Father Michael Oleksa - Difficulties With Becoming Orthodox in America

today's video comes from an interview I conducted in early 2017 with father Michael Alexa when he came to the area to give some lectures father Michael is a talented storyteller he has served as a village priest as a university professor and has written a number of books on Alaskan culture and history so I hope you'll enjoy this episode from my interview with father Michael [Music] I may be mistaken about this as I'm living in Alaska and villages that have been Orthodox for hundreds of years but we still have people coming to the church many through through reaping through research entire groups have converted to orthodoxy simply as they put it looking for the ancient or the undivided Church of the first millennia and millennium and then realized its orthodoxy where do we where do we attach ourselves to an Orthodox Church and they've read Bishop kallisto's where's the Orthodox Church at the Orthodox way and father john meyendorff the orthodox person they received a good introduction to the history and theology of Orthodoxy and then maybe they look around them trying to attach themselves to a particular parish a particular jurisdiction and they find the orthodoxy of America rather well complicated half maybe most of the churches in in the 48 contiguous states were founded by immigrants so they have ethnic names attached the Greek Orthodox parish the Romanian Orthodox parish the Albanian Orthodox parish the Bulgarians the Ukrainian the Russian and so forth and you go there and you find that maybe some of the worship is still being conducted in that ancestral or archaic language and you don't feel at home there because you're not a member of that ethnic group and then you go to another one and while they may be a bunch of mostly converts they're discussing or divided among themselves about what jurisdiction they should be in what calendar they should be using in other words the problem is that there's no perfect parish there's no perfect match and so you could be discouraged and say well you know let's try the episcopate it's well let's go to the Roman Catholics just keep shopping because the Orthodox seem to be dysfunctional in some way or at least they don't they don't meet the ideal that you read about in the book I would point out to such people who may be discouraged or frustrated first of all there's no one right way the rubrics varied from country to country and they varied from century to century if anyone says what we do it the right way and all the others are wrong stay away from that that would be my advice because they're not telling the truth they may soon see really believe that but it simply isn't true rubrics and practices and liturgical rites have changed from century to century over the years there's not one right way though in my opinion the right way is though is the way that meets the spiritual needs of the people who attend that church now those people speak mostly Romanian than to meet the spiritual needs of those people is going to be to use the Romanian language if they mostly speak English then obviously the use of English is going to be necessary but we have two people to accommodate that it's not a strike against the church that it's meeting the spiritual needs of the people who founded that church and who attend that parish with a lot for that and that's what gives us this tremendous variety but it's not as if one way is right and the other one is wrong in my opinion it's only wrong if it's not meeting the spiritual needs of the people who are there that would be wrong but but as long as they're doing what those the people who have founded over built that church have done the way they did imported it from wherever they came from that's okay that's legitimate but maybe most of the people in that parish it's certainly true here in the diocese of the South may be very few or none of them have been cradle Orthodox as they're called and it's up to that parish thing to sort of find its own way what musical tradition will they use the freedom we have in North America is they're all ours there's no such thing as the right music if you like Romanian litanies and Byzantine chant on a holy friday for the lamentations and russian the russian canon for the Paschal vigil we are free to pick and choose whatever we like as long as it means the pastoral needs of the people in that parish so you can discuss that it's open but we have 2000 years of history and hundreds of different variety in iconography and art in architecture and in rubric role or liturgical practices and we're free then too we should be free and not to say well you know the way they did it in Russia in 1880 is the ideal and all we have to do is replicate that that's archeology that's not worship or theology and it could be damaging to people who believe well if that's right then you mean the way I've done it and my pen my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did it that was somehow wrong that we were we've been doing it wrong all this time and now all of a sudden you're coming and telling us the one right way I would say don't fall into that trap the church is is like a lens and we joined the church to put ourselves under that lens so that God that the teachings and theology that Christ Himself can be focused on us the church's liturgical and sacramental life is that lens by which that Spirit of God which is everywhere present that fills all things can some will be concentrated on us and we deliberately put ourselves under that lens in order for the whole theology teaching doctrine and spirituality of the church can somehow gain a focus and we can place ourselves under that in order to receive the presence of God in a more intense way I think we experience this most Express excessively and intensely during the Holy Week and pasca and in that respect as long as you're at a church where you can understand what's being sung that's good that's good that's that's what you need the personalities involved you're hardly relevant the church is the church that lenses the lens no matter where you go in the whole world now if it's not a language you don't understand obviously it's not going to be able to concentrate the same texts and meaning as intensely it really helps to you know you really have to be in the church where you can understand what's going on but if you're a Greek Orthodox on you speak Greek and you can go to your church and you understand you've learned from childhood the meaning of all these hymns and it's just the way you've worshipped all your life god bless you there's no reason for you now if you're not and you don't understand that well maybe that's not the best situation for you but it may be the best the only one available within in our context hundreds of miles so you make the best you let it go and you don't complain about the kind of practices of this particular parish because it's not meeting your needs I think that's a rather individualistic and perhaps Protestant mentality the church isn't here to meet your needs you're here to meet the church's needs it's not what you get from it that counts as what you put into it and if that means that you have to learn the Greek alphabet in order to follow the texts in the creek and the English translation on the finishing page that may be an extra effort you're called but don't become discouraged you you sort of get what God gives you and accept that and then as you look more closely especially those who have converted to the Orthodox faith by virtue of reading the history and the doctrine in the texts oh this is not the common stuff but this is not the common stops where church I read about is that the church is never that perfect ideal nothing with human beings included is perfect the closer you look at anything a human being is doing the more you find the flaws the faults and the mistakes the most beautiful painting or tapestry the closer you look the more you discover where the weaver or the painter messed up in some way and then they kind of did their best to fix that my daughter who's an actress says there's no such thing as a perfect performance you can do the same Shakespearean production night after night and make a different mistake every night but you never get a hundred percent and the same for celebrating the liturgy people get upset because the choir messed up on that pitch and started and have to had to redo or but clergies bus stumbled over some of the prayers it's a human production there's no such thing as a perfect performance don't get upset about that go with the flow allow human beings to be in the beings you do the best you can it's an offering to God to make it as beautiful as you can but it's never going to be perfect and then when you look at even the ethical and moral conduct of Christians that can be rather disappointing at times you find out that there's been even crimes committed within the church the parish funds have been misappropriated or mismanaged it could be the diocese it could be of Lila it doesn't matter we have to remember this there was a time when the church had 12 members and Jesus Christ himself was the pastor and rector of those 12 it wasn't perfect even then Judas was dipping into the tail peter was denying Thomas was Dowden James and John were rapt were trying to lobby for higher places the thrones on the right and left hand in the kingdom of God there was ambition there was pettiness there was misunderstanding there was ignorance there was dishonesty there was theft there was denial and betrayal and that's when the church had 12 members so if you're in a parish that isn't quite perfect remember that when Jesus Christ himself was the leader the pastor the rector of the group and there were only 12 disciples whom we now call the holy apostles it wasn't perfect then why because we are fallen sinful human beings the church is holy by virtue of Christ's holiness the church is holy by virtue of God's holiness is not holy by virtue of ours and when God decides to impart his holiness through whatever medium the laying on of hands of a pastor on back on the head of a sick person or the touching of an icon or a cross by on the same person God can use whatever he wants he wants to make it obvious let us really him and not us and I think that's why what Jesus Christ didn't choose the best and brightest of the Jewish religious leadership to be his disciples he picked barely literate fishermen who had very little theological training because he wanted to show that their wisdom Pentecost was not their wisdom at a halt and it was from God and God uses the lowly very often to reveal his wisdom he doesn't choose the best of the brightest among us to be his servants he chooses those who were clearly incapable of concocting or faking or manipulating other people he uses those who are humble for his glory and finally I would say there's nothing God would like better I think than to make all of us into miracle workers and prophetic visionaries and he doesn't or at least he hesitates because he knows if we suddenly all did become eloquent preachers of the gospel and miracle workers it would destroy us we would become so proud and arrogant that our own spiritual lives our own Souls would be distorted in a very harmful way and so it's our own lack of humility that makes it that precludes God using us the way he would like I again hope you enjoyed this episode from my interview with father Michael Alexa please subscribe to get notified when new videos become available which happens every Friday and if you would please leave a comment below letting me know what you thought of this video have a great weekend and we'll see you next week

Channel: Protecting Veil

Views: 48,344

Rating: 4.9443674 out of 5

Keywords: Orthodox America, American Orthodoxy, Orthodox Christians in America, Orthodoxy in the USA, Orthodox Christianity in America, Father Michael Oleksa, Orthodox convert

Id: QOzt4CVEEdQ

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Nordrhein]

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[u/GGbrothers27]

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