Orthodoxy through another perspective

[John Charmley]

Dear Rick,

I think that, as so often, Fr. Gregory challenges us to do that difficult thing - reall think. He, as ever, shakes us out of our comfort zone when he asks:

Quote:Is the Church a museum for the preservation of relics from other times and places, or a living organism proclaiming the Gospel to every person in his or her own tongue (following the description of Pentecost)? And, if the latter, how is this to be done in practice?

He reminds us that we are all the Church. It isn't something over there we attend, or that authority to whom we meekly surrender our intellects and let it decide for us. After all, we make the choice to be Orthodox - and we can equally make the decision not to, or, if we find we are in a museum, not to stay.

Earlier today I typed out the whole of Theophilus' homily on the Crucifixion and the Good Thief - given in the late 300s, it is as unlike a museum piece as you could imagine. When I read it I say 'amen' a lot (alarming my wife a good deal). As Fr, Peter has said elsewhere, what matters is how we reach and understand the spirituality that is Orthodoxy. It isn't a theory, a set of propositions, a 'code' or even a 'confession', it is a way of life - the way we live with the risen Lord and where we encounter Him at the Eucharistic feast.

I note I keep coming back to that. It is not just that Orthodox ideas like theosis make more sense to me, it is who I encounter at the Eucharist.

In Christ,

John