For a Change: An Orthodox Christian Book

 Archbishop Anastasio's In Albania: Cross and Resurrection (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2016) has brightened these past few days. I confess no great expectations to find this book such a compulsive read. This is a series of  interviews with the Archbishop of Albania - the first Orthodox Archbishop in post-Communist Albania. This book I removed from our Orthodox Christian group's locker at the chapel (where it had been for more months than I should admit) as insurance against the Covid lockdown. As it seem s usual for me and Orthodox Christian literature: once I think I know what is coming the road zig zags into an entirely different landscape. I have learned more about Albania than I knew I had an interest along with insights into Orthodox Christian theology.

See what you think.

The Church's position through the centuries has been constant and clear: We are to respect every human being irrespective of background, race, gender, ethnicity, education, religious conviction, social status, and any other discrimination. We are to support people with unaffected love. What remains most astonishing is that Christ identifies with the despised and stranger...  However, what is easily spoken and heard in sermons is difficult and "harsh" in practical application.

Nonetheless, the Church is obliged to maintain its critical and consultative word, providing not only guidance toward reconciliation with whatever may appear "different;" namely, with whatever at first glance seems unfamiliar, even repulsive, but also courageous love for the positive acceptance of the "other" or the "foreigner." 

p. 137

***

Someone self-label as an atheist may in fact be much closer to God than I, who appear as his representative. The boundary between good and evil lies in our heart. It all depends on which of the two is activated at each given moment. This sense of humility is yet another fundamental feature of Orthodoxy. Indeed, humility always accompanies freedom and love. 

 p. 191

***

...Terrorism cannot represent any civilization. Indeed,it constitutes the denial of civilization and the return to the law of the jungle. We cannot allow religion to be entangled in the cogwheels of terrorism and fuel such a clash. We are obliged to protect the essence of religion with all possible means. Religious experience - as the attraction to the beyond- opens the human mind and heart to the boundless, while revealing one's spiritual potential; it leads to communion with the sacred, with God, a relationship of respect and love toward one's fellow human beings. How tragic it would be for such an impetus and impulse for God to be distorted and corrupter into a missile that hurls hostility.

p.  194

 Hopefully, this explains how I  fell in with Orthodox Christianity for those of you who wonder how this could have happened. And if it doesn't, worry there's more coming your way.

sch

3/31/20

[Continued in Archbishop Anastasio #2. sch 4/1/23.]