Well, here I am! And it’s been well over a year since my
last post… I guess being quasi quarantined creates time for things that have
fallen by the wayside. Plus, today is a bit of a special day for me personally
and I feel it is worth sharing about.
As some of you may or may not be aware, I have spent the
past year practicing my Catholic faith in the Eastern Byzantine (particularly
Ruthenian) tradition. If you aren’t familiar with the Eastern Catholic
churches, let me just throw out a few tidbits of information right off the bat:
No, I am not in schism! Yes, I am still Catholic! All of the Eastern Catholic
churches are in full communion with Rome, with valid liturgies, sacraments,
theology, etc. Any Roman Catholic can walk into any Eastern Catholic church at
any time (and vice versa) and participate in the liturgy, receive the Holy
Eucharist, etc., 100% valid, 100% Catholic. Other Eastern Catholic Churches
that you may have heard of before are Chaldean Catholics, Ukrainian Catholics,
and Melkite Catholics. These, along with Ruthenian Catholics, are just a few of
the 23 particular churches that comprise the ‘Eastern Catholic Churches’. That’s
about all I will go into about the details of the Eastern Catholic churches at
this point, as this is not the purpose of this article (though necessary for context), but you can find more
information that is extremely helpful from the Wikipedia article on the Eastern
Catholic Churches if you want to read further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches
Oh, and bonus tidbit: the Eucharistic Celebration in the
Eastern Catholic Churches is called the “Divine Liturgy”, not the Mass.
Since becoming introduced to the Eastern practice of the
Catholic faith, there have been many changes to my life as a result. I’ve been
quite immersed in the church and the entire way of life. On the outside, this
means a lot more icons! A lot more incense (which I absolutely LOVE! My favorite
thing is to go home from church and having my hair and clothes so permeated
with the smell of incense that I can still smell it hours later!),
longer hours of prayer, and even learning the ancient language of Old Church
Slavonic. (We celebrate the Liturgy in English, but Slavonic is the liturgical
language of the (European) east; the equivalent of Latin in the west – but much more
complicated as it is based in the Cyrillic alphabet like Greek and Russian). Spiritually,
the sacredness of prayer has been heightened and incorporated into my life in
new and beautiful ways. I could go on and on for HOURS, or more likely DAYS,
about many specifics of practical and spiritual traditions of the East that
have transformed my day-to-day, but maybe I can do more of that in future posts.
To make a very long story short, I dove into Eastern Catholicism
head-first. It was like tasting sugar for the first time… This is GOOD! I want it all the time! Okay, maybe sugar is not the
greatest analogy because sugar isn’t good for you. God is. But you get the
point. It’s something that you never forget and that you want to go back for.
And that’s what I did. I kept going back. I felt a peace come over me that I
couldn’t describe; like there was a puzzle piece to my spiritual life that I
was missing, searching for, then found, and it fit. My first Divine Liturgy at
my now home parish, was almost exactly a year ago on March 31, 2019. And I
never turned back.
Coming up on a first anniversary of sorts, I’ve been
anticipating it for WEEKS, filled
with gratitude and great excitement! Enter in: coronavirus. Everything
cancelled, no gatherings, no celebrations. Anticipating and climbing toward it
like a mountain peak, and just when I’m so close, the peak gets chopped off. I
can’t celebrate in prayer with my parish family, with my new friends. I can’t
go to the Divine Liturgy; I can’t receive the Eucharist; I can’t have coffee in
the social hall. My soul was grieved. I teared up reading our Ruthenian bishop’s
letter as the reality hit. Then, I just tried not to think about it.
My parish, like some other churches, is open during the day
for some hours in order for the faithful to come and spend time in the church (socially
distant of course) for personal prayer. I went to the church today to pray for
a while.
No one else was there. I entered alone, I prayed alone, and I left
alone.
Going to the church today, my experience was far from what I
would have weeks ago imagined it to be, but was basically as I had grown to
expect during these past few days. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t
disappointed. I still wished it could be different. But – only by God’s grace –
I fought against the despair and desolation and entered into the Presence of my
Lord.
Enter in: St. Mary of Egypt – the absolute most fitting,
perfect, timely feast to commemorate at this time. I remember celebrating her
feast last year, at my second Divine Liturgy. Her feast day is April 1, but we also celebrate her feast on the Fifth
Sunday of the Great Fast (Lent) – today. St. Mary of Egypt spent well over half
of her life in complete isolation, and deprived of the sacraments (sound
familiar?). But I’m jumping ahead. St. Mary of Egypt, since being a young girl,
lived a life of dissolute promiscuity for 17 years. She was greatly
impassioned, seeking pleasure from any man who would have her. She chose this
way of life not out of necessity like a prostitute, but out of sheer, unbridled
desire. Mary decided one day to travel with a group that was going to the Holy
City of Jerusalem, willingly trading her body for the means to pay her way. She
wasn’t traveling with these pilgrims for a holy reason, but simply taking the opportunity
to travel. Upon their arrival to the holy church of the Resurrection, Mary was
unable to enter the church as though by an invisible force, no matter how many
times she tried. Upon waiting at the entrance of the church, while the others
gathered inside, she was enlightened, realizing that her impure way of life was
preventing her from entering this holy place. She wept bitterly in sincere
repentance, imploring the Mother of God to allow her to enter the church and venerate
the Lord, which she did. She immediately renounced her impassioned life, approached
the Holy Mystery of confession to be absolved of her sins, and received Holy
Communion for the first time in her life. From there, she fled to the desert to
live the next 47 years of her life in repentance and prayer as a hermit in
complete isolation. After 46 of these years, St. Zosimas, a priest, discovered
her in the wilderness. Mary told him her story, and asked him to bring her holy
communion one year later, which he did, and Mary crossed the Jordan River by walking
on the water to meet him and receive communion. St. Mary received the Eucharist
that day for the second and last time of her life, dying shortly thereafter.
St. Mary of Egypt is a powerful example of repentance and reformation
of life, and also of the omnipresence of God’s grace – even when deprived of
the sacraments. We should, of course, receive the sacraments often, and be
immersed in the life of the church. The Eucharist IS the source and summit of
the Christian life. However, if and when we are deprived of the holy mysteries,
as many of us currently are, this does not
mean that God’s grace is not at work. His grace is ALWAYS sufficient. Not
sufficient in a way that just ‘gets us by’ as if to provide the bare minimum to
just barely hang on to holiness, but sufficient in a way that provides for every, single, possible need for grace.
Sufficient to pave the way for great virtue, holiness, and even sainthood – if we
truly seek Him.
Today in my beloved church, as I sat in complete solitude for an
hour and a half of private prayer, I reflected quite a bit on the life of Mary
of Egypt, on this, her feast day... isolated, as she was; deprived of the
Eucharist, as she was; ‘celebrating’ in prayer, not like I imagined, but like
was almost destined - and perhaps even fitting - for this time. The journey of
faith is not to be reduced to mere human celebration. The journey of faith is a
sublime process of union with God. It is not about how many days, or months, or
years, have passed. It is simply about Him,
and His presence permeating our lives. So as I reflect on this day - a day that
turned out to be much more solemn than I originally anticipated - perhaps it is
the way it was supposed to be. With focus not on the tangible, but on the
eternal; not on celebration, but on solitude. Not on humanity, but on Divinity.
Suddenly, my time of prayer alone in the church this day
doesn’t seem at all sad - but truly sacred.
St. Mary of Egypt, pray for us!
Photo Source: My own photo :) Not my regular icon corner, but my make-shift arrangement for prayer in a different room in my home last night. Complete with incense burning - my favorite!
