Transcription
It is [Music]. I think the most important thing to know about the faith, you know, um, is that you can't become Orthodox. You can't live Orthodoxy, if you really want to live it, you can't do it just coasting. You can't, you know, you're not just saved and, you know, all is good. There is a process. You know, you engage, you go to confession, you have to take on certain disciplines and slowly try to move forward. You know, and so I think it's important for people to understand that as they enter it, as they approach Orthodoxy, is that it's not going to be on your own terms. You know, you have to enter into a life and you have to enter into relationships of submission to other, to principles, to traditions, and to people. You have to submit to your Confessor, submit to your spiritual father. And so all of those things are so counter-cultural to the modern world that it's important to understand that as you approach Orthodoxy.
I think the heart of Orthodoxy is Christ. I think that that's obvious. And I think that what's amazing about Orthodoxy, which I've found so profound, is that Orthodoxy seems to have preserved or kept the multiple aspects of Christ. And I think that that is so important and so profound. And so we have this notion of Christ as the implicit principle of the world. And so we have this image of Christ as a child who is hidden in a cave, and this notion of Christ as the hidden spark which is hiding in the people that you meet. You know, that Christ is hidden in the world, hidden in those in the cosmos.
Then we also have the image of Christ as, you know, entering into death, as taking on all of death onto himself. We have this image of Christ on the cross. We have this image of Christ in the Dome of the church as the Sovereign, as the Emperor, as the Magnificent one who is above everything. And so I think that once we see Christ filling up everything from the highest to the lowest, I think that that is really the heart of Orthodoxy and that is the most precious thing that it has to offer. And then we see that this filling up of Christ from the highest to the lowest then also appears in the life of the Saints and fills up the world in all other types of ways. And I think that really is the greatest thing that Orthodoxy has to offer is this filling up of the world with Christ and with the light of God.
We talk about the Divine energies of God which fill up all of creation. And that we can perceive as we approach, as we commune, as we come together, you know, as we learn to love our neighbor, as we learn, we can approach God and participate in the life of God, participate in those, become God to the capacity that we can become God, you know, by participating in his life. And that is, I mean, that's mind-blowing for most Western Christians to even hear. But all those things are the heart of Orthodoxy. And those are the things that get me excited when I think about the Orthodox tradition.
Yeah, it is another step for the world. Orthodoxy is definitely out of step with the world. But then, you know, I don't want to live in a world of zombies. You know, I also don't like certain aspects of where the world is going. And I think that traditional Christianity, that Orthodoxy has an answer to the nihilism, to the desperation, and to the fragmentation that we're seeing in the world. So it is precisely because, in a way, Orthodoxy is out of step with the world that it can provide a path towards somewhere else, towards something central, so, you know, something that is solid that can hold the world together and prevent it from falling into the abyss that it seems to be headed into now. In terms of our loss of meaning, loss of cohesion, you know, the fact that, you know, what is it, almost half of the people are on antidepressants, half of the children are on some kind of drug, you know, it's, you know, everybody is addicted to porn, everybody's addicted to all kinds of things. That's the image of our world. And so Orthodoxy is out of step with that and it can give you another path.
So, yeah. Well, I can speak for myself. I think that a lot of converts, not all converts, but many converts that I've met, and even myself, we come at Orthodoxy at first intellectually, in a way, because we read books and we read theologians and we're amazed reading the Church Fathers. We get this amazing vision. You read the Philokalia and you get the sense of these spiritual fathers, amazing spiritual fathers that teach you the Jesus Prayer. And so we have this vision of Orthodox, almost a theoretical vision of Orthodoxy. And so sometimes you enter into the church and you realize that this is still a human community with all the foibles and all the difficulties that come with human institutions. And so sometimes you get this disillusion. And I certainly felt it, a disillusion to feel like, no, I'm not encountering what I read in the lives of the Saints. I'm not encountering this amazing, you know, starrets who will take me, you know, like in the Russian Pilgrim, let's say, which will take me towards a mystical experience.
And so you have to kind of get through that first wave of maybe intellectual disappointment to then realize that it's a path and that you're actually not very far on that path when you convert. And you have to take the breadcrumbs that you can get and just slowly move forward despite all the difficulties, despite all the people's faults and all of people's weaknesses. And just kind of slowly move. And as you slowly move, then you feel, you encounter this slow theophany that I discuss. And I think that a lot of it will then depend on your own capacity to let the light of Christ, to let the light of God transform you and to open yourself up to that light.
So I think some of the most important thing that Orthodoxy has to offer the West is obviously the life in Christ and the life of the church, the communion of the Saints. It is the most important thing that it has to offer the world. But since we're talking about culture and we're talking about cultural manifestations, there's something very important that Orthodoxy can offer to the West and to the modern world. And that is this amazing preservation of the totality of this pattern that I was talking about, the connection between the scripture and then the lives of the Saints and the Liturgy and the iconography and the architecture. All of these, like I said, create this amazing whole that can act as a bastion and that can act as a frame in which we can live in order to face the chaos of the modern world. And I think that that's something that used to be there in the West, was there at some point in the West, but had been slowly degraded with time. But for some miraculous reason, it has been preserved in the Orthodox tradition and it has been constantly revived and kept. And so I think that it can offer a breath of fresh air to the West. It can help to reinvigorate our culture and reinvigorate our forms and help people see all those connections.
In the stories where we have been taken over by the scholarly approach, where we've dissected the Bible, we've dissected the stories in this critical historical way, but Orthodoxy brings us back to the poem, brings us back to this beautiful pattern which runs through everything. And so we can enter into that. And it actually is that symbolism, it brings meaning together in our lives and it can do that in our society.
It's interesting because when you talk to Orthodox people, often, you get the feeling that they're still living in the 4th century or the 7th century or the 8th century or the 11th century. There is this very deep connection to the past and this feeling like those fathers that wrote the ecumenical councils, the theologians that precede us, that we're still engaging with them, that they're part of our community. And I think that that is a really powerful thing that has been lost quite a bit in the West. Catholicism has a little bit more of it, but it's truly astounding to engage with Orthodox people and really feel like they're talking about Saint Basil as if Saint Basil had lived last week. And engaging with their thought and talking. And so I think that that's really a very powerful thing is to really live in this line, to feel like there is this line from Christ up to today and we inhabit that line, we inhabit that thread through the early fathers and then through the Hesychastic renewal and all these things still exist today and still are part of the whole package of Orthodoxy. And it's difficult to describe, but there really is that feeling of being connected, being connected to this whole civilization that has been there for two thousand years.
So I think that that is something very profound. And you see it not only in the text, let's say, with the fathers, but you see it in the art, in the visual, you see the architecture, we see it in the hymnology, we see it in the music. Everything has this deep connectedness to this line that goes all the way to Christ. It's very beautiful and it has preserved, let's say, this coherent pattern that I talk about. And because of that, it inhabits that grand pattern, that huge pattern that has been, let's say, the Christian civilization.