Bonovox

I wrote this article a couple of years ago for the website Radical Christ, and have recently rediscoverd it……..

“We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth!” So stated the envoys of Vladmir, prince of Kiev. You see he had sent them out to find a religion for his people, the “Rus” in present day Ukraine. “We only know that God dwells there among men.” This report from his men (and no doubt the influence and prayers of his mother Olga), led Prince Vladmir to embrace and endorse Orthodox Christianity for his people, in the year 988, and 1,000 years later, even after more then a half century of state enforced atheism, Orthodoxy still stands as the official faith of the Russian people.

And this was my experience as well, as I entered the Church dedicated to the Great martyr St. George, I knew that my search was over. As the Liturgy was celebrated, I truly did not know whether I was in heaven or on earth, and I am still disoriented in that regard to this day, almost ten years later. What was it that I had been looking for? Authentic Christian Faith. Or as Matthew Galletin entitled his book, “Thirsting For God in a Land of Shallow Wells.”

I was brought up a Baptist, the great-grandson of a Baptist preacher. As a teen we began to attend an Assemblies of God “mega-church,” where I spent ten years, eventually serving as a youth worker and worship leader. While I am thankful for my upbringing, for I was introduced to Christ and learned a love for the Scriptures, I began to be frustrated with reductionism on one hand, and emotionalism on the other. As a single person, my desire was to be married and raise a family. The goal of this I instinctively felt, was to raise up men and women who would serve God and their fellow man. But I had no clue how this was to be accomplished, and had serious doubts that it COULD be accomplished, in the context of Christianity that I knew. I was given no help in battling the sinful passions that enslaved me.

But Christianity had survived for 2,000 years. Had it always been experienced the way that I experienced it? I knew that the early church was persecuted, and many were martyred. Did they really die for the Christianity that I knew? Not likely. Why would you die for something that you were embarrassed about? I occasionally had brought friends to Church with me. As I got older I did this less and less. Its not that my desire to introduce them to Jesus diminished; just my desire to have them participate in something I know I no longer wanted to myself.

But As I studied the history of the Christian Church, I found a Church that I could be excited about. A church composed of not only Christ and the Apostles, but of people like St. George and St. Demetrios, the Great Martyrs. Penitents like St. Mary of Egypt, and St. Moses the Black. Converts like Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodrovna, a New Martyr of the Communist Yoke. Preachers like John Chrysostom. Wonderworkers like St. Nicholas of Myra. Theologians like Ireneaus, Basil the Great, and Gregory Naziansus. Pastors like St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco and St. Raphael of Brooklyn. Wives and Mothers like Matushka Olga of Alaska and St. Juliana of Lazarevo.

Not only was I given these role models for myself and my children, I was given a way to attain the same union with God that these Saints had: theosis, deification, transformation. My children have been washed in the waters of baptism, sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands and the Holy Chrysm. They have been assigned godparents, who will eternally pray for them, guide them, and encourage them (and their parents) in the way of the Cross. They have holy nuns as friends. They each bear the name of a Saint, and venerate their picture each night at bedtime; knowing they have a protector and faithful intercessor at the throne of Christ. They celebrate with joy, Christ’s passion, and Holy Resurrection. By the time they are five, they have probably heard the joyous hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life,” umpteen hundred times.

And finally, to the question I am asked, “Are my children fed?” I wholeheartedly answer yes! For I see them every Sunday, partaking of the literal body and blood of Christ Himself! The “medicine of immortality” as St. Polycarp of Smyrna put it. For as Christ says, “My body is food indeed and my blood, drink indeed.” Can anything else, be more nourishing?

St. Paul says that the Church (interestingly not the Scriptures) is “the pillar and ground of the Truth.” My search through history, showed me that the Church I read about in the book of Acts, founded on the day of Pentecost, was still around. To have the opportunity to raise my children in that Church, to have them be inheritors of 2,000 years of the Holy Spirit guiding that Church into all Truth, is for me, literally, “Heaven on Earth.” Like Prince Vladmir, I too sought a “faith for my people.” And God answered my prayer, through the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.