A Voice in the Desert: Abbot Sergius Interview
I just listened to an interview with Archimandrite Sergius, the abbot of St. Tikhon's Monastery. I highly recommend going and listening to the full interview with Fr. Sergius.
Right off the bat, Fr. Sergius says...and when I say "says", I really mean emphatically repeats, "The inner life is just as real as the outer life." He encourages us to pay attention to our heart...and no, that is not some warm-and-fuzzy saying; he is literally suggesting that the heart is both a physical place and a spiritual place. The spiritual place of the heart is "the door to the world to come". And "it is a shared space...Christ is there, too". We will have to work to uncover that Kingdom within, and when we do, "it is only in that stillness of the heart that we will be able to experience God."
But that is only how Fr. Sergius starts off in the interview. He has recently posted a couple of videos in response to our being cut off from being able to meet together at the physical church building, the first was his initial response, and the second was especially helpful for us who are just making the first steps toward serving the Liturgy of the Heart. This interview with him is not only a follow up to those videos, but is much more lengthy on that same topic, to help those of us who need a little more help getting started.
He covers a lot of ground, which is seen by where he ends up in the interview: communion with God at the altar of our heart. Where do we commune with God? "Yes, in the services," he says, "but also in prayer. The heart is an altar, and we need to learn how to serve liturgy there." Then, in helping us not define liturgy only as that service that we attend on Sundays at church, he defines what liturgy is. "First, liturgy is thankfulness. We say 'thank you, Lord', for everything. 'Forgive me, Lord.' Be thankful for everything around; everything is a gift; be thankful. Our life is sacred.
In the Divine Liturgy (the one at church), we prepare gifts of bread and wine and give them to God in thankfulness. God, in turn, receives those gifts, consecrates them, and gives them back as Body and Blood. The Liturgy of the Heart is the same: we give every word, every circumstance, every thought, every feeling to the Lord in thankfulness, and he, in turn, gives them back, consecrated by his grace. We are then performing a liturgy that sanctifies all of life around us, even the whole world!
In closing, he says that consistent prayer is the key. Then, when we return to church, we are all the more prepared for Communion. He loosely quotes St. John of Damascus, "In order to come into communion with God, we must come into communion with ourselves."
Right off the bat, Fr. Sergius says...and when I say "says", I really mean emphatically repeats, "The inner life is just as real as the outer life." He encourages us to pay attention to our heart...and no, that is not some warm-and-fuzzy saying; he is literally suggesting that the heart is both a physical place and a spiritual place. The spiritual place of the heart is "the door to the world to come". And "it is a shared space...Christ is there, too". We will have to work to uncover that Kingdom within, and when we do, "it is only in that stillness of the heart that we will be able to experience God."
But that is only how Fr. Sergius starts off in the interview. He has recently posted a couple of videos in response to our being cut off from being able to meet together at the physical church building, the first was his initial response, and the second was especially helpful for us who are just making the first steps toward serving the Liturgy of the Heart. This interview with him is not only a follow up to those videos, but is much more lengthy on that same topic, to help those of us who need a little more help getting started.
He covers a lot of ground, which is seen by where he ends up in the interview: communion with God at the altar of our heart. Where do we commune with God? "Yes, in the services," he says, "but also in prayer. The heart is an altar, and we need to learn how to serve liturgy there." Then, in helping us not define liturgy only as that service that we attend on Sundays at church, he defines what liturgy is. "First, liturgy is thankfulness. We say 'thank you, Lord', for everything. 'Forgive me, Lord.' Be thankful for everything around; everything is a gift; be thankful. Our life is sacred.
In the Divine Liturgy (the one at church), we prepare gifts of bread and wine and give them to God in thankfulness. God, in turn, receives those gifts, consecrates them, and gives them back as Body and Blood. The Liturgy of the Heart is the same: we give every word, every circumstance, every thought, every feeling to the Lord in thankfulness, and he, in turn, gives them back, consecrated by his grace. We are then performing a liturgy that sanctifies all of life around us, even the whole world!
In closing, he says that consistent prayer is the key. Then, when we return to church, we are all the more prepared for Communion. He loosely quotes St. John of Damascus, "In order to come into communion with God, we must come into communion with ourselves."
Comments
Post a Comment