When you are talking about “coming, and seeing” in the Church, you are not talking about coming to see some kind of a performance. You are not talking about coming to see anything, except Christ, in the end. That’s really what you are coming to see. You are coming to see the believers worshipping Christ together. That’s what Church is all about – believers worshipping Christ together. All our services are about that. Yes, we are praying; we are asking, and so forth. However, it is mainly worshipping God. While we are worshipping God like this, we have our eyes on Christ. This is where joy comes in, joy in looking at, and being in communion with Christ.

Father Alexander Schmemann, who was one of my teachers long ago, was a man who was joyful. He was a really ordinary man, an ordinary kind of a human being. But he was a strong believer, and he had a big responsibility in the Church. Carrying this responsibility in the Church, he saw some of the worst things about human behaviour. He saw, and experienced on a regular basis the weaknesses of human behaviour that most of us don’t get to see, don’t want to see, and don’t need to see, and experience either. Even encountering all of that, Father Alexander was always single-mindedly serving Christ, and talking about Christ. He always kept his sense of direction, his vision, and his perspective. I would say about him that he was exemplifying what the Lord wanted from the Apostle Peter when the Apostle Peter came out of the boat onto the stormy sea to walk on the water to Christ. As long as his eyes were on Christ, and his concentration was on Christ, the Apostle was on the water. However, as soon as he paid attention to the wind, and the waves, down he went. Of course, he said: “Save me” (Matt. 14:30), and the Lord did save him, and picked him up.

This is how it is with us in our lives in Christ. Many times, I hear people complaining about the church: Oh! People are doing this, and people are doing that, and they are behaving in such a bad way, and so forth. Part of the problem is that people have this unrealistic idea that when you go to church, you are encountering a community of holy people, saints, perfect people. They think that the Christian community is supposed to be somehow perfect. But it isn’t. The Church is called “a hospital for sinners”, and that’s what it is. We’re here because we are not well, and our wellness can only be found in our communion with Christ. That’s why it’s important for us to do as Father Alexander did – keep our eyes on Christ.

When we are in church, it isn’t our business what kind of things anyone else is doing. It’s not our business. Our business is to be there, to look at Christ, and to worship Him. If someone is out of order, and it catches our attention, at least we can pray for that person. However, this is not our opportunity to put our hands on our hips, and to start judging this person or that person, or condemning this or that person for whatever weakness they are showing. When we are in church, the Tempter comes to tempt us, and he tempts all of us in all kinds of different ways. It’s important for us to keep our eyes on Christ, and our concentration on Christ, no matter what anyone else is doing or saying in church, because Christ is the reason we are there. Christ is the reason for everything. Next time you are in church, keep your eyes, and your focus on the Lord, and not on anything else as much as you can. If you have difficulty, say: “Lord have mercy”, and ask the Lord to help you to keep your focus.

DISCUSSION

Bishop SERAPHIM : Answer to Question One – On singing in the choir.

Ultimately, each of us, standing in the temple of the Lord, has a gift from God to build up the Church. From the time we were baptised, and chrismated, the Holy Spirit came to us, and we were given a gift or many gifts. Some people have a formidable number of these gifts, and some people have only a few. That’s how the Lord chooses to work with us. We have to accept the gifts that He gives us, and try to use these gifts according to His will, listening with our hearts. If we are a singer, for instance, then our responsibility is to come prepared to sing. That means not to come to make an operatic performance in the choir, and let my voice stand out. The choir is a harmonious entity. It is a body of singers that have to sing together without voices sticking out. The choir has to try to sing as if it were one, even though it’s in harmony. The person has to have warmed up the voice ahead of time. The person has to have warmed up the heart ahead of time. There’s a famous saying in Church life that the devil’s door to the Church is the choir. Why is this? Because in the choir, people often let their pride in their own vocal abilities take over. They treat the choir as if it were an opera choir, or an oratorio choir or even some kind of a solo thing: Look at me! Look at me! Pay attention to me, and my beautiful voice! This is not how Church singing is supposed to be done. Church singing is supposed to be the blending of voices so that no-one sticks out, but all together the sound is glorifying God. You can’t do that unless your heart is in the right place. Your heart has to be in order. Your voice has to be warmed up. Things have to be in order.

On any given day there’s likely to be at least some members of the choir who have been tripped up, and so there’s always a certain amount of glitches. On a few miraculous occasions, everything is beautiful, but more often than not, there are little glitches. There are glitches in serving, too. There are glitches in everything in the course of worship because people are not all at the same stage of being in focus, and in order, at the same time. That’s how the Tempter works with us. However, if we are living in repentance, and if we are trying to get over these things (even if we do have glitches), we can at least say we are sorry, and not pretend we didn’t make a mistake. If we get corrected, we don’t have to be offended or all bent out of shape. It’s important for us to accept the correction, (and the fact that we could actually make a mistake), and to try to do better.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Two – On fasting.

When it comes to these fasting periods, try to find the way to change your way of thinking about it, if you can. Usually with the fasting period, we say it’s a rule. When it’s a rule, we have to do it. But that’s not really the right spirit with which to approach these things. If you do something just because it’s a rule, and you have to do it, it’s not really good enough. It’s good for us to be abstaining the way we do on these days, and in these periods. Wednesdays, and Fridays are fasting days, and there are also these periods where we are abstaining in one way or the other. We do it in preparation for Communion on regular occasions or in preparation for a bigger feast. If we are going to be abstaining in these periods, let’s at least undertake these things in the right spirit, which is to make an offering of my abstinence to the Lord. To do it voluntarily is the most important part. It isn’t that you absolutely have to fast, and lightning is going to strike if you don’t, because that doesn’t happen.

Fasting is good for you. There are lots of people who are saying as they are passing through their lives that they really look forward to these periods of abstinence because they actually feel better during these Lenten periods. It takes more time to cook some things, but they feel better. However, it’s not just because it’s good for your health. It’s good for your soul. You are doing this as an offering to Christ. You’re doing it because you love Christ, and you want to be pleasing to Him, and in harmony with Him.

I think that the first thing in terms of being practical is to try to change your attitude, with God’s help, always with God’s help, from thinking: I have to, to thinking: What kind of an offering can I make to the Lord in my way of eating or not eating, in my way of doing this or not doing that? What can I do? Sometimes people, for instance, because of their health, can hardly abstain from many things at all because their health is weak. However, they still want to make an offering to the Lord. Under those circumstances, they do something else. They do more of something else or they do less of something else according to the nature of their lives. However, they still do it as an offering to the Lord.

Christian mentality is all about being pleasing to the Lord, and how to offer something pleasing to the Lord in my life. If you are thinking about it as rules, rules, rules, human beings always look for a way around them. Some time ago I was told that in Imperial Russia before Communism there used to be a saying in the Faculty of Law: the Law is a lighthouse on which there is a balcony to get around it. That’s how we are with laws. We are always looking for ways to get around them. How much can you bend the speed limit? Can you go ten or twenty kilometres over that speed limit before the police will stop you? How far can you bend a Montreal stop sign? Do you slow down even at all? It depends. Rules are always difficult for human beings because we are resisting them all the time. If we keep imposing rules on ourselves all the time, we beat ourselves up for not obeying the rules. Then we fall into disobeying the rules even more, and being negative about ourselves, judging ourselves, and condemning ourselves. It’s important for us to try to keep a proper disposition. Let’s avoid the mentality of rules, and maintain as much as possible the mentality of voluntary offering.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Three – On spiritual training.

One of the things about abstinence, fasting, and so forth that is characteristic for people who are outside of the Christian community is that these things are often done to a certain extent for training somehow, but mostly because it’s good for the body. It’s not with the same overall effect as in the manner in which we are doing it. The Apostle Paul is talking about this training also because the spiritual life in itself is like being an athlete (cf. 1 Cor. 9:25-27). You have to work at it. It is important for us to be careful not to do too much “self-training”, because if we do it all by ourselves, we are going to get lost. You have to have someone to help you know where you are going with this training. You have to have a trainer to help you do the training. It is like people who are doing work-outs. They have an advisor to help them do it right. All these various systems have to be fine-tuned to suit the person exactly.

It’s exactly the same thing with spiritual development. The training is a reality. There has to be another person outside who has more experience to help you do what is better, and right for you. If I just make my own determination: Well, I’m going to do this fast this way, or I’m going to do this or that by myself because I read it in a book, and it looks good, and it feels good, and it’s convenient – maybe it’s not at all the right thing for me. Maybe I should do something rather different. Maybe what I decide to do for myself is exactly poisonous for me. That’s why I am always cautious about training myself or making determinations for myself because in the course of my life I have made many, many determinations about myself by myself, and it always ends up in a mess.

It’s much better to try to determine what God is telling you to do through someone else, rather than just thinking that you are plugged in directly to the Lord, and that you yourself have all the answers about yourself. Don’t make the same mistakes that I have made if you can avoid it.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Four – On confession.

Confession in early times was public. People confessed their sins in front of each other. It wasn’t like a common confession today where you never admit anything specifically, where you just hear a list of sins or a general meditation on repentance, and everything is generic. One of the reasons, as I was told, that we stopped this kind of public confession that was characteristic of the earliest times, is that people fell into the temptation of gossip. That’s why customarily when people are going to confession, it is not open, and public (so that everyone hears the details), but the priest, standing there on behalf of everyone else, is witnessing the confession the person is making to Christ. He is somehow the representative. He is also the representative of the Lord, because the Lord often speaks through the person who is hearing the confession. You have to make a distinction, too, between the person who is hearing a confession, and a spiritual father (or spiritual mother), because those are two different things. Spiritual paternity, in the way that we usually use that term, is something that you usually find only in a monastic community because it involves discussing your thoughts, and all kinds of things in detail, even on a daily basis. I like to avoid “spiritual parenthood” as a term. People will assume that anyone who is hearing a confession is therefore a spiritual father, but that isn’t necessarily so. Sometimes a person who is hearing a confession is just capable of hearing the confession, and discerning a few things about what can be done in terms of helping you, somehow. One person is not “one size fits all” when it comes to confession, either, just as a spiritual father isn’t as well.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Five – On spiritual gifts.

When you are trying to discover what your gifts are, well, that is very subtle. From what I remember, whatever gifts I have had, or sense of direction also (because the two things are often connected), these were usually suggested to me by other people who could see something in me. They would say: We see that you have this particular ability. You should go in that particular direction with your life. Those are ways in which the Lord has tended to direct me in the past. Sometimes I have been very stubborn about those things, listened to other advice, and got myself diverted. When I went in the right direction, the doors opened. When I went in the wrong direction, the doors closed. That doesn’t mean that if you meet an obstacle, the Lord is saying “no” to you. You have to pay attention, because some obstacles are temptations. It takes a bit of discernment.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Six – More on gifts.

There is another thing about gifts worth remembering, and that is: what really constitutes a gift? The answer is that it is something that is given freely. If it is really a gift, you don’t have to give anything back. It is just given. And why is it given? It is given because of the thought, because of the love. It is freely given. That’s what makes it a gift. No strings attached. It’s important for us, having been freely given these gifts (if we are living in the same kind of love which produces all these gifts, the love of Christ), that we share these gifts freely in the same way. The Lord said it’s better to give than to receive. Receiving is very nice, but giving is even better. However, it always has to be without strings attached. North America is really bad these days in the gift department (and visiting, too). If you get a gift, then you have to give a gift back. However, then it’s not really a gift: you are extorting a gift from someone else. If you give something, and then say: Well, where’s mine? That’s not giving; that’s not really a gift. If I invite you to dinner, then you have to invite me to dinner. Well, what is this? This is not hospitality at all. This is extorting invitations from one another. We’re upside down. We have to do things in a Christian way, which is: everything open, and free, emptying yourself in love.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Seven – On being an Orthodox Christian.

To be an Orthodox Christian means you really have to dare to be different in a good way – not just rebelliously different, but positively different, healthily different. Those people that you are talking about, those holy monks on Mount Athos – what makes them holy is that they have become real human beings. They are really, really, whole human beings as God created them to be. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what our life is about: to find ourselves in the love of Christ. Who are we really in the love of Christ? In that environment, anything is possible. All those Star Wars movies, and all those other things are nothing compared to what can be accomplished in Christ. Although those movies are fun, it still pales compared to what kinds of things are possible in Christ.

Bishop SERAPHIM: Answer to Question Eight – On dealing with negative people.

People who are discouraging, are generally trying to do this discouraging as a result of jealousy, or envy, or just plain nastiness, because they are broken people. They have a worldly mentality. There are three things you have to do as a Christian. Always, when people say something negative to you, there is a possibility that there could be an element of truth in it. You have to see. Don’t just look at it yourself. You have to check with someone else, and also ask yourself: Is there any truth in this negative comment, or is this just grumpiness or whatever else negative it might be? If there is an element of truth, then maybe you could make a change, and that would be good. However, if it’s not true, then you just dismiss it. When a person is trying to discourage you from following what is the right path, it’s important for you to forgive the person. That’s necessary, because the way of Christ is the way of forgiveness. A closely related element to that is that it’s important to pray for the person who is trying to discourage you from following what is the right path, because that person is suffering from a temptation.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America