POINTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE

‘THE ORTHODOX in this country are divided into several jurisdictions, and their [the jurisdictions’] number seems to be growing. The main concern of many of the churches seems to be preserving some ethnic or cultural identity of a mother country. Services do not seem to engage the people, partly because they do not understand the language they are conducted in and partly because they do not seem to have any instruction in how to relate to what is going on in church. Parishes are riven with strife, even between the clergy.… Many of the clergy seem only interested in raking in the shekels. You have to pay up front for anything and everything. Except when nationalistic or cultural things come to the fore, hardly anyone seems to be giving a lead, or even attempting to bring people to Christ.… Don’t you think this is all incredibly depressing? - T.S. Croydon.

Yes, of course, we do. One would have to be totally heartless not to be saddened by these things, but I think that we need to bear one thing in mind: that we cannot correct everyone else! There is one person we can correct, and that is ourselves. It can be a source of great temptation to be continually looking around at the woes and disappointments around us, and neglecting, as the Fathers say, to tend to ourselves. You say that the things you have mentioned in your long letter [of which we have quoted just a few above, cutting out personal references - ed.] are “incredibly depressing.” Depression can easily lead to despair. I remember hearing of one Athonite Elder who taught that all our sins may to of some use to us with the sole exception of the sin of despair, which is totally destructive, - so, see where your thoughts are leading you! There is one aspect of contemporary church life in this country which is equally as sad as those you complain about, and it is one that you do not mention. It is also one of the few that we, as individuals, can do something about. We cannot sort out the jurisdictional problems from the grassroots, and in fact, as a priest once said to me, they may have their purpose. We cannot change the policies of church leaders or those who control the running of the parishes up and down the country. But we can change our own “application” to Orthodoxy. The subject that you neglected to mention is the failure of us to order our lives according to the Church. The Church has established for us a calendar of feasts and commemorations (I do not want to make this an issue or Old or New Calendars - it applies equally to both). She has instituted and blessed the fasts. She has given us various disciplines to order our lives, and various blessings to consecrate them to Christ (blessings after birth, for starting schooling, moving house, starting a project, at times of distress or illness, etc., etc.). All this She has done for our benefit, to nurture us and to bring us to a deeper Christian understanding of life. And yet most of it is completely ignored by the majority of Orthodox Christians today. Even those who are relatively frequent attenders at church seem to arrange their life, and only then fit what church attendance they want into it. The Church by her whole ministry proposes another way, so that we should not simply live a life like every other materialist, just adding a dash of church-going when we are in the mood, or turn up for the anniversary of grannie’s death. The Church has disposed things so that we reorder our life and are not conformed to this world, but live in a different way, with our church-life, Jerusalem, as the head of our joy. In the conditions of the society in which we live today, it is admittedly extremely hard to live in this way. Pressures of work, family commitments and a host of other things always get in the way, but something that would improve church-life immensely in the country would be if we made some little effort to live in the way in which the Church, in Her wisdom, suggests to us, so that indeed we might grow and come unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, rather than just being people who (occasionally / when the mood takes us) attend a different church. Each one of us can and should make some effort to do this. Then the situation of the Church here in Britain (indeed anywhere in the world) would improve immeasurably.