Tag: armenian-christian

Arrogant Christianity

Daily Readings: Isaiah 1:21-31; Rom 7:25-8:11, Mt. 12:38-45
Ընթերցուածքներ` Եսայ. Ա 21-31; Հռոմ. Է 25- Ը 11; Մատ. ԺԲ 38-45 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen!

As Christian’s we are very arrogant; We are arrogant, and audacious. Yes, this may be true of people who are not Christian as well, but as Christians we are especially seen as arrogant. Why though? I remember the first time as a teenager I had to appear before a judge in a courtroom. I had to dress a certain way and was not allowed to speak unless spoken t and when I did speak, my words had to be weighed and carefully chosen. I’ll be honest, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I was in a place where I was answering to a higher authority so, there was a sense of fear, awe, and reverence for the judge. The judge was someone who had the power to free me, exonerate me, punish me and question me. Therefore, it was right that I felt that sense of fear. Likewise, in life there are other people who hold a certain level of authority that must be honored and respected such as a police officer, a doctor, a priest, a teacher, a parent, or someone in our life that has more experience than us. We respect them not because they are perfect but because we recognize the authority that has been entrusted to them. There is fear in that authority, there is respect, there may even be admiration.

Yet, we as Christian’s are very arrogant when it come so the ultimate authority. We are arrogant not because we don’t respect others but because we claim to believe in God, and even more than believe, we relate. We believe in God, recognizing His greatness, and authority and we are taught to have a sense of fear and awe out of recognizing that authority. “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13) We also declare God as our Lord. We recognize the authorship, as supreme ruler, master, and possessor of all creation. That is why we go to Him to be illuminated and grow and as Scripture teaches us “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov. 1) Yet, as Christians we also claim God as our Heavenly Father. And it is for this reason my dears, that we are arrogant. To refer to God as God, we are declaring our belief in His authority; to refer to God as our Lord, we declare our submission to His authority; yet, to call God “father” is to speak with such intimacy that one must either be arrogant or more?

In the Divine Liturgy, (p. 40) the priest prays, “God of truth and Father of mercy, we thank you, who have exalted our nature, condemned as we were, above that of the blessed patriarchs; for you were called God to them, whereas in compassion you have been pleased to be named Father to us…” You see in Judaism, prayer to God acknowledged that God is a Lord, that God is omnipotent, unapproachable, unknowable and must be feared. In Judaism when one would pray to God, they would refer to their forefathers, “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…” Yet, through God the Son Christ Jesus, that relationship, that communion with God for us changed. We became no longer a distant creation, or a stranger that feared God or was ashamed because of our brokenness and our sinfulness, but rather, we became the children of God.

It is here that we must reflect, how much audacity do we have to call God our Father? Because to be a Christian my dears is to be courageous in this way. A courage we receive through God the Holy Spirit, who illuminates us to see not God the Father not as a distant power, or as only a Lord, and King but to see us as His children and Him as our compassionate Father. That is why the prayer in the Badarak continues, “…And now, O Lord, we beseech you, make the grace of so new and precious a naming of yourself shine forth and flourish day by day in your holy Church And grant us to open our mouths with a cry of bold voice, to call upon you, O heavenly Father, to sing and say…” To be a Christian therefore begins with a commanding voice to claim God as our Father and us as His children. This is something the world will see and call us arrogant for. Who are we to be that intimate with God? What makes us special?

It is the love of God my dears that gives us that authority, give us the claim to be His children. A love we are given through God the Son Jesus Christ, who came and died on the Cross for us, not because we are perfect but because He loves us in the same way our earthly fathers would give of themselves for their children. Yet, there is another layer to this relationship my dears. If appearing before a judge or someone of higher authority demands of us a level of preparation and respect, perhaps we need to ask, what is required of us as a child of God? What is more arrogant, calling God our Heavenly Father or denying that truth as His children through the way we live? There is nothing a child must do to earn the love of their father. A father (and mother) will do everything and anything for their child to be better than them, to have more than them. Yet, as children when we grow up, we begin to mature and recognize that no matter where we end up in life, it was only because of the love our parents we had the opportunities that we had.

Likewise, though we are courageous to say God is our Father, we must be humble my dear brothers and sisters, as His children, to live as He commands, no longer out of fear but as a reflection of His love. To recognize that God is no longer merely a judge who will condemn us for our sins, but is like a father, who embraces us when we fall, defends us when we are hurt, loves, guides, and provides us. To call God as our Father is to also see ourselves as His beloved child; to be as our Father in Heaven is. It is this truth gives us courage; it is the recognition at being a beloved child of God, His love that sees not our stain but removes our sinfulness, and that love that sees our darkness, our shortcomings, our real arrogance, our hatred, our pridefulness, our addictions, our failures and yet, does not look with disappointment but stretches out His hand to bring us back into Communion with Him. And as our response to that love, we are called to repent, to turn to Him, to live, pray, ask, learn and be the children we were created to be.

So that one day, when we stand before the Judgement seat, we will not be afraid, but our Lord, our God, our Heavenly Father will embrace us, heal us, and raise us to life through His merciful love. A love that the world will say makes us arrogant and audacious. Yet, a love that is freely given to all creation, and which opens our mouth, with a courageous cry of our bold voice, to call upon our Heavenly Father and say, “Hayr Mer”. Amen!

Failure to Finish

Christ is Resurrected from the Dead – Blessed Is the Resurrection of Christ
Քրիստոս Յարեաւ ի Մեռելոց – Օրհնեալ է Յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի

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

Mara had a talent for beginnings. She enjoyed starting new endeavors—a new job, a new habit, a new version of herself—with a kind of electric hope that made people believe in her instantly. The problem was that she also had a talent to always fail. Somewhere between the excitement of starting and the satisfaction of finishing, things fell apart. Her first business idea collapsed in three months. She decided to go back to school to be better prepared, but she struggled to understand the subject matter and so she flunked out. She met the love of her life, got married and began getting ready to start a family. Yet, as quickly as she began, her marriage sadly ended in divorce. She again attempted to start anew. This time she worked harder, slept less, sacrificed more. When she failed again, it didn’t just feel like bad luck, she truly began to feel like failure. Though she tried to laugh it off, she began to tell herself, “You’re just not built for success. You will always fail.” She replayed it in her mind so much, it sounded like truth. Failure had taken a lot from her. One night, without announcing it to anyone, Mara started again. When things started going wrong, she didn’t spiral; she adjusted. When she felt the urge to quit, she waited. The difference wasn’t that she stopped failing; She failed constantly. Ideas didn’t land, people said no, progress stalled. There were moments, that that voice of her past crept back telling her to give up because she would fail. But while in the past doubt caused fear, now Mara saw failure as an opportunity and not a verdict. She wasn’t defined by doubt or questions or uncertainty. Then, one day, she noticed something strange! Things were working. Not perfectly, not effortlessly but they worked. When people asked her how she finally succeeded, Mara even failed to answer that because it wasn’t that she became more talented, or that she got lucky. The biggest difference was that she stopped treating failure like the end of the story. She had failed enough times to realize something important: Failure doesn’t mean you’re done. It just means you’re still in the middle. And the middle, as it turns out, is where almost everything important happens.

My dear brothers and sisters, no one likes to fail. No one starts a diet with thoughts of failing, no one dates or gets married with fear of divorce, no one studies with expectations of flunking out, no one starts with belief they’ll fail. Yet, so many of us listen to that voice of failure, we devalue ourselves, we define who we are focusing on the failures. We become disheartened and feel like giving up. This is especially true with our faith my dears. We try to remain faithful, we try to be forgiving, we try to be prayerful and yet, even with our faith we like a failure the moment we begin to struggle or doubt. And yet, Holy Scripture teaches us, Prov. 24:16 “for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” The righteous fall seven time. Meaning those who try to remain faithful, prayerful, those who strive to succeed fail not once, not twice but multiple times. Yet, they rise again. They rise not through mere human efforts, nor strength, nor talent.

Remember Mara when asked how she succeeded admitted her talents, or smarts, or skills had not changed. What raises us my dears is our trust and love in our Lord; recognizing that our sin is not the end when through Christ Jesus we live. See how the proverbs says, the “wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” The wicked my dears are the arrogant, the prideful, those who look to blame others, and the world. The wicked are those who are unrepentant, who believe they are sinless. As we read in 1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The truth is that failure does not define us; our darkness, our addiction, our mistakes, our brokenness, our sin does not define us; it is not the end!

Christ defines us; the love of God, who through grace and mercy forgives us of our sins through His death and resurrection raises us out of failure, renews us as righteous, lifts us out even out of our tombs. It is for this reason that St. Anthony of Padua teaches us that “Apart from the Cross, there is no other ladder.” A ladder to get back up, a ladder to lean on, a ladder to hold on to when our strength has failed. We need take hold of that ladder, take hold of the Cross and use it to get back up. Trust in not our strengths or weakness but in God. Yes, we might feel discouraged when we fail, yes, we can doubt and worry. Yet, “A drop of prayer is worth more than a sea of worry” – St. Nikolaj Velimirovic. In the face of our failures, we have an opportunity to renew our trust, confess, repent and start again, start with a simple prayer. The cross – in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is prayer; it is a symbol of us placing our trust in God; it is a shield that defends us against evil. It is victimhood transformed into victory. Pray my dears. Come to Church with a thirst and hunger to be filled with love, compassion, mercy. Failure is not the end; death is not the end; sin does not define us. Bring worry, doubt, fear and failure and lay it before the Holy Altar. Take hold of the Cross, and we know, that as Christ has been raised, we will be raised. We will be raised and renewed in love, hope and mercy to be an example for others to see and recognize that through God, even multiple failure, even the darkest of pains, has no power over the love and of our Lord. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, see and hold on to the Cross and we will be lifted up to proclaim in word and in deed, Christ is Risen, Amen!

Christ Is Risen, So What?

Քրիստոս Յարեաւ ի մեռելոց – Christ is risen!

Who cares my dears? Who cares and so what if Christ is risen? This is a question we need to dare ask ourselves and allow it to pierce our heart and mind because who cares if Christ Jesus has is raised from the dead as we proclaim as Christians. This is not a denial of God but a challenge to us. Does the Resurrection of Christ truly matter to us? If we say yes, then in what way does it impact us? There on a large island, is a village that lived in constant fear of a great and terrible storm. For generations, they had been warned that one day a horrific storm would come with such force that nothing would survive it. So they built shelters, stored food, and spoke often about how to endure when the storm finally arrived. They taught their children and prepared them. One day, a messenger came running into the village with astonishing news: “The storm has already come—and it has passed. It has lost its power. You are no longer in danger.” The people, surprised, looked at each other and nodded politely. They thanked the man for the great news, and then turned around back to reinforcing their shelters, living in fear, as though nothing had changed. Nothing changed for the people even with the news of no more danger. The people would rather live in fear of a storm, rather than change their lives.

And that is the problem my dear brothers and sisters. We proclaim with joy: Christ is risen! But do we live as though death—the great storm of humanity—has truly been conquered? As Armenian Christian’s, as people who have endured persecution, and slaughter, who year after year remember the Genocide and what we have lost, who now gather proclaiming victory and sainthood of our Martyrs, those who became the foundation for us to live today, are we changed? What unites us? Fear, death, and loss? As individuals who are each battling a storm in our life, addiction, despair, hopelessness and fear, anger and arrogance, sin of all sorts, how are we changed when we proclaim hope and life in Christ? The tragedy of the story is not that the storm was dangerous—but that the people lived as though it still ruled over them, even after it had been defeated. The greatest tragedy for us my dears today is not that we have faced Genocide, not that we are seeing history repeat itself, not that we have darkness in our life.

The greatest tragedy is that we have allowed death to define us. We have allowed defeat, and persecution to unite us. We haven’t changed. We have placed our trust in the weakness of people to give us peace rather than the power of God. And so I ask, who cares if Christ is Risen, who cares that our martyrs are recognized as saints, who cares if we are able to gather and pray in our own language, in our Mother Church, who cares if we have been able to have families, dance and sing, love and grow, who cares when internally in our hearts and minds nothing has changed? If we care, how are we different? The St. Paul declares: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins… But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:17,20). If we truly believe that Christ is Risen my dears, then no genocide, no worldly authority, no storm, no darkness, no sin, no addiction, no pain, no worldly ideologies can define who we are; it cannot devalue us or break us.

That is why St. John Chrysostom proclaims, “let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free.” In other words, my dears, our strength, our response, our hope and our transformation is not merely found in words, but in the life we live. We need to be transformed and changed. Our how and why needs to be grounded in that Good News that the Storm has passed. How and why we love, how and why we go to Church, build careers and families, how and why we treat one another and ourselves with compassion, how and why we are here, how and why we are united, must be changed from fear of suffering, from anger, from shame into life with God. We are not united merely by shared history of death, but by the blood of Christ Jesus. Blood, that our martyrs gave; Blood that demands response; What kind of response, what kind of change?

Humility, compassion and forgiveness. Humility to recognize we don’t have all the answers, humility to recognize that neither our brokenness nor our achievements in this life determine our value but the love of God, humility to come to Church focusing on God and not others. Too many of us whether we come to Church every Sunday or once a year, we come with arrogance. We look at the people around us and judge them for how they dress, how the speak, how they vote, how they live, and we think, “at least we’re not like them.” And it’s true! We aren’t like them. We are far worse! Because the worst patient that a doctor can have is one who thinks they don’t need healing and therefore ignore everything the doctor says. The Holy Church is a hospital, St. John Chrysostom teaches, for the sick and broken who are seeking healing, not a palace where we are looking to be glorified. God is who we glorify, not our egos.

This leads into compassion, and recognizing that just as I am suffering, just as others are suffering, we are all looking for peace, for healing, for love from God. And we can begin to therefore, forgive others and ourselves, because we know that nothing, no failure, no sin, not even death or genocide can separate us from God. Yes, we will feel hurt, yes, we will demand justice, but we know that our value is not determined by others but by God. And that is why we care. That is the so what to Christ being Risen. That with Christ we too are risen, we also live, and we will love and grow! We live today not because we fear death, not because we fear storms, but because our ancestors, our parents, placed their trust in God even when they faced immanent death. If Christ is Risen, then how do we respond?

The early Christians, our ancestors, did not merely believe in the Resurrection—they lived it. They faced persecution as they marched through the deserts, they gave without counting the cost and loved in a way that astonished the world. Because they knew that Christ had destroyed death, and nothing—not even suffering—could separate them from His life. If we truly believe, then we must care with our whole being. We must care enough to change, to struggle, to repent, to forgive, to love. We must care enough to live as those who have already begun to rise with Christ. For the Resurrection is not only something that happened to Christ—it is something that must happen in us. Do not be like the villagers who heard the good news but continued to live in fear. Instead, be witnesses—living witnesses—that Christ is risen. That we are risen. In our thoughts, in our words, in our actions, the world will see that death no longer reigns, that love is stronger than hatred, that hope is stronger than despair. For Christ is risen—and we will rise!