The 2008 Troost Avenue Festival was held this past April 19th at the corner of 31st and Troost.  Review the Two Hundred Years - Troost historical presentation on Troost’s origins.

The 2008 Ancient Christianity Conference on HOPE was held May 30 - June 1, 2008 in Springfield, Missouri at the Baymont Hotel.

Visit the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black website for more information.

As I was first approaching Orthodoxy in the early 1980s, I remember that friends were reading a book that advised Christians to stay away from psychology. It was called Psychology as Religion– The Cult of Self-Worship by Paul C. Vitz.¹ The title was enough to convince me, and I continued my search for the soul’s healing through strictly Orthodox texts. “Psychology” means the knowledge and science of the soul, and the Orthodox Church has had true, spiritual psychology and soul therapy from the beginning. On the other hand, there was always the struggle to apply what was written for other generations and cultures and conditions. The particular genius of the Eastern Church is to seek and to “baptize” the good in every culture, and it can seek and “baptize” the good in modern psychology as well. In that spirit, I have drawn from psychology’s clinical experience and therapeutic techniques, but not from its vision of the nature of man and wellness, which do diverge significantly from a traditional, Christian understanding.

Psychologists since the time of Freud have been studying guilt—the gnawing feeling that we have acted badly—and its role in our lives. In 1987, Daniel Goleman began a New York Times article with this bit of irony– “Psychologists, admittedly chagrined and a little embarrassed, are belatedly focusing on shame, a prevalent and powerful emotion, which somehow escaped rigorous scientific examination until now.” Shame feels similar to guilt, but it has more to do with who we are than what we do. He continues– “Shame is emerging, in the view of some, as a ‘master emotion’ that influences all the others.”² I’ve been pleased to discover that Christian therapists—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—are now wrestling with this topic.³ Some are also including the Bible as an important point of reference.

I’d like this morning to discuss shame from the point of view of the Bible and other familiar Orthodox sources, as well as modern psychology and social commentary. To give an overview of what it is, its causes, its significance, its manifestations, and its resolution. The Church offers divine revelation to help us get a true perspective. Psychology, on the other hand, offers something which the Church cannot—case histories. Those who turn to the Church with suffering souls will unburden them to their confessors, who are then bound to the confidentiality of the sacrament. For that reason, there is much to gain from reading the case histories which psychologists can more freely offer. It will be beyond the scope of this talk to share those, nor do I wish to discuss issues so graphically that it might make people feel uncomfortable. But I will be happy to share references with those who are interested later.

Shame in the Bible

The Bible speaks about shame from beginning to end. I was surprised to find in the concordance that there were six times as many references to shame as to guilt in the Scriptures.⁴ The whole drama of the fall and salvation of man is couched in terms of shame, both in the Bible, and in the Divine Services of the Church. When we pray for salvation for our souls we say, “Let us not who put our hope in Thee be put to shame,” and similar phrases. When we pray for deliverance from the demons we say, “let mine enemies quickly be put to shame.” The story of shame starts in Genesis. We are told that our first parents in Paradise were “naked … and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). The only words used to describe the paradisal state of soul are “not ashamed.” Surely they were also joyful, peaceful, grateful…“not ashamed” though, seems to sum up that blissful state and imply all other blessings. After their fall through disobedience their shame is described by their actions—they hid and they blamed (Gen 3:7-13). Both the Church and psychologists recognize hiding and blaming as symptoms of shame.

We will draw from the Patristic understanding of Genesis to develop further our definition of shame. Our first parents were created to be immortal. They were wise beyond any human comparison. They did not suffer from hunger, thirst, heat, cold, fatigue, disease, injury, and did not need to suffer death. Their eating did not produce waste, and they lived as virgins.⁵ But Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and fell from all the goodness which had freely been given to them. For the first time they experienced shame. Shame is an emotion; it is also a state of being at odds with ourselves and with God. Shame says, “I have fallen from the good state in which I was created. I, who was just under the angels, am now like one of the beasts. The whole creation is cursed for my sake. I see my sin exposed—I deserve to be rejected by God and cast away from His presence.” Oh, what a painful feeling of rupture, of not-rightness! In the grips of an intense feeling of shame, we can hardly even stand to look at ourselves, at the exposure of our shortcomings. Shame not only makes us hide from God, and each other, but we hide our shamed state from ourselves by a myriad of smoke screens. The Church calls this hiding self-delusion. And it calls the smoke screens “the passions.” From its vantage point, psychology also calls this hiding self-delusion. And it calls the smoke screens “defense mechanisms.”

The cause of shame, as we have seen, is original sin. Unlike the Western Church, which teaches that we inherit the guilt of Adam, the Eastern Church teaches that we inherit the shame of Adam. As the canon for the feast of Theophany tells us,

The Maker saw in the obscurity of sin, in bonds that knew no escape, The man whom He had formed with His own hand. Raising him up, He laid him on his shoulders, And now in abundant floods He washes him clean From the ancient shame of Adam’s sinfulness.⁶

Shame in Human Development

So far, everything we have said about shame seems negative, but actually there is healthy shame, and there is unhealthy shame. We begin to see its significance for us in terms of human development. Our sense of shame appears around the age of two. We learn the distinction that certain things are private, such as our hygienic activities—we learn boundaries. This is an important, positive lesson. The capacity for shame develops before guilt, and before rational thinking. For this reason our early lessons about shame become part of our deepest sense of self, and are hard to revise if they have been contaminated by poisonous shame. All our emotions are psychic energy—the energy of the soul. They are reactions given by God to help move us to make good responses to the situations around us. For instance, joy moves us to praise God. Fear moves us out of harm’s way. Interest moves us to study and to work. When we have completed our response, then the emotion is resolved. Our heart moves on to something else. Shame in small, healthy doses tells us to correct our mistakes —to stop, recognize our human limitations, and proceed with prudence. If the feeling is rational, it can resolve itself in wisdom and insight. Here is a perspective on healthy shame from Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw–

It is necessary to have the feeling of shame if one is to be truly human. Shame is the emotion which gives us permission to be human. Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes, and that we need help. Our shame tells us we are not God. Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility. It is the source of spirituality.⁷

But in large doses, shame becomes poisonous. Rather than telling us to correct ourselves, it tells us that we are incorrigible. It is that shamed sense of self which we constantly seek to drown out—the feeling is irrational and so there is no way to resolve it. For example, if I feel rationally ashamed and guilty because of a thoughtless remark, that will prompt me to seek forgiveness and to watch my tongue in the future. The guilt is resolved by making amends, and the shame is resolved by a firm decision not to repeat that sin. But when I was a girl in school, I remember feeling painfully and irrationally ashamed of being intelligent. I was afraid that boys would reject me for being smarter than they were. What moral lesson could I learn from that? Occasionally I would attempt to resolve the shame by playing to lose in a competitive game. In this case, my shame made me hide my true self in relationship with others. With deeper shame, we try to escape the pain by hiding self from self. It is in this sense that shame becomes a powerful energy of avoidance—the avoidance of truth and reality about ourselves and our relationships. Bradshaw continues–

Toxic shame is unbearable and always necessitates a cover-up, a false self. Since one feels his true self is defective and flawed, one needs a false self which is not defective and flawed. Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically. To be a false self is to cease being an authentic human being. The process of false self-formation is what Alice Miller calls “soul murder.” As a false self, one tries to be more than human or less than human.⁸

“Soul murder,” as Alice Miller so aptly calls it, is exactly what happened at the time of the original fall. God warned Adam that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die. Adam lived in the flesh for a considerable time (Gen 5: 5), yet there is no contradiction here. The immediate consequence of his sin was the death of his soul—the departure of the Holy Spirit from it. Through his lack of humility, he passed a legacy of shame and spiritual death down through the generations even to our present time.

The Spiritual Effects of Shame

Healthy shame was anticipated in the Old Testament righteous ones, but it is truly made possible by Christ’s incarnation and baptism for our sake. Healthy shame is modeled by the Prodigal Son. That shame says, “I have fallen from grace, ungrateful wretch that I am. I deserve to be rejected by God, but He is full of mercy and loving-kindness. I trust in His mercy, and dare to pray to Him with hope!” Our unhealthy shame says, “Don’t look at me—I’m a mistake! I have a hole in my soul and I should never have been born. If people really knew how I was inside, they would hate and reject me.” In other words, healthy shame still remembers that we are God’s creation and that He loves us. We were created good, but have become filthy and diseased. We need cleansing and healing, not discarding. Unhealthy shame makes us feel that we, our family, or group have a defect that others do not share. That we have a hopelessly bad nature that cannot be fixed, cured, or changed. Again, healthy shame is the foundation of humility. Here is an example of healthy shame from Unseen Warfare—a repentant sinner is counseled to pray in these words:

“O Lord, my God! I have done this because I am what I am and so nothing can be expected of me but such transgressions or even worse, if Thy grace does not help me and I am left to myself alone. I grieve over what I have done, especially because my life has no righteousness responding to Thy care of me, but I continue to fall and fall. Forgive me and give me the strength not to offend Thee again and in no way to digress from Thy will. For I zealously wish to work for Thee, to please Thee and be obedient to Thee in all things.”⁹

This humble sinner recognizes that all good is borrowed from God, and so expects nothing good to come out of himself unaided. He is not afraid to look frankly at his failings and shortcomings, and is not scandalized by them. He does not get obsessed with them. After offering his repentance to God, he feels confident of forgiveness and goes on with life. He doesn’t say, “how could I ever have done such a horrible thing! I’m really not that kind of person.” Squarely shouldering the healthy awareness of shame is a big part of carrying our cross and following Christ. It helps us not to judge and disparage our neighbor.

There is a profound state of imbalance and loss of perspective that is characteristic of the false self in fallen man. Our fall, the tasting of the tree of knowledge, opened us up to the experience of both good and evil, but tragically left us still without discernment. As we became coarse and material in our fallen nature, became confused about the issues of pleasure and pain, good and evil. This undiscerning condition is so severe that the Church counsels us never to trust ourselves—our thoughts, our motives, our instincts, our judgements. The Church calls the false self the “old man.” It is a death-like sleep of the soul that causes us to identify ourselves with our lower nature and our senses. To side always with the irrational, sensual will, and not the higher, godly will. It is that false self which begins to wash away in baptism, and is the very reason that we must be born again.

In one of his homilies, St. Nickolai Velomirovic´ further explains,

…there is a trinity in the interior heaven of man, which must become not just an association, but a unity, that he may be blessed both in this world and in that which is to come; that is the unity of mind, heart and will. While these three are only in association, man is at war with his own three parts and the heavenly Trinity.¹⁰

In the fallen state, the mind, the heart, and the will are out of balance with each other, at war with each other and with God. Poisonous shame encourages us to feel ashamed of some parts of our threefold make-up—sometimes to the point of not acknowledging that they are there, and to over-identify with other parts. For instance, a person could be over-identified with the mind, and ashamed of his feelings, or some of his feelings. A Western upbringing tends to give the sense that some feelings are intrinsically good and some are intrinsically bad. Love, joy, and excitement are “good,” while sorrow, anger, and fear are “bad.” In truth, all that God put into our make-up is good, but we need discernment—we have to know when and how to use it. If we are brought up to believe that all anger is bad, then how will we be angry against the demons and our passions? If we believe that all fear is bad, how will we develop fear of God? If we believe that all sorrow is bad, how will we sorrow for our sins and repent?

The Manifestations of Toxic Shame

As we have defined shame, both healthy and unhealthy, and looked at its significance, we have done so in universal terms. To look at the many manifestations of toxic shame, we will resume our creation story, and then move on to particular circumstances. The first beings to be shamed were the spirits who fell from heaven due to their over-weaning pride. Man was created a little lower than the angels in order to grow and to fill the void left by the fall of a third of them or more, according to some traditional Church sources. God shamed the demons in an ultimate way by casting them down from heaven, and from all that is good. The demons try to retaliate by shaming God. Shame for a creature is one thing—shame for God, impossible of course, would mean something entirely different. Shame for a creature results from choosing unwisely to trust the creation rather than the Creator—it means being cast away from God’s presence. Shame for God would mean proving that He was unwise in His counsels, fallible in His foreknowledge, foolish in His generosity. In particular, it would mean showing that He had made a tremendous mistake in creating man to replace the fallen angels. All the ranks of demons are motivated by consuming and unquenchable envy. They try to tempt us night and day to prove that God was foolish ever to create us, and to prove that man, like the demons, is inherently an enemy of God. In this pursuit, they are constantly blaming us before God, ourselves, and each other. In tormenting us they feel that they somehow ease their own torment. That is why the shameless ones provoke in our hearts the feeling that we are a mistake—that we shouldn’t have been born. If we ever feel this way we need to know that the demons are tormenting the wound of original sin in us. They want to provoke us to blaspheme our Creator Who formed us to share in His goodness and bliss.

We mentioned earlier that shame causes hiding and blaming. So far, we have looked at the response of hiding, but we have said little about blaming. The nature of shame is such that the feeling of it can be shifted from one individual or group to another. The demons proudly teach us to participate in their ruse of shifting the hurt of shame onto others. They take great delight if we begin to grumble and to blame God for our miseries. Or if we dull our distress by crowing over our supposed superiority over our neighbor. This could be moral superiority—a feeling of self-righteousness, or physical superiority—greater strength, or mental superiority—greater intelligence. It is often the inverse superiority of feeling that we are the worst at something—the most delinquent, the most rejected and unloved, the worst failure. Still having the log in our own eye, we try to take the speck out of our neighbor’s eye (Matt 7:3–5). We blame and judge our neighbor for our own unacknowledged faults and desires, which some therapists like to call our “shadow traits.” Family relationships, racial and caste relationships, ethnic and national relationships—in fact all relationships that I can think of—involve rituals either for maintaining a balance of shame or transferring shame.

Here is a simple example of maintaining the balance—a friend was with me in the monastery kitchen. As I finished the dishes, I looked down at my faded, black habit and remarked that it was full of stains and grease spots. My friend looked quite nice, but she immediately began pointing out minor stains on her own clothing, too. She tactfully brought herself down to my level so that I wouldn’t feel embarrassed. My heart felt lightened because of her kind gesture. In a different vein, if someone has criticized you, you may have noticed an insurmountable urge to find some “helpful” criticism to offer him in return. These are the little exchanges we are involved in every day. But they reveal our ancestral wound—our fall and our subsequent search for balance.

Here is an example of how we begin to transfer shame to others—I went to fill up my car at a time when the gas prices were fluctuating wildly. The cashier made me feel really stupid for not knowing in advance how much it would cost to fill the tank. Next thing I knew, I was hunting in my mind for an excuse to chew out someone else, in order to relieve my own stinging embarrassment. Yelling, put-downs, or any abusive behavior will make the victim feel shamed. Why? In reality, the person who behaves abusively ought to be the one to feel ashamed of himself. But somehow, we believe that we deserve what we get according to our this-worldly sense of the fairness of the universe—if we are treated shamefully we feel ashamed.¹¹ We learn to assess our worth from how others treat and see us. We learn who we are first from our parents and those in our families, then from those in society around us. Our sense of identity comes from agreeing with the most important people in our life about who and what we are or should be.

Shame in the Practice of Slavery

Beyond the family, the transference of shame in society has happened through the universal practice of slavery. From as far back as sociologists can trace history, it has always been there. Slavery seems to have its genesis in making the slave the carrier of toxic shame. He begins as a conquered warrior. He is ashamed because he couldn’t defend himself or his women or his tribe. Then he is given a different name, distinctive dress or haircut, or some other mark. He must shoulder the work which his master scorns, and he has no recourse against the ridicule of society.¹² Or again, he begins as a debtor who cannot feed his family. He shamefacedly sells himself into bondage and passes a growing debt onto his children and his children’s children. The legacy of debt becomes a legacy of shame as the “free” people mock, cheat, and abuse them. Looking at American history, Dr. Aphrodite Matsakis discusses this transfer of shame in terms of “shadow traits”:

Many of our racial stereotypes originated in the need to project the shadow traits away from ourselves onto a distinct group. Hence, white slave owners made much of the unbridled sexuality of their African-American slaves, when in reality it was the white slave owners who were taking sexual advantage of their slaves. They projected their own uncontrolled lust onto their victims, calling them “seductive” or “oversexed” or “immoral,” when the problem wasn’t the sexual desires of the slaves, but the sexual desires of the slave owners.¹³

In every slave culture the bondwomen are raped, and their children are born into slavery. I used to think that this was an anomaly of American history, but I have learned rather, that it is the norm.

Rape is one of the most standard procedures to ensure that women feel totally shamed and submissive.¹⁴ I have gained insight into how it works from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.¹⁵ He describes how Soviet prison guards used to deal with the hunger strikes of the political prisoners by force feeding, which he likens to rape in that it is a violation of the will. He observes that a person’s will has to be violated only once in this way to induce a state of apathy, because he is made to feel like his own betrayer. The nerves of the stomach, or any other part of the body cannot tell the source of stimulation. They register pleasure on a purely animal level. On the other hand, the heart and mind can react with strong disgust to things which are morally degrading and sinful. To make a person feel intense disgust and pleasure at the same time is to rip his soul in two. The most shaming thing one person can do to another is to accentuate the disharmony, originally caused by the fall, between the trinity of the mind, the heart, and the will. Or the trinity of the spirit, the soul, and the body. This is what the foul demons want to do to us.

I experienced that sort of violation recently on a much milder scale. I was sitting in a hospital waiting room. There was the inescapable presence of the TV, with a big, handwritten note, “Do not change the channel.” I waited for six hours with my prayer rope, but nothing to read, nothing else to occupy my mind, and with that inane TV blaring in front of me. To escape boredom, I tasted the entertainment. It was truly disgusting. Someone was trying to resolve marital conflicts by subjecting husbands to lie detector tests right there in front of an audience, if you can imagine. Yet my eyes, ears, and brain experienced some pleasure in being stimulated, in spite of the debasing content. Inside my soul was howling. I was angry with myself for watching, but too weak with boredom to resist.

Shame and Needs

Abuse in families is like that experience. Perhaps the abuse is verbal—it is shaming, but on the other hand, being yelled at is a form attention. In the case of children, they become torn between the conflicting needs for attention and safety—some will sacrifice attention for safety, and some, safety for attention. Either way, the unmet need causes them shame. Because our natures provide for us to learn types of behavior that meet our needs, that sort of conflict may teach us to act in ways that encourage abuse or neglect, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Our nature is equipped for survival, and if we are unable to meet a need well, we will always choose to meet it poorly. Later, the opportunity may arise to meet it in a better way, but we have to unlearn our unconscious habits—which is very difficult. It’s difficult because it’s bound up with our sense of identity—who we are. It’s bound up with the creation of a false self that we spoke of earlier. Once our identity is formed, we constantly seek to affirm it, even if causes us shame. To admit, if only to ourselves and God, that we were wrong about who and what we thought we were, brings up even more powerful feelings of shame.

Our needs themselves are humbling. An angel, being immortal, has no survival needs—he lives by the presence of God alone. That is exactly how we were originally created, and how God wants us to become, by virtue of spiritual rebirth. All the daily survival needs we have are as a result of the fall. The need to work to fulfill our needs is a result of the fall. Wealth and poverty are a result of the fall. God gave us the penance of neediness and hard work for our disobedience. Those who struggle to meet their needs feel it more keenly—they feel ashamed. But it is properly the shame that belongs to all of us. The author and poet Wendell Berry says–

I believe…that the root of our racial problem in America is not racism. The root is our inordinate desire to be superior—not to some inferior or subject people, though this desire leads to the subjection of people—but to our condition. We wish to rise above the sweat and bother of taking care of anything—of ourselves, of each other, or of our country. We did not enslave African blacks because they were black, but because their labor promised to free us of the obligations of stewardship, and because they were unable to prevent us from enslaving them.¹⁶

We stigmatize want and need. We also stigmatize “work that is fundamental and inescapable,” to use Berry’s phrase. Ordinary human work—housekeeping, farming, maintenance and such. We glory in work that is optional to survival—in entertainment, higher education, trade in luxury items. To deny someone what is necessary to meet his needs, either materially or psychologically, is also deeply shaming.

In slavery the shaming of basic needs and of necessary work is as much a part of the transfer of shame as the beatings and the sexual abuse. In the slave system, the master is allowed to have needs—the slave isn’t. The slave exists solely to minister to the master’s needs. He is used as an object, valued solely for what he can do, and not for who he is. The fiction is maintained that to have many needs, and to have them all met by someone else is a source of pride, while to have few needs and to meet them poorly by oneself is a source of shame. People whose needs are routinely denied come to feel ashamed when they feel the needs arise. They come to feel ashamed of their needs as if the needs were the culprits. They may eventually come to disown their needs, and not to acknowledge them consciously, even to themselves.¹⁷

The Scars of Slavery

Because slavery did create such a deep wound in our nation, let us examine more closely the scars that it has left in family life and society. What emotional habits would the slave system foster in the slaves, or indeed, in the owning class? The dominant race successfully transferred its feeling of original shame to the slaves. The slaves would react both by accepting the assessment that they were an inferior race, and by rebelling against it. The masters would feel pride in their ascendancy and power. The slaves would feel ashamed of their powerlessness, especially as family members were beaten and abused in front of one another. They would suffer from slow-burning resentment, and hot-flashing anger. Anger, which could not be safely expressed against the masters, would sometimes be turned inward against self or against other slaves. Some would hear the Word of God imperfectly preached, and by grace, turn the energy of anger into powerful prayer—prayer for deliverance, prayer for their soul’s salvation, and even prayer for their abusers.

What happens to this emotional legacy with emancipation? Is it just written off? The legacy of shame is unfortunately like an enormous, inherited debt—not easily written off or paid. Efforts are made through politics, business, and education, but little change is seen. Almost a hundred fifty years later, gunshots are still heard in the neighborhood streets. There are still coffeehouse readings of the poetry of black rage. We still nurse our wounds with the myth that the slavery we experienced was the most bitter and brutal on the face of the earth—that no one has suffered as we have suffered.

To follow one thread, the slave mothers found it dangerous to bond with their children and mates because they could and would be sold away at any time. They couldn’t expect stable and supportive relationships with husbands. Slave women were valued as breeders, and only informal marriages were tolerated by the system. Deprived of protection and bred like animals, would they not feel resentment mixed with their maternal love? In those generations and later, the mother who’d never had her emotional needs met would perhaps feel resentful when her children clamored to have those same needs met. The basic needs to be valued in and for themselves, the needs for love, bonding, affirmation of their feelings. What makes them feel they’re good enough to demand the things she did without? A child’s cries for attention might get met with a sharp put-down, as the mother tried to put down the rising feelings from her own shamed childhood.

The stamp of the particular type of shaming experienced through slavery is still strongly imprinted on the African-American community. It has been passed from generation to generation, waiting to be recognized and addressed. There are scars of self-hatred shown by the desire to change hair texture and color, and other physical traits. There are the more obvious signs of addictions and violence. There are the scars of chronic abandonment of families by both fathers and mothers. But the legacy of shame can be passed down in any family from any ethnic group in a similar variety of ways. In one, it will be eating disorders, in another, physical abuse, in another abandonment, either physical or emotional. In another, it will be the less obvious quest for superior achievement. Over-achievement can also be driven by a desire to reduce the feeling of toxic shame. Where psychology differs from the Church is that psychology still views shame as an issue involving this patient or that, this family or that. The Church teaches that it is at the core of the question of our fall and salvation. Salvation is precisely salvation from shame.

Freedom from Shame

Jesus Christ paid the debt of our sin on the Cross. In paying our debt, He freed us from the legacy of shame, and made us joint-heirs with Him (Rom 8:17). Every commandment in the Bible, every counsel of the Holy Fathers is a liberation from shame. However, if an individual labors under a mountain of poisonous shame, it may be hard at first to take advantage of what Christ is freely offering when He says, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). If our identity is based on toxic shame, “I am a mistake,” rather than healthy shame, “I make mistakes,” it can be hard to believe that Jesus loves us. The false identity begins to form long before we can think rationally. The Church urges us towards saving humility, but when we try to say the penitential prayers in the services, or even the Jesus Prayer, we may feel that they shame us even more. We may want to edit out certain parts of the prayers—to omit phrases such as “sinners, of whom I am the chief.” Or we may agree with those sentiments in the wrong way. We may be saying in our heart, “mistakes, of which I am the chief.” Sinners are not mistakes. That is what the demons want us to believe. Sinners are feverish children, who in their delirium, often project onto God the rejecting attitude that they have experienced from others.

How do we resolve unhealthy shame and learn to trust in Jesus’ love? Of course this is a deeply personal and pastoral question for each one of us. Fortunately, He makes the first step for us toward healing. Nothing is more efficacious than the grace of the Holy Spirit, conferred by the Orthodox sacraments of Baptism and Chrismation. Since our original shame was the loss of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, then the Incarnation, Baptism, and Passion of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ are the remedy. We must pray that He will show us that all our worst sins are as a handful of dirt cast into the ocean of God’s love. That our pain is from the wound of our common enemy, and not at all God’s doing.

Healing Work

In our healing work, psychological techniques are useful if they help us to hold out our hand and to receive the grace which God already desires to bestow on us. The approach for each soul is unique. A good beginning is to realize that shame is an issue for everyone, because shame is the emotion that tells us all that we are all fallen. It helps to know that it is not only “me or my family or my racial group.” We have to feel secure enough in supportive, therapeutic relationships for shame to begin to ease out from its hiding places. By therapeutic relationships, I don’t necessarily mean formal counseling. Any relationship is potentially therapeutic where both parties try to live and love according to the Gospel. Where both parties try to be sensitive not to increase the other’s unhealthy shame. Since we reject the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, and don’t like to acknowledge that they are part of us, it may help to affirm our love and acceptance of the very parts that we don’t like.

The sin of self-love is really the sin of self-indulgence, of loving the sensual side of ourselves, and of ignoring the spiritual. God wants us to love ourselves correctly. That is to work towards our salvation by following His commandments. To acknowledge that we are His handiwork to treat ourselves with respect for His sake. Just as we love our friends and family members in spite of their physical and moral defects, we have to love ourselves. As silly as it sounds, we can say “I love myself for having a big nose, or big feet.” “I love myself for having a temper or being a coward.” The issue here is not to get mixed up between faults and virtues, but rather to accept and embrace our whole self so that our whole self can come to Christ the Physician. Then the elements that are misdirected can be redirected.¹⁸

St. Paul said, “be ye angry, and sin not…” (Eph 4:26). It is better to love myself for having a temper and getting angry—which I’m known for—than to be ashamed to acknowledge that I have the full range of human feelings. God created us all with the reactions of anger, fear, and sorrow. Anger or fear is elicited when we feel our wellbeing and safety are threatened. They are there to motivate us to protect ourselves. The problem is when we misunderstand the nature of the threat, because then our response is misdirected. Unacknowledged anger can seep out in a host of destructive ways—anything from a stubbornly uncooperative character to a major addiction. But if I love myself for feeling anger, then I can ask God to help me redirect my anger from my neighbor who certainly does not deserve it, to the demons who most certainly do. My healthy shame will urge me to apologize for my slips, and to be more prayerful and vigilant.

Forgiving our Families

Perhaps our parents’ emotional needs were poorly met, and they struggled imperfectly to meet ours. All people have had a fallen upbringing to some extent. It may seem as if we were there to meet our parents’ emotional needs—to parent our parents—while no one was there for our needs. Or we may feel that we came from a model, loving family, but then why do we feel so messed up inside? In reality, all our family members have sinned against us, and need our forgiveness. But how can we forgive if we don’t acknowledge the hurts? Some people have to begin shame resolution by acknowledging their hurts. Young children blame themselves when they are hurt. They must deserve it, or their parents wouldn’t hurt them. To admit that the parents were at fault seems to breech a taboo. But to remember that our parents were sinned against by their parents, who were sinned against by their parents, all the way back to Eden, puts things in a right context. Our parents sinned against us, not because they were terrible people, but because they are fallen human beings, tempted by the devil, just like everyone else.

Our parents and family members need our forgiveness, but not just the cheap forgiveness of saying, “It’s not a big deal. Why remember the past. Live in the present.” Real forgiveness requires acknowledging the hurts and grieving for the hurts. Grief resolves pain and loss. Grief involves retrieving pent-up, unconscious feelings and releasing them in a safe way—by writing them in a journal, crying on the pastor’s shoulder, expressing them through a work of art. When the buried emotions are resolved, then we can tear up the grievance sheet against our family, and forgive them from the heart. We remember the past in order to set safe boundaries for ourselves, but we remember without rancor.¹⁹ This step by step housecleaning of the cluttered rooms of our souls needs the guidance of an experienced and willing pastor, in the context of our ongoing sacramental life.

The Memory of Paradise

When we grieve for the imperfections of our upbringing, the imperfections of our family’s expression of love for us, when we acknowledge that these things cause us deep pain, we are really grieving for the loss of Paradise. We are grieving for our fallen condition and the loss of our first estate. When our ancestral parents were cast out of Paradise, God settled them in a place nearby where they could constantly see it and remember the good from which they had fallen through disobedience (Gen 3:24, Septuagint).²⁰ We make a great mistake when we idealize our family, our upbringing, and our past for the sake of supposed loyalty. We need to see the difference between how things truly were, and how our heart longed for them to be. That longing is a remembrance of Paradise, without which we cannot be saved. That longing is intended to encourage us to seek fulfillment in God, and not to be satisfied with the things of this earth. The Lord said, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt 5:4). We mourn for our sins, but we also mourn for the sins committed against us. We mourn for a paradisal childhood that was lost to us. But this redemptive mourning is with hope. For Christ also said that we must be born again, and become as little children in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 18:2–3, John 3:3–8). A second childhood is given to us through baptism, and if a second childhood, a second upbringing. The first upbringing by our families, in spite of their best intentions, is passionate and unbalanced. The second upbringing is by Holy Mother Church, directed by the Holy Spirit and aided by grace.

While psychologists say that we must mourn if we want healing from our shame, it is a mourning without real hope, as those who mourn their dead without expecting the resurrection. While they would have us mourn the love we never experienced and the destruction of our souls in childhood, they only extend to us the hope of adjusting to the painful truth of the past and finding fulfillment in the present. But we mourn with full hope that all of that for which we mourn will be fully restored and resurrected. Truly, through divine grace there is a resurrection of the soul, a restoration of the balance of heart, mind, and will, and a development of discernment between good and evil. In that state we are no longer tossed about like rudderless ships in a storm. St. Nikolai Velimirovic´ describes this mature state of soul in his inimitable way:

A true Christian is a mature man,…who is distrustful of sensuality, who has a finer judgement and makes a finer distinction between the value of what is and what passes away. To the Christian, surely, clear guidance is given by the revelation of God to distinguish between good and evil; but he has need of long and serious study to reach perfection, to be able to know in every given situation what is good and what is evil. His knowledge must move inward to his feelings to be reliable and unmistaken. And both good and evil seek to touch the heart of man. It is therefore essential for a man to be practised in recognizing at once by the feeling of his heart what it is that approaches him, in just the same way as the tongue can immediately perceive the salt and the unsalted, the sweet and the sour.²¹

The heart that is shamed is blinded by shame. It cannot see good from evil. The heart that is liberated by Jesus Christ is free.

Summary

We have looked at shame as an emotion—both healthy, where it leads to humility, and unhealthy, where it leads to unbalance and to self-delusion, which is the first step of every sin. We have seen how toxic shame causes the formation of a false self—a cover-up, which the Church calls the “old man.” We have looked at shame as banishment from God, and salvation as freedom from that shame. We have looked at shame as a social phenomenon—both in the family, and in society, especially through the phenomenon of slavery. We have looked at shame as the unique, personal experience of original sin, and how its legacy is passed from generation to generation. We have looked at how the feeling of shame gets transferred from one person or group to another, through the projection of “shadow traits.” And lastly, we have begun to look at the resolution of shame. That resolution entails fostering our healthy shame, and learning to recognize the symptoms of our unhealthy shame in our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior. As we see it crop up in our lives, we shame shame by exposing it. We seek honesty with ourselves, with God, and in our relationships.

We still have disjointed parts of our make-up that war against themselves and God because of our fallenness and our unhealthy shame. As we walk the path of Christ, these parts will be balanced and healed, and discernment will begin to form. “His knowledge must move inward to his feelings to be reliable and unmistaken.” This expresses the full healing of shame—the healing of shamed emotions and the flowering of humility. St. Nikolai finishes his earlier passage by telling us that when the mind, the heart, and the will become whole and reunited,

when one is not dominant and the other subservient, then that man is filled with the peace that passes all understanding (Phil. 4:7), [that passes] all speech, all explanation, all fear and all sorrow. Then the small heaven within man begins to be like the great heaven of God, and the image and likeness of God then become clear within him.²²

Shame can truly be a master emotion holding us in the bonds of slavery. We want to “bind the strong man” (Matt 12:29) concealed within us so that he will not bind our God-given capacity for love, for creativity, and for joy. It is for that reason that Jesus Christ our Liberator came down to earth. He was not afraid of mockery and rejection. He was not afraid of deceit and treachery. For thirty pieces of silver, He was sold as a common slave. Hunted down by the law, He was crucified among common criminals. Having no guilt, He embraced shame and rejection so that we who are enslaved to sin, need fear rejection no more.

Jesus is not afraid of our wounds; Jesus is not afraid of our needs; Jesus is not afraid of our sorrow. Let us come to Him with boldness and tell Him everything on our hearts. As we sacrifice our pain on the heart’s altar, He will receive every offering as One Who has sweated His very Blood for us. He will free us from the legacy of shame and help us take on His easy yoke of humility. He will walk us step by step, as we can take those steps. From His overflowing goodness, He will give us His courage, so that we may see ourselves with dispassion. From His overflowing kindness, He will give us His love, so that we may see our neighbor with compassion. From His overflowing wisdom, He will give us His light, so that we may see God with the purified vision of our heart! To Him be glory and honor and victory and praise, together with His eternal Father and His life-giving Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Glory be to God!

Presented by Fr. Paisius Altschul at the 8th Annual Ancient Christianity and African American Conference, Feb. 10, 2001 in Kansas City, Missouri

In the Gospel of St. Matthew, 22: 36-40 we read, “‘Master, which is the great commandment of the Law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law of the prophets.’”

When we hear the Lord Jesus teaching us about the greatest of the commandments, He explains to us the greatest, of course, is the commandment of love. “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Many, many sermons have been preached on the subject of loving your neighbor as yourself. I want to focus upon a particular problem that I’ve found working in our particular area of ministry since 1984. Many simply don’t understand the proper place of loving your self with a view to loving your neighbor.

Beloved and Baby Suggs

In the film Beloved, produced by Oprah Winfrey and based on the book by Toni Morrison, there is a beautiful scene that speaks to this issue. The scene is an outdoor meeting led by Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs is a matriarchal preacher in Cincinnati. The setting is the reconstruction Period after the Civil War. After Emancipation, African Americans were dealing with the trauma of slavery and its effects on their souls and their family’s. What we find in the particular sermon she’s about to deliver is an understanding of loving your self.

The setting is not too dissimilar from what Professor Albert Raboteau spoke about a few years ago at this conference when he related how slaves commonly would meet in the woods to have prayer meetings. They would gather together and pray and dance and sing and cry out to God. In the midst of such a scene, Baby Suggs lifts her arms to draw all present to her heart. She urges the community that’s gathered there to love themselves as proof of their love of God. She declares:

“Here, in this here place, we flesh. Flesh that weeps, laughs - flesh that dances on bare feet and grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes. They just as soon pick them out no more than they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it, and oh my people, they do not love your hands. They only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty! Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them! Touch others with them. Clap ‘em together! Stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it - you! And no they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder out there they will see it broken - break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leave’ns instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it! This is flesh I’m talking about! Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance. Backs that need support. Shoulders that need arms. Strong arms I’m telling you. Now my people out yonder hear me - they do not love your neck unloosed and straight, so love your neck. Put a hand on it. Praise it. Stroke it and hold it up and all your inside parts, that they’d just as soon slop for hogs. You got to love them. The dark, dark liver — love it! Love it and the beats and the beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet, more than lungs that have yet to draw free air, more than your life holding womb, hear me now — love your heart, for this is the prize!”

“Love your flesh! Love it hard!” Many Christians in an attempt to fight against selfishness and self-centeredness have gone to an extreme where they basically view all love of self as basically evil. This has led to much distorted thinking about who we are and about how to exist in this world. The purpose of this talk is to put love of self in its proper view, according to the Church, so we can effectively love our neighbor as our self. Then healing can come - not a disintegration or a denying that there is a self at all.

Orthodox View of Love of Self

In the Orthodox catechism it asks a question under the section entitle, The Division of the Commandments into Two Tables.

Question: But why is there no commandment of love to ourselves?

Answer: Because we love ourselves naturally and without any commandment. “No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherisheth it,” Ephesians 5:29.

Saint John Chrysostom, when he comments about this verse “for no man ever hated his own flesh but nourisheth it and cherisheth it” says, “he tends it with exceeding care, regarding the flesh.” When we look at Baby Suggs we hear, and we feel her actually restoring her people to that which normally would come naturally — nourishing and cherishing one’s flesh. She’s speaking to people that have been robbed of security, nation and identity. She is trying to bring them and make them aware of the restorative place of people positively loving themselves. What’s needed for a people is the same that is needed by many individuals in America today.

Culture of Narcissism

There, of course, is a love of self that is contrary to God. When I say ‘love of self’ this is what most Christians think of. Selfishness. There was a book that was written in the 70’s, called The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch. It showed some amazing things…Jerry Rubin, one of the Chicago Seven who was calling for revolution back in the late 60’s, had become a stockbroker! Many changes occurred in people who, at one point were calling for deep kinds of radical social and personal changes had ‘evolved’ to become a part of things as they are.

This idea of narcissism is rooted in the word narcissus, coming from Narcissus of Greek mythology. He was a young man who, walking by a pool, saw his own reflection there. He was so mesmerized by this figure in the water that he couldn’t move his eyes. So later he died looking at his own reflection. Later a flower grew up in that spot and they call that flower the narcissus flower in memory of Narcissus.

Indeed there is today a self-worship that’s taken this to an extreme. It’s what St. Paul referred to in II Timothy 3:2 when he said in the last days men would be lovers of self. It’s this kind of narcissistic self-centeredness that St. Paul is referring to.

“Without Natural Affection”

Yet, St. Paul went on to write, “Know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. When men will be lovers of their own self, covetous, boisterous, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection.” It’s a very interesting thing that in the same verse where he talks about this kind of inordinate love of self he also says that people would be without natural affection. Now the teaching of the Church says that people would naturally be able to nourish and cherish their flesh. Something has happened, though, today. Many are without natural affection. The kinds of bonds that link people together have often been broken. We have to stop and consider - what is really going on? The same generation that on one hand promotes self-worship, on the other hand is losing natural affection. The Church saw it as natural for someone to love themselves. But at a time when people lose natural affection that which previously came natural has to be re-taught.

Many today need to be re-trained in what would come natural. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s a very straightforward command. But for someone who is very confused about properly liking himself or her self, love for one’s neighbor as myself becomes very confused. Their inner dialogue goes something like this:

“Hmm…Love my neighbor as myself. Well, when I have a problem it’s my fault and I deserve it so if this person has a problem he must deserve it too. He’s just getting what comes to him. That’s what I say to myself!”

or

“When I see my neighbor hurting I tell him, ‘Well the people in India have it far worse because…That’s what I say to myself.”

In other words, rather than having empathy or feeling a deep sense of sympathy for the person that’s suffering, the person will minimize their needs and then excuse themselves from getting involved. The neighbor, as a result, doesn’t receive support or comfort but rather a feeling of blame and shame. It’s like a little boy that just pounds his thumb with a hammer and then his parents comes and say you should be thankful that you didn’t cut your arm off like Mr. Jones who had the accident at work. What’s needed for that little boy at the time is for the mother or father just to hold the little boy and say, “Listen, it’s going to be OK. Let’s go in and put a Band-Aid on it or some ice on it and take care of it.” That teaches the child the feeling of taking care of the thumb as something that is basic. That kind of neglect, though, happens in multitudes of families, and the child is often times felt feeling that some how it’s their fault that they are having pain and it’s a problem and as a result the proper self-love or proper self-comfort is actually cut off from the child’s soul. What’s needed at that time for that little boy or that little girl is love and support - not minimizing the pain.

When a child receives the proper kind of love for himself or herself then he’s able to naturally feel love for his neighbor. When he sees his friend that hurts his thumb then his response will also be to go and get ice and try to comfort or help him, because that was what was done to him. And in this very simple analogy we find that this very lack is often what causes the kind of inability to effectively love our neighbors as our selves.

Unfortunately for many what comes natural is hatred for self rather than love for self. To love our flesh as Baby Suggs puts it is not to love what Saint Paul calls the old man and what he calls the flesh (i.e. the selfish tendencies inherited from Adam.) But, to love our flesh as she spoke of is survival! It’s healing! It’s restoring ourselves to what the catechism talks about when it says we love ourselves naturally and without any commandment. For abused people and for people coming out of dysfunctional families, or alcoholic homes, the tendency naturally is actually to hate one’s self. This is revealed in acting out on our selves with self-harming behavior, continuing in abusive relationships, or repeating abusive cycles when we grow up. The messages from the past abuse say to us, “See you’re bad. God doesn’t love you! Give it up!” Often the inward pain results in exploding on others with violence or verbal abuse or imploding on ourselves with self-harm, destructive behaviors and addictions. These are all indications of the failure to properly love ourselves or to naturally love ourselves.

Loving the Image of God

The catechism goes on to explain, “What relative order should there be in our love to God, our neighbor and ourselves? Answer: we should love ourselves not for our own, but for God’s sake, and partly also for the sake of our neighbors.”

So here we find that the key to us loving ourselves is for God’s sake. What does this mean to love ourselves for God’s sake? First of all, you and I are not accidents. We are very carefully planned by God. The scriptures say that everything created by God is good. This inward sense of goodness is something that definitely needs to be instilled within children. I often hear young mothers say to their babies “You’re bad! You’re bad!” What they’re transmitting is something much deeper than what you just did was bad. They are actually communicating a sense to that little baby you are bad. You are defective! You are messed up! And so, as a result, often that child grows up with this deep sense of alienation, separation, badness. They tend to feel crushed, ashamed and separated. Yet, everything created by God is good, including you and me.

The scriptures speak of us being made in the image of God. A story deep in meaning in the life of Jesus is when some of the religious leaders were coming to test Jesus with a coin. They thought that they had trapped Him. They were thinking, “Ah, He is going to tell us not to pay taxes. Then we can report Him to Rome!” So they pulled out a denarius with the image of Caesar asking Him, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus simply replies, “Well, show me a denarius.” As they pull it out, He asks them, “Whose image is on this?” And they say, “That is Caesar.” And He says, “Then, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God, what is God’s.”

Let us think about it. The coin had the image of Caesar. But whose image was on the face of those very men that came to Jesus bringing the coin? That of God Himself. Give to God what is God’s - your body, your soul, everything that you are as a human being, in that it reflects the image of God. It belongs to God. Because of that belonging, in order to truly understand ourselves, we must love ourselves for God’s sake.

We’re not creatures doing our own thing on this planet. We’ve been created for God’s glory. We’ve been created in such a way that we can be able to do something in cooperation with our Creator so that love can pour out of us back to Him again, because He gives it to us. And so we start to see ourselves in partnership, cooperation with God. A proper love of self for God’s sake then is to show respect for ourselves and to seek what is best for us from God’s point of view, and from the point of view of eternity. It is not selfish or narcissistic to seek what is good for our souls in our lives. Part of glorifying God in our bodies is to do what is best for us so that we can serve God and others.

Love of Community

In St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia, Chapter 6, there is something that Baby Suggs said that needs to explored more deeply. She said “love your flesh.” Think of the context of that statement. She was looking around at former slaves, at those who had suffered, at those who had been beaten and oppressed, at those who had been rejected and made to feel less than human. And she said, “Love your flesh.”

In other words, it’s not only that I properly love the flesh of my body, but I also love the flesh of my brothers and my sisters, i.e. my “flesh and blood.” In comparing two verses back to back, Galatians 6:2 and 5, at first they almost sound contradictory. Yet when you put them together they reveal the Wisdom of God.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” Galatians 6 v2. Then, verse 5 says, “For every man shall bear his own burden (or load). Each man shall bear his own load but bear ye one another’s burdens.

The idea is this; each person in their lives is given a knapsack, a pack to travel with. It’s that particular area that God has entrusted to each of us. You’re given a body, you’re given a soul. The Lord expects you to take care of that body. The Lord expects you to take care of that soul. Just as the Lord expects you to eat and feed yourself when you become an adult, you have to understand also that the needs of your soul are to be taken care of by your contact with God, by watching yourself and making sure that those inward needs are being lifted up and not neglected. When this happens something very deep starts to occur. You’re starting to take care of your own responsibility for your own self.

Because of that something else will start to occur. As we take care of our own burden, this ‘backpack’ that God has entrusted to us, we find that some of us are given bigger backpacks than others. In the realm of our responsibilities, some of us have children to care for. We have responsibilities at work or with our godchildren. We have responsibilities for a number of other things that are within the particular realm of “our backpack.” Different people can carry different loads. So we seek to carry our particular backpack in our journey.

However, there are times in our lives when traumatic things happen. A certain sickness comes along and can wipe someone out. A person takes a fall, a person suffers a major loss. At such times, they need a helping hand. When their load becomes too heavy to carry, when they can’t any longer continue on their journey, it’s time to bear one another’s burdens. It’s time to help each other out. So to love your flesh is to love the flesh of those close to you. First, take care of those responsibilities, that soul, that body that you’ve been given, but then, in addition, love your flesh - your brothers and sisters that walk with you. Walk in community. Become aware of what you can do to help carry those loads that are around you.

Unfortunately, this can lead to being a busybody. The word ‘busybody’ is a very interesting word in the Greek language. It actually means ‘someone else’s bishop.’ You actually start to look over everybody else as if you are the bishop! You’ve made it your personal duty to make sure that everybody else is ok. (You might think it’s a nice distraction because of the fact you don’t have to worry about yourself!) You see your job as the FBI of the kingdom of God! Your job is to make sure everybody else is doing their job. Then, you might think you can rest at night! Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You still have a body to take care of. You still have a soul to take care of. You still have your personal needs that reveal the need to continue to connect with God. Without this personal work and personal connection with God, we can’t be effective in reaching out to somebody else. Thus, we have to bear our own burdens - this pack, this load and then be able to bear one another’s burdens.

Removing the Log from Our Eye

Although these truths may sound simple, they are some of the most neglected truths that I see right now within many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. As a result, they are stumbling right and left. In attempting to fix someone else’s problems they often make things worse. This is why the Lord Jesus said, “First remove the log from your own eye, then you can see clearly to help the brother remove the speck in his eye.” This idea of the log is quite a picture. I remember one time reading a book called The Humor of Christ, by Elton Trueblood. This parable was one of the illustrations he used. If you actually picture this image that Jesus is giving us here, it’s a man with a very big log coming out of his eye, and he is turning around and he says, “Here brother let me help you with that speck”. All the while this big log is sticking out of his eye! So our Lord is saying we’ve got a lot of work to do.

St. Moses the Black was one of the Desert Fathers that emphasizes this the most. His teachings, written in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, again and again call us to pay attention to dealing with these things regarding our souls, rather than obsessing about our neighbor.

Love of Self and Healing

A proper love of self is essential to heal from abuse and from neglect. An abused person hears within their soul, “I’m bad, if you really knew me you really wouldn’t want to get close to me.” So, as a result, self harm and drugs, cutting, sexual abuse, prostitution, gambling-these are all echoes of a deeper pain. A pain that shows love somehow didn’t connect with that little part of us. That part of us that must become like a little child to open up to the Kingdom of Heaven within. That is where we can open up in wonder, in open-eyed amazement, in tenderness, all the while protected by that rational, assertive part of us that protects us from abuse and from the fake and from the thief.

A proper love of self enables the soul to receive the message of the Gospel, apply it to ourselves and then share it with others. We begin to say yes, I do want what is good for me; I do want this love from God. And we begin to have hope that God really does love me. God wants me to receive this goodness.

A long time ago someone taught me a very simple principle in reading the scriptures. Whenever you find a phrase that refers to people in general, put your name in there specifically. Let’s consider an example:

Most of you probably know John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Whenever you find a “whosoever,” put your name there. So, if you believe in Him, you won’t perish but have everlasting life.” He promises that if I believe in Him I won’t perish, but I will have everlasting life. What the Lord Jesus Christ did for all He surely did for you. The fact is that you’re a part of this.

It’s amazing to me how many people say things to me like, “Well I believe that God will do that for others but I don’t believe He will do it for me. I believe God will really answer other peoples’ prayers but I don’t believe He will answer my prayers. So, these messages that we hear of Our Lord Jesus Christ we can apply to ourselves.

Now St. John the Apostle said in 1 John 5:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.” Think about that “We love Him because He first loved us.” Love has to be initiated and then there is a response. The Lord is the lover, our soul is the beloved, it’s that which is loved, and by being loved it enables us then to love others. Ideally this is what children would receive - the kind of love and nurturing that would enable them to reach out to other people.

One of the things that are important for us to stop and hear in the Scriptures is that God loves you. Wounded souls can pray, “I don’t understand this Lord, I’m asking You to reveal it to me. I’m asking You to pour out into my heart this love.” In the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans he says, “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit has been given to us.” When the Holy Spirit touches a heart, that deep place inside begins to feel love. Then a spiritual healing actually begins to occur.

I remember a dear friend of mine shared with me that when he was little he used to sit and listen each night to his parents say things like this, “I never wanted him, it was your fault that he came into this world. I can’t believe that he is here now, he’s the black sheep of the family.” Night by night he would cry himself to sleep listening to these kinds of statements. So one day he decided he was going to the railroad tracks and let a train run over him. While he was out there at five years old, he heard a voice come to him, a wonderful presence - a peaceful presence came all over him and he felt love. This Voice said, “They might be able to say that they don’t love you, but you can never say that about Me.” And he began to understand that God loved him. It totally changed his life. As a matter of fact, it was through his testimony that I became a Christian. Something so deep had touched me through the awareness of the love of God that I began to realize that it’s possible for a soul to be repaired.

It’s possible for a soul that had missed out to experience it, and to be able to realize something very deep, “I can become something because of God’s love.” We love because He first loved us. If that transmission was messed up, it can be repaired through beginning in faith to act on the declared love God has for us. By acting on faith we read it, meditate on it, and step by step begin to live according to it. “Lord, I don’t feel it now but I do, in faith, take it that you love me. Help me feel it and know it more.”

A second thing is receiving from and modeling our lives after the inspiration of Saints or healthy Christians. It’s important to realize that oftentimes people don’t know how to properly take care of themselves. Where are they going to get this idea from? Find healthy Christians that you are close to and start to talk to them. Find couples that, in observing their children, you see that they are feeling loved and cared for. Get to know them, talk with them. Find out how they are living and try to say, “Ah, that was something that I missed out on earlier and begin to try to treat yourself accordingly.” Remember that God is present. Remember that God is a healer. Remember that it is good to learn to properly love ourselves and take care of ourselves. This especially includes receiving God’s love personally for us.

Being Comforted by God and Self

Let’s consider now some examples of Scripture about this point. The theme of Second Corinthians is comfort, the comfort of God. It’s one of the most wonderful letters regarding those who are experiencing troubles and sufferings. “Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of mercy and the God of all comfort.” (2 Cor. 1:3,4) Did you hear that? The God of all “comfort”. “Who comforteth us in all our tribulations that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble by the comfort where with we ourselves are comforted by God.”

So, receiving comfort for ourselves from God enables us to comfort others. Often I see people trying really hard to be good, trying really hard to love people, trying really hard to be able to do the right thing but inwardly there is a lack - a connection is not being made. A friend of mine years ago said to me, “You know many people are going to miss the kingdom of God by 18 inches - the distance from the head to the heart.” Many are functioning and trying to do the right thing, but inwardly they are cut off. They need help to make that connection. The scriptures declare that God IS the God of all comfort. “You mean this soul of mine You can comfort? This soul of mine You can lift up and You can encourage?” Absolutely.

The Prophet-King David once suffered his family forcibly taken from. In addition, the people who formerly loved him turned away from him. Furthermore, he was being pursued by King Saul to the point of death. In 1 Sam. 30:5, the Scriptures say, “But David encouraged himself in the Lord His God.” He encouraged himself in the Lord His God. One of the things that is desperately needed is that we realize our souls, our self needs to be encouraged. How did he do it? In the Lord His God.

It is important that we pay attention to those places that give us help. Those things that bring comfort to us. Those things that lift up our souls. If it’s quietness in prayer, do more of it. If it’s gospel music that lifts up your soul and that can bring you out of it, listen to gospel music. If it’s inspiring films that lift up your soul and help bring you out of it, then listen and watch inspiring films. If it’s walking in the woods that lifts you out of it, then go do that. If it’s playing with a toy that does it, then do that. If it’s helping little kids somewhere then go do that. If it’s doing a canon [an Orthodox prayer service], then do that. Whatever that particular thing is that lifts up your soul and puts your mind back on track, do it. Then you say to your soul, “God’s here. He’s for me. He’s not against me. Living really is good. God really is able to help me.” You start to lift yourself up as David encouraged himself in the Lord. St Seraphim, the Russian saint that lived 150 years ago, spoke about trading in those things that bring grace to you. The idea was that if fasting brings you grace, then practice fasting. If alms bring grace to you, then continue to do alms. Look for those things in your life that bring grace to you so that you’re able to continue those things and be helped as a result of it.

Encouragement of Self in Psalm

King David was one of these that understood how to get his soul encouraged in the Lord. The entire book of Psalms speaks to us about the inward life of this prophet King. Let’s look at just a few verses in Psalms because a proper love of self is expressed throughout the book of Psalms.

Let’s listen to Psalms 61 in the King James Version, verses 1 and 2. (It would be Psalm 60 in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament.)

“Hear my cry O God, attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

He didn’t say inwardly “How are you doing?” “Oh, no problems, everything’s fine” and as a result deny the fact that he was having struggles. What did he say? “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I for my heart is overwhelmed.” He was experiencing at that point a feeling that comes to us as human beings, being overwhelmed, that feeling like, “It’s just too much - what am I going to do?” And he lifted up his soul to God.

In Psalm 42:11 King David asks himself,

“Why art thou cast down O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”

He recognized how he was feeling. He recognized the condition of his soul. He was caught in a place of despair, sadness, but instead of allowing himself just to sink deeper and deeper, He began to lift up his soul to God. He began to pray “Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.” He went on to pray, “Rescue my soul, my darling, from the lions.” This is what is actually referred to in the scriptures about the human soul. This is the kind of care that the holy prophet had for his soul, his “darling,” so that it would be tenderly in communion with God.

Let’s look at Psalm 46:1 and 3. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.”

Before this time, everything felt secure, but, all of a sudden, he thinks and feels like he is going through an earthquake. What does he say? He says “Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted on the earth.” He quieted himself, he got still with God and began to lift up his soul, his soul to God, and as a result the peace of God was able to come and calm him down.

Psalm 121 speaks to the same thing. This was said to be George Washington Carver’s favorite verse, Psalm 121:1.

“I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and the earth. He will not suffer the afflicted to be moved, He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is Thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil, He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time and forevermore.”

King David in other words knew where to get help from: “My help cometh from the Lord, who hath made heaven and the earth.” You take a little walk with Jesus - you get away with God. You start to pour out your heart to God. You start to allow your soul to be quiet and, as you lift up your soul to God, there comes what’s called the “peace that passes understanding.”

Another example is found in Psalm 130:2.

“Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

The idea is of a child leaning upon the mother’s breast. It say’s, “As a man has a tender feeling for his mother, so does our soul have for the Lord.” The picture of the Lord being like a mother is found many times in Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus Christ said “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to wanted to gather you together like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you weren’t willing.”

God is a comforter, like a tender mother. He’s able to be there. One of the Gospel songs we often sing is,

“Thank You Jesus, Thank you Jesus, You’ve been my mother. You’ve been my father. You’ve been my sister, my brother, too. You’ve brought me such a mighty long way.”

The Lord’s able to meet those deep inner needs that we have by the Holy Spirit. He’s able to calm us, quiet us, in those deep inner places.

King David also encouraged his soul to bless the Lord and as a result he was able to encounter or counteract all those negative things that were coming into his head.

At the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, we as Orthodox Christians sing from Psalm 103. Some people say that you shouldn’t be talking to your self. But listen to this, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Who is he talking to? “Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all His benefits.” A very key point: he starts to think about what God’s done for him.

When we start keeping track of the deeds of God in our life it actually enables us to build a history of what the Lord has brought us through already. And so in the Scripture when we say “Forget not all His benefits O my soul,” we are reminding our very heart of those things that God has already done for us. “Who forgives all your iniquities.” Don’t you remember what you’ve done? Don’t you remember that God forgave you? Don’t you remember that God forgave you of that already? Well, He is going to forgive you, go on confess your sins. “Who healeth all thy diseases.” Don’t you remember the times that you were struggling with this or that and that’s gone. He is going to help you. “Who redeemeth thy life from destruction.” You start to think back of the times when you were in a pit, you were caught, you thought it was the end and God got you out of it. I mean some of you know what I’m talking about! Some of you have been in those situations and, as a result, He redeemed your life from destruction. You start to think about the goodness of God. King David said, “I would have despaired unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Believing in the goodness of God counteracts despair. Goodness overcomes evil. “Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” St. Paul in Rom. 12.

We meditate in our soul about what God has done for others; what he’s done in the Scripture; what He’s done for me already, and that gives us the courage and strength we need to face another day. This gives the strength to go on and to try one more time to go forward in the things of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Moderation as an Expression of True Love of Self

The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church reflect this proper love of self in teaching another principle as well, that of moderation. They tell us NOT to do ascetic labors to the point where you damage our bodies, our minds, or our souls. They show that even keeping the fasts of the Church are according to one’s strength so that you have the ability to serve God and others. That’s the proper love of self reflected in moderation. Today we remember the feast of St. John Chrysostom. In his twenties he tried to overdo it with fasting. He actually experienced a very severe illness as the result of this. So, he had first-hand experience of this lesson of moderation.

Properly loving ourselves by opening up to God, to His love and learning how to treat ourselves in healthy ways, enables us to truly love our neighbors as ourselves. Without it we will treat our neighbors as abusively as we treated ourselves and that isn’t good news for our neighbor. That often means we will abuse them, neglect them, and then simply say they will get over it or it serves them right and a multitude of other messages that we never dealt with when we were younger. So now we have to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, to enter into unseen warfare, as the Patriarch Job said, to “eschew the evil and cling to what is good.”

The Church as a Therapeutic Hospital

During the Divine Liturgy, the priest prays that the Holy Gifts would be filled with the Holy Spirit. When we receive Holy Communion we’re actually receiving the very body and blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit is coming right inside of us to renew us and fulfill us and strengthen us right there. Love incarnate is coming inside us. It’s a very, very wonderful thing to approach the Holy Chalice with faith, expecting love to come into us at that moment.

Meditating on the scriptures of who we are in Christ, praying for the Holy Spirit to fill us with the love of God, learning from those further along the path of how to have safe and loving behavior, are all part of proper love of self. These practices enable us to receive love so that we can in turn give it, both to God and to our neighbor.

We love because He first loved us. The Good Samaritan represents Christ bringing that wounded man through His oil through His wine to the healthy community so that we can be restored. That ideally is what the Church on earth can represent to the wounded. St. John Chrysostom spoke of the Church as a hospital. He spoke of it as a place of therapia, as a place of healing. This is desperately needed in these times. When so many people around us are wounded they need to be able to come to the Church. In Swahili in Kenya they say, “We are going to be going to the Church.” The alternate translation is that “we are going to go to the hospital.” And the reason for that is that they know that is the place where they can receive healing for their souls and their bodies.

As our wounded souls are healed, as our wounded souls receive love, we’re then able to turn and express to our neighbor the same love that we’ve received from that Good Samaritan, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

In reaching out to people with Orthodoxy, let us remember that the very essence of the commandments and the teaching of Christ is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as our self.

Let us properly love our self so that we can properly love our neighbor, so that we will feel for our neighbor, so that we will feel the same sympathy for him that we have received ourselves from God and from those that are also in our lives that are bringing healing to us. As we hold that dear in out hearts let us continue to turn around so that more and more people can come into the family of Christ with open arms, growing in the peace and strength of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“…If our dead ones who are dear to us have been vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven, they reply to prayer for them with an answering prayer for us….” - Fr. Michael Pomazansky

The children of Africa have kept a deep sense of honoring the ancestors since the earliest times. Appreciation for, respect, veneration, and seeing oneself at the end of a long line of all those that came before are principles that native cultures have shared in common throughout all of Africa. It is in keeping with the original revelation of God’s ways passed on to Noah. After the sin of Ham, in failing to honor his father Noah, (Gen. 9:20-24) his children have shown, on the contrary, the deepest respect for parents and ancestors. As the faith spread abroad and became more removed from the original teaching and ways, the honoring of ancestors led many to actually worship the ancestors as gods. For others they saw the ancestors as their protectors, guides and avengers of wrongs that needed to be regularly appeased through sacrifice and offerings. However, these traditions, as well as other tribal belief systems, all contain a fundamental human principle: the importance of honoring those that came before us. We are to see ourselves in lowliness, as recipients of all that have come before us, indebted to their goodness and maintaining respect for them.

In the Law given to Moses, we are taught to “honor thy father and thy mother.”(Ex. 20:12) Moses taught the younger to rise in the presence of an older person and to fear God. (Lev.19:32) In the book of Job it is written, “For inquire, please, of the former age, and consider the things discovered by their fathers; for we were born yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, and utter words from their heart?” (Job 8:8-10) This idea of remembrance is also reflected in the detailed geneologies found in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and Matthew and Luke in the New Testament. The apostle Paul spoke of giving special greetings to the apostolic couple, Andronicus and Junia, who, he said, “were in Christ before me.” (Rom 16:7) These ideas of honor reflect the faith passed down from Noah and finally brought to fulness when the God-Man, the Savior of all Mankind, Jesus Christ, came into the world and sent out His Holy Apostles.

When the good news of the birth of the Messiah was announced to the holy Virgin, Mary, she burst out later in song and prophetically declared, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. For He hath looked upon the lowliness of His handmaiden. From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” (St. Luke 1:46-48) Here she spoke of universal and endless blessing that would be given to her because she became the Mother of God.

Right before the Lord Jesus Christ was arrested and taken to the Cross for the salvation of the world, He offered a prayer so deep and far reaching many overlook its significance. He prayed for the Apostles and for those that believed in Him through their teaching, that they would all be one. He specifically prayed that they would be one just like He and the Father were one. Think of it, a unity with Christ and the apostles that would extend down through the ages for those that believed in Him through the Apostles teaching. Thus, the unity is not only with those that are alive now, nor was it just for the twelve who were alive then, but for all who believe in Christ, then and now, to be one together. This is often called the Communion of saints. It is a holy community that all people are invited to participate in. (St. John 17:20-23)

Close to the time that Jesus was to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, He took three of His closest disciples with Him up to a mountain called Tabor. As He was praying, there appeared to Him the holy prophets Moses and Elijah. Now Moses had died, but Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot and never died. Yet both of them appeared and spoke with Jesus. (St. Luke 9:28-36) This is why when Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, died, that Jesus said he was merely asleep. St. Paul spoke of believers in Christ not dying, but sleeping. (1 Thes.4:13-14) For though the body in death is in a state of sleep to be awakened at the resurrection of the dead when Christ returns from heaven, the soul is in a continued state of consciousness.

The idea of continuing to share in God’s kind of life even after death is part of the Faith. Jesus said that when God said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” He was revealing that He was “not the God of the dead but of the living.” (St. Luke 20:37-38) In the Old Testament period, during the time of the Maccabees, the Holy Prophet Jeremiah, many years after his death, appeared to Judas Maccabees, and was shown to be a great protector of the people of Israel through his prayers. (2 Mac.15:13-16) The book of 1st and 2nd Maccabees appears in the Apocrypha of the Protestant Bible, yet in the time of Christ and the Apostles, it was part of the Septuagint, which was the Bible used throughout the world at that time. The feast of Dedication in St. John 7 is a feast recorded in the book of Maccabees, and honored by Christ Himself.

In the letter of St. Paul to the Hebrews, St. Paul adds to our about our communion together with the holy ones that are around the throne of God. He says, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” referring back to all the saints of the Old Testament period. (Heb. 12:1) He then goes on to say that the believers in Christ now “have come to Mt. Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than the blood of Abel.” (Heb. 12:22-24) In this amazing passage, he says not that we will come, but that we have come to this heavenly fellowship. To participate in the life of the heavenly Church while on earth is a basic part of the Faith. Their examples, their faith, their encouragement, and their prayers are all part of the way Christ administers His grace to His Church on the earth. From the earliest Christian times, there have been two primary ways to stay connected in truth with one’s ancestors. They both are centered in prayer. For those that have actually become saints, we ask them to pray for us. For most, whose place of respose is unclear, we pray for them.

When the 1st century Bishop, St. Ignatius of Antioch, was thrown to the lions in Rome in the early 2nd century, he afterwards appeared to the faithful. In the “Martyrdom of Ignatius”, written around 110 AD, it is recorded that “some of us saw blessed Ignatius suddenly standing by us and embracing us, while others beheld him again praying for us.” That the saints pray for us is verified not only by Jeremiah in the Old Testament and St. Ignatius in the early 2nd century, but in nearly 2000 years of continuous Orthodox Christian history. In one of the earliest first century Liturgies, the Liturgy of St. James, who was the half-brother of Christ-God, and the early leader of the Jerusalem church, we find, “Especially we perform the memorial of the Holy and Glorious Ever-Virgin, the Blessed Theotokos (God-bearer, i.e. the Mother of God). Remember Her, O Lord God, and by Her pure and holy prayers spare and have mercy on us.” The main portion of this liturgy goes back to the first century!

The ancient liturgies of St.Mark (commonly used in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church), that of St. Cyria of Alexandria and that of St. Basil the Great (both commonly used in the Egyptian or Coptic Orthodox Church) and that of St. John Chrysostom (commonly used throughout most of the Orthodox Churches) all contain these same elements. Why this is so significant is that the basic parts of most of these liturgies were written before the formation of the New Testament was finished! This included the parts where we ask the saints to pray for us and where we pray for the departed. While some strongly object to the idea that those in heaven are able to pray for us, most will readily admit that they could use the prayers of those that they believe are closer to God than they themselves. If we are truly “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” in Heaven, and we have come to the “spirits of righteous ones made perfect,” and we are to be “as one” with them as the Father and the Son are one, than why not ask them to pray for us? This is not to negate the work of Christ as the Mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5) for all prayers go to the Father through the Son, even those in heaven, as well as those on earth. It rather magnifies Christ Who is “wondrous in His saints.” (1 Chr. 29:10-12) as the Head of the Body of Christ. (Eph.1:22-23)

The second way to stay connected is to pray for them. Regarding the prayer for the departed, a most illuminating passage is found again in the story of the Maccabees in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. There it was found that, in a certain battle, some of the Jewish soldiers died, but previously had confiscated some forbidden golden idols, which were still in their possession. When this was discovered, all the Jews “blessed the ways of the Lord, the righteous Judge, Who reveals the things that are hidden; and they turned to prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out. And Judas Maccabees himself sent to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection.” (2 Mac. 12:39-46) During the feast of Pentecost, celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, there is a beautiful prayer during Vespers that is prayed on our knees for all people, even for those in Hades. In another of prayer the Akathist for the Departed, the following prayer reflects the early Church understanding on prayer. It shows an experience that St. Macarius, the great African desert father had. We pray, “Enlightened by the illumination of the All-highest, Saint Macarius heard a voice from a pagan skull: When you pray for those suffering in hades, then there is comfort for the heathen. O wondrous power of Christian prayer, by which even the nether regions are illumined! Both believers and unbelievers receive consolation when we cry for the whole world: Alleluia.”

In an explanation of early Orthodox Church teaching on this subject, Fr. Michael Pomazansky writes, “Of course, on the earth it is not known to what lot each has been subjected after his death. But the prayer of love can never be profitless. If our dead ones who are dear to us have been vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven, they reply to prayer for them with an answering prayer for us. And if our prayers are powerless to help them, in any case they are not harmful to us, according to the word of the Psalmist: “My prayer shall return to my bosom.” (Ps. 34:16, Sept., 35:16 KJV), and according to the word of the Savior: “Let your peace return to you.” (Mt. 10:13).”

There is a vast difference between this and what is called in the Scriptures, necromancy or spiritism. There one actually seeks to contact the departed for consultation or guidance. This treacherous path actually opens the soul up to a myriad of spirits who are capable of posing as the departed, but unfortunately bring the soul in subjection to the power of darkness and the evil princes. A few of the commands against it are in Leviticus 19:31; 20:6; and 1 Sam. 28. This unfortunately is what often occurs when people innocently seek guidance from their ancestors. (Isa.8:19-9:2) The Scriptures say, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hos. 4:6)

Yet, the desire to help one’s ancestors can safely be accomplished through the prayer tradition of the Church. Prayers during Liturgy, alms and memorials given on their behalf (like Judas Maccabees), and other special prayer services of the Church enable one not to neglect their loved ones but show them the proper respect they deserve and give them the most powerful help available in heaven and on earth: the prayers of the Church of Christ offered to God through Jesus Christ.

Today, as more and more are discovering the ancient riches of the Orthodox Church, we are led to the true path regarding helping and honoring our ancestors. Let us remember every godly thing they have passed on to us, let us venerate and love them, let us recount their lessons and pass them on to the next generation, and, above all, let us bring them regularly before the Holy Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, through the Prayers of the Church.