following the precedent of the pre-history Irish and Scottish saints, the Hermitage has retreated from the world. Like our forebears who eluded Roman influence, the Hermitage is situated on the edge of the earth (an island most remote from any major land mass); at the end of the day, nearly 180° from the prime meridian; and removed from the secular world by thirteen days, following the Holy Calendar of Jesus and the Apostles. Humbly following the example of our forebears, we practice monastic life, serious study, spiritual writing, and labors on a farm — all done in a desire to stay pure that we might approach the light of Christ and share it .... in our case by means of the internet.
Americans say they want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But without God, none of these things will be possible. Without God is only death, enslavement, and eternal regret. C. S. Lewis wrote that "Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
We do not suggest that God penalizes us for straying from Him. His heart is only to bless. He has always already predestined all to Heaven. But He has given us the precious gift of freedom, which equates to sovereignty over our lives. We have the final say. The destinations we choose are of our own devising. Freely, we may reject Him and His marvelous world of holy life, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. Many have rejected Him. The place of willful separation from the family for which we were all born is called Hell.
What is the next thing people do when they encounter God? They seek to learn, to be guided, to compare notes. This is our ministry: to meet with these pilgrims, to offer guidance, to offer learning, and to assure them that the unbelievable things they have seen and heard are to be believed, indeed, are the only reality. This is the spirit of the "snapshots" we share. We pray they will be helpful.
If you appreciate the many hours of prayer and study which are the foundation for these reflections, please support our efforts as you can. We receive no funds from the Church. No one at the Hermitage receives any kind of salary, neither the Hermits or Board members of our non-profit corporation. Please be part of ceaseless work to bring godly life into a world descending into darkness.
Nota Bene:
The Hermitage grants permission to our readers & listeners to download our reflections
and pass them on to others.
Copyright © by the Holy Spirit.
Download Podcast: "You Shall See Angels"
Why do we call Archangel Michael, always depicted as a Man-at-arms, the "Prince of the Heavenly Host"? For that matter, why is the Synaxis of all Angels (or Bodiless Powers) called a host? In the first century the word host was intrinsically a military term. It had no other meaning. And the Angels are inherently warriors. That is their nature. Their God is called "the Lord of Hosts" more than 200 times in the Bible. That is, YHWH, their Master, is intrinsically a Warrior.
Heaven has has been marked (or should we say "gored") by rebellion, and earth, to which the vanquished fell, is a dangerous place. Accordingly, we are inducted into the ranks of God at our baptisms, swearing our allegiance to Him and declaring our everlasting enmity against the forces of Satan. It is right that this is the moment we receive our Guardian Angel. He is a guardsman and fitted to defend us.
St. Kosmas of Aetolian said without understatement that
Life is spiritual warfare. If you are not fighting, then you are losing.
This is the nature of things. We must struggle to attain the Kingdom of Heaven. For in our condition of freedom, warring impulses, a conflict among choices, a war between two minds is always the case. This is the nature of free will.
On this great feast day, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the Heavenly Host. Let us renew and refresh our baptismal vows, for this battle will rage until we consent to God. Till then we shall have no peace. How could we while God and His Angels must fight unending rebellion?
Download Podcast: "Two Ways There Are"
For centuries readers have marvelled at the Gospels for their awe-inspiring spareness. For the most expansive subject imaginable is expressed in so few words.
The subject matter before us is a case in point. Having revealed His Divine Identity, Jesus then openly displays His purposes — to expose the way of death and to invite all into the way of life. But there is so much to say: the way of Abraham and Melichizedek set against the blood-sacrificing Temple; the culture of the Northern Kingdom set against the ascendent Southern Kingdom; the traditions of Isaiah set against the Second Temple prophets; the ways of Heaven and servanthood set against the grasping culture of Sadducees; the Sermon on the Mount set against the Laws of Sinai .... the list is a long one that would occupy many hours to rehearse. Yet the sublime artist, St. Luke, renders it in a few scenes. He has opened the Divine to us through windows to Heaven.
Let us enter into this mysterious place where he has done so much with so little. Let us reflect, for he reveals the marvelous, the filled-with-grace, and he shows us the way to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Download Podcast: "God Among the Ruins"
Who could rise to the heights of telling this most extraordinary tale in human history? God roams the ruins of the world that He made. His people are demon-possessed, wholly entranced by the lowest things in their nature, feeding on the garbage of their animality. They tread the path that leads to incurable disease and eternal death. To make matters worse, they are inured to worshiping a god, who is not Himself. Indeed, the forgotten true worship, mindlessly offering blood sacrifices and forbidden to mention His Name. How can He turn them away from these vile habits? How can He rouse their spirits from these deadly stupors? How can He turn their faces back towards Heaven?
To tell this tale one had to draw on all that learning and spiritual journey had to teach. One had to draw on the highest rhetoric that could be mastered. And one more thing: one had to be elevated by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The erudite and highly literate physician Luke had a vocation to write a Holy Gospel. He was the master of many fields ranging from what we would call the sciences, the fine arts, and the liberal arts, including philology and an interest in Hebrew culture. We have spoken about his painterly style of writing. Today, let us reflect on more of St. Luke's gifts. For He was chosen by God to offer to us a dazzling work of his deepest arts.
Download Podcast: "All There Is"
Here in the week when we venerate the Evangelist and (with St. Paul) Apostle, St. Luke, we again reflect on one of his icons written with words. Aside from his works as a painter of icons, his written Gospel is a veritable icon book.
The present artwork is an icon of all there is. In it are depicted God's principal creations, where are boundless and eternal Hell and infinite and everlasting Heaven. Included is that limited and temporary creation we call "the world." And one more thing: the creation for which God mysteriously has made all: Man.
Our Gospel lesson presents what is perhaps Luke's primary icon. Not only does it include everything, but it also presents us with a paradox which goes to the very heart of God's Creative Genius.
Please join us as we gaze on St. Luke's divinely ingenius art imitating His Master.
Download Podcast: "The Un-secret"
Today, we reflect on a world intent on destroying the holy, brought into sharp focus by iconoclasm, which literally means "to smash icons." The Second Council of Nicaea (seventh in the sequence) was convoked to settle this controversy which threatened to rupture the Church.
Icons are not art. They are not the comforting familiar. They are the un-secret. They are the eyes of eternity looking out on the unredeemed world and on the world's desperate attempts to paper over the unspeakable and to domesticate the unutterable.
And in our grave sins against God, vainly eradicating the holy (as if we ever could) — whether they cry out to Heaven from eighth-century Byzantium or from Soviet atheism burning churches, smashing icons, and murdering 100,000 clergy or, in our own time, defiling and desecrating the Eucharist in giddy public ceremonies .... — be sure of this: the sober eyes of eternity look on. They continue their holy witness, and they set out a mirror to us disclosing the real even as we frantically attempt to conceal our true natures, the true meaning of life, and the ultimate reality of everything.
But the eighth century has vanished like a dream, and all empires turn to dust. Without fail, the eyes of the Holy Ones look on forever from perfect light. In the poet's words,
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An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick .... O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. (William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium") |
Download Podcast: "Upon God's Holy Mountain"
When it comes to Scripture, we are often "text-oriented," using individual words to open hidden roads from passage to passage. But St. Luke, our proto-icon-painter, departs from the other Evangelists conspicuously conceiving these holy events in term of images revealing divine mysteries.
Now, this is not news to our readers. We have been exploring this aspect of Luke's art for the past ten years: his two, companion icons (a dyptich) of Gabriel's divine visitation to Zacharias and then to Mary; his depiction of Pentecost as an "operatic" stage set featuring a locked upper room opening out onto a many-peopled Jerusalem — sweeping, grand spectacle; his other "arias," assigned to Mary (the "Magnificat,"), to Zacharias (the "Benedictus"), and to Simeon (the "Nunc Dimittis"), anticipating grand opera by more than a thousand years.
Last week, we were again ushered into the holy precincits of his expansive art, taking in another dyptich: Last week, we were again ushered in before a great dyptich, the Sermon on the Mount hinged beside the fiery summit of Mount Sinai. St. Luke actually depicted only the former. The latter he implied. But the contrast between them was the mystery he sought to unlock. The work could well have been titled "God upon His Holy Mountain" — a bold contrast between the God-Who-Is, Who-Is-with-Us, and the distant, forbidding figure worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple.
But it is not a simple contrast: the Laws the Lord Jesus gives from the Mount are not less rigorous but rather more so: prohibitions not merely on murder but even on anger, not merely on adultery but even on lust or sexual fantasy, not merely on false witness but even on giving any oath. We are to love our enemies and do good to those who mean us harm. The point of the two-paneled icon is, God does not seek merely slavish rule-followers. He seeks friends (Jn 15:15). He wants to transform our hearts that we might enter into true fellowship with Him, indeed, that we might become His adopted children.
The image of the mountain is crucial if we are to understand the following chapter, Chapter 7, as we find Him roaming about Galilee doing what we might call "the works of the Holy Mountain": — healing incurable diseases, raising the dead, and announcing the good news.
How beautiful upon the mountains,
Are the feet of him who brings good news ....
Download Podcast: "Under Her Mantle"
We at the Hermitage live only two timezones from the eastern shores of the Russian Land but about 7,000 miles from Moscow (such if the breadth of the Russia). But we join them today in a blessed Feast venerating the the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos. In Russia, the hustle and bustle of daily life stops in order to bow before our Most Holy Mother, but in personal terms. From individual apartments in Moscow to snow-covered cabins in the Taiga, people draw near to her in her icons and speak to their Most Holy Mother. For it is Her care for us, Her desire that we come to no harm, which we reverence.
The Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos is among the most beloved of feasts among the Slavic peoples. The signature cathedral which we associate with Russia, called St. Basil's in Red Square, is formally known as Pokrovsky Sobor. The Russian word pokrov meaning "cover" generically but in particular on this feast day, "mantle" or "veil." The Most Holy Mother of God shelters us "under Her mantle" and under the protection of Her intercessory prayers — all expressed in this word, pokrov.
On this day especially, remember Your Most Blessed Mother. Her prayer is simple: that each of us be the apple of Her eye and that each live under the shadow of Her wing.
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Pray for us, O Most Holy Protectress!
Keep us under your holy Mantle! Help us to grow into the fullness of your prayers! Help us to become worthy of the promises of Your Son! |
Download Podcast: "God's Kind"
For centuries people who do not necessarily believe in God have pressed Jesus into service as their spokesman. He is the "apostle of kindness," they say. And the Gospels form the world's classic text on being kind. But here is a surprise: the words "kind" and "kindness" in their sense of gentle compassion appear only once in the Gospels: Luke 6:35, and there as part of a distinctly otherworldly discourse. As countless writers have pointed out, the Incarnation of God was not to offer advice on virtuous living in the world. In fact, the opposite is true. The Life of Jesus calls us away from the world to an entirely different kind of life — a marvelous Kingdom which Jesus says over and over again is plainly not compatible with worldly ways.
No question, Jesus teaches us. Certainly, He calls to us. But He calls away from our worldly lives to be with Him far away from what we know to a new way of seeing and a new way of being.
Download Podcast: "The Holy Circle"
The secular way to account for the movement and motions of our planet with respect to the sun is marked by four annual events: the Winter Solstice (when the sun is farthest south); the Vernal Equinox (when the sun is over the equator); the Summer Solstice (when the sun is farther north); and the Autumnal Equinox (when sun is again over the equator), which we perceive to be its yearly journey. (All this is from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere because the people who first made these calculations did not know there was a Southern Hemisphere.)
But we Christians regard all such distinctions to be secondary, as things indifferent. We draw our measurements from things holy: the Annunciation signifying the Conception of God within the material Creation (readying us for His Nativity nine months later) and the Conception of His Forerunner (preparing us for his birth nine months later). In our way of seeing, their births, six months apart, mark the pivotal moments in the history of the world.
That these holy conceptions and holy births should occur at the four corners of the year might appear to be a wonderful timing of biological events. But I think of this as being even more basic, more elemental in the ordering of our world. That is, I believe that the very structure of everything we perceive is patterned upon Him, the Lord God Jesus Christ. That is, the Holy Ones come first, and our physical reality attends upon them. And why shouldn't this be the case? Why shouldn't the physical universe and movements of the heavens be about Jesus, the Logos? He created them. And they find their source and origin in Him Alone, Who was before all worlds.
Download Podcast: "Love Marriage"
The King of Heaven arranged a marriage for His Son.
This marriage to the world would be celebrated, would be solemnized, would be consecrated upon the Holy Cross. For what is the great difference between a God Who emptied Himself, the Suffering Servant, the All-Holy and Divine God humbling Himself unto earth and the Cross? What is the difference between a Passion that began at His Conception and lasted three decades and the sufferings of a few days?
On the Cross was perfected the terrible privations of this marriage. On the Cross was put on stark display the neglect and abuse that had been heaped upon God's Son from the time of His Birth. On the Cross was no longer hid the enormity of what the world had done — and all He endured that the world might be reconciled to Heaven. No, His marriage would not be to a comely and chaste bride, who deferred to His Royal character. But it would be a thing of sordid confusion, of defilement and degradation, of adulteries and treachery, and of common filth.
The Cross is the place where the twisted world must square with the perfect lineaments of Heaven. It is a place of unbearable torsion: where demons cry out, where oceans boil, and gales blow. It is .... the end of the world. Yet One has been sent as a Bridegroom Who presides over the world's end, Who will banish demons, Who stills the winds and calms the seas. And He bears with Him the instrument of His intrinsic rectitude: the Cross with its perfect geometry, where mercy intersects with justice. He saves the world with this Life-giving rightness, this sanity, this goodness.
Thus, the Cross endures as the symbol of the most heinous crime humanity is capable of and a world that is healed and reconciled to God. It is the symbol of God's faithfulness to the last and of a love that cannot fail. It is the sign and seal of His marriage.
He is Heaven, and Heaven is none other than He. He is Judge of the world and the measure of all things. He is the Alpha and the Omega. And He surveys the whole span of human experience — every darkness, every depravity, every failure. And it is His will that all things be made right. Even at the moment of our greatest crime against Him, yet He stretches His arms out to embrace His bride and to heal her with that fearful geometry we had designed as a torture for Him.
Download Podcast: "Take Up Your Cross"
What does it mean to pick up our crosses and follow Him? After all, this is a basic condition of becoming a Christian. It means that our worldly life, our old ways of seeing and being, must be crucified and killed. Our worldly selves must be buried and forgotten .... never to be monstrously dug up and revived.
We must go forward with a new way of seeing and hearing and being. We must clearly hear God when He speaks to us .... and reply. We must see Him clearly, free from polluting influences. Only by doing these things can we begin to follow Him and begin our journey to His marvelous Kingdom.
Download Podcast: "The Two Ways"
The proto-icon painter St. Luke has provided us with a dyptich — two hinged-together icons, each explicating the other. But he has painted them with words. His great theme is nothing less than the nominal purpose for the Incarnation of God, which is the gathering of the lost sheep.
Formally speaking, these icons are quite similar to each other: the barren couple. One couple is in a religious tradition which God deems to be a failure of faith. The other is in an exemplary religious tradition, representing the true ways and looking back to Abraham and Sarah, God's exemplars, which are types of the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet God will use both, the anti-type and the type, to set the stage for the salvation of humankind. Each, in its way, will surely be instructive for us, for they speak to our own age with its "check-list religion" on the one hand and the lively, religion of the heart and hand, on the other.
Come, let us appreciate the handiwork of the great icon-writer, St. Luke. And let us reflect on our lives as we gaze into these mirrors, which he has set out for us.
Download Podcast: "The Gates to Salvation"
Everyone is familiar with "the gate of life," for we have all passed through it. It is sacred and protected by God with holy commandments that it not be slighted or abused or defiled. On the contrary, we must revere this holy place and approach it with awe, for it has been set aside by God as a most holy sanctum. For the gate of life through which we all have passed to take our first breath in the world is the path God has prepared to effect our universal salvation. It is generational in all senses of that dynamic and life-giving word.
At the Nativity of our Most Holy Mother, let us ponder God's handiwork, which touches each of us personally yet reaches out in its meaning to Divine and cosmic dimensions. Let us step beyond our wonted ways and open our minds and hearts to God's way of perceiving and being. For this is the way of eternal life.
Download Podcast: "Won't the Books of Moses Save You?"
The young ruler's task is one set before all of us. The irony about true Christian life is that it is well within our reach. But it must always begins with a decision made at a crossroads: the things of the world or the things of God. St. John, our highest earthly authority, says it simply and plainly:
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Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world,
the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15) |
And the Teachings of the Apostles (the Didache) begins this way:
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In effect, Jesus says to the ruler of the Academy of Moses, "So, won't the Books of Moses save you?" There is something more, much more. We are invited not to read about the ascent to the summit of Sinai, but to ascend Mt. Sinai ourselves and to see God Face-to-face .... as even the synagogue ruler now does on a roadside somewhere in the Levant.