After trick-or-treating the neighborhood and snapping enough pictures to keep the memories going beyond the evening and season, the custom of opening the bag, inspecting, and sampling the treasure takes place. The first step, though, is removing the mask off your face, to better enjoy the goodies.
The masks we wear in life come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The masks we wear at Halloween are celebratory, they are part of the fun and excitement of the evening. The most beautiful young face can be distorted into something so old and hideous, and vice versa. The masks we wear after Halloween are the ones that we need to examine, for they are easy hiding places for our true nature. We wear one mask at home and another at work. The mask we wear as a spouse might be different from the mask of a friend. The one we wear as parents speaking with our children might be different than the mask we wear speaking with our parents. One mask may be that of the boss and the other of the faithful employee. We wear masks to fit the occasion.
At the end of the day, we remove our masks, and usually do so in front of a mirror. What we see is the maskless self – the one that looks back at us and the one whose stare we cannot escape.
When we talk about an all-knowing and all-seeing God, we understand He has the unique vantage point of seeing through our masks, no matter how many and how layered they may be. In this sense, it is like a mirror-stare, in that we cannot escape His view. To open the bag of “goodies of life” and enjoy the treats within, that view – unhindered, unobscured, is the God view that is the same view from a clean and receptive heart.
The prayer of St. Nersess says (#9) “Lord, Protector of all, instill Your holy fear in me that my eyes may not look lustfully, that my ears may not delight in hearing evil, that my mouth may not speak lies, that my heart may not think evil, that my hands may not do injustice, that my feet may not walk in the paths of iniquity. But direct all my actions that I do your will in everything. Amen.”
I often wonder why we complicate things. Why is it that children are flexible and bounce back from difficulties? Why does Jesus point to a child, challenging us to understand that Kingdom of God it belongs such like the little children?
Halloween is one such time when I can’t help but think about the innocence that is lost when adults jump into children’s lives. Halloween is a church feast. It is the night before “All Saints Day” or “All Hallow’s Eve” slurred to the sound of Halloween. Yes, the roots are pagan, but so are the roots of just about everything else. Christians have taken the tradition of remembering the saints – the hallows – and celebrating them. All Saints Day is celebrated on November 1st in the West, and so October 31st is the Eve of All Hallow’s Day. In the Armenian Church, All Saints Day is celebrated on the Saturday closest to November 1st and so the eve is on Friday night. In Armenian we refer to the evening celebration as nakhatonak or “before the feast.”
Saints are very special people in our lives. They are not gods, that is, they are people just like us, with their frailties and imperfections. They have sinned, doubted, betrayed and have been found to be insincere. Yet, despite their imperfections, they have risen from their humanity to touch the divine. In other words, because they are like us, the door is opened to the possibility for all of us to excel and strive for perfection.
Because we believe in the continuity of life, we believe saints live beyond their earthly existence. The practice of intercessory prayer is merely asking the saints to remember us in their prayers, much like you would ask any of your friends or your priest or pastor to pray for you. Because saints have passed on, the notion of connecting with someone in the grave conjures up spooky thoughts and expressions. Add to this the money motive, and you have the formula for what takes place today at Halloween, with scary movies, zombies, bloody masks, and disfigured disguises.
Here’s a challenge that comes straight out of the Armodoxy playbook, take back Halloween. What a beautiful way to share the traditions of the Church with your children, but to have them dressed up as the saints of the Church! Each saint brings a story of devotion, dedication and challenges us to overcome. Halloween can be a means of learning and celebrating your religious heritage.
As you dress up in the costume of your favorite saint, listen to the intercessory prayer made to our saints.
O Christ our God, you crown your saints with triumph and you do the will of all who fear you, looking after your creatures with love and kindness. Hear us from your holy and heavenly realm by the intercession of the Holy Mother of God and by the prayers of all your saints. Hear us Lord, and show us your mercy. Forgive, redeem and pardon our sins. Make us worthy thankfully to glorify you with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit. Now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
The 1997 movie, “Contact” may have been pointing to the heavens and composed around a science fiction story line, but it in the end it was more about faith, belief and spiritual sensitivity than might be imagined from all the hype surrounding the movie. “Contact” is based on a book written by astronomer and science communicator Carl Segan, and accordingly fills the screen with images of extraterrestrial hopes and dreams, events and life. Playing simultaneous with the theme of scientific exploration is a parallel search for adequate articulation of the supernatural phenomenon. If and when contact is made with an extraterrestrial life form, how will the novelty of something so spectacular be transmitted and expressed to humanity? That question needs to be asked in our experience with the Divine – how will we express ourselves? How do we express ourselves? What are the forms of expression available to us?
The term “sensory overload” is often ascribed to the generations who have evolved from the 20th to the 21st centuries. Today we have opportunities to engage in a wide range and variety of entertainment. Even news and information arrive to us in packages that are entertaining, all of which make the fantastic and spectacular into the mundane and ordinary. Our senses have become dull to the wonders of the universe and therefore to the beauty of God living within us.
When we see a monastery or a church, such as Holy Etchmiadzin, the oldest Christian Cathedral, or an architectural marvel such as Sanahin or Datevavank, we don’t give ourselves the time or resources to take in those wonders to a level where we are left in awe. We approach them as yet one more attraction that we have visited, touched with our glance and hands, and now we’re ready to walk on to the next marvelous edifice. To understand this desensitization, you can easily run this experiment right now: Think of the last day. Did you pass by a flower or tree, a child or a group of children, your spouse or partner, your parents, the ocean, the heavens with stars and moon, and did you not stop? Did you pass by without a thought of how marvelous each of these creations are? A flower that makes your life beautiful, a child whose smile warms your heart, a loved one’s embrace that gives you hope? If nothing else, take a deep breath and understand the miracle of that breath, as the millions of nerves that send signals around your body, and the oxygen which mixes with your blood to give you life, AND… we do this unconsciously, without thought, thousands of times a day.
Life is the greatest gift given to us by God. Jesus Christ came to point to that gift and its importance, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). The practice of living in the moment, experiencing and appreciating the simplest of life’s beauty and wonders is the starting point of religion. The prayers, hymns and wonders of the Armenian Church are here to be experienced. These lessons in Armodoxy are about our experiential encounters – our contacts – with the Divine realm, with the God of the universe. The challenge is to be ready to fully engage with those encounters.
Today we pray a prayer based on the 9th hour of St. Nersess Shnorhali’s “I confess with faith,” with an twist to the contact with God, All provident Lord, place your radiance before my eyes so that they may see the beauty of your world, before my ears so that I may delight in the hearing of your commands, before my mouth so that I may speak out for truth, before my heart so that it may think of Your goodness, before my hands so that I may work for justice, and before my feet so that they may be directed in the paths of righteousness, always in accord with your commandment to Love. Amen.
The first responder in the Church is often the priest. He is ordained to the ministry. In Armenian, the word for ordination is tzernatrutiun which literally means “hands placed upon.” It refers to the Biblical process by which the transfer of rites is accomplished. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles we read,
When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:14-17)
One of the marks of the true Church is that it is “apostolic” which means that there is a traceable line of succession to the time of the apostles. In other words, a priest can trace his authority within the Church, in a straight line to the time of the Apostles, and therefore to Jesus Christ. In the case of the priests of the Armenian Church, each can trace their roots to the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. (Apostolic also refers to the traditions carried over from Apostolic times.)
In the Armenian Church, a priest is not only ordained, via the laying on of hands, but is also consecrated with the holy miuron.
We offer this prayer for all of our priests by Fr Karl Rahner SJ
The priest is not an angel sent from heaven
He is a man chosen from among men,
A member of the Church, a Christian.
Remaining man and Christian, he begins to speak of you the Word of God.
The word is not his own.
No, he comes to you because God has told him to proclaim God’s Word.
Perhaps he has not entirely understood it himself.
Perhaps he adulterates it.
But he believes, and despite his fear he knows he must communicate God’s Word to you.
For must not some of us say something about God,
About eternal life; about the majesty of grace in our sanctified being?
Must not some one of us speak of sin, the judgement and mercy of God?
So, my dear friends, pray for him, carry him,
So that he might be able to sustain others by bringing to them
The mystery of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ.
Amen
https://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_7333-e1698378517100.jpg834795Vazken Movsesianhttps://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/final_logo_large_for_epostle_web-300x189.pngVazken Movsesian2023-10-27 00:01:492023-10-26 20:50:17To the Priests
This week is Spiritual care week, giving opportunities to organizations and institutions of all kinds and types to recognize the spiritual caregivers in their midst and the ministry which they provide. Within the Church, the priest is on the front line of life and is the first-responder to domestic situations. He is the spiritual caregiver to his flock and community, and much more.
In the spirit of Spiritual Care week, I share with you a blessing shared with me, and written by Nadia Bolz-Weber.
A Blessing for a Pastor’s Heart
I imagine it was because of your heart that you went into this work in the first place. So, I imagine you have a heart that wanted to extend beyond itself, to stretch to love God’s people.
So may God bless the parts of your heart that receive their stories so openly, and comfort their sufferings so compassionately, and share their joys so thoroughly.
And may God also heal the parts of your heart that have been wounded by the very people whose stories you receive and whose sufferings you comfort and whose joys you share.
And may God revive the parts of your heart that have grown protectively cold.
And may God protect the parts of your heart that are well-loved by those who know you best.
And may God gently place God’s own heart right behind yours so that the sorrow of those in your care can move your heart but find a landing place in God’s.
And may God gently place God’s own heart right behind yours so that the love you give in this work can come through you but doesn’t have to come from you.
And as the love of God moves from God’s heart through your own to those in your care, may your heart soak up all it needs in the process. Because your heart is a human one too, and it deserves to be well tended to. AMEN.
Cover: St. Gregory the Illuminator by night, spiritual caregiver of a people. 2017 Fr. Vazken
The journey to and through Armodoxy is paradoxical, it is rather simple to understand but difficult to implement, above all, it requires an open mind. Stories, clichés, phrases, and general conversations are filled with idioms that are seldom questioned or explored. Instead, we repeat them as part of an unbridled conversation. An open mind is necessary to dispel some of our skewed understandings of life, how we live and how we interact with the Divine. For instance, when we say, “They spilled the beans” we mean they gave away a secret and not that they were clumsy with pinto or fava varieties of beans. The expression, “Under the weather” has nothing to do with rain, sleet, or snow, rather it is a way of saying a person is feeling ill. There are thousands of these expressions that have made their way into daily conversations.
Some of these expressions have been repeated so often that they obstruct our reasoning capabilities so much so that we think of them as truths or axioms. For instance, the expression, “You fight fire with fire,” means to fight against an opponent by using the same methods or weapons that the opponent uses. However, if we think about it for a moment, we quickly understand that fighting fire with fire only makes the fire bigger! And so, if we use the same tactic an opponent uses on us, the “bigger fire” is the necessary kindling for war.
Armodoxy comes from Armenia, a land and people that have fought fire with water. Many times, the water supply hasn’t been adequate, but still, we understand the best way to fight fire is not with more fire, but with water. This model, for a land and people that have been attacked and killed by barbarians. They have witnessed the rape and pillage of their country and people, and yet, they have survived and dare to talk about peace… lasting peace.
When looking at the conditions of our world today, I realize that I have no other alternative but to talk about Armodoxy as a necessary way of life, especially today.
Jesus says,” You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:38f)
This is a much tougher solution than fighting fire with fire, but as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.”
The world is playing with fire and we’re only fanning and fueling the fire at an unprecedented rate. Armodoxy demands that we have an openness of mind, and a sense of reason to see the ends apart from the means. To understand that that the end is, and must be, peace.
Let us receive the blessing from our Lord Jesus Christ, by praying His words,
Blessedare the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the [a]earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matthew 5:3-9)
Two Josephs are remembered by the Armenian Church today. If the life of Jesus were on a set of books on a shelf, these two Joseph would be like bookends on both sides of his life. One is referenced at Jesus’ birth, as St. Mary’s husband and the other Joseph, following Jesus’ death on the Cross, comes from Arimathea to retrieve the Body of our Lord for proper burial. (Matthew 27:57)
In the Armenian Church calendar, St. Joseph, the husband of the Asdvadzadzin, St. Mary, is given the descriptor, “Father of God” (Hovsep Asdvadzahayr). In Western Tradition, St. Joseph is the patron saint of adoptions, after all, he adopted our Lord Jesus Christ and raised him as his own. We know he was a carpenter, and we can imagine warm images of the young boy Jesus running around the shop that was filled with wood and tools, learning the carpentry craft from his father Joseph.
Joseph was an upright and righteous man, scripture says. He was firm in his Faith. Most importantly, he was a man who loved, cared for, and honored his wife so much, that he believed the seemingly impossible: she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Despite the social stigma and the public embarrassment and humiliation that was a certainty during that time, he took Mary as his wife and adopted Jesus.
Joseph gives us a very special example which we need to adopt in our lives. When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We ask that God’s Will be evident in our lives, here on earth. The reason Jesus instructs us to pray those words is not because God needs to hear that we want His will to be done. Rather, it is for us to understand that the way His Will is done in this world is through our participation. Joseph understood that if God’s Kingdom were to come, his participation was essential. And so, against all the odds, against the conventions and norms of the day, against the impossibility of a virgin birth, against the put downs of gossiping mouth, and humiliation by members of his own community, Joseph says, “Thy Will be Done” and obediently follows the order to take Mary as his wife.
Some of the difficult solutions to the problems in this world begin by us simply accepting the responsibility to be a participant in God’s Kingdom. Joseph gives up his comfort and his dreams to ensure the Kingdom in enacted, “on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
Let us pray, from a traditional prayer dedicated to the Blessed husband, “Oh, St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God. I place in you all my interests and desires. Oh, St. Joseph, do assist me by your powerful intercession, and obtain for me from your divine Son all spiritual blessings, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. I never weary of contemplating you, and Jesus asleep in your arms; I dare not approach while He reposes near your heart. Press Him in my name and kiss His fine head for me and ask him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. Amen.
Cover: St. Joseph with the young Jesus. This statue was photographed at the Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles, California.
https://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/02-St.-Joseph-edited-e1698119288871.jpg18011502Vazken Movsesianhttps://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/final_logo_large_for_epostle_web-300x189.pngVazken Movsesian2023-10-24 00:01:222023-10-23 21:07:33On Earth as Heaven
The words of Christ are always relevant. The words he speaks in the Gospel are timeless.
Today’s message is a meditation of sorts, by listening to the words of Christ and understanding the timelessness of the words. The Gospel passage which was read in the Armenian Church this Sunday comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 4, where Jesus, following his baptism and the 40-day period of fasting in the wilderness, now comes back to his home town, Nazareth. He returns, “In the power of the Spirit,” says the narrator. There he enters the synagogue and opens the scriptures and proceeds to read a passage from the Prophet Isaiah. Upon completing the reading, he closes the book and proclaims, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Thus, Jesus is proclaiming that this is his mission, the reason he has come to be with us. As a Church, the Body of Christ, entrusted with carrying on the mission of Christ, this passage then becomes our mission.
This then, is the passage which he read. I invite you to listen to the words he reads. He is proclaiming his mission. Think of our world today, the tragedies that confront us and the healing that is necessary. Pray for our world and you’ll come to understand that Jesus’ message is timeless and always relevant.
He opened the book and read,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
(Luke 4:14-21)
Cover: Etchmiadzin i Horeh: “Descent of the Only Begotten from the Father” carving outside the Holy Angels Sanctuary at Etchmiadzin
Next Step #782 – October 20, 2023 – Forget Armageddon, listen to this and then act. Here are the “missing steps” in moving forward. A month after the loss of Nagorna Karabakh, Fr. Vazken comes with a response to the collective disappointment plaguing the Armenian community. Victim mentality returns with a loss of self-worth. Now Israel and war, without an alternative, why Bibles are not the answer. Jesus as revolutionary and the loss of that revolution. Fighting fire with water instead with fire. In His Shoes toward peace. Freeway Blocked – Armenia & Karabakh Who would Jesus bomb? Mr. Smith goes to Washington Leveraging Love Lucy Yeghiazarian
Produced by Suzie Shatarevyan for http://Epostle.net Subscribe and listen on demand on your favorite pod-catcher!
We’re on Pandora, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Warning: The following message may contain content that is graphic and/or disturbing intended for historical purposes.
After the fall of Nagorna Karabakh I shared, in a daily message, the absurdity to the vocabulary we have invented for war. Now that Israel is at war I hear the absurdity reinforces with talk about the killing of women and children being of a different caliber than that of a man. There are rules for humanitarian corridors, as we kindly ask assailants not to bomb areas.
Here is a revisit to the oxymoronic language of war.
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. For instance, “act naturally,” is an oxymoron because if you’re acting, you’re not natural. Awfully good, is often used to describe something of excellent quality, even though if it’s awful, it certainly can’t be good. There are many oxymorons that are part of our daily conversations. Deafening Silence, Civil war, Old News are all examples of the pairing of opposite meaning words.
You can say that I’m clearly confused, I truly am, over a set of words with the same or similar meaning that are paired together to give the illusion that they are opposites. And although they’ve creeped into our daily conversation, their pairing doesn’t fool me. I’m talking about the words “War crimes.” We talk about people being guilty of war crimes, as if war is not a crime in itself as if you can have a war without committing a crime. Digging a bit deeper we find that there are rules and regulations that govern war. Because we have classified our society as civilized, we have formulated rules for war. A soldier is fair game to be shot while a civilian is not. It sounds crazy, but a young man who dons the uniform of a soldier is no longer presumed to belong to a mother or father who will be devastated at his death.
It’s bizarre and even sickening, when we try to convince ourselves that we are civilized, that our conflicts are resolved by the shooting, maiming, injuring and killing those who oppose us. In Kigali, Rwanda I stood at the genocide museum. There, they had exhibits of all the genocides of the 20th century. I stood as the child of survivors of the first genocide of the 20th century at the scene of the last genocide of the 20th century. With one foot in Armenia and one in Rwanda, I was looking at the spans of 100 years and all the genocides that occurred in between. The Holocaust, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Bosnia were all there along with others that were somehow left off of the 6 o’clock news. It’s sobering when you look at them all and think is this the best we can do to resolve conflicts?
War Crimes! We even have rules that govern executions, that is state approved killings. In the time of Christ, we know that crucifixion was the manner in which criminals were executed. What we may not know is that the cause of death of the crucified was asphyxiation. The crucified person would die a slow death, gasping for air, and with each gasp getting less and less oxygen into his system. It was cruel and unusual. That was the process of execution two millennia ago. We evolved, and now we kill humanely. Did you catch that oxymoron. A quick bullet by a firing squad, electrocution, gas chamber and lethal injection. And then in 2020 we learned of George Floyd, neither tried nor convicted, died of asphyxiation, as he was deprived of oxygen on the streets of Minneapolis.
In the time of Jesus they had rules and regulations governing execution. But it wasn’t about humane methods, rather it was about man-made laws. In the Gospel of St. John we read that after Jesus had given up His spirit on the Cross, (19:31-35) “… Because it was the Preparation Day, the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.”
Very much like the modern day expression of war crimes, the Jews had rules and regulations that allowed for death – even cruel death – so long as the rules were adhered to, it was acceptable in their society.
That spear, known as the Holy Lance, is now kept by the Armenian Church. In Armenian it is called the Holy Geghart, and one of our monasteries where it was housed bears the name of that instrument. It is used during the blessing of the Holy Miuron, to stir and bless the Sacred oil. When that Lance entered the breathless body of our Lord Jesus on the Cross it was sanctified in the same manner in which the Cross of Torture became the Cross of Salvation following the Crucifixion.
There is no such thing as war crimes. All wars are crimes. We need to stop fooling ourselves. Conflicts need to be resolved civilly. If Christ transformed the tools of murder into instruments of life, we can do the same in our language and expressions. We can transform war crimes into peace actions.
Let us pray, from the Book of Hours of the Armenian Church, Beneficent and abundantly merciful God, through Your forgiveness and infinite love of humankind be mindful of all that believe in You and have mercy on all. Help us and deliver us from our several perils and trials. Make us worthy to give You thanks and glorify You, the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, now and always. Amen.
