The Church First, All Else After

The following is taken from a sermon by His Grace, Bishop Auxentios of Photiki.

[Now His Eminence, Bishop of Etna and Portland]

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VIII (1991), No. 4, pp. 1-2.

 

 

We are told in Scripture that, "Though the outward man perish, yet the inner man is renewed day by day" (II Corinthians 4:16). Again we read that, "...Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (St. Luke 9:24). We are told that there is no profit if a man should gain the whole world, yet lose his soul (St. Matthew 16:26). St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, summarizing this Scriptural teaching on the worth of the soul, tells us that it is "great ignorance" to adorn the body at the cost of the soul, which ought to have the majority of our attention and care.

In other words, the human soul is so precious that even the loss of the body for the sake of the soul pales before the unthinkable and frightful possibility of losing the soul out of excessive and unwarranted care for things worldly. Indeed, it is the soul which flourishes even as the body dies. The one priority in Christian life, then, that which rises above all other things, is our care for the human soul. And in that care, the Church, which nurtures and protects the human soul, must stand at the core of our human activity. As precious as the human soul and purchased by Divine Blood (Acts 20:28), the Church must become the focus of our worldly chores, since it serves the soul. All else must come after.

An Orthodoxy of minimalism. From all that I have said, it is obvious that we Orthodox, who claim to preserve inviolate the spirit and ethos of the Apostolic Church, cannot live a faith built on minimal commitments. To be Orthodox is to make the priorities of the soul—repentance, ascetic self-transformation, and union with God (θέωσις)— foremost in our lives and to center, focus, and concentrate all of our activities on the Church and Her self-transforming, life-giving, and deifying Mysteries. There is, for the true Christian, no other purpose in human life. All of the beauty, joy, and significance of the earthly realm are centered on and derived from the Church, through which they acquire an eternal quality, thus moving us up and away from the illusory qualities of the untransformed and unrestored world.

I once heard a fellow monastic tell an Orthodox Priest that his priorities in life should be as follows: the Church, his family, and his secular profession. With some astonishment, I saw the Priest object to this formula, maintaining that his Priesthood had to be integrated into these other pursuits. He in fact measured his Priesthood in terms of its minimal demands on his other activities. This Priest is certainly not alone in his misunderstanding of the nature of the Church, if only because it rests on a general misunderstanding of the Christian life.

We work in the world in order to sustain the body, so that it can serve God. If we avail ourselves of the comforts of the world, we do so in order to make more time for the spiritual life and to lift ourselves up above the curse of labor and toil that has befallen us in our imperfect state. If we have families, this is for the purpose of raising up our children for service to the Church. And if we are married and have the physical love of another human being, this love is only ultimately fulfilled when, as a mere image of our union in love with God, it prompts us to seek God and to share such limited and selfish family love with others.

If we have a profession, then this profession should always be understood as service to God. If it provides us with food and shelter, so that we have greater time for the Church, then it is God-pleasing. If our professions have provided us with education and learning, we must not use these gifts to exalt ourselves—indeed, no truly learned man is puffed up with what he knows, but is humbled by the mountain of things which he has come to realize that he does not know—; rather, we must let our education adorn the Church. We must sacrifice it to the Church. And if our earthly work brings us fame, fortune, or prestige, then we must surrender these things to the Church also, using what has come to us to help others come to the Church.

If we can live a life of celibacy, solitude, and sacrifice—even if only after trials and at the cost of our dreams about life and success in the world—, then we are obligated to seek this highest service to the Church: one of angelic purity in the monastic life. If God has, by His Grace, given us a healthy understanding of our own sexuality and has directed the desires of the flesh to serve the inner spiritual yearning of mankind for God, then we must heed the call of God, lay aside the fleeting and illusory priorities of the world, and follow Him. All else must follow after.

Every relationship in life, every responsibility in the world, and even life itself, are secondary to our service to the Church. A layman is bound by this rule, since the Royal Priesthood of believers exists in its exaltation of the new life that God has given us, one which demands that we put aside the life of sin and of the world and give ourselves over wholly to the needs of the soul and God's Church. A Priest is not only bound by this rule, but it is his task to exemplify it. If the household of the Church functions primarily to serve God, the servants of that household, the clergy, forego even the privileges of the household in order to bind themselves to God.

In minimalism, there is no Orthodoxy, as Father Georges Florovsky has so clearly said.

The soul and the Church are priorities which relegate all other things to a secondary or even tertiary place in genuine Christian life.

The practical life of Orthodox maximalism. We see in so-called "official" Orthodoxy—that is, an Orthodoxy which, on account of its deviation from a spirituality of commitment, is recognized by the heterodox and by the world—something which is neither official, nor genuine nor truly Orthodox. We see an Orthodoxy which has set aside fasting. (Indeed, not only do many Orthodox modernists reject the canonical foundations of our fasting traditions, but many so-called "Western Rite" Orthodox—and without reputable historical justification—have wholly dispensed with fasting as something "Eastern.") We see an Orthodoxy reduced to Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy on weekends—if that! We see an Orthodoxy in which worship during Great Week—one week out of the year!—has become too great a burden. Even Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, is made into a folk feast attached to the fewest possible hours of worship.

The modernists would tell us that their jobs, their families, and the "modern world" place demands on them that necessitate this kind of spiritual minimalism. In fact, however, the practical concerns of daily life must be approached from the standpoint of the Orthodox maximalism to which we have referred—from the perspective of a Faith which meets the demands of the soul and the Church, not those of the world.

Thus, if one's job or one's earthly pursuits impede, rather than accommodate and serve, the priorities of the spiritual life, it is the former pursuits which must be put aside, not the latter priorities. One should ideally hold employment which allows attendance at Church not only on weekends, but on major Holy Days. And certainly, one should arrange to have vacation days from work correspond at least to the activities of Great Week and Pascha. Vacations from work should not be seen as occasions for leisure or travel pleasures, but as a time in which one's service to the Church can be increased or when pilgrimages to monasteries and holy places can be arranged. If one's employment precludes this, then he should seek another livelihood. And if this means a decrease in one's standard of living— well, better a life lived in poverty than an eternity spent in spiritual deprivation.

The family must never place its aims and aspirations at odds with spiritual renewal and the life in Christ. It must to the maximum limit seek those things of God, even if it means that children forego worldly success and recognition. For if it profits a man nothing to lose his soul and gain the world, of what profit to any family are successful children who, in bonding themselves to goals and desires of the world, have alienated themselves from God? Of what profit a family which all of mankind admires but God and the eternal hosts lament?

As for the "modern world," let us remember the teachings of Christ about the Christian and this world: "...Ye are not of this world" (St. John 15:19), a world of evil, we are told, to which a Christian must not be conformed (Romans 12:2). And if it is true, as it is, that Jesus Christ is the same "yesterday, today, and unto the ages" (Hebrew 13:8), it is equally true that the evil world of yesteryear is the same evil world in which we live today and which to tomorrow's "modern world" will be yet another yesteryear. Orthodox maximalism places a priority on the needs of the soul and the Church, two eternal things that are far removed from the vicissitudes, whims, or wants of any single age. The practical realization of the faith in its fullness demands of today's man what it did of yesterday's and what it will of tomorrow's.

The one priority. The salvation of the soul, victory over sin, and union with God, we have said, are the goals of human life. In attaining these goals, fasting, prayer, and separation from the world (the good work of God's peculiar people [Titus 2:14])— that is, the life of the Church—must guide us and must be foremost in our minds. If we attend to the soul first and make the center of our activities the ascetic practices of the Church, the world must of necessity come second. The world lies in sin and self-indulgence, whereas the Church teaches self- discipline and ascetic struggle. The world corrupts and stains the soul, while the Church restores it and cleanses it from stain. The union of man with God, the priority of the soul in Christian life, stands on the foundation of commitment to the Church.

This one priority must never be clouded by the priorities of fallen human life. If, in the name of ecumenical love and union with our fellow man, we set aside the exactitude of Church teachings, then we compromise the greater union: the union of man with God. Millions of united men have no significance before a single man united with God. For from united human beings flow forth the imperfect priorities of fallen man. But from one man united to God, there flow forth, in unceasing streams, constant exhortations that humankind return to the likeness of God, to the sinless life of eternal joy, and to the one priority in human life that renders all else meaningless. It is to this truth of the Christian Church, slandered and betrayed, that we owe faith.