St. Gregory of Nareg begins his prayers, “From the depths of my heart, [here is] a conversation with God.” Ascetics, hermits, monks, are said to have a special relationship with the Divine to facilitate conversations, more specifically, dialogues. A conversation with God is always a dialogue, never a monologue. You pray. God answers. You answer. God answers.
The Holy Muiron is a means by which God communicates with us. Herein we begin to understand the Muiron as the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is talking with us always, but often, our receptors are dull or not tuned to the same frequency. The Holy Muiron aligns our receptors with the direction of the Holy Spirit.
The second of the seven Sacraments of the Church is Chrismation. This Sacrament immediately follows Baptism, which is the entry point for an individual into the Life of the Church – the community. With baptism a person is born anew. With chrismation, the individual is now anointed with the means to keep that newness, that freshness, throughout life, against the perils, temptations and challenges that face us.
Invoking the Holy Spirit, the priest chants a hymn, “You, being above the water (a reference to the Holy Spirit during Creation, as described in Genesis), now coming down into the waters of the Font (of Baptism), adorn and restore always Your new church so that her children shine with Your diverse gifts.”
The priest then anoints the person’s forehead with the words, Sweet ointment in the name of Jesus Christ is poured upon you as a seal of incorruptible heavenly gifts. He continues to all of the senses of the body. On the eyes to keep them enlightened. The ears, for the hearing of divine commandments. The nostrils, for a sweet smell to life everlasting. The mouth to speak the words of God. The hands for good works and virtuous deeds. On the heart for a pure and upright spirit. On the back as a shield of strength against evil. And on the feet to direct the journey through life.
The Chrism – the holy Muiron – is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life, talking and directing us always.
We pray, Lord, in Your Truth and in the light of Your Holy Spirit, may I become a temple and dwelling place for your Love and Grace, so I may walk in the paths of Righteousness. Amen.
There comes a time when children want to leave the nest and part of the parenting skill is finding the opportunity to encourage that move. Sometimes it requires a push, so the young one can catch the wind as they spread their wings. In preparation for their departure parents have given their children the necessary upbringing and education. Of course, the education process continues through life activities and events.
When Jesus stood at the Sea of Galilee and called his disciples to follow him, his invitation was simple: Come. After his Resurrection, at the Ascension, the command was just as simple: Go. He first invited them to come, follow and learn. At the Ascension he said it is time for them to go, teach others. It is precisely at the Ascension that the Disciples (students) become Apostles (those who are sent = missionaries).
The Apostles received the tools with which to do their missionary work on the day of Pentecost, hokegalust in Armenian, which means “Coming of the Spirit.” As we read yesterday in the Book of Acts 2, the Holy Spirit gave the gift of utterance to the Apostles.
The gift of God is communication. We are not created as robots, but entities with the ability to process thought and communicate it to others. Is it any wonder that the human being is the only member of the animal kingdom that procreates, makes love, facing each other. In the most intimate of positions, the human being has the opportunity to communicate at all levels with thoughts, speech, feel and touch. Language is the skill to communicate with others.
Armodoxy rejects the idea that at Pentecost the gift of utterance was a secret sound-code that was understood by only some. Scripture says that the people who heard the Apostles talking said, “And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? … we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” The sounds that people heard were languages, not non-sensical words or sounds. The gifts of God are always practical; they have a function.
Words express our thoughts and teach, that is, they pass along knowledge. The object of those teaching-lessons is harmony among people. The idea that God would give people confusing sounds, or would want to confound people’s attempts to understand one another is foreign to Christian thought. The gift of the Holy Spirit brings us together, not draws us apart.
Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. With the Holy Spirit, the Church would now move to continue the work of Christ. The Church is community. There is no such thing as one-Christian. Christianity is about working together, so that “Thy Will be Done, on Earth as it is in Heaven” (from the Lord’s Prayer).
Christ taught his Disciples. When the time came and the Disciples were ready to continue the mission, what we may refer to as “spreading their wings,” Christ commissioned them to “Go” and share what they had learned, ensuring the continuity of his message in perpetuity.
The perfect vehicle for this is the group of people, that is community, that reach out to one another with hands, legs and voice, to find strength and work for what Jesus sought: Peace on Earth, good will toward one another.
The Church is one when it reflects this harmony in its teachings.
Today’s prayer will come from the last verses of Acts, chapter 2, the first Christian community after Pentecost:
44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, 45 and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.
46 So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. (NKJV)
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Communications is the glue that holds society together ~Apple Computer, 1984 ad campaign.
Twenty Years Ago an experiment took place on the streets of Glendale. Since Easter I have shared with you stories from the Armenian Church Youth Ministry Center, nestled in an area that was ignored by Armenian organizations, a place where education, identity and prayer came together.
Today’s Episode: And then we rolled out our greatest weapon, communications. Epostle.net becomes real.
The Youth Ministries gave me an opportunity to explore and exploit the latest trends in technology, namely the blossoming self-broadcasting trends and podcasting. Enter Suzie Shatarevyan, a young lady with a passion for the ministry, computing and the remarkable innate talent to actually bring it all together.
The Church has always pioneered the use of technology. Think of the printing press, a means of sharing information on a mass scale and the printing of the Bible. In the Armenian world, the first prayer book to be printed was called “Oorbat” or “Friday” and rolled off the press to bring God’s presence in written form to the masses. Earlier, in art, from early tapestries, to the use of special dies in miniatures, to icons, to frescos, the Church has used the tools that have been at the cutting edge of the technology.
By the time we landed at the Youth Ministries’ Center we were already heavily using technology to promote our Armenian Christian faith. We were a regular feature on the Glendale TV show produced by Vatche Mangassarian. We originally came on as a guest and soon it was obvious that we needed our own platform. Vatche provided the technical side and I provided the content. We produced weekly shows promoting the Armenian Church, via the St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in Pasadena. Talin Kazanjian produced these shows and Tamar Papirian Khatchadourian was the commentator while I gave the spiritual message. Each show was presented in Armenian and English which was a novelty in the Glendale market, and arguable, still is.
From there, we were approached by Japonica Partners in New York. They asked us to produce and broadcast the Divine Liturgy on the Internet. The first official Epostle broadcast took place on Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000. With the same team of Talin and Tamar. By today’s standards, our systems were primitive, we extended cables and couplers to modems and phone lines and simulcast the traditional Armenian Divine Liturgy with overdubbed English explanation. It worked!
I will never forget the note I received the day after Easter: Thank you for the Easter Broadcast. This was the first year that my father was going to miss Easter service because of his failing health. That morning, he wore his suit, cleaned up, shaved and sat in front of my computer and listened to the entire service, from end to end. He received the blessing. Christ is Risen!
The power afforded us by computer technology was a game changer. It moved us forward exponentially. Suzie came on board and offered her computer know-how and skills as a volunteer at the center. She maintained a full-time job at the Loyola Law School, and still managed to offer 30-40 hours a week to the ministry. It was the kind of dedication that was needed to become the foundation for Epostle.net. She put together the church’s website and the early social media pages (My Space, My Church et al). We began recording sermons in audio and visual formats and distributed them in hard-format, on CDs and DVDs. A parishioner donated a DVD/CD duplicator machine. During the week, volunteers duplicated sermons and educational programs from the Youth Ministries Center. Those CDs were then packaged and distributed Sunday mornings, on college campuses, local businesses and by mail.
By 2008 we were ready to make the plunge into podcasting. I was following a pioneer, Fr. Roderick on his podcasts and realized that the hardest part would be to start. Suzie took the edge off of that hardness and set up the entire production of what we named “The Next Step with Fr. Vazken.” It launched on June 18, 2008. We added the “dot net” to our Epostle brand and we moved from CDs to podcasting.
Steve Jobs had introduced the iPhone only a year earlier and podcasting was in its infancy. In November 2008, the Thanksgiving edition of the Next Step was featured on the cover page of Apple’s Music program iTunes, spiking our listener base by several thousand. Some call it luck, I called it a blessing, that is, luck without the element of chance.
Through the years we stirred the pot with special features such as “Ani Bubbles” a series of bright blessings produced by Ani Burr Simonoff. We pushed the limits in many ways by constantly exploring the edges of technology. At the time there were podcasting conventions, which we attended to learn and share. Once Suzie, my sister Anush and I took rented a blue convertible Mustang and drove out to Las Vegas for a day of meeting podcasters in what was a hobby burgeoning into an industry.
Suzie was and continues to be on the production end of Epostle.net.
In the “Our Father” prayer, Jesus instructs us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To pray that prayer means that first we accept the responsibility of being the agent by which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Often when we discuss the ministry and church, we forget that it all comes together because of very special people who accept that challenge. Some say we were lucky, others say it was good fortune, I name it blessed, luck without the element of chance to have the quality and caliber of volunteers who make the Ministry the miracle it was.
From this simple but sacred church on a corner across the cluster of schools, the Christian Gospel of light over darkness, life over death, love over hatred was preached and witnessed. The miracles were many and unforgettable by everyone who attended and called this church home. Sunday mornings we celebrated the Badarak, Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church, and that celebration continued throughout the week as we celebrated life and walked in the shoes of others.
https://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/DALL·E-2023-05-10-22.05.01-Surrealistic-image-combining-technology-grid-with-microphone-and-internet-symbols-.png10241024Vazken Movsesianhttps://epostle.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/final_logo_large_for_epostle_web-300x189.pngVazken Movsesian2023-05-11 00:01:512024-08-30 09:55:54On Earth as in Heaven
