By Fr. Pavel (Velikanov)
In a report first given at the annual
Orthodox conference of Sourozh Diocese (ROC) on the 1st of June 2013
archipriest Pavel Velikanov examines the problem of peoples churching in the Russian
Orthodox Church nowadays.
In order
to see how crucial the problem of churching is – in modern Russia as well – I
suggest we watch a very short video. Last year, on a very bleak rainy day in
May, I stopped at the entrance to the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra (the largest
monastery in Russia) with a camera crew from the “Bogoslov” film studio and
asked a few visitors of the monastery three simple questions: “What is baptism?
How often do you take communion? Who forgives sins?” No theology, no
«communicatio idiomatum» or “uncreated energies”, just very basic questions.
Let me put it straight: hearing the answers to this brief quiz made us sit down
and think. I would suggest we watch the video now.
I would
like to emphasize that all the people involved in the quiz were paying a
deliberate visit to the Lavra to pray, venerate the relics and attend monastic
services. At the same time, the questions which had, as it would seem, answers
that are simple and obvious for a believer, genuinely frightened and confused
people.
Approaching
the notion of “churching” has recently become a concern not only for priests
and theologians, but also for scholars, and in particular sociologists.
Wide-ranging estimates of the number of Orthodox believers in Russia (which
heavily depend on how the surveys were conducted) are the reason behind this
surge of interest to the problem. The percentage of Orthodox believers among
the population has oscillated from 2-6% to 70-80%. This has brought forth the
question of what the “real” Orthodox believer is. The answers were out there
for everyone to see: only a fully churched believer could be called a “real
Orthodox Christian”.
In 2005
the term “churching” was the main focus of the research by a Saint-Petersburg
based sociologist Valentina Chesnokova, who elaborated the so-called
“Ch-index”. V. Chesnokova came up with sociologically simple and easy-to-use
markers to define the degree of churching: frequency of attending church
services, regularity of home prayers, reading Scripture, observing the fasts,
as well as certain dogmatic aspects – e.g. belief in God, the Holy Trinity,
life after death, etc. However, this approach was faced with an ambivalent
reaction among both secular sociologists and the ecclesiastic community. The
introduction of the “Ch-index” did not solve the problem of “identifying”
Orthodox believers. Currently the issue is progressively making its way from
the sociological into the theological field, where it turns out that there are
so many gradations of “churching”, and that the connections between the outward
markers and the inner state are so oblique,that no universally accepted
approach to defining the term exists. All the critics of Chesnakova’s approach
are unanimous in pointing out that “the criteria and indicators of being
religious must be re-oriented to the authentic logical patterns of religious
cultures. If one shifts to this kind of relative stance and measures up a
respondent’s religiosity according to the demands of the religions he or she
deems his own, then the methodological obstacle in sociologically grasping the
religious will disappear”.
Whatever
the outcome of the academic clashes may be, however, an emergence of a
universally accepted marker of being Orthodox and a “real church-goer” could
hardly help us in solving the truly ecclesial issue of helping people fully
become members of the Church as the Body of Christ. This is what leads me to
focus on the inner, theological understanding of the phenomenon of churching in
my paper, as well as on the patterns and risks which have to do with it.
Historical background of the notion
The term
“churching” – ὁἐ κκλησιασμ ὸ ς – is
interesting in many different ways. Historically speaking, the notion of
churching originated as a specific rite performed over a mother and her baby
forty days after its birth. The rite introduced in the 6th century AD allowed
new babies to enter Church life to a certain extent even before their baptism,
while it granted their mothers permission to receive Communion once the period of
purification was over.
The
question of when the term “churching” first emerged in its modern meaning is a
tricky one which still awaits clarification. It should be noted in this
connection that neither Catholics nor Protestants have this term. More than
that: the notion does not go a long way back even in Greek-speaking Orthodox
communities.The term virtually does not surface in the corpus of the patristic
writings except for the few contexts where it has a strictly practical meaning.
The term ἐ κκλησιάσαι is used by the Fathers ( e.g. by
Cyril and John Chrysostom) in a meaning which was standard for that period –
“to gather a meeting”. The word had the same sense in antiquity (in
Aristophanes etc.) , in the Septuagint the same meaning can be found in Deut
31: 12, 28. Even in Modern Greek the verb ἐ
κκλησιάζομαι simply means attending the church community regularly rather than
the process of profound exposure to ecclesial patterns.
The term
“churching” is nearly absent from the writings of the later Russian Church
Fathers; thus, it occurs only once in the corpus of Theophan the Recluse (in
his “Sketches of Christian Doctrine”), while Bishop Saint Ignatius makes no use
of the term whatsoever.
The term
“churchism”, in a way similar to “churching”, came to be actively used in the
late 19th – early 20th centuries, first of all in the so-called
religious-philosophic circles, where the importance of “churching of life” and
returning to original Christian principles was being discussed. In his
“Philosophy of the Cult” Fr Paul Florensky wrote: “We do not live and breathe
the Church; rather, we just come there every so often. This means that during
the six weekdays we assimilate certain patterns, a non-ecclesial mode of
thinking, and during our short visit to the Church our mode of thinking is only
somewhat differently adjusted rather than rearranged, while we should think
ecclesiastically both within and without the church”. Bishop Mikhail Gribanovsky
addressed the same concern: “Churchism is, according to the literal meaning of
the word, what characterizes the Church, what makes it different from the other
world lying outside the grace of the Church. What has a seal of the Church is
ecclesial. That person should be called ecclesial who lives by the spirit of
the Church of Christ, is illuminated through its sacraments, loves its doctrine
and follows it in all his or her pursuits”. “Churchism is a life pattern in
which the transforming activity of the Holy Spirit is evident which is inherent
to the Church”. It is through churchism that it penetrates into our earthly
tumultuous life, and revives and invigorates it”.
However,
the modern meaning of the word “churching” goes back only to the second half of
the 20th century when many people who had been brought up in the totalitarian
Soviet ideology and culture began entering the Church.
In order
to better understand where the term came from and how it made its way into
modern ecclesial vocabulary in the 20th century, it is crucial to understand
the context in which the Russian Orthodox Church lived in the Soviet epoch.
From the general perspective which the society had, the Church came across as
an essentially marginalized and closed structure, which was, when not under
persecution, only tolerated for political reasons. The borderline setting of
the Church, being apart from the Soviet world and its people, was easy to see
both in the habitus of the believers and priests and their demeanor, as well as
in many other markers. Church life was totally asocial: the opportunities for
the Church to do missionary, catechetical or social activities were either cut
short or strictly limited to the church premises. Finding himself within the
Church, a person who had come to believe in Christnow realized that the way
back into society was actually closed to him or her. He or she had either to
conceal their belonging to the Church, to constantly act against their
principles or to openly challenge the dominating ideology, which would have
very clear consequences.
In the
aftermath of the protest movement of the 1960s, many saw in the Church the only
institution surviving from before the Revolution, which had for the most part
retained its unique lifestyle, its centuries-old spiritual regulations, as well
as its relative retention of the “estate character”.At the same time, it still
legally functioned on the territory of the USSR. The Church came to be
perceived by the “60s generation” as the only shelter for those sick and tired
of “sovietness”, the differences between the lifestyle of the “Homo Sovieticus”
and the Orthodox believer being paramount. It was probably at this point that
the problem of churching as a gradual penetration and profound change not only
of mind, but also of all the aspects of life of a person turning to Christ,
began to take shape. It is worth noting in this connection that virtually no
earlier than the end of the 20th century was churching seen as a reenactment of
the lifestyle and traditions formed in the Russian church community in late
19th – early 20th centuries with very few unsubstantial alterations.
A special
emphasis on churching was laid by His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill, who said that
retaining the unity of the Church and the churchingof the young people were
among his main objectives. Let me quote here the interview of His Holiness
Patriarch Kyrill to the “Russia” TV channel: “When we speak of the churching of
the nation, we do not only mean people knowing on which feasts to attend churches. We mean being able to set alive
this huge spiritual and cultural layer which a person has inside, very often in
a “sleeping mode””.
Definition of churching
Thus,
churching is the process of entering the church; its aim is “clothing oneself
in Christ” (Gal 3:27) and obtaining “the mind of Christ”. This process is
substantially different from entering any other social structure or
organization. Without a clear understanding of what makes the Church different
from a corporation we cannot come close to knowing the essence of churching.
In the
Creed, a Christian professes his belief that the Church is one, holy, catholic
and apostolic.The Church is an object of faith in the first place – thus, all
its above qualities can be less than self-evident. Otherwise stated, in real
life a believer will come to face factionalized, vicious, authoritarian and
selfish ecclesial institutions, and, while facing all of these, he or she will
have to retain the faith that the Church is in fact not like this. Most concerns
are usually raised in connection with the sanctity of the Church and its
independence from the moral level of its members. As S.I. Fudel, a remarkable
theologian of the second half of the 20th century, puts it, “The sanctity of
the Church relies only on the holy things of the Church and on His sacraments.
It is not the people that sanctify the Church; rather, it is the Church that
turns the people into partakers of the holy things kept within it. However,
there is no holy Church without the saints, because in its human aspect, as the
theanthropic organism, it is made up of the saints and it is built ”for the
perfecting of the saints” (Eph 4:12). At the same time, as A. Khomyakov aptly
remarks, “flawless sanctity belongs only to the unity of all the members of the
Church”.
Thus,
while in terms of external aspects churching can be defined as a believer’s
mastering of “the church lifestyle, the church mode of thinking, the church
points of view on things” (V. Chesnokova) or ”the exposure to and realisation
of the plenitude of the tradition of the Orthodox Church” (N. Adamenko), the
very essence of churching can be described as the process of a Christian’s
“in-growth” into the mysterious life of the Church as the sacred Body of
Christ.
Churching
can by no means be reduced to an “incorporating” into the church structure;
this is a deeply personal and mystical process, which can get out of pace with
the change of one’s status within the church organization. It should be pointed
out that the notions of churchism and churching are not identical. Churchism is
institutional and can be compared to one’s status in a corporation, while
churching primarily refers to an inner change, reflecting a profound link with
the Church not as an institution but as the Living and Holy Body of Christ.
Early in the 20th century, before the onset of the revolutionary period, Father
Paul Florensky used to joke that before establishing Orthodox missions for the
heterodox they should be opened for the students of theological academies:
their “churchism” was perfectly all right, while the “churching” was sometimes
totally absent. Thus, churching is in many ways a mysterious process which was
not quite accomplished even in a community as churched as Russia would seem to
have been back then.
In his
Epistle to the Galatians the Apostle Peter expressed what churching is in a
vivid and graphic way: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). A
truly churched person is one with a high amplitude of resonance with Christ in
all his life. Saints are “truly churched”, even when their lifestyle might seem
scandalous for “deeply churched” people such as, for instance, St Xenia of
Saint Petersburg, who would scandalize any pious eye by the way she looked. At the same time,
there is a whole host of saints in the Church who, though being the “ecclesial
officials”, were role models of truly Christian sanctity.
Stages of churching
Churching
is a complex, multifaceted and synthetic process, or, rather, a spiritual
journey of a person who has heard Christ’s call to follow Him. This journey has
both its stages and its peculiar challenges and temptations.
Churching
has to do with the development of the religious outlook of a person, beginning
with the most basic forms of religiosity and going on to the ultimate and most
perfect ones. These three stages are traditionally referred to in the patristic
tradition as the states of slave, mercenary and son. This mirrors quite
accurately the Old Testament idea of personal ascension to God. However, in my
opinion, it is worthwhile singling out the “zero”, preliminary stage too; that
is, the pagan, magical or, rather, mechanical religious outlook which is the
most widespread in today’s society and which cannot be ignored.
Thus, if
we tried to single out the main stages of churching, we would arrive at the
following scheme: needing, interest, immersion, studying and understanding,
soaking (saturation) and in-growth. Let us now dwell more closely on each of
these stages.
Needing
Shortly
before his death Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov wrote in his diary: “I am thinking
about the Church more and more. More and more often. I’ve come to need it.
Before, I used to feast my eyes on it, admire it, ponder it. I evaluated its
use. This is completely different. I need it – this is the beginning of all.
Everything
before this has been essentially nothing.
How can
one help kissing the Church’s hand when she provides ways of praying even to
the illiterate. An ancient and backward old lady lights an icon lamp and says
“Lord have mercy” (which she heard said in church or has come up with on her
own) and makes a bow all the way down to the floor.
She does
her prayer and gets consolation. The mind of the old and lonely lady is eased.
Who can
invent this? This is something neither Pythagoras can “discover” nor Newton can
“calculate”.
The
Church, however, has done this. It has understood this, it has managed to do so.
The
Church has enabled everyone to do so. Hosanna to the Church, like hosanna to
Christ – “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Churching
is absolutely impossible when the Church is “not needed” or if it is something
habitual, an afterthought. In Rozanov’s “It became necessary to me” the Church
as the “ultimate value” finds perfect expression, as the object of faith which
becomes the central element of life, since the Church is here something like
the “representative of Christ” on Earth.
It is
noteworthy that, according to the sociological studies performed in 2012 by the
sociological centre “Sreda”, the largest percentage among the reasons which
prompted people to turn to the Church is their religious family upbringing
(that is, they had already been churched to a certain degree) and illnesses of
loved ones (12% and 7% of the respondents). As the director of “Sreda” noted,
according to the statistics our prime missionaries are our sorrows.
As a
rule, some kind of vacuum in life is necessary to trigger churching; an acute
sense of “existential emptiness” must be there to bring about the need for the
Church. However, this need for the Church to a certain extent proves to be
connected with an essentially pagan understanding of religion as a “spiritual
market” that offers a universal and efficient remedy for problems once they
occur. This is particularly evident in the case of issues which cannot be
solved in a usual human way. Having despaired in getting assistance in the
secular field, a human being raises their eyes towards heaven and goes to
church. Now he or she “feels the need for it”.
However,
it is already at this stage that dangers may lurk. Firstly, he or she can face
the inefficiency of the mechanics of the “spiritual market” which might seem
self-evident for his or her effectively pagan outlook. A candle lit in front of
a wonder-working icon, a litany service arranged in church or a pilgrimage to
holy places can fail to do what was expected from them. And this is very good,
otherwise there is the risk of retaining this half-Сhristian and half-pagan
perspective on church life. The discontent inevitably born within this context
either urges one to seek the answer for what the reason for the failure is or
can bring about disillusionment and prompt one to quit the process of
churching.
Another
challenge is that the Church is poorly approachable, both in inner and outward
terms. A dramatically inadequate number of priests and churches, as well as the
psychological distance between them and the laity, boost the risks of the
failure to satisfy the emerging need for the Church.
Interest
If the
above dangers are happily avoided, the person seeking the Church does not turn
away and begins to discover it as a whole new world living by totally different
rules to those of the secular society. A constant comparison of the secular and
the ecclesial is underway: and the more drastic the difference is, the clearer
the church patterns of life become against the background of mundane values, as
the Church looks all the more attractive.
Once the
interest in church life has been kindled, the neophyte begins to visit church
services, read spiritual books, and meet and mingle with churchgoers. He is not
at all in the Church yet and chances are he tends to make it explicit. But the
very important process of the “bride-show” is underway – studying the object of
one’s new interest. A person faces quite a challenge: not just getting to know
what Orthodox Christianity is from an external perspective, but also making a
practical comparison of it with his or her life.
A
profound internal conflict of values can result from this examination: the
Christian values can be too “solid food” for a person who is used to following
earthly ways and consenting to the passions.However, this conflict can lead to
the opposite result too: it may literally push a person to become really
penitent and to be eager to drastically change his whole lifestyle. Bishop
Saint Theophan speaks of the “contrition of the spirit” and “the rise of the
anxieties of the conscience” as an apparent sign of the grace of God calling on
a person.
However,
seeing the Church exceptionally against the background of secular life can be
dangerous in that it can prompt becoming radical or even fanatic about faith.
This risk has to do with the direction “away from the world” and on to
something significant and holy dominating this period; it can be quite vague
and not intelligible at the same time. Bishop Saint Theophan the Recluse
remarks: “This world is an accomplished world of passions, as well as passions
personified in people, habits, deeds. By getting in touch with it in any way
you cannot help stirring your own wound or passion according to their likeness or
similar structure”. This all makes the urge to cut oneself loose of everything
which is connected with sin in the mind of the penitent person only
understandable. But if this urge of soul finds the correspondingly resonant
context, one can easily expect the birth of another exponent of the radical
movements in the Church.
Crucial
at this stage of churching is the personality of the priest, the spiritual
father of the person “taking a close look at the Church”, with whom they can
discuss challenges and questions. One’s further progress is in many ways
dependent on what kind of basis is laid down at this point, what kind of
emotions colour this period of getting to know the Church.
This is
what stays behind the risks lurking in wait for the one those taking their
first interest in the Church. First of all, this interest can simply perish if
left without constant support and inspiration, when facing the formalism of the
priests and other church personalities. From the perspective of most people,
these include everyone employed at church premises, candle sellers and guards
too. Bossiness, pretentiousness and the tendency to avoid any real dialogue can
also discourage this original interest and put people off getting involved with
the Church. A closed character of the inner life of a parish and “double
standards” for insiders and outsiders all work towards bringing about concerns
and doubts within those involved in the process of churching as to how right
their choice is.
Immersion
The next
stage – immersion – usually has to do with starting to take part in the Church
sacraments and amending one’s life according to God’s commandments. Typically,
the main “gate” into the church life is the sacrament of confession.It is here
that the covenant between man and God once given during holy baptism is
renewed.Ideally, once the confession has been made, a person should have a
fairly clear idea of what has to be done in order to maintain this state of
reconciliation of the human soul with God. This is the start of reformatting
one’s life, filling it with new content, which is now in many ways defined by
the Church. Naturally, external changes in the lifestyle come first: things
which are apparently out of keeping with the ecclesial patterns are taken away,
gradually giving way to ecclesial values and lifestyle. Probably, one’s life
comes to be regulated for the first time ever: a person becomes involved in the
liturgical rhythms, begins to frequent church services, observe fasts and
celebrate Christian feasts.
It should
be borne in mind that these changes happen first of all on the external ritual
plane. As a rule, the soul continues to live according to its old habits, which
often leads to family tensions. Not aware of the profound shift in the value
system of the new convert, those around him see him as “going mad about
religion” and genuinely hope that this all will be over soon. The new convert’s
mind is not steady enough yet, he feels essentially insecure and clings to the
external expressions of piety, for it is only thanks to these pious “crutches”
that he can maintain some kind of “upright posture”. A joke has been popular
recently: “When there is a neophyte in a household, all its members become
martyrs”, and this is a very apt characterization of the period of “immersion”.
It can also be said that this period in the emerging Christian lifetime is his
or her “honeymoon”: the mysterious marriage with the Church has been
contracted, the past has been left behind, his or her heart is solemnly handed
over to Christ, and standing on the threshold of this new life fills you with
joy, inspiration and pure elation. Waves of sincere enthusiasm and fascination with
the church grandeur, the depth of thought and the prayerful power of the
services stream through the neophyte, and he or she realizes that at the long
last the ultimate goal and essence of living has been found. Besides, the
widest vista of historical, theological, cultural and other kinds of horizons
which churchism opens up just takes your breath away. According to Bishop Saint
Theophan the Recluse, this is the period of rejoicing in the ample gifts of the
grace of God granted free, without particular efforts on the part of the new
convert.
However,
challenges and temptations lurk here too. Let us point out one of the central
of these – the tendency to abandon altogether rational analysis of spiritual
life and church life at large which results in disillusionment following a
surfeit of the emotional exaltations of the soul. However, the biggest harm can
be done by facing the inner deceitfulness of the people “with a long record of
church life”, the feeling of cold shoulder and indifference of the church
community, as well as its personal tensions there. By causing confusion in the
still immature, though captivated with fascination, soul of the neophyte, these
temptations can lead to a profound disillusionment with the Church as a
theanthropic organism, particularly in the cases when the sanctity of the Church
is far from self-evident.
Studying and understanding
The
“romantic period” of the neophyte’s immersion is gradually followed by learning
about the basics of the Christian life. A key role in this process is played by
regular participation in the church services and sacraments, as well as being
in constant touch with the spiritual father. A new hierarchy of values is
gradually settling in the mind, new notions like passions and virtues being
introduced, this time in practical terms. A Christian outlook is being
constructed in one’s mind and an understanding of the spiritual “itinerary” is
being drawn. The once unambiguous texts of the Scripture become polyphonic and
acquire new shades of meaning, which open up not so much through reading research
on biblical studies as through the personal experience of living according to
the Gospel. The Scripture is no longer “universal”, rather, it begins to be
perceived as very personally addressed, chiming in with one’s specific needs,
concerns and reasons for joy. The initial experience of church life is gained
and one becomes accustomed to many things.
There are
challenges here, too. First of all, there is the challenge of intellectualism,
of reducing Christianity to a type of outlook or ideology. But there is also
the opposite extreme of giving up the search for understanding the Christian
faith in favour of keeping the established pious lifestyle which has become, in
a sense, comfortable. Finding himself or herself strongly dependent on an
authoritarian spiritual father, a neophyte can easily slip into becoming
uncriticalof the practices and perspective of the spiritual life of his
teacher; this can prevent him from making further spiritual progress. Combined
with the “absolute submission”, this more often than not results in a
“spiritual short-circuit failure”, in which, although the Church is the centre
of one’s life, its essence is not Christ, but a “God-bearing spiritual leader”.
Saturation
At a
certain point a Christian’s life becomes quite self-contained and
well-balanced. There are already almost no unfamiliar things except for a few
highbrow and essentially insignificant theological subtleties. It is generally
clear what the passions are which tamper with the soul and how to fight them. Taking
part in the divine services comes to be a natural part of life. Relations with
the spiritual father grow into friendship and the questions asked of him
gradually become minor as life starts to be generally pious.
This kind
of person can be said to be quite “saturated” – steeped with churchism. Here we
come to a very important stage in churching where one passes from external
points of support to the inner and significantones.
However
stunning this might seem, becoming used to the sacred is one of the important
indicators of this stage of “saturation”, which is the main challenge to the
spiritual life, according to the holy bishop Theophan the Recluse. After
reaching a sufficiently stable state both in the external relationships with
the Church and in the inner spiritual life, one begins to grow cold. This development can be beneficial in a
certain way, for it contributes to the minimization of the excesses of the
period of the neophyte’s elation. However, the danger of losing interest in
church life and growing weary of it can lurk here too. A feeling of being
devotionally lukewarm becomes a major concern, and this personal state comes to
be perceived as a sign of spiritual degradation or even seceding from the
plenitude of faith.
The
challenge one faces here is that of “spiritual consumerism”. A believer starts
tohave the idea of being on the “final cut” of the road to Kingdom of God where
the Church functions only as a kind of “runway” during his personal flight to
Heaven; that’s why he must always have enough “fuel” for the full flight and
the grace of God must always be felt actively and evidently present in the
soul.
Many
Church Fathers mention this period of a certain lukewarmness in the way the
soul feels the presence of the grace of God.
Archimandrite Sophronius Sakharov treats this feeling of being abandoned
by God which lies in wait for the ascetic at the ultimate stages of ascension
to God. Almost every going through stages of churching to some degree is
exposed to this. The reason for this is the significance of “personal kenosis”
which is a sine qua non for the in-depth “ingrowth” into the Church as the Body
of Christ. A person wholly concerned only with his own individual salvation
cannot break free from the circle of his egotism (although it is spiritual this
time round) and becomea cell of the organism of the church by abandoning his or
her selfish needs.
Unfortunately,
a different pattern of tackling the issue of feeling lukewarm can begin to see
one’s spiritual experience in absolute terms and imposing it on others as the
only viable paradigm of Christian life. Naturally enough, clerics are
vulnerable to this more often than others. A feeling of his or her superiority
and righteousness is fostered in those around, a “sect of the proper” is formed
led by a “spirit-bearing guru-monk” who acts as a resonator of the fading out
spiritual impulses of the parish members. This results in creating a certain
effect of spiritual self-exaltation perceived by the churchgoers as an apparent
operation of the grace of God.
If a
proper pattern of churching is followed, the gradual shift of emphasis is
there: from the external on to the internal, from the ritualistic on to the
sacramental, from the form on to the content. Now with no fear and with an
understanding of the role and function of the different aspects of church life
the Christian begins to fine-tune and correct the mode of his or her presence
in the Church, aiming to fully disclose the operation of the grace of God in
his soul. He seeks those forms of spiritual life which prove fitting best to his soul. He
faces a major challenge of doing everything he gets to do to the glory of
Godand before the face of Christand in doing so not pursuing a big personal
ambition but in submission to our Mother Church in order to create the united
Body of Christ.As John Chrysostom poetically puts it: “Are you having a meal?
Give thanks to God with determination to do so further. Are you sleeping? Give
thanks to God with determination to do so further. Are you going to the city
agora? Do the same. Let there be nothing secular, nothing mundane, do everything
in the name of God”.
Ingrowth
The
feature of last stage of churching – ingrowth – is that the believer cannot
live without the Church anymore. As God’s commandments are progressively
observed and the believer advances in humility, it is necessary to have regular
Eucharistic communication with Christ for constant compensation of his
weakness, as he or she is nurtured with the grace of God “which replenishes the
languishing and treating the ailing”, and a Christian begins, on the one hand,
to see his spiritual feebleness and infirmity, but on the other hand, the
operation of the grace of God in him becomes evident. “Sanctity – as S. I.
Fudel writes – is a certain degree of churching of a person, a degree of
transformation of his or her corruptible nature into the Church of God. This is
achieved in the great and long challenge of the lifetime, during which a
struggle for incorruptibility is going on inside the human being. But if there
is struggle, it means there already is the Church inside as there still is
darkness”. Without seeing this inner “darkness” in realistic terms, without a
constant cutting off of this personal darkness from the holy Body of Christ one
cannot fully enter the living theanthropic organism. Otherwise the “darkness”
would become part of the Body of the Church, and, like a carcinoma, would
constantly harm and devour its whole body.
Finding
himself at the summit of churching, a Christian drastically changes his vision
of the very adverse points he was fighting with at the “entry point” of his
Church life. The emphases in one’s prayer are shifting from “problem solving”
to thanksgiving and praying for the others, the benefits of the Church as a
single organism take over personal interests. Saint Isaac the Syrian aptly
speaks about this attitude of human towards God: “Do not ask of God those
things which he grants us without asking and on His own Providence and which
are granted not only to His own and beloved, but also to those bare of the
knowledge of Him. A son does not ask his father for bread, but reaches for the
utmost in the house of his father. For it is only due to the feebleness of
human mind that our Lord commanded to ask for the daily bread. But behold what
is commanded to those who are perfect in knowledge and sane in their soul.It
has been said to them: Care not about bread and clothes, for if God takes care
of the speechless animals, birds and inanimate creatures, all the more does He
care about us. Hence seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33). Even the way a
Christian feels about demons and other adverse effects changes too: “Neither
the demons – Saint Isaac goes on to say – nor the pernicious animals, nor the
lascivious people can perform their will to their detrimentunless the Counsel
of the ruling Lord allows this to happen. Say to yourself: If this be according
to God’s will that the wicked prevail over His creature, then I accept it
without sorrow like someone who does not want God’s will to happen. Thus you
will rejoice in your temptations like one who knows and feels that beckoning of
the Lord”.
The life
of the churched person is already unconceivable in isolation from the church
and divine service. The Church becomes the very essence of life, or, rather,
the very backbone of life “that cannot be moved”. In this connection it is
relevant to bring up a passage from the memoirs of the late Archpriest Vladimir
Pravdolubov (Ryazanskaya region), a well known priest and spiritual father: “We
retained our faith because of our churching: there were no schools, no books,
there was nothing but the divine service. And a person rejoices in the divine
service even if he does not understand a word. The soul which is accustomed to
the Church feels that it does not belong in the world, it is homesick there.
All these discos, modern gizmos and TV series are repulsive for it. Once a soul
beholds the real beauty, the world fades out for it, the world pushes the
churched person away from itself. Thus, what matters most for the laymen is
frequenting the Church as much as possible”.
Measuring up the churching
How one can go about measuring up the churching is a
very involved question. As mentioned before, Priest Paul Florensky considered
the essential indefinability as a crucial aspect of the vitality of churchism
(or, rather, churching), beauty being the only criterion.
Recently
an article by N.A. Adamenko “The change of attitude to death as a criterion of
churching” has been published at the site http://www.bogoslov.ru. In it its author suggested one’s attitude to
death as an objective marker of churching. The author argues that during the
process of churching the attitude to death changes gradually from pagan concept
through the Old Testament notion and on to the truly Christian understanding.
N.A. Adamenko shows that while the pagan perspective on death sees it as a
natural occurrence common to all the living creatures thus finding a kind of
psychological way out in the faith in afterlife or reincarnation, the idea of
death held by the churched Christians is absolutely different. For them death
is a cosmological tragedy, however, it is overcome by Christ. Therefore,
earthly life is a responsible period before entering the Kingdom of God here
and now, long before death. The linear Christian perspective on life as the
unique chance to either be saved or perish in eternal damnation brings along a
totally new pattern of priorities and emphases in life.
Conclusion
Churching
is a new term which originated in the context of the peculiar historical
conditions of the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet and
post-Soviet period although the problem of fully and informally entering church
life had also existed in pre-revolutionary Russia. Research into the patterns
and ways of churching of modern people should be continued on different levels
ranging from studies in an academic theological vein to practical
recommendations distributed at parishes. Even if one has learned the Creed and
prays every day but does not attend church services and takes no part in the
life of the parish, he or she cannot be called Orthodox Christian, however
strict the patterns of abstinence and praying he or she might be following. For
the Orthodox Christian being churched is a an objective state of real
participation to and operation of the Holy Spirit within the members of the
Body of Christ rather than a state of being “incorporated” into the church
structure. There is no salvation beyond this “ingrowth” into the Church.
By way of
concluding remarks let me offer the tantalizing evidence of Metropolitan
Veniamin (Fedchenkov) about what once struck him as a role model of churching.
“Shortly before the death of Father Ioann Kronshtadsky God granted me an
opportunity to visit the holy shepherd.
- Holy father – I said – will you please tell
me where your ardent faith comes from?
- Where faith comes from? – slowly and
thoughtfully repeated the already ailing monk. He remained silent for some
time. I have lived in the Church! – suddenly and firmly answered the priest.
These words – alas! – did not make sense to me, “theologian” and student.
“Lived in the Church” – what is that supposed to mean? A strange kind of
ignorance, as my reader would say. I do not contradict, I avow. But this is
exactly what is so sad, that we, the would-be shepherds, did not understand
things as simple as “Church” while it was perfectly self-evident for Father
Ioann. His answer actually made no sense to me, as if he had spoken in a
foreign language. So I repeated my question:
- What does that mean that you have lived
in the Church?
This even
made Father Ioann a little disappointed.
- Well, what does it mean… I have performed
the Divine Liturgy and other services, generally, I have prayedin church.
Then, after
thinking a little, he added:
- I enjoyed doing the menaia readings. Not
the hagiographic menaia, but liturgical ones. I loved reading canons to saints.
This is what living in the Church means – he finished. The importance of the
Church was unfolding for me step by step too. Looking back now I have to admit
that it was upheld not by Holy Scripture or patristic works. You can say I
never read the latter, and I read almost no lives of saints, neither in the
church school nor in the seminary, while the Scripture was just a textbook, and
quite cold at that. Neither did it nurture us.
- Probably you could say that it was
sermons that made an impact on us? They did not. I remember that up until the
theological academy I had not heard a sermon which would have inspired me.
Besides, sermons were very scarcely performed in the church school and
seminary. While the clergy was being given communion in the altar the chorus
used to sing something “concert-like”. But what was it? Maybe they were passages
from the Apostle book or the Gospel? No, they weren’t either. We hardly ever
understood the Apostle readings and appreciated it only for their loudness and
beauty of performance. We knew the Gospel by heart, and never did Gospel
reading take our breath away.
What is
left here of the “Church” then? The crucial things: just this standing in the
church, taking part in the prayers performed, of course (to different extent
for everyone), well, and listening to the word of God. It was this “service”,
liturgy in particular, simple as it is, without a specific role played by the
mind, that kept and fostered our faith. These most basic things: being in the
church, presenting yourself at the liturgy, attending divine services – upheld
our faith in a miraculous way. Which
way? We never gave a single thought to it. But it was this very “going to the
church” that fostered us the most”.
Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/3442670.html
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