About to be chrismated - and scared

[Jeff Craven]

Hello. This is my first post to this site and here it goes: After attending a parish for almost a year now, my wife and I have decided to join the Church.

Both coming from Evangelical Protestant backgrounds, we're excited about our new life in the Church - but also quite scared. We both want to serve and please Christ, our whole reason for joining, but we are very uneasy. In some ways it feels like we're turning our backs on Christ to go towards Him (if that makes any sense).

I'd be interested to hear from you 'old timers'.

Thanks.
Jeff

[Theron Mathis]

Jeff,

I myself converted to Orthodoxy from Evangelical Protestantism a little over a year ago. I understand the feeling. My main fears had to do with family & friend rejection; and ministry future (I was a Baptist seminary graduate). The best ways to overcome the fears seems to be to look at what you are gaining--the pearl of great price. Think of all the lives of the saints that have been written over the centuries, and imagine yourself experiencing God the way that they did. Ponder the reality of truly being able to partake of the body and blood of Christ. There is no greater intimacy with God.

If you are like me. You will have to go to the bottom to move up. I was involved in the leadership of the churches I had been in the past, but now I was the "low man on the totem pole". If this is the case, embrace it and allow the Lord to teach you humility. Don't give into the arrogance that can come from being a convert. Many that have grown up in the church are just as pious and zealous as you and your friends in the Evang world, they express it dramatically differently.

May God bless your journey and give you the grace to take the final leap.

God bless,

Theron Mark

[Elisabeth]

Jeff, and your wife,

I join with Theron in his words of support to you. I come from an Anglican and Taoist/ Buddhist background. I was received into the Orthodox Church on Great Friday twenty one years ago. My fear then is still very vivid, especially around my anniversary. Someone once said to me that you have to stand at the back of the church for twenty years in order to begin to grasp Orthodoxy! Well, after having done that I still feel like a beginner, but with an enormous feeling of gratitude to have been invited to approach God in this way.

Bishop Kallistos says that great faith is often accompanied by great doubt, and the thing to be worried about is unchanging certainty. For me, the important thing was that I felt deeply at home in the Orthodox Church in a way that I never experienced in other churches. Although this has always remained, my doubts about the church and lack of faith continued for many years….even to the degree of leaving my parish for six months. But after missing Holy week and Pascha I knew that I had to return and work out my problems within the church, and not outside it.
What day is your Chrismation going to be?

May God bless you and your wife and give you the grace to make the final leap.

God Bless

Elisabeth

[Elisabeth]

I realise that out of context, my Bishop Kallistos saying might be misleading. I should add...that if faith is to be alive and active, the moments of doubt, fear and questioning can lead to a growth and deepening of faith (or a faith), rather than departure from faith.

My apologies

Elisabeth

[Jeff Craven]

Thank you for all of your replies. With God's grace, we will be chrismated on Holy Saturday before Pascha.

I am glad to hear the quote from Bishop Kallistos, Elisabeth, and I think I knew what you meant by it. We both have great doubts about the Church but like you have said, it is also the place where we feel at home. I have always longed to worship Christ in the way that He is in the liturgy. The only solace we really have is the assurance of God's mercy and love. As He has said "If you seek me, you will find me."

Something else that has bothered me is the apparent division between the OCA and the ROCA. (I attend an OCA parish) Definitely not the 'oneness' I was hoping for. However, I do realize that Christ's Church has been screwing up and squabbling since day one - as evidenced by many of St. Paul's epistles. Never a 'golden age' of the Church in other words.

So if I attend an OCA parish, am I considered a liberal?

Blessings in Christ,

Jeff

[Razhden]

Greetings in Christ,
Jeff and beloved spouse,

Please,for God's sake,and yours, do not let the "sandbox politics" of the jurisdictions cause you any problems. These differences will be worked out in time.

The Body of Christ is just having some temporary "indigestion".

Trust that God WILL apply His best medicine and heal His body.

While the languages,vestments and music are different for each jurisdiction , the Theology is the same for all. The body is truly one.

Welcome to the Body of Christ.

May you both experience the best that Orthodoxy has to offer.

God grant us all to have the faith of a little child,
ICXC,
Razhden

[Moses Anthony]

Dear Jeff,

My family, and the other members of our small community were Chrismated on Pentecost of 1998. An amazing thing about all this was when, unsolicited, my college daughter said, "This is a lifetime decision."

My main concern in sticking my spiritual foot into the water was, is this biblical. As one of the "Jesus People" I'd always said that ,"...we need to get back to First Century Christianity." I was more than a little skeptical; since, until my priest asked me us to join him in starting a new fellowship, the only orthodox I'd ever heard of were Jewish Orthodox. I got an enormus information overload!

The presence of politics dismayed me when I found out about a situation in my jurisdiction. However, I can only fight such attitudes by allowing Jesus (whose resurrection we soon cele- brate) to be who He is, in me.

The nuances which you and your wife will discover are endless, and such is the beauty of His house the Church, His people!

His unworthy servant,
Subdeacon Moses

[Richard McBride]

I respond to the caveat on, “unchanging certainty”. Thank you Elizabeth. That is an often unconscious seeking I have seen in many of my evangelical friends. Orthodoxy will surely resist that tendency.

Recently, I have been reading the Dynamis lessons emphasising the presence of “contradiction” in scripture. It is difficult for those of us who have been use to seeking certainty, to accept the notion of contradiction. What seems certain to the worm may be but one moment of respite in the eagle’s view.

Also, I should not play down the importance of the fear one feels upon facing Chrismation. It is a necessary quality Orthodoxy, and this is too often played down in our “feeling good” world, where happiness is the mantra, not fear of God. It is not old fashioned to fear God. It of prime necessity, according to the Fathers.

To make a paraphrase: I fear God; Lord, help me in my non fear.
(Sorry; it doesn’t come as well as I might have hoped.)

richard

[Gideon]

I too am fearful. The Church I have been attending is very Greek. Everything is done in Greek, even the Bible study and this makes it hard to bring my wife and kids(I have young children)along who are all high Anglican. I feel Orthodoxy to be the True Church but at the same time find it very hard to pull up roots in a Traditional English speaking Anglican parish and attend a Church that speaks a different tongue. I have spoken to a Byzantine Catholic Father and their parish uses a lot more English, would this be an acceptible alternative?

[Rev. Dn. Raphael Barberg]

Byzantine Catholics are not the same thing. They may have many of the same trappings o Orthodoxy, but they arein submission to the pope, which is an important point.

Are there no English speaking parishes in your area? If not perhaps you can gather some like minded individuals to try to begin an English speaking mission?

Fr. Dcn. Raphael

[John Wilson]

Gideon,
Are there no Russian Orthodox churches nearby? They seem to be a lot more mission oriented than the greeks and will try to provide the liturgy in the vernacular as well as church slavonic. As Owen mentioned in another thread, the Greeks go to America to get rich, not to spread their faith. Of course this is not true of all Greeks, but I think it sums up the general situation. Their will certainly be plenty of Russian churches next door in Alaska, so it would suprise me if you did not find any in Canada.

Maybe you could look at your situation differently. Instead of seeing it as a problem, rejoice in the opportunity to grow in humility?

I know how you feel though. I live in Greece, have done for ten years, and my greek is still pretty poor (I'm talking about modern greek, not the koine greek used in the liturgy). It is not just the liturgy and bible studies, I also go to confession, confessing in greek! Since I cannot understand much of what is being sung or said during the service, I try to focus more on the wider spiritual reality. I look at the frescoes of the saints on the walls of the church and the icons and understand that they represent the reality of their real presence among us during the liturgy, or perhaps our presence among them, in Christ, in heaven. We are literally standing before the throne of God, glorifying Him in communion with the saints though our eyes of flesh see only matter and cannot yet see that which is spirit. As a protestant convert I find I have a great deal of baggage I need to rid myself of. I think perhaps my current situation is helping me to do so.

Your servant, John.

[Dianna]

II was just chrismated on March 2 2002 and i know the feeling. Howver, after much prayer pondering and meditation i followed the spirt. On the day of my christmated i never in my life felt so awesome and at last whole.

[Fr Averky]

Dear Dianna,

May God richly bless you now that you have entered the path to salvation.Keep in mind that Orthodoxy is not meant to be a "feel good" church: Christ Himself tell us that those who would follow Him must take up his cross and follow Him. that cross can consist of many things; ill health, an unhappy marriage, mistreatment by co-workers or family members, financial difficulties, or loneliness and depression. Whatever it is that God will allow, don't falter, but accept what God sends you as cheerfully as you can. Blessed Augustine said, "You were not created for pleasure, you were created for joy." You will better understand this when everything around you goes wrong, and yet you can remain calm and at peace within yourself - believe me, it can be done. Please allow me to suggest that you never let a day go by without prayer and spiritual reading, not just from the Fathers, but more importantly, the Holy Scriptures. Prayer is that opportunity to form a spiritual companionship with God, and spiritual reading feeds the soul and the intellect. St. John Chyrsostom says that a person who does not make time for spiritual reading every day has little chance of salvation. God bless you, and please remember me in your prayers -you and all the members of this blessed community are assured of mine