Orthodoxy Live Mailbag Episode 16

This is Orthodoxy Live with Father Evan Armitage, a live interactive call-in program where your questions about the Orthodox faith are addressed. Father Evan is the priest at St. Spirit and Greek Orthodox Church in Loveland, Colorado. Call in your question at 1-855-AF-RADIO. That's 1-855-237-2346. Here now is Father Evan. Good evening and welcome to Orthodoxy Live, a live call-in show about the Orthodox faith through teachings and traditions. I'm your host Father Evan and we're streaming to you, but not live here on ancient faith radio. I'm glad you're with us. If you're tuning in tonight, you've joined us in one of our special mailbag episodes. I have to admit I've grown to enjoy these times with my friend Mike who's in studio going through some of the questions that we get via email. So for those of you who are streaming with us on YouTube or Facebook as you post your questions, and it gives us an opportunity to kind of answer questions that we don't typically get to while we're live on air. But Mike, welcome back to the program. It's nice to be with you. It's a pleasure to be back Father. Always enjoy picking your brains and judging by the volume of questions we have, the people definitely agree with me. Well, the funny thing is, you know, you were not with me the last time. I shouldn't say funny thing. It was kind of a tragic thing because of the flooding that happened in Indiana. You got put out of your home. Yeah, almost. We lost power for about eight and a half days. And during that time, it got so severe, the humidity in my house that mold started to become a real threat. And I had to drive all the way three hours or so to Coldwater, Michigan, just to acquire one of the last generators in stock that could power my house. So power just came on this past week, right? Last week, last Wednesday. Last week. Well, glad you're up and running again. And, you know, I was in touch with one of my friends who's a priest in Indiana and he said, yeah, the defestation was just surreal. So such an awful thing to have happen. And glad you're okay and that you have your power back on. And it's good to have you back. Thank you, Father. Yeah, it's my thoughts and prayers are really with some of the hardest hit communities in Northwest Indiana, unfortunately also. So some of our most impoverished, particularly descent of the Holy Ghost Orthodox Church in Maraville, Indiana is in a neighborhood that got absolutely devastated by the last weather event we had earlier this summer. And this one was equally, well, not equally, it was even more horrendous, unfortunately. So downed trees everywhere in that particular area. And I'm sure many, many other churches throughout South Chicago land, unfortunately have the same defestation. Yes. Well, for those of you out there who are wondering how you can help, you know, one of the ways you can do that is you can go to iocc.org and check out the response that the church is making. And of course, other agencies, nonprofits, you know, the Red Cross being one of them, obviously, you know, meeting the needs of those who have been impacted by these rains and floods. But as I said, as we open tonight's program, you're listening to Orthodoxy Live. If you call in to our number 1855 AF radio, you won't get anybody because we are pre-recording this mailbag episode to be aired in an upcoming Sunday. But if you get an opportunity to visit the ancient faith stores, one of the ways you can support ancient faith ministries and ancient faith radio, you can share this with your friends. And of course, if you've got a question and you're listening to this podcast, what you can do is you can write in at orthodoxyliveatancientfaith.com. If that's too much to remember, you can just use askaskatancientfaith.com. So Mike, why don't we get to our first question? All right. Our first question comes from an anonymous questioner on Facebook who asks, Why do the Orthodox dig up the remains of a saint and spread them around the world? It seems a bit disrespectful to the body. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this whole idea of relics in general can appear from the outside to be a very strange practice, maybe a superstitious practice, almost something that's like delving into magic, you know, dark arts, whatever, right? But when we sort of back up and we understand, you know, really how has the church historically handled the relics of its saints? How has the Lord himself shaped our understanding of the material world? And so then from that, we can kind of start to understand what's going on with the distribution of a relic of a particular saint throughout the world. You know, first we'd say that our understanding of the material world is radically, and if you will, forever shaped by the incarnation, right? Christ, who is the second person of the Trinity, becomes incarnate. He's born in the flesh, takes on a human body, and we say that he is fully human and fully God. It's not like God sort of appears like a man. He is a man, but God, you know, two wills in one person. Two hypotheses is the classical definition the church gives that two natures, you know, both the nature of God and the nature of man, a human soul even. And you know, probably the earliest definitive work on this is going to be on the incarnation by Saint Athanasios, the great, which is a work that's easily accessible to people. But this shapes forever and radically transforms the approach we take as Christians to the material world. And God himself appears in the material world, interacts with the material world, even though prior to the incarnation, God is not material in any shape, form at all, right? He's immaterial. And so the body of Christ itself can become the means of our sanctification. That's true in the continuation of the reception of the Eucharist, which Christ says clearly in John 6, you know, he eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him. And he commands his followers to eat and drink of his flesh and blood, which is the Eucharist. And this is something the church has done from the time that Christ instituted this in the last meal that he had with his disciples, the mystical supper, and is repeated continuously in the church to this day, right? So matter itself has been sanctified by the presence of Christ and it sanctifies us, right? It changes us and transforms us. We see that even in his ministry, right? How he interacted with the physical world. A woman touches his garments and his healed. His physical body is transformed in the transfiguration. He uses water, mud, touch, right? Not that he is confined by these things, but he works with and through these things and that continues in the life of the church. So we see that the church uses bread and wine, which becomes the body and the blood. The church uses oil and we see this referenced even in the letter to James, how oil is used for the healing of the sick. We use incense. We paint icons. We use physical touch. When the confession is given, the instruction to the priest is to lay his hand upon the head of the one who is repenting for the prayer. So we use water and baptism. So matter is used. Now when we think about how our Lord became human and when we think about his use of the material world and the means of that for our sanctification, we can consider that a human being themselves can be sanctified by their participation in the life of Christ. And so one of the ways that I've described this in the past is, Mike, you're probably familiar with the tuning fork. Yes. The instruments. It's like a little metal U, usually with a stem on the bottom and you knock it against a hard surface and it gives a pitch. And you can place the ball of the stem against your ear and you can hear that pitch. The vibration enters into the inner ear and you catch the frequency, right? Or you can sometimes just put the U shape near your ear. But eventually, you know, while you hit that tuning fork, you might initially hear audibly the sound as it continues to vibrate. That sound becomes almost inaudible unless you place that tuning fork right up against your ear or as I said, the stem against a bone in your body and then you can catch the frequency. Well, if we use that analogy for Christ entering the world and we say, well, Christ came into the world and he offered to creation a true pitch, right? He was trying to take a cacophony of sound, which is how creation through the fall became, you know, all of us moving in disparate and disfigured ways. And he comes in and he tries to repitch us, retune us, reshape us, reform us. And those closest to Christ, those who come into contact with that frequency at the most intimate level find that they now may match his pitch. So if you've seen a symphony being tuned, you know, the oboe comes out and plays A. And I remember the first time I went to a symphony as a kid with my mom. And I don't really remember the symphony. I totally remember them warming up. And we walked into the concert hall and it was chaos. I was like strings and kettle drum and brass. And everybody was doing their kind of old thing and some scales and it just was like a cacophony, right? There was no discernible melody or tune. And then I remember there was a rapping of I think the first violinist's bow and then the oboe put out that A. And then you heard the orchestra, you know, the symphony kind of come to that pitch. It took him a little minute, you know, and you can kind of watch this on YouTube. And then there was that unified pitch. And it was, to me, it was beautiful. It went from cacophony to symphony, you know, to a single melody note, you know, if you will, a single pitch, everything vibrating. And what I found out later, scientifically speaking, is that the vibration of the oboe and then the vibration of the first violin and the first trumpet, that vibration itself when correct, when it goes out, not only is the musician tuning their instrument, but the instrument is tuning itself. It's catching the frequency. Wow. And a sort of micro, you know, a level below what we can visibly understand or see, right? So again, if we think about Christ coming into the world, he's like that oboe, right? He comes in, he sets a pitch, a tone. This is where we're supposed to be, humanity, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, right? All that. And then humanity, especially the saints, they tune to that pitch. Now they've caught the frequency of Christ. And then like Christ, they can pass that frequency on to others. Following me? Yeah. Now, when they pass, when they die, does their body lose that frequency? I'd imagine not. No, it's been sanctified. It's been pitched. It's been tuned. It's been reshaped, reformed, right? And now it carries that pitch into the world forever. And so then the church in distributing relics is saying, let's carry this, you know, the psalm says, the voice of the Lord has gone into all the earth, right? And the creation declares the glory of God, you know, and God has made wondrous in his saints. So they carry that pitch outwardly. And they do that not only in the words that they wrote, not only the deeds that they did, but in their physical presence. And so, you know, from your own personal mundane experience that there are some people like maybe your grandmother, your mother, a close uncle, a friend, that when you just simply go into their presence, it restores you. Just being around them. And so it is with the relic. And so it's not disrespectful. It's helpful. The church is sharing the wealth and the saint himself or herself. This is what they were about. They gave themselves up as St. Paul talks about as the Lord talks about as an offering to others and to the world. And so the church doesn't contain that blessing and say, well, it's only reserved for those, you know, in this one specific area, rather it's distributed, if you will, throughout the world. It's poured out as a drink offering, you know, using some scriptural language there. I'm going to stop. I've said a lot. No, it's all good. I think one of the things that comes to mind is not just how much difficulty that a lot of Protestants have with relics in general for the Orthodox, but also just kind of the idea of praying for talking to and cultivating a relationship with the saints. Yeah, it's kind of hard for a lot of them. And I just found in my own conversion process that that was so vital to forming a relationship with these people and to truly coming to love them, not just in an intellectual or spiritual sense, but in an emotional sense, that kind of physical dimension to our piety with venerating relics. Well, yeah, it's a relationship that you form that, you know, again, is not, if you will, in one sense necessary, but it is certainly beneficial. And it is what God himself did. He lived in community. Now, let's just kind of extract this for a second and just say, does our culture and whatever culture in have relics, whether you're religious or not, it does, you know, in the US, take the Stanley Cup. It's a relic. People hold it up. They kiss it. They hug it. They touch it in with reverence. It's handled by, you know, even the caretakers of where white gloves, they put it in a case. They take it out. You know, it's like, oh, that, you know, when you're watching the NHL playoffs, you know, and it gets to a game where there could be a winner of the Stanley Cup. They'll tell you before the game, it's here. It's in the building. And then they'll do a camera shot. There'll be two custodians, you know, standing by the cup. You know, Indie drivers do this. You know, they, they kiss the, the, the brick that marks the finish line. They drink the milk. They shower themselves with the champagne. We do this with the Lombardi trophy. Players in the World Cup, you know, they gather on the stage. They bring the trophy out. They hand it to the captain. He lifts it up. Right. It's, it's the same. Right. It's the same, but these are not objects that are self-ethic. You know, they don't carry a grace from God. They're worldly objects, yet we're built by God to have what is sacred brought into our lives and to transform us. And so we'll even do this with places. You know, we all have, you know, this is where I proposed to mom. You know, this is where we had our first date. This is where we had our first kiss. This is where I went to high school and we go back and we, we sort of walk the halls, you know, and, and the same is true in, in the spiritual life, except now that, that reality is transformative. Right. You know, in a different way. So anyway, it was a good question. We have a lot of them. I, I love the questions that we get. This next one comes from user young lion who writes, father, I've been a catacomban for a year and a half. I've switched churches a few times now and I'm desperate to be baptized. Do you have any advice as far as how to keep patient and what I should be studying? That's something. Um, well, just a reminder to our listeners, you're listening to a special male lag episode of orthodoxy live. So if you dial in or try to type in a question, uh, you won't get an answer. Uh, Mike, who produces and engineers are shows with me in studio in Indiana. And we're taking questions that we've received, uh, in the past and trying to get through some of them, you know, th this question has become more and more prevalent and relevant. Uh, Mike, in the last, you know, a couple of years as we see throughout the country, uh, throughout the world, a swell of interest in Christianity and of interest into the church. And, you know, in my own parish, that interest is so large that we've had to design special systems and logistical support elements just to handle the flow of, of, of inquiry. It's, it's wonderful. Uh, but it's, it's demanding. And, you know, many, many people come into the church and they come from a number of different backgrounds. So they might come from a background in which there's no exposure to Christianity. So they, they really don't know what the process is. Others have come from other Christian, uh, uh, you know, churches. And, and the, the, the process of becoming a member there is vastly different than it would be within the, the true church. And so, um, for example, whether they've never had exposure to the church or whether they have had exposure to the church, a lot of times they show up, um, having done a lot of research and reading and YouTube viewing. You know, I have people that spend a year or two online, uh, researching, listening to podcasts and shows like this, reading books, downloading texts. Um, and hopefully all from ancient faith. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, right? Why not? We've got a great store and a great set of resources. Um, and so then they'll show up and their assumption is I've made this intellectual, uh, journey. And as a result of that journey, I'm ready. I've, I've prepared myself to enter the church. And so there can be, and I'm not saying it's for this particular, uh, listener, um, a challenge where they think, I mean, I've literally had people call me and, uh, or, or message the church or get a hold of my secretary and say, Hey, I'm coming to church for the first time this Sunday. When can I get baptized? Right. And of course our understanding of faithfulness is not connected to the idea of simply faith being, I believe certain things to be true now. So I'm a, I'm a member of the church. And so what we typically will say to people is, okay, we're so glad you're here. We want to welcome you and treat you with dignity and respect. We want to support your journey, but we need to take some time getting to know one another and having you integrate yourself into the life of Christian living, not just simply the intellectual side of things. So, you know, a year and a half is about, you know, the limit of, of that journey. So I can understand her frustration. If you've been faithfully attending a parish for a year and a half, you should be at the stage either now or very soon of entering into the church as a catechumen. And so let's just say a little bit about that. You know, if you show up at the church this Sunday, you come to St. Spyrinons and I, and I'm sure we'll have some new people that come for the first time. What we understand that to mean is that you're a guest of our parish. You're not a member. You're not receiving the sacraments. You're just a guest. I shouldn't say just a guest. You are a guest and we're going to treat you again with respect and dignity. We're going to support you, try to get to know you, but we're going to treat you like a guest. We're not going to make any expectations. We're not going to ask you to sign up to do something, you know, like someone coming to your house. It's not like you say, well, could you take out the trash? You know, and hey, at our house, we don't put our elbows on the table. We're not going to expect any of that. We're just, you're a guest. Let me feed you. Let me get to know you at some point in that journey, you might say, well, I think I'm, I think I'm interested in staying here. I like this home. I don't know everything. I'm not even sure what the rhythms are, what the, what the expectations are, but I think I would like to learn. That's an inquirer, not a guest. That's an inquirer. At some point in that journey, and that could take months, years, typically, I think it should take at least a year, you know, try to get through a cycle of the year with the church and in that process, regular attendance at the, at the services, you know, the service. The at the services on Sunday. And if possible, feast days and other special services, it means showing up in the fellowship of the church and getting to know people and assimilating into the community structure. It may mean starting to participate to a degree in some of the ministries of the parish. And it can't even mean beginning to integrate some of the spiritual practices of a C