The Question of Lent

For some the season of Lent might mean a time of lamentation and deprivation. For others it has little or no significance except that it precedes Pascha (Easter).
For me, it is a time of deep reflection, the opportunity each year for renewal and ultimately of joy.

It is the time when we can (and should) examine ourselves and ask serious questions. Most especially to ask ourselves, "Am I being saved?" Not, "Am I saved?" but "Am I being saved?"
We know our salvation is not a one-time event but an ongoing conversion - a progression of being transformed and perfected in the Image and Likeness of Christ.

Do we reflect the manners of Christ in our mannerisms? Or do we treat others as obstacles to getting what we want? The kindness of Christ in our speaking? Or do we talk trash? The Face of Christ in our faces? Or do we walk around with a scowl? Are we so sensitive to offense that our conversation with our husband/wife/close friends is a monologue of the indignities we had to endure throughout a given day?

We often get pulled in so many directions throughout our daily activities that we struggle with remembering all the things we are supposed to do so we carry day planners and set alarms and ringtones on our cell phones to notify us of various appointments. I wonder how it would work if we set our cell phones to tone and display a note saying, "Be still, be silent, remember God and give Him your loving attention for the next 5 minutes."

I have said before that I am not a fan of resolutions because they are usually of a selfish nature and are rarely kept. I stand by that statement. However, if one is determined to make a ‘resolution’ Lent, it seems to me, is the better time to do it than New Year’s.
But in either case, we should use caution in deciding on these ‘resolutions’. We should be cautious in resolving to do something that we do not have some realistic notion of being able to carry through. This is often why we seem to fail. We set the bar too high. Most often, however, the things we seem to pick to ‘give up’ for Lent also just so happens to have ‘self-improvement’ qualities as well. We ‘give up’ sweets and desserts and it also helps us to lose weight. Convenient.
Are we really giving up the sweets and desserts for the sake of disciplining our appetites to encourage a greater hunger for God’s Presence? Or are we giving these up so we can say we gave something up for Lent and because we think we might be able to drop a few pounds and look better in our new Easter Sunday Best clothes?

We should examine our intent.

Many years ago I heard an Orthodox bishop tell a story during his homily. Perhaps it is a well-known story, perhaps not, I do not know. But I do know it made an impact on me at the time such that I have never forgotten it. The story goes that a young soldier in the army of Alexander the Great was accused of desertion in the face of the enemy during a campaign. The young soldier was caught by his superior officers and brought before the king. The young man was ashamed and afraid for his life and so kept his head bowed and stared at the ground. The king asked the young man his name. There was no answer. The king asked the same question several times with no answer and became angry. He got up, stood before the young man and drew his sword and asked once more, “What is your name?”
The quivering young man finally looked up and fearfully whispered, “My name is Alexander.” The king looked at him sternly, sheathed his sword and said to the youth, “Change your conduct or change your name.”

Although repentance is not confined to one season of the year, Lent is, for Christians, the time of opportunity to change our conduct, for we dare not change our name. Not if we want to live.

To isolate and focus on one particular aspect of our thinking or doing and to offer just that for God to change according to His Will may not seem very notable but it is the little things that so often cause us to stumble. “The devil belittles small sins; otherwise he cannot lead us into greater ones” (St. Mark the Ascetic).

These little things become like signposts pointing the way to the answer of “Am I being saved?”
The activity of Grace in our lives and the progress we think should ensue often seems to happen very slowly or in ways that are seemingly insignificant. The Holy Trinity is always working. Christ is ever working, drawing us to the Father through Himself and in the Holy Spirit but it is we who resist. We resist in ways we don’t even realize and so it takes some effort on our part to cooperate with Grace. That cooperation often takes some not so pleasant forms. It may take the form of simply remaining silent when someone offends us. Or it may take the form of doing something even when we don’t feel like it. I suspect there are many opportunities of Grace that I have missed out on simply because, when it came to being somewhere or doing some thing, I didn’t feel like it. Our Christian lives are not based on how we feel. How we feel has nothing to do with Am I being saved?
We may not feel like going to church or participating in the Liturgy at any given time, but are we being saved when we don’t?

A change of heart (metanoia) is the essence of repentance and should be a continuing condition. Our conduct and attitude is a reflection of this inner state of our heart and the disposition of our heart is, in turn, influenced by our thinking and doing. As Fr. Stephen has profoundly noted: “The heart changes in the crucible of our actions. Generosity and kindness are begotten of generosity and kindness”.

But our actions are always preceded by thoughts, as St. Mark the Ascetic affirms: “When you sin, blame your thought, not your action. For had your intellect not run ahead, your body would not have followed.”

We should discriminate in what we give our attention to.

Feeding the intellect a steady diet of gratuitous violence, horror, bloodshed, sex, greed and hypocrisy and calling it ‘entertainment’ will certainly beget something in us but it most likely will not be generosity, kindness or humility. Or love.
I tend to think there is a lot more to that old cartoon of the three monkeys with their hands over their eyes, ears and mouth – See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil – than many of us would care to admit.

Are we being saved?
Are we being saved in our marriage relationship? In our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ? In our church? In our monastic community? In our Vows?
These are hard questions that cannot be answered with excuses.

Christ emptied Himself that we may receive His Fullness. He continues to empty Himself and we are not worthy of His Emptiness nor His Fullness. We are not worthy of such a Saviour, of such a King … of such a God!
May our journey through Lent prepare our hearts to meet the Answer.

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Not Exactly A Follow-Up

In my three previous Speech Therapy posts, I made passing references to Multiculturism and Political Correctness, (both of which I hold in utter contempt). I did not expound on these in depth, largely because I recognize my own lack of ability to do so. Happily, I discovered this wonderful piece which expounds on these topics quite well.

Frank Ellis -- Multiculturalism and Marxism



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Speech Therapy - End Game.

"As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings. []
The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say 'I'm as good as you'. []
The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid resounding lie. []
No man who says 'I'm as good as you' believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholor to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. []
Now this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to the humans for thousands of years."

--- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

Mister Clive Staples Lewis was translated from this life in 1963. He did not live in this life long enough to witness the full onslought and subsequent effects of the 'sexual revolution', feminism, multiculturism, globalism, political correctness and the like. But he certainly, so it seems to me, saw the beginnings of these things which is apparent in his writings, particularly the work I have quoted from in these three posts. I tend to think he was gifted with a certain prophetic insight.

I have focused in these three posts on the corruption of our common vernacular in the hopes of arousing awareness of the types of words and phrases in common use and to inspire, perhaps, a greater caution in what we say and how we say it.

The state of our current society makes it a rather difficult task to simply not participate in what is regarded as acceptable terminology; simply not participating is a little harder than yielding to the urge to correct someone else's way of speaking. It's always easier to correct someone else than to correct ourselves but with ourselves we must start. A heightened sense of awareness of the changeable nature of things comes, first and foremost, by Grace but we also must cooperate with that Grace in order that it might become active within us. The guarding of the heart and the spiritual intellect against the constant bombardment of the senses by the hypocrisy, disinformation and moral degenerateness disseminated through various media forms challenges us to be very discriminating in what we give our attention to - and why.
Most of us (including myself) have probably given little thought to the subliminal messages we receive through our favorite television programs and other forms of 'entertainment'. We have unknowingly become catechumens of the doctrines of political correctness and multiculturism which influences our way of thinking, speaking and in some cases, behaving.

We have become overtly sensitive to things that (in the End) will not matter and desensitized to the things that do and will matter. It is no longer enough to "... let your 'yes' be yes and your 'no' be no"; we have to 'qualify' everything we say simply because no one (except perhaps those somewhat perfected in humility) are ever willing to accept a direct statement or answer they do not agree with - even if it is the truth. To give a simple and direct response is to most often be continually coerced to qualify every aspect of a given statement, resulting in the statement being dissipated into subjectiveness and rendered meaningless.

The late comedian George Carlin, (upon whom be Peace) notwithstanding his usual habit of flagrant vulgarity, had an amusing observation in one of his routines when he noted that we can no longer refer to a person as "fat" - they are "gravitationally enhanced", nor "short" just "vertically challenged", not "ignorant" but "intellectually deficient". Amusing but absurd, which was his point. Where have all the adulterers and fornicators gone? They're still here, we just call them 'polyamorous' now.

There is a women's clothing store in my area by the name of "Catherine's Plus Sizes" which has been in business for many years. I can remember back when the original name of it was "Catherine's Stout Shop". 'Stout' gave way to 'Plus', no doubt due to someone thinking their business would benefit from a word adjustment that does not draw strict attention to the simple reality that overweight women need larger size clothing. Or perhaps someone suddenly realized that the word 'stout' classically means 1): proud, fierce, brave; strong in body or build or 2): strong beer. Plus, using the word 'plus' gives the nicer connotation of something being added to something else, something being gained. This is quite clever since it vaguely conveys truth at the same time it does not offend vanity. This kind of word-play is what passes for "truth in advertising". There are many such examples. Vanity and Envy are kissing cousins and their song is "I'm as good as you".

It is also interesting to note an example of the vocabulary of de-sensitization.
Realizing that science has, over the course of time, developed and assigned specific clinical terms to specific things for specific reasons, one still has to wonder what exactly was going on in the room when they came up with some of these words.
An article on human reproduction offers the following:

"A genetically unique entity is formed shortly after conception, called a zygote."

"5 days or so after conception: The grouping of cells are now called a blastocyst."

"13-14 days after conception ... now referred to as an embryo."

"10 weeks it becomes a fetus."

These terms, in their original clinical context, are probably harmless.
Where they have done great harm, I think, is in using them to avoid referring to a human baby as a human baby. It is far more palatable to say we are going to aspirate the zygote/blastocyst/embryo or abort the fetus than it is to say we are going to murder your baby (at whatever stage of development it may be).
I believe these words have been deliberately employed by the abortion industry to de-sensitize people and lead them to believe that what they are destroying is something less than human.
It is shameful.

Just as shameful (if not more so) is how the word "God" is used with such flippancy.
"Oh-My-G*d" has become a popular exclamation and along with the age-old favorite has become the habitual methods of taking the Lord's Name in vain.
God is not an exclamation, a curse or the distributor of damnation.
God is Person and Presence. He is Beauty and Love and Goodness. "I AM God", He says, and there is no other." Someone might contend that the word "god" (especially with a small "g") is not, according to English grammar, a proper name. Perhaps that's true. But what then do we mean when we say it? Are we invoking a "god"? Cursing a "god"? What are we thinking? Obviously we are not thinking. We are reacting - badly. We have heard these expressions (and even used them ourselves) so much for so long we have become anesthetized to blasphemy.
Old Uncle Screwtape and company must be overjoyed. They are most surely not offended.

Now wheresoever Envy and Vanity doth go, the child called Offense surely follows and the "I'm as good as you" chorus reaches its crescendo.
It seems we get offended by a great many things, some more so than others. Some folks carry around so much emotional and/or ideological baggage that one is hard-pressed to come up with anything to say that will not cause sadness or anger. As far as it depends on me I try diligently to never offend anyone but inevitably it happens. When it does and I am made aware of it I ask forgiveness. If we do not love and forgive each other everything falls apart.
It is good to be sensitive to causing offense if Christ's humility is the motivation. If, on the other hand, the motivation is fear of retaliation or litigation, it is vanity.

I am entirely responsible for what I say and what I do.
I am not responsible for how someone perceives what I say or do.

Offense is a choice.

I always have the choice of whether or not I am offended by some one or some thing.
If I can remember this by keeping a constant awareness of God's loving Presence, then so many, many things that trouble me are revealed for what they are - vanity - and they no longer hold power over me.
Taking offense at social, religious, national or historic symbols; colloquial, ethnic or political terms and other such things, more often than not (if one is really honest with oneself), springs from the ground of Envy and Vanity. Whatever we say on such occasions, however we react, is usually just another form or way of saying "I'm as good as you."

There are forces at work in this world whose sole ambition is to create and maintain a fertile breeding ground for Envy, Vanity and Offense.

Some (I do not say all) who have appointed themselves as champions of the proverbial ‘plight of the poor’ really do not care all that much about the poor or their condition. They use their Christianity as a means to an end. At the core of the thrust behind the attitude and agenda of “soaking the rich”, “spreading the wealth around”, “affirmative action” “gay rights”, "universal healthcare", the "Green" movement, "Global Warming", etc, is the basic feeling of --- “I’m as good as you.”

Uncle Screwtape (that crafty old demon) really had it pinned down when he said, “… We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything --- even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game”.

I believe it is time to stop playing the game.
Stop playing the game of class (and every other form of) envy.
Stop playing the game of “I’m as good as you” vanity.
Stop playing the game of offense and instead be grateful.

“Hold on to what is good. Return no one evil for evil. Strengthen the fainthearted. Support the weak. Help the suffering”.

But let us do these things ourselves, personally, as much as we are able, motivated by the joy of the Holy Spirit. This will change the world more effectively than any government program or legislation.

I am not as good as you and I don’t have to be, because I know God and love Him and am loved by Him. And that’s all that really matters.

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Speech Therapy - Part Two

"You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. [] As a result you can use the word ... to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings. You can get him to practice, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided."


--- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.



Lewis' focus in this passage was on the word democracy but the implications here go far beyond that. The types and choices of words we use in speaking has been subtly manipulated by political, academic and media elites to the point of creating a universal assumption. This same assumption is continually perpetuated by the same elites and we buy into it without question. Why? Well, it must be true of course. After all, the politicians talk that way (they never answer a direct question directly so they must be really smart). Those college and university professors, doctors and lawyers with all the MD's and DD's and PhD's after their names talk that way cause they're experts don't you know! Besides, they're on TV so they must be important.

My intent is most certainly not to disparage academic disciplines nor the people who practice them nor do I mean to suggest that all politicians are wicked or that all news journalists are dishonest. My intent is to point out that linguistic development over the last fifty or so years has taken a definite turn for the worse and our thinking and behaving is following suit.

Under the guise of 'political correctness' (the abominable spawn of the equally abominable 'multiculturism') we have been duped into accepting (even if subliminally) ideas, lifestyles and behaviours that, were it not for the introduction or manipulation of certain 'magic' words might have remained universally derided and modestly hidden.

Gay and Gender - two words that have morphed into something totally other than their original meanings and enthroned themselves with their morphed meanings into common speech to the point that no one hardly gives it a second thought.

Gay, by classical definition means, "mirthful, merry; bright-coloured, showy".

Likewise, Gender, classically has never had any other application outside of it's grammatical context: "kind, sort; any of the three 'kinds', masculine, feminine and neuter, of nouns, adjectives and pronouns".

I fail to see where this has any relation whatever to those afflicted with the desire to practice sodomy. In fact, according to R.V. Young, Professor of English at North Carolina State University:

"This English word [homosexual] is itself a very recent coinage. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both “homosexual” and “homosexuality” first appeared in English in 1892, along with “heterosexual” and “heterosexuality,” in an English translation of Richard von Kraft-Ebing’s Psychopathologia Sexualis (1886) and turn up again five years later in Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
In other words, only in the late nineteenth century, when physicians began discussing sexual perversion as a medical rather than a moral problem in Latin treatises intended only for the learned and required a neutral, clinical term, was there a perceived need to refer to “homosexuality.” Moreover, it is not at all clear that the originators of the term had precisely in mind what is usually meant by “homosexuality” in contemporary parlance.

Yet, our contemporary parlance has universally adopted these words with their morphed meanings. Gender has come to mean the distinction between male and female and the word sex has become an action. Professor Young goes on to explain:

"The imposition upon an ingenuous public of the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” required a prior bit of linguistic legerdemain, namely, the redefinition of “sex” and the displacement of its principal original function by the term “gender.”
Latin provides the root (sexus or secus, probably from “cut” or “sever,” but more pertinently to “divide” or “halve”) for the English word “sex” and for its Romance language equivalents. Since the twentieth century, the word “sex” first evokes the specific notion of sexual intercourse and everything associated with it rather than the simple division of a species into male and female, or the division of humanity into men and women. “Sex” now means primarily an activity rather than a state of being, as in the awkward and ugly, but ubiquitous, phrase, “having sex” (of which the OED attributes the first usage to D. H. Lawrence in 1929).
Once “sex” had acquired this new semantic profile, it became easier to substitute “gender” for “sex” as the denomination of the difference between male and female, man and woman. If the first change, however, was the gradual result of recreation replacing reproduction as the principal association of “sex” in Western culture, the introduction of “gender” as the differentiating term was deliberate and fraught with ideological baggage." []

"Before the sixties, “gender” was largely confined to marking the distinctions between “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter” nouns and pronouns in various languages. The gender of a noun is quite often purely arbitrary or, if you will, “socially constructed”; that is, there is no particular reason why the Spanish word for pen (la pluma) is “feminine” while a pencil (el lápiz) is “masculine.” Or why in Latin, French, and Spanish the hand (manus, la main, la mano) is “feminine,” while the foot (pes, le pied, el pie) is “masculine.”
The application of the term “gender” to the difference between men and women thus implies, without the argument ever being made, that the differential roles of men and women in family and society are as arbitrary as the gender of nouns. The routine use of “gender” to identify as men or women, test-takers, applicants for driver’s licenses and insurance policies, and virtually all those who fill out almost any kind of document marks the bureaucratic imposition of the feminist view of the sexes on society as a whole."

Part of the tragedy of this imposition, so it seems to me, is the upheaval it has brought about within Christianity concerning the role of women in the Church. Some say women can serve as ministers/pastors/priests, some say no. Theological arguments and theoretical cases both for and against abound but my point here is not to make a case either for or against women's ordination. My point is to draw attention to how two separate issues - women's ordination and approval of the sodomitical lifestyle in the Church - has become, in a Siamese twin-like relationship, a single issue. If one makes an in-depth search of the myriad churches/religious organizations calling themselves Christian who permit or approve of women's ordination, one will find that nine out of ten times the same group will also approve/accept/ordain sodomites (although there are a few exceptions). Accompanied by the magic words of "social justice", "inclusiveness", "equality", the sodomite ideological agenda has attached itself to the feminist ideological agenda and the two are happily causing chaos across the ecclesiological board.

This need not be so. These are two separate issues and should be treated as such. One is essential to salvation and the other is not. As a priest whom I know and love once remarked, "It is entirely possible to be a practicing woman and be without sin". I personally know and believe that there are many orthodox Christian women who have a valid priestly vocation. Whether they act on this or not depends on their own decision to pursue it and finding an orthodox Christian jurisdiction that has a need for such ministry and willing to permit it but without the ideological baggage. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of public example that gives reason for the scepticism surrounding the women's ordination issue but there are good examples also, perhaps just not as public. Let each case be treated on its own merits and without universal assumptions predicated on "linguistic legerdemain".

Professor Young again: The words in which we express our ideas have consequences. To insist that words be used rationally and consistently is a first small step toward recovering moral reason. We should, therefore, refuse to accept “gender” as a relativistic substitute for the fundamental difference indicated by “sex,” while the latter term is expropriated to mean any kind of physical coupling. Above all, we should not acquiesce in the labels “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” when we are referring to men and women.
To concede the validity of such linguistic novelties is to allow the ideologues of the sexual revolution to control the terms of the debate. “Male” and “female,” “masculine” and “feminine,” designate normative components of actual human nature: anatomical, physiological, affective, and rational. []

"No really existing class of persons of a specific, distinct nature corresponds to the word “homosexual” in the way that men and women are distinct, complementary kinds of human being. A claim for specific “homosexual rights” is, therefore, frivolous, and the word is merely an ideological construct aimed at undermining the sexual norms inscribed in human nature".

We Christians should be acutely aware of the words and phrases we use to communicate - verbal and written - and especially in everyday conversation. To commonly use such terms as 'gay', 'lesbian', 'transgender' and even 'homosexual' in their modern socially constructed meanings is the same as granting credibility, acknowledgement and (implied) acceptance of modern immoral social constructs. We simply do not have to play this game.

Now some may contend that this is unrealistic, especially in the context of the modern workplace. I do not think so. And I certainly do not advocate the usage of vulgar, slang or otherwise unkind words when referring to anyone, no matter who or what they are. Nor do I mean to suggest useless chatter filled with pointless platitudes (although in some situations this may actually be useful if not the safest thing to do). But in all cases let us choose words of love, words of mercy and words that heal and let our silence speak to the rest.

"It is better to remain silent and to be than to talk and not be. Teaching is good if the teacher also acts. Now there was one Teacher Who 'spoke and it was made', and even what He did in silence is worthy of the Father. He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to His silence, in order to be perfect, that he may act through his speech and be known by his silence." ---

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians.

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The full text of R.V. Young's article may be found here:

Touchstone Archives: The Gay Invention