The cradle Orthodox experience of Christ

[Robert Hegwood]

The other day I had a conversation with a person baptized Orthodox, a Russian, who was not raised in the faith but who tried to return to it as an adult. This person did not understand the language, rituals, matters of personal praxis, etc. but she hung on in that mode for a couple of years becoming more and more frustrated and never feeling like she had any "connection" or "relationship" to God.

She eventually was given a Bible by an Evangelical friend which she began to read and for her things opened up and became clear. She began to love Christ and to joy in her new found evangelical faith. Her Orthodox friends tried to give books on converts, her priest said just give it time, but even though she still visits Orthodox Churchs on occasion, they still puzzle her and seem pointlessly complex and never seem to clearly open up the scriptures in her expereince.

My experience though was much the opposite. I grew up in a devout Protestant home, was exposed to the Scripture from my childhood, was baptized...though it never "took" until a kind of second conversion/awakening in my late teens and early 20s. Then I read the Bible a lot. But over the year the theological experience of the Protestant world grew thinner and discovering Orthodoxy was (at the risk of literary cliche) like opening a armmoire and finding a whole new glorious world within. It was and is amazing and the spiritual riches I find astound me still.

But the exchange got me to thinking...what would my spiritual life have been like had I been raised in a conventional American Orthodox home by craddle Orthodox parents? Would I likely have ever discovered the Holy Scriptures? Would I have come to a place of joyful personal ownership of my faith and a delight in Christ our God? Or would I have been like her friends...know the mechanics of the faith without being able or willing to articulate how Christ is our hope of Glory, and why the Church is what it is and the way it is? Would I have ever had a personal point of conversion, whether fast or slow?

So I wonder what is it like for the craddle Orthodox. That is a perspective I am unable to share. I know the path that the Lord led me from there to here. But what is it like to begin "here". Where and when does the Christ of the Church not just inform your cultural perception or intellectual percetion, but begin a more obvious overworking of one's heart, so that you love Him and desire Him and His will above all else?

I know its bound to be different for different persons...but I would appreciate learn what it is like to begin to really love the Lord from a craddle Orthodox perspective. And further...what can this way reveal to the convert to Orthodoxy about a properly ordered "conversion" within the Orthodox faith. Feel free to correct terms and usages as appropriate.

[Mother Evfrosinia]

Dear Robert,
Your post raises several interesting points. I’m cradle Orthodox and I thank the Lord for my reverent and pious parents, who taught me by example more than in any other way. We prayed at home as a family and before meals, attended Liturgy every Sunday and the Vigils on the eves of the major feasts, every effort was made to keep the fasts, and to prepare for and receive Holy Communion at least during the fasts, on Paskha and on our namesdays. My brother and I attended Russian school and catechism classes every Saturday during the school year for 11 years, and my parents taught there as well. We kept many Russian Orthodox traditions and from early childhood I felt that we were “different” and that the Church played a much more important role in our lives than in the lives of most people around us. Most important though was that my parents made every effort to put their faith into practice, especially in their dealings with people, and in their own relationship. It wasn’t just a matter of customs. My father underwent a sort of conversion experience when I was around 10 and began to read a lot of spiritual literature, to say a prayer rule and to read Scripture regularly, and he would discuss all this with my mom and we kids couldn’t help hearing. I was also blessed to know many outstanding hierarchs, clergymen and monastics, and knew quite early on that I, too wanted to serve God in some capacity, and that the only thing that really mattered in life was salvation. My own conversion, when my faith became real and personal, occurred when I was 15 and a close friend died. I participated in reading the Psalter for someone for the first time, and in the summer a group of my friends and I made a pilgrimage to Greece and the Holy Land in his memory and to pray for his soul. That experience changed my life forever. In spite of being from such a traditional family we were never isolated, and I had many non-Orthodox friends, especially Jewish ones and kids from Protestant Evangelical families, and we were taught to respect their beliefs; there was no feeling of superiority, that we were somehow better because we were Orthodox, though it was always stressed that Orthodoxy was the One True Church. The seriousness with which the Jewish kids prepared for their Bar and Bas Mitzvahs impressed me and made me study my own faith more seriously and made me consciously an Orthodox Christian. It was my embarrassment at my Protestant friends far superior knowledge of Scripture that first pushed me to buy a Bible and read and study it, though this wasn’t really stressed either in catechism classes or at home. But it seemed really wrong to claim that we, the Orthodox, were “right” and “true” when the Protestants knew so much more about what the Saviour had actually said and taught and done. Glory be to God, most of my childhood friends have stayed with the Church and are practicing Orthodox Christians and try to bring their children up as such, and several became clergymen and/or monastics. But I realize that my experience isn’t all that typical, and that many cradle Orthodox fall away. I strongly believe that everyone, cradle Orthodox or convert, has to have one, if not several “conversions”, or points in their lives when their faith becomes conscious and real, or somehow deeper, or renewed. You can’t be “passively” Orthodox, one has to constantly search and struggle. It will be interesting to hear about other people’s experiences and their opinions.
In Christ, sinful m. evfrosinia

[Antonios]

Thank you Mother Evfrosinia for sharing such a beautiful and personal story to us and Robert who has started such a wonderful thread!

I am a cradle Orthodox and have from as far back as I can remember always viewed religion as a mystery. I remember as a young child in church, watching the Divine Liturgy in a language I had very little understanding of.

My family at the time was going through difficult financial times, and with both parents working, it was difficulty for us to attend services as often as we should have. I believed there was God, because my parents told me so. I knew He sent His Son to save us, and I knew that Holy Communion was very, very important. And so the years passed on...

When I began to reach those rebellious teenage years and then later into college and began to ask deeper questions about life and the meaning of it, I found that my faith was not as easily swayed or shaken by the education I received in school and college as with my friends who were not Orthodox. Advanced math and the complexities of science simply displayed to me how glorious and almighty God is. Philosophy and sociology just proved to me all the more of God's existence.

It wasn't until years later, with a loss in my family, the birth of my child, and other personal 'epiphanies' in my life which led me to a stronger love for Christ.

I think a lot of what has maintained my faith and other cradle Orthodox Christians during those difficult times in life is from growing up with the respect and fear for the mysteries of God. The sacramental aspect of the Orthodox faith gives such great comfort and assurance to those cradle Orthodox, even to those of us who are not the ideal Christian or have completely strayed from the path.

Thus, my 'conversion' was rather an 'awakening' to what I always revered and loved, but now with greater understanding and deeper love.

What truly astounds me and humbles me is the conversions others from different faiths have to the Orthodox faith. I feel these are much more beautiful and profound.

I hope others can share there stories as well.

Glory be to God for all things,
Antonios

[Andrey Vershinin]

It is truly great and bountious to read of everyones personal stories, which bring us toward Christ. I've been only Eastern Orthodox for a year, but so many things have happened to me that are truly great and which only God could have given me the oppurtunity to enjoy. But what I find truly great, is reading through the Bible, and finding by my own hands the special meanings as to why we Orthodox participate the Eucharist.
But the thing is that: even though its plainly obvious why we take part in the Eucharist, it feels so much more profound and meaningful when you recieve that wisdom, which tells us the material things which we recieve are so much more than they are seen by eyes!
And yes, when I read about Jesus explaining of his flesh, and of his blood..I find a bigger grasp of the Eucharist.. and all angelic and priestly orders seem to revolve around this event; from the smallest Angel to the Archangel, and from the Layman to the Priest(whatever his rank might be)
But even the smallest is great already, because the member participates in something which is unified, and ever enlightening( I borrowed the language of The Celestial Heirarchy)
"And that with repentance I may worthily recieve divine Communion, for which I fervently beg, most earnestly desiring such a gift."-Akathist to the Guardian Angel
"Sanctify me by the descent of the Holy Spirit, so that as I awake from the mists of the unclean fantasies of the devil and all temptations, I may be accounted worthy at a proper season to approach and taste Thine awesome and terrible Mysteries"-Prayers for Purity
But on a note, I wonder what is the thing which seperates Communion and the Eucharist(as I thought the Eucharist was part of Communion)