People like that say one thing, but something
else is in their heart; on their tongue it is, “Lord, have mercy!” but inside,
“Have me excused.”
St. Theophan the Recluse
In
Christianity, we constantly use familial themes: we call each other “brother”
and “sister,” we call upon God as “Father,” we get together and partake from
one Cup, after each service we sit down for a meal at the common table, we are
taught to care for each other as one would for family… but do we adhere to these teachings? Do we think of our Church as our home, of God
as our Father and of each other as a brother or a sister? Quite the opposite often appears to be
true. In this age of individualized
consumerism, we often treat our Church as a spiritual “supermarket.” We properly recognize that the Church offers
us treasures, but instead of communing we consume. If our soul is alive and
hungers for God, we come to Church more frequently; if it is on its way to
atrophy, we do not feel much of a need and seldom come to Church; and if our
soul does not require food any longer because it neither lives nor grows, we
may find our way to Church once every few years, if ever. But when we do come, we act like shoppers,
rather than children of the kingdom. As
in a supermarket, we browse for what we need or like, we “sample,” we may smile
at another “shopper” or ask a question at the “customer service desk.” We are untouched by the lives of others and
we keep our own life private, hidden from other “shoppers.” We may even like the “store” enough to show
up for a “sale” or a “promotion event,” but soon move on with our thoughts, our
feelings, our life, with our “loaf of bread” in our shopping bag.
Our
consumer-like behavior starts with the least noticeable things: we treat the
very building of our church and its grounds as if they belong to someone
else. We see trash on the walkway—why
pick it up? We see items out of order in
the narthex—why bother? It is not ours,
we do not know where it belongs. Aren’t
there people who work here? Isn’t there
staff? “Clean up on isle 2!” This attitude of separation from the Church
begins with benign things, but it enters our prayer and our very being. Our Father calls us to attend His Divine
Feast. He calls us to the Holy
Eucharist—we may come if it is not too inconvenient. Having received an invitation from our
relatives to attend a family gathering or a celebration, we make arrangements,
travel plans, feel bad if we cannot go due to circumstances beyond our control,
call and apologize… But when God, our
heavenly Father, calls us to His service, we think nothing of just not showing
up. At best, we have reasons: “I have
bought a piece of land… I have bought
five yoke of oxen… I have a business…
Have me excused” (Luke 14:18-19, Matthew 22-5). Even when we are present at the Liturgy, we
are absent from it. Liturgia by its very
definition is “common work,” but we stand with a wall of our self-importance
all around us, alone in a Church full of people, thinking private thought and
praying private prayers. We watch the
Liturgy, not taking part in it; we are consumers, not participants in a common
work. We completely forget that the
Church is not a concert or a spectacle, nor a neighborhood supermarket, it is
the Body of the Living God, it is our home, the ark of our salvation, the ship
which takes us to the calm harbor.
As in any
living body, a member of the Body of Christ is either fully connected with all
its members and is nourished by the same Blood, or he or she is cut off and
dead. A foot cannot be by itself,
choosing when to be in the body and when to leave because it is inconvenient,
when to help the body walk, and when to say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not
belong to the body” (1 Cor. 12:15). In
the same way, a member of Christ’s Body is connected to the Whole by the Blood
which runs through all its members and is either fully living with and in the
Body, or is cut off from it and is dead to it.
Why is it so important to be in the Body rather than just near it? Because there is no “individual” salvation,
alone, by yourself, in your own body.
Because only Christ’s Body and no other conquered death, only Christ’s
Body and no other ascended into heaven, and if we are to have hope of
salvation, we must be in that Body and no other.
So, how
do we enter into the Body and stay in it?
The Sacrament of our salvation is Liturgia or “common work,” and we are
to become co-laborers with God. The Holy
Spirit draws us to the doors of the Church, Christ heals and restores us, and
the Father adopts us and gives us strength to be victorious in our struggle
against sin. But we must answer the call
of the Spirit and enter, we must preserve our baptismal garment unsoiled, we
must also adopt God as our Father and His children as our brothers and
sisters. We can start with small things:
treat the church as our home and others as our family, try to show genuine
interest, care, and love toward the lives of others, consider every church
service as an invitation from the Father to a family feast and be there if
possible. And when you come, do your
best to be a participator in the common work, not merely a spectator. These external things, even if done sometimes
with effort, will internalize and undoubtedly reflect in our prayer: not “I
came to the Liturgy,” but “we came to the Liturgy”; not “I am praying,” but “we
are praying”; not “I am taking Communion,” but “we are entering into
Communion”; and not “I am being saved,” but “the Body of Christ is being
saved.”
Of
course, there is room for solitude in Christianity, for privacy, for lonely
silence and for secluded prayer, but not at the core of it, not in the Liturgy
and not in the Eucharist. Christ said,
“where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst
of them” (Matthew 18:20). If we do not
learn to be in the Body, to live in it in this temporal existence, how can we
hope to spend eternity in it after we depart this world? And if we cannot learn to act like God’s
children in the physical matters, what hope do we have to suddenly one day
transcend into the spiritual realm? Let
us then gather together not in our names, but in God’s, and let us celebrate
the Divine Liturgy as our common work, let us be co-laborers with Christ and
with one another, let us Commune with His Body and be connected by His Blood,
because only in this can we have hope of salvation.
By Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov
Source: https://frsergei.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/on-consumerism-in-church/
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