Our Pilgrimage to Pascha

Great Lent has now finished. This week we take another spiritual journey, that of Holy Week. During this week we journey with Our Lord to Jerusalem where we witness in the spirit, His betrayal, crucifixion and burial. To share in Christ’s suffering we keep the fast and attend all the services. If someone dear to you were dying, you would keep vigil or at least visit them everyday. Let us not abandon Christ in His time of suffering. Do not let the affairs of the world distract you but rather put the world to one side this week and join Our Lord in His Passion. Fasting this week is a pilgrimage, a journey. Pascha is the destination. Pascha is the fulfillment of our journey, of all our efforts – it is the source and beginning of our spiritual struggle. The Kingdom of God is here and yet is to be consummated at the end of time. We partake of the Kingdom, which is still to come. We foresee and taste but still struggle on earth. On Wednesday we will commune at the Vespers of the Presanctified. We need this Holy Communion to stay alive on our journey through the spiritual struggle against evil. Our physical hunger from fasting is a reflection of our spiritual hunger. Both will be fulfilled if we share this week in Our Lord’s Passion. For the faithful that observe this Holy Week of Passion, Pascha will be the fulfillment of our physical and spiritual hunger. Then fasting will have no meaning for we will be feasting with the Bridegroom.

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." (Chronicles, 16: 29)

God's creation is truly beautiful and the Church as a living organism, reflects this beauty in her services and ceremonies. In the Church, especially in the physical temple, the harmony between creation and the spiritual world is expressed in its architecture and in its atmosphere of holiness.

An Orthodox temple has its origin in the divine worship of the Temple in Jerusalem. To enter an Orthodox church is to enter a holy place. Emphasis is on the experience of God first, followed by scriptural readings and teaching.
In St John's Gospel, we read: God is a spirit and they who would worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth. (John 4: 24)

True devotion must be internal and come from the heart. But we are not to infer from this that exterior worship is to be condemned because interior worship is prescribed as essential. On the contrary, the rites and ceremonies which are enjoined in the worship of God and in the administration of the mysteries are dictated by reason and are sanctioned by God in the Old Law (Zechariah 14:17) and by our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles in the New. Our worship is not human based but based on the heavenly.

The Church is a divine-human- community in which the eternal worship of Heaven is always present and ceaseless. The heavenly servants, the angels being pure spirits without body, render to God a purely spiritual worship. The sun and moon, and stars of the firmament pay to Him a kind of external homage.
In the Prophet Daniel, we read: Sun and moon bless the Lord...stars of heaven bless the Lord, praise and exalt Him above all forever.

But man, by possessing a soul or spiritual substance, partakes of the nature of angels and possessing a body, partakes of the nature of material bodies. It is therefore his privilege, as well as his duty, to offer to God the twofold homage of body and soul; in other words, to honour Him by internal and external worship.

Genuine piety cannot be concealed in the heart without manifesting itself by exterior practices of religion; and hence, though interior and exterior worship are distinct, they cannot be separated in the present life.

The fire cannot burn without sending forth a flame and heat. Neither can the fire of devotion burn in the soul without reflecting itself on our countenance, and even in our speech.
It is natural for man to express his sentiments by signs and ceremonies for, from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. And as fuel is necessary to keep the fire alive, even so the flame of piety is nourished by the outward forms of religion.

Gender or Agenda?

It has become very popular to use the label 'gender' instead of  'sex'.  Not only is this incorrect but I find it an affront to my intelligence. When I was learning French and Latin at school, it was amusing to learn that the pen of my aunt was also feminine.  Later I discovered that while the sun was masculine in French, the mere moon was feminine...the Sun outshining the dull moon!...in German the sun was feminine and the mere moon was masculine.  While I was learning these peculiarities of foreign grammar, the feminist movement was busy changing the label 'sex' into 'gender'. Was this to serve their own perfidious agenda?

Gender refers to language and in most languages there are three - masculine, feminine and neuter. Sex, on the other hand, refers to male and female. There is no other, not according to Genesis that is.  Another 'agenda' word is anti-Semitism.   This word again applies to language, not people.  To be anti-Semitic is to hate Arabic and/or Hebrew and perhaps Aramaic, the language of the Lord Jesus Christ.

May be it's old age, but I am tired of this misuse of language to support politico-social agendas. I was brought up to call a spade a spade, however not to label people with offensive titles.