Writings

Saint Zoticos' Spiritual Library

"The trouble with normal is it always gets worse." A reflection: why our youth leave the church.
- Dec 2016
by Fr Roberto Ubertino & Fr Nicolaie Atitienei

A conversation has been going on in church circles since statistics revealed that in Orthodox churches throughout North America young people tend to leave the church around the age of 16. This has been also our experience here at St Silouan. There arose with this observation a feeling of grave concern in trying to understand this phenomena among those who are responsible for shepherding the community here on Broadview. While it is hard to address a North American problem, we can look closer to our home.

Over the years, I have tried to strike up a conversation with whoever would talk to me among the youth who left the church. What I have learned so far is that there is not just one reason. Frankly, no reason that would say to me, "Yes, the church failed this person and they had no choice but to leave." The reasons tend to be, for the most part, not well thought out, or more importantly what I would consider a free, personal decision. My sense is that for the most part, it's a circumstantial. The loss of faith is not so much a because of a crisis in that person's life but rather the consequence of a slow, imperceptible wearing-away and ultimately loss of the faith - something like being exposed to low-grade arsenic over a long period of time.

What is this slow, imperceptible loss of faith caused by? Patriarch Bartolomeos recently spoke about the "None" movement as being the most challenging of our time; especially among our young people. "None" refers to "none of the above," religions. It is a turning-away from all faiths without really taking the hard road of a committed atheistic life. It's a kind of soft atheism that still allows you the comfort of some kind of spirituality.

This soft atheism is much in vogue and almost everyone seems to be attracted in some way to it. Certainly, this slow erosion of true faith is nurtured in all the institutions our children are part of. We need to find a way to answer to the challenge that the "None" movement is. Part of the "None" phenomenon is that it teaches all of us that the church has nothing to say that is relevant to our life. For example, we have tried to have Bridges where reflection on common social problems were given a space for freedom of thought, freedom of information and freedom of expression, something that is becoming more and more rare for our youth to be exposed to - but with little success as far as interest within the parish demonstrates.

The other big factor in the erosion of faith is financial. Yes, we need money. The present social system is oppressive to most families and individuals. There is also more to this. We value money as a way to initiate our young people into adulthood, i.e., responsibility. Father Nicolaie reflecting on this commented "We value money in the way other more "primitive" societies had initiation rites". Getting your first job is the first step to becoming a man in our culture. Being an adult means, being independent. Some young people have confessed to me how they felt pressured at home to get a job when they turned 16. The reality is that today, in Canada, when a person gets a part-time job, it almost always will mean being absent from the Sunday liturgy. All parish events aimed at the youth become challenged by these other commitments. In particular, without the Sunday liturgy, their lives become easy prey to every kind of spiritual disease that is going around. Christianity is a faith that is meant to be lived in community. When we as parents encourage our children to make decisions about their lives that compromise this experience of regular church community life, we expose them to the inevitable reality that they will find themselves alone in what they believe.

This brings me to the last point. There is in our children a desire to be normal. As if normality was safe, sane and pleasurable. Yet, as the Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn reminds us, "the trouble with normal is it always gets worse." The reality is that our youth are suffering more than ever with depression and anxiety, and are plagued by the temptations of drug addiction and suicide at an alarming rate. Our so-called normality is actually scary. This is where we adult Orthodox practicing Christians need to ask ourselves: are we also not trying to be too normal? Are our values and priorities the same as everyone else's? Is our use of time, mind and money "normal"? We are not called to live in a religious ghetto, but neither are we bound and defined by the values of our present society, which is softly atheistic and radically non-religious. Christ has freed us from the need to be normal, and opened us up to the possibility to really know his Father, to love and be loved, and not just for a day but forever. Can we witness to our youth that money is not the same as being responsible? Can we not teach our children and youth that you can volunteer at the Mission and not be paid and still be a responsible person? Can they hear from us that there are other, more important values and realities that we as Christians are actually gifted to live. Not only to live for our own sake, but also for everyone else who is seeking to be so called "normal" and who ends up suffering beyond measure. So is there anything that we can offer of positive towards this challenge? YES!

We offer many varied opportunities to our youth to grow in the church.

The grace to experience liturgy within the context of a daily lived community life and mission in the world.

The opportunity at any age (younger the better) to come and serve the poor and learn first hand Orthodox mission life. We have three dedicated youth really focused on this ministry.

The training in our leadership program that begins this February.

Opportunity to live in community and away from home at Lorumel.

In the situation where financial necessity is a real concern we are committed to try to find paid work within our community for the youth who need it so they don't have to leave the church to find work in their teen age years.

Encouragement to consider diaconate, priesthood and lay missionary work as Sisters and Brothers of Mercy as a life choice.

Can we witness to our children our choices that manifest hope in the goodness of life, that take delight in the joy of the liturgy and in the presence of the Holy Spirit, in the community of the Church? Maybe we won't end up having lots of money, and maybe we will be called fools by the "normal" people, but we will give society the light and the flavor that it so desperately seeks and lacks.

Christ is baptized
In the Jordan!
+ back to top   |   Writings List



The Parish of the Poor
From Walking Humbly: The Holiness of the Poor, by Father Roberto Ubertino, Father Nicolaie Atitienei, Mary Marrocco & Paul Tadros; ©2017 by St. John the Compassionate Mission.

Each historical time has its own challenges. The Church does not exist in a vacuum, or in historical 'suspended animation.' It needs to be incarnated. In the life of the Church, monasteries and parishes have been the two places where most people experience what Salvation looks like, 'in real time.' The monasteries and parishes incarnate the truth of the Gospel for each generation.

St. John the Compassionate Mission is not trying to be innovative, but rather traditional, and returning to the original roots of what a parish life is simply meant to be. We don't try to be a monastery, even though there are aspects of parish life that are similar, like hospitality.

That most church buildings on our continent today are closed during the work week, and for the most part serve only a specific group of people, does not mean that the present manifestation of parish life has always been the norm. The present 'normal parish,' even with the best of liturgical performances, is not 'traditional.' It is an innovation to see the church as uniquely a 'worship center' for Sundays and feast days.

Nonetheless, this reflection is not about trying to correct anyone; we don't try to teach anyone anything. We are moved to reflect, and to seek to live out, the full potential of parish life, both on Broadview Avenue and Markham Road. What we are to reflect on is what parish life can look like, from the perspective of our own limited experience, and in the historical context in which we find ourselves. We must start from the understanding that the Church is not just in the heart of the world, but that the Church is the heart of the world. Therefore, a parish is not made up just of its 'membership' (however we define this), but includes everyone who lives around it, and who come to its doors for a variety of reasons. There are no outsiders for us in the parish. Therefore, the lives and concerns of all those around us belong to us, and are part of our concerns and care.

We need some reflection on this question, on who is in the Church, from dogmatic and pastoral points of view. In present-day Russia, for example, and as in most historical Orthodox nations, the Church claims a large part of the population: seventy-five percent Orthodox, yet only five percent of those regularly attend church. Even with only five percent of membership attending, the Church still acts and understands itself as being the church of the people. It seeks to minister to all in society, and to influence society. It is true that this is based on the ethnic and historical origins of this particular church. However, do not being human and attending church, for whatever everyday reason (like our Mission's 'breakfast people'), constitute being in the embrace of the Church? What about those who grew up with no religious formation? Are they not part of the Church also?

In other words, is not the Incarnation the basis for our understanding of where the boundaries of the Church are?

At compline, for example, I believe that when we pray for those who are absent, we are praying for all the people who through the day have come to the Mission, but for whatever reason are absent at that moment. For those who are absent for worthy reasons from the liturgy, could they not also include all those whom we pray for? Might this not also include those possessed by unclean spirits; those in jail; those in all kinds of tribulations, trials and trauma; those with mental and physical brokenness; and those with addiction?

As with monasteries, parishes in pagan lands are dynamic engines of renewal of people's lives (such as Ora et Labora), and even of evangelization of whole nations. The traditional model of evangelization that we see in the early Church, for example, with St. Eusebius of Vercelli (a strong supporter of the council of Nicaea), and by whom my ancestors claim to have been directly evangelized, was known for his deep compassion for the people around him. He wanted the Church to live in community, which included a strong commitment to communal poverty, with faithful men and women living together. From this 'center of parish life,' or 'mother church,' as it was called, northwestern Italy was evangelized. One of the earliest translations of the New Testament, dating from before Jerome's Vulgate, was done under Eusebius' authority in his effort to evangelize the local people.[1] He did this because he really cared for the people to whom he brought the Gospel.

I use this example so as not to repeat the same Basilian model of the famous 'Basiliad' (and those of other Eastern fathers), giving the false impression that this was the only such attempt in the life of the Church. It was a universal practice that in every diocese the Church would also have Houses of Hospitality. These were under the direct supervision or responsibility of the Bishop, who presided at the Eucharist. There was even a canon (now forgotten) of the council of Nicaea about this very practice.

The parish is the place where the Eucharist is served, offering the Eucharist Τὰ σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν σοὶ προσφέρομεν κατὰ πάντα καὶ διὰ πάντα ("for all and for the sake of all"). Therefore, and equally, those who through union with Christ in communion receive the Eucharist live out their lives "for all and for the sake of all": "Καὶ πάντων καὶ πασῶν" ("for each and every one").

It is not about keeping our doors open, to "those yet to be Orthodox." It is about being the Ark of Salvation for all, receiving each person — and especially the poor and marginalized — as another, as vicars of Christ. It was the unique and exclusive practice of the historical Church to care for all, and not just its members, that separated it from other contemporary charities. This was a revolutionary practice that would subvert the natural order of society, which was itself believed to have been established by the very gods.

Where was this new order most visible? It was visible in the Eucharist, where now even a slave could be the presider. In fact, it is this practice of universal love that was most in conflict with Roman society, values and civil religion. That is why Christians were called the first atheists.

Today, and it seems in paradox, the same so-called historical Church lives the opposite. In the minds of the average member of the clergy or the average person, it is secular society that is seen as being concerned for all, with the Church concerned only for itself. Nonetheless, the Eucharist calls us to receive and reach out to each person. But this welcome does not treat people as "ministry cases," but as true Brothers and Sisters on the journey, and on the walk toward the Kingdom. We are called to understand the heart of the human being, as made for God, regardless of where she or he is in their journey toward the Kingdom.

We can do this because the parish is primarily the place where the Eucharist is offered, and where those who offer it live their lives as living sacrifice, seeking also to become broken bread, for the life and salvation of all. Therefore, it is important that the celebration of the liturgy not be simply one of the many devotions of our life, another of the "five" ascetical practices of self-improvement, but rather the center, the beginning and end of all we do, are and want to become.

It is also necessary that we spend time in the chapel praying alone or in community, and in silence, prolonging the communion we have received, and offering our time, body and mind to Jesus, in a direct and simple way. This is also where we learn to listen and welcome each other and others, in the liturgy and after the liturgy. Without this silence, the liturgy after the liturgy can become just social work.

This sense that "the work" of the Church is to be the incarnation of the body of Christ cannot happen through us, unless we are inebriated by the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire that we receive in Communion. Equally in us, there must be a burning desire to let this fire burn in our whole being and through us, with all we welcome in the parish. This fire in us must burn: this cannot be stressed enough.

There is also a particular ascetical life that is proper to the parish life, and that is different from the life lived by those who are in monasteries. The difference is in the expression, but not in the essence or in its intensity. Communion is received not based on merit, but based on whether one is willing to try to live with God's help, with what one has received, and to become what we receive in communion. "Broken and shared, like this bread offered for all in all and for the sake of all": "Καὶ πάντων καὶ πασῶν" ("for each and every one").

The ascetism of the liturgy is to be vigilant, and we are not to make worship a 'form,' an end in itself. For the esthetical, music and beauty are important, but when they are separated from a desire to truly enlarge our hearts, and exclude no one from them, they become another form of idolatry. The aim of the ascetical life for those in the parish, as for those who live in monasteries, is exactly the same. This end, 'telion,' is universal love: a love that is boundless, and that excludes no one. Aphatia is not lack of sensitivity, but rather is a love that is not conditioned either by suffering or by pleasure. The end, the telion, is to exist as Christ, who exists in agony in the poor man, and will until the consummation of time.[2]

This universal love (to repeat until we get it) is based on the fact that the Liturgy is offered for ALL: "Τὰ σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν σοὶ προσφέρομεν κατὰ πάντα καὶ διὰ πάντα."

The exclusion of some from Communion is part of the discipline of the Church, but its intention is to reconcile, and not to push away forever the sinners. Even here, some who do not receive communion may be closer to Christ than those of us who do. We need canons to regulate the life of the visible Church, but we are in illusion (fantasia) if we think that they limit the work of the Spirit or completely define the Church. Father Nicolas Afanassieff has written well on the limits of Canon Law in Church life.[3] The present obsession with quoting the Pedalion seems to replace the fire of the Gospels and limit the understanding of the reality of the Church. It seems as if we all woke up one morning, specialists in Church canons!

Ascetical life, when in reference to the Eucharist, is understood as the way by which we can participate in God's kenotic love, and in the measure we can, given our sinfulness. Sinfulness is not about breaking rules, but about limiting our capacity to become the Eucharist. As a poor person in Scarborough reminded me, "Sin is what gets in the way of the way of Love." We touch the body of Christ in Communion, and we touch the Body of Christ in welcoming the poor person. How Christ is present in each person is not up to speculation, but rather we are to receive the body of Christ in faith and the fear of God with love: "Μετὰ φόβου Θεοῦ, πίστεως καὶ ἀγάπης προσέλθετε."

The poor will concretely help the parish be missionaries by their very presence, and they will keep the parish from being closed upon itself. If the poor are truly part of the parish, we won't need to find ways to reach out. They will challenge us in our understanding of the faith, and in the importance of the liturgy and all its dimensions. They will teach us that if Christ is not risen, than we know despair only.

The squabbles over jurisdictions, minute canons and rules take on a very different flavor in the context of real lives, with real problems and real suffering. The parish gives flavor and color to the lives of all those around her, and to those who come to her. You are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. The parish of the poor is about giving flavor to daily life, and not about making the whole world a pile of salt. It is about being a leaven, and making bread so people can eat, but without making everything into leaven.

Births, marriages, deaths, divorces, recent releases from jail, losses, homelessness, not having a family, being single: all sorts of human situations that today are so widely spread, find in the parish a place of welcome. In the parish, there is the offer and possibility of healing, or, at least, a physical place of no despair, and a place of hope.

The parish is a place of non-demanding welcome, as it was for Joe the other day, when he was starting to have the 'shakes' because he had not had a drink since the morning. He returned shortly after speaking to us, and with tears in his eyes he asked if I could give him a hug. He wept in my arms. I had not met Joe before. His hands, black from never washing, were trembling, and his face was deeply carved out by the years. Who had told him that this was a safe place where he, the unrepentant alcoholic, could finally break down and cry in the arms not of a man but of the Merciful Father? Was it not Christ who drew this man into the church that afternoon? All we had to do was open our arms to him. This was without saying a word, and without videos or instructional theological courses. We need to be there, so Christ can welcome them. That is all that it is asked of us.

This is why I have this real sense and certainty that when we bring the Eucharist in a place that is abandoned, Christ radiates through us, even in our defective ways and with all our limitations. When we celebrate the Liturgy, the Church comes to be in the midst of the people. The adventure is then in discovering the many ways this is true. Like the gospel says, "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather" (Matthew 24:28). People know where there is food, where to find bread, and where there is the water for their thirst. In the Eucharist present among us, the parish has the bread and the water people seek. Everything in the parish becomes Eucharistic. The table where we serve the meals, the door we open to welcome, the cup of friendship (the coffee mug), the listening, the resources we share, all come from the blessing of the Eucharist. We believe that the celebration of the Eucharist changes how people experience their lives. We can do this simply and humbly by letting Joe, for example, cry on our shoulders. We can also do this by sharing the cup of friendship with some lost newcomers just out of jail.

A lot of our work is not in what we say, but how we look at people. Words but also looks have a powerful effect on people and the so-called "outcomes." Today we can't say much any more to people. Too much is being said, and too many words are uttered, so that the Word has lost its power to convince.

What we can still do is change how we look at a person. We can look at a person with hope, in love and with faith, or we can be cynical and fatalistic. Harm reduction, for example, is a form of fatalism, masked under pseudo-compassion. Assisted suicide is another collective way to affirm that some people's lives are really not worth living. The list is long. The asceticism of parish life includes never looking at anyone with lust. In other words, it is to look at a person without only our personal interest or agenda at heart.

Cynicism, dismissal, fatalism and despair of the other are ways of looking at another with lust and not purity of heart. This warfare is at times very intense, because the temptations are real. You can only talk to the same drug addict high on coke for so many times. You can only bury people who overdosed so many times, and you can only bear the self-righteousness of the religious professionals for so long.

Only in the ascetical struggle to have a pure heart can we persevere to seek, to see correctly, and to see that in doing this it is promised that we will see God. The gospel assures that those with purity of heart will see God. They will see God, where others see only despair, ugliness, death, and lack of any value. We must struggle in prayer and fasting, for this purity of vision of the heart. Orthodoxy is not just about having the truth, but being able to see God, truly.

Fasting and prayer are of course very powerful means, but the test of the authenticity of our prayer and fasting is in how well we see the poor and the things around us. Do we see God, or just our own frustrations, judgments and self-interests. Is our heart so enlarged that it can hold hope for all? Without this purity of heart and vision of God, we will grow tired and become a simple institution that serves itself. We will not be the parish that incarnates the Eucharist through its daily life. The parish is then the body of God in a particular place, among "these people." This is the Eucharist that is the fulfillment of the world.

The parish priest is at the heart of this community. He speaks the words of Christ and does the acts of Christ. He offers the sacrifice and gives it to us, so we may become it. Everyone in the parish, who with the priest offer the Eucharist, is called to live out this movement of offering. We must encourage the many charisms that are present in the parish, that manifest the richness of this life, and that are offered to the world. All who in some way are part of the parish, even if not as communicants, by virtue of their humanity share a desire to even just take refuge in the parish, as part of the Church.

They do carry the "mystery" (mysterium tremendum) within them, especially the poor and the vulnerable. We must not see them as "not yet Orthodox," for really only God knows who is Orthodox and who is not, as Blessed Augustine reminded people in his city many centuries ago.

Maybe it is me and not Joe who is "not yet Orthodox."

People today no longer believe in or have ever known unconditional love. Even our desire to want to change another, as a starter in our conversation, will do damage to their heart, and will smell like everything else in the world. Only God is so rich in Mercy that he can love us, and welcome each of us with no demands. We are to witness to this Apathia, this love, not because of gain, or an agenda, or even a holy agenda, but simply because first of all there is Love.

Christ loves Joe, so I can just love him as he is. This often means suffering with, loving, and letting the suffering in! I need to hold in my heart this truth, especially if Joe has forgotten it or never known it. What an immense privilege this is! "Καὶ πάντων καὶ πασῶν" ("for each and every one").

Our parish will renew itself each day through the Eucharist, lived out concretely in the service of all, but especially the poor, by a witness of a love that is utterly freeing, a love that has seized us and that burns ever more concretely, deeply in our hearts.

"Τὰ σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν σοὶ προσφέρομεν κατὰ πάντα καὶ διὰ πάντα."

+ back to top   |   Writings List



Is Transubstantiation Sacramental Monophysitism?
by Father Roberto Ubertino

"Transubstantiation is the change over the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and the whole substance of wine into the substance of His blood. This change is brought about through the efficacy of the word of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristic of bread and wine, that is the Eucharistic species remain unaltered." (Catholic Catechism)

Transubstantiation is a dogma of the Latin Church defined at the Council of Trent in 1543. At that time the protestant reformation and the Catholic counterreformation had taken place and the Latin Church had become very distant and alienated from its oriental sisters churches and from the Fathers who had "confected" the early Eucharist Liturgies. The Latin Church tried to respond to a interior crisis by using Aristotelian philosophy rather than the Fathers experience and description of the Liturgy.

Can an Orthodox approach to the mystery of the Eucharist be expressed in terms of Transubstantiation?

Is the doctrine of Transubstantiation in fact a monophysitic Christology? The fundamental problem lies in that the human mind has difficulty grasping how something of this world can continue to exist once God assumes it into Himself.

Strict monophysitism and docetism, all say that the logos took the "appearance" of a man, but somehow the human flesh, and human life, were somewhat absorbed into the Divinity, they only had the "outward characteristics of man".

In the doctrine of Transubstantiation we have the "outward characteristics" of bread and wine. How can that be? If God can only act out of His Logos, the creation of the world, the incarnation and the sacraments all must equally come to be in the same Logos, the same "logic".

If we assume that Revelation is never changing and God acts always according to this Logos, than we see that when God became flesh and human both God and man never ceased to be, but rather without confusion, division, one nature not doing violence to the other, both Divine and Human nature in the person of Christ.

Could we not therefore contemplate the "change" in the mystery of the Eucharist in this same way?

In Orthodox Liturgical experience it is not the words of institution that "change" the elements. After the words of institution the priest lifts the gifts of simple bread and wine and offers them to God on behalf of all. Bread and wine are not just "accidentals"; they constitute part of the Churches' offering. They are the offering of humanity, the new humanity in Christ to the Father.

It is following this act of offering of simple bread and wine that the Holy Spirit is invoked on the community and than specifically on the bread and wine, to be changed by the Holy Spirit. The word is Metavalon – "which means to project" into the very Kingdom. Another ancient word used is "to manifest". Meaning that the Holy Spirit manifest in the bread and the wine the future kingdom – Christ all in all. This change is not a deletion of creation (like in Appolinarism) but rather a bringing to completion – "telion" – bringing the end in the now, the end point of all creation – to bear God, made present for us.

This accomplished without doing away, the person or creation. The bread and wine that are changed need to continue to be bread and wine to be in the "logic" (Logos) of the incarnation, and to be truly the Body and Blood of Christ for us.

In them we find ourselves and the whole created universe healed and reconciled and transfigured. Brought to their perfect end, not done away with or just appearing to be still of our world. In truth this is bread and wine and in truth the Body and Blood of Emmanuel – Christ, God with us all in all.

Both present on the Holy Table constitute the Eucharist of the Church.

+ back to top   |   Writings List



An Orthodox Understanding of Acts of Mercy
by Fr. Thomas Hopko

Christ commanded his disciples to give alms. To "give alms" means literally "to do" or "to make merciful deeds" or "acts of mercy." According to the Scriptures the Lord is compassionate and merciful, longsuffering, full of mercy, faithful and true. He is the one who does merciful deeds (see Psalm 103).

Acts of mercy are an "imitation of God" who ceaselessly executes mercy for all, without exception, condition or qualification. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

To "do mercy" means to do good to others in concrete acts of charity. It does not mean, in the first instance, to forgive, or to "let off sinners." A merciful person is one who is kind, gracious, generous and giving; a helper and servant of the poor and needy. For example, St. John the Merciful of Alexandria was a bishop who helped the poor and needy; he was not a judge who let off criminals.

Mercy is a sign of love. God is Love. A deed of merciful love is the most Godlike act a human being can do. "Being perfect" in Matthew's Gospel corresponds to "being merciful" in Luke's Gospel. "Perfection" and "being merciful" are the same thing.

To love as Christ loves, with the love of God who is Love, is the chief commandment for human beings according to Christianity. It can only be accomplished by God's grace, by faith. It is not humanly possible. It is done by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. One can prove one's love for God only by love for one's neighbors, including one's worst enemies, without exception, qualification or condition. There is no other way.

To love God "with all one's strength" which is part of "the first and great commandment" means to love God with all one's money, resources, properties, possessions and powers.

Acts of mercy must be concrete, physical actions. They cannot be "in word and speech, but in deed and truth" (First letter of John and letter of James).

Jesus lists the acts of mercy on which human beings will be judged at the final judgment (Parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25). Acts of mercy are acts done to Christ himself who was hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, in prison and "sick" i.e. wounded for our transgressions on the Christ, taking up of our wounds, and dying our death.

Christian acts of mercy must be done silently, humbly, secretly, not for vanity or praise, not to be seen by men, "not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing", etc.

Christian acts of mercy must be sacrificial. By this, we understand that we must not simply give to others what is left over. We have to be sharing our possessions with others in ways that limit ourselves in some way (The Widow's Mite).

Acts of mercy should be done without qualification or condition to everyone, no matter who, what or how they are (Parable of the Good Samaritan).

Christians, when possible, should do acts of mercy in an organized manner, through organizations and communities formed to do merciful deeds. Throughout its history the Christian people have had many forms of eleemosynary institutions and activities.

Being the poor Christians are not only to help the poor; they are themselves to be the poor, in and with Jesus Christ their Lord. Christians are to have no more than they actually need for themselves, their children and their dependents.

How much is enough? How much is necessary? What do we really need? How may we use our money and possessions for ourselves, our families, our children and our churches?

These are the hardest questions for Christians to answer.

*Fr. Thomas Hopko is Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary and currently serves at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.

+ back to top   |   Writings List