Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Mary of Egypt - Lazar Puhalo

The Ascent to Pascha

We cannot sink so deeply into the darkness that the light of grace cannot reach us.

THE SUNDAY OF SAINT MARY OF EGYPT

How deep into the darkness must we fall before the light can no longer reach us? What wickedness or what vice puts us beyond the reach of the love of God and of redemption?

 There can be no place in the universe where God is not present; there can be no darkness which His light does not penetrate. There are neither boundaries nor barriers to the love and mercy of God. There is no limit to the grace of the Holy Spirit.

 That is what this “Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt” is designed to reveal to us.

Today we learned once more, from the life of our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt, that our weaknesses are our most loyal friends. Our weaknesses never desert or abandon us. They are always with us, and they can grow so powerful within us that they become genuine addictions and begin to consume our lives.. In the life of St. Mary of Egypt, we learn both the power of addiction and the power of repentance and the power of a determination to seek the grace of the Holy Spirit in order to become liberated.

 The power of addiction is astonishing. As one becomes addicted, the chemistry of the brain is actually altered, and there are even structural changes in the brain. Some addictions can be controlled, but few can be cured. Addictions that have been developed and strengthened over many years often cannot be controlled under any normal circumstances. They may destroy the addicted person and those around them who become enveloped in them.

 Confronting such addictions and struggling against them requires enormous courage and dedication. An Orthodox Christian who is enmeshed in such addiction will prayerfully seek the help of the Holy Spirit in such a struggle. We sometimes find ourselves consumed, completely controlled by a passion and there is little consolation or contentment to us after we have fulfilled the passion. It simply fills a momentary void so that we get can have a moment's peace, a momentary sense of pleasure.

  When we finally reach such a point of desperation tht we turn to God in prayer, realise the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit, we can be guided by grace to find an inner strength within us that we did not know was there. Drawing out this inner strength, grace can support our struggle as we seek to invoke and utilize this inner strength. Our loss of self-respect can be so great that we do not realise that we deserve self-respect and that we must find it once more in order to overcome our vices and addictions and find liberation into an authenticity of life.

 The struggle for liberation must begin with a full acknowledgement of the problem and a determination to take responsibility for confronting it. This usually requires a special impetus. An addicted person who draws others into the manifestations of the addiction often requires isolation from other people in order to control and struggle against the addiction. 

 Such was the case of St. Mary of Egypt, who had developed a a powerful sexual addiction in her youth and steadily reinforced it with constant gratification. She was sexually addicted to such a degree that her whole life was completely consumed by it and she lived for nothing else.

 By any human standards, her situation was insurmountable and hopeless. Seeing the hidden courage and the possibilities in her and foreseeing how completely she would give herself over to struggle, to the point of becoming a great saint and inspiration to others that would help to deliver them from such bondage, in the fullness of time, God intervened.

 We all know the life of Saint Mary of Egypt so we will not re-tell it here. It will doubtless be retold in the sermon. Rather we will seek to understand why one Sunday of Great Lent is devoted to her memory and what sort of spiritual strength and guidance this is intended to impart to us as we enter the last week before the solemnity of the holy week.

The life and example of St. Mary of Egypt is given to us as we begin this final week of Great Lent before entering Holy Week in order to assure us that forgiveness is available to all no matter what kind of addictions, vices, and sins we may have fallen into. Her struggle was extreme because her bondage to her addiction was so extreme and powerful, but we are shown that, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, any addiction and vice can be overcome with struggle and cooperation with that grace. We are being encouraged through her to assess ourselves carefully, discern those addictions and vices within us, and redouble our struggle during this final week of preparation for great and holy Pascha.

 We will speak more about Holy Week after the commemoration of the Entry into Jerusalem next Sunday, formally inaugurating the struggle of Holy Week.

 One may ask, if Mary had overcome her addiction and become already a saint, why did she remain in the wilderness alone until the end of her life? It may be that she had found a life of peace, joy and meaning, being filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit and having experienced such great spiritual joy and such peace there in the wilderness that she did not want to leave it but wanted to stay there living together with nothing more than the grace of the Holy Spirit, feeling the immediate presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in her life.

 We, meanwhile,We are given hope of the help of the Holy Spirit if we will open our hearts to it. And we are given the  assurace of God’s mercy and foregivness, no matter what vices and addictions we are strugging with. We are given hope of the help of the Holy Spirit if we will open our hearts to it.

R.S. Thomas and the Question of God’s Migratory Patterns - Luke Knight

Photo by Luke Knight

R.S. Thomas and the Question of God’s Migratory Patterns

The early reports on February 6 were of a massive earthquake with substantial casualties expected. Within a few days, the death toll had climbed to the thousands and the stories of trapped people began to emerge. We looked for glimmers of hope, but the thought of hundreds still stuck and dying alone under collapsed buildings became overwhelming. I was in England at the time, visiting family and taking a holiday. I tried to enjoy myself, but the thought of those suffering in Turkey and Syria raised afresh the age-old question: where are you, God?

I had been reading R.S. Thomas (1913 – 2000) for about three years, and like a great many others met in his poetry an unflinching mind and a wide-open heart; a personality willing to take on the stark questions of life and God, even if conclusions were hard to come by. Once nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thomas was a reclusive Welsh poet-priest, revered today as one of the most incisive voices of his generation.

While traveling in England the chance came to visit Wales for a day, so I shared my plans with an online affinity group that celebrates Thomas’ work. Jane responded immediately, "I'm the vicar of one of R.S.'s old parishes and would be happy to show you around." I was just about the only passenger to get off the train at Welshpool where Jane was waiting with a big smile and rainbow-coloured hair. We drove to St. Michael's Church in the village of Manafon where Thomas served from 1942-54.

On the way I learn that Jane trained for ordination in later life following a long teaching career. Spending the last twelve years being reluctantly promoted, she now oversees several rural parishes. She and her husband Nick, a local flight instructor, are planning their retirement to a cottage on the coast by the end of the year. They’re English, but after thirty years in Wales this is clearly home. In a knitted vest embroidered with sheep, three dogs in tow, and a pilot herself, Jane well fits the description I once heard from Rowan Williams about his home country's clergy: “Some of the most interesting and strange people I've met are Welsh vicars.” We could say the same of R.S. Thomas, though for different reasons.

Jane admits she does not appear a predictable successor to R.S. Thomas at St. Michael's as he usually comes across as austere, more at home with long lonely walks and birdwatching than with the chatter of church life. His tendency toward parishioner avoidance is well documented, some half-jokingly caricaturing him as the ogre of Wales. "I'm not sure what R.S. would think about a woman vicar, let alone one with rainbow-coloured hair," Jane remarks as we stand in St. Michael's on a frigid February afternoon, just as bracing as it must have been when Thomas presided.

Visionary Experiences & Religious Trauma - Florian Berndt

VISIONARY EXPERIENCES & RELIGIOUS TRAUMA

After several people shared their visionary experiences with me recently, I read a post along the same lines on social media the other day that almost made me reply with charges of blasphemy. I refrained from drafting a direct response, in order to avoid getting into some senseless internet debate, and decided, rather, to write this short reflection.

About one-third of the Jewish and Christian scriptures describe dreams and visions, and they seem to be one of Holy Spirit’s favorite ways to communicate (e. g. Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). Probably because there is something about visual imagery that often reaches deeper into our hearts than mere language and calls forth an equally deeper response. Also, I always thought that this was the reason that Jesus taught primarily in parables.

Personally, I am no stranger to such experiences but tend to downplay them (2 Corinthians 12:1-6), also because there can be the danger of creating an atmosphere of super-spirituality, as I’ve seen those gifted in certain areas exploit the insecurities – knowingly or unknowingly – of those gifted in other areas – often for the sake of establishing a “ministry” (Colossians 2:18-19).

Even among those who would otherwise confess the “priesthood of all believers” are some who set themselves up as more spiritual than their siblings. (For example, the claim that while the “average” individual sees “pictures,” they differentiate their more celestial “visions,” thereby subtly creating a hierarchy of divine proximity.)

While each one of us is on our own journey, we can’t use our experiences as a claim to our own superior spirituality. In fact, such an attitude is directly opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and someone who has learned to abide in the Vine (John 15:4-11) will not boast about their revelations, but rather manifest the childlike qualities of utter dependence on Abba’s love (Matthew 11:25-28).

Hence, even the Apostle Paul decided to know nothing among the super-spiritual Corinthian community of faith, but Messiah, and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-14), Whose Grace manifests in our raw humanity (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Because our spirituality is so intertwined with our general experience of being human - taking the incarnational reality of life in the Spirit seriously - our imagination plays an important part in visionary experiences. And while the majority of Western cultures often dismiss it as something intangible, other cultures – like the ones in which the biblical writings and many of our faith practices emerged – value it as an integral part of one’s spirituality.