Fear and Faith in the COVID Crisis

[Music] [Music] so [Music] i'd like to start your grace with yourself we have been missing you very much from the united states these last few years and your absence has been felt all over the country but especially here at saint andrew church in riverside where you were a frequent uh teacher could you tell us a little bit about your ministry uh in london and in western europe what have you been doing and what is the state of holy orthodoxy right now in europe so the diocese that i had now together with my vicar bishop alexander of vevay in switzerland is the diocese newly minted of great britain and western europe which is an amalgamation of what were two separate dioceses until 2018 the diocese of geneva and western europe and the diocese of great britain and ireland though over the course of the last hundred years the the constitution as it were of this territory has changed many times the diocese was headed for a time from brussels when saint john the wonder worker was the diocesan bishop we think of him as saint john the wonder worker of shanghai san francisco and paris and london and brussels he was actually serving for much longer in this diocese than he was in california but he reposed in the lord here so he gave his title to san francisco but he was the diocesan bishop of brussels and western europe for a time the british isles were part of this diocese for a time they were a vicariate for a time there were separate diocese the holy synod of bishops restored the unity of this territory so now the diocese encompasses 11 countries and principalities covering everything up to the border with germany and austria but that is the border with our second diocese in europe the diocese of berlin and germany and eastern european territories so we have two broad geographies in the diocese the british isles this one region as we've kept it semi-separate because it has its own linguistic background and own cultural background and then the region of continental europe which includes everything on the continent uh it's a thriving diocese uh many parishes we have six languages uh we have more than six but six that are in widespread usage in the diocese three official diocesan languages french english and russian and we're fortunate to have many bilingual and trilingual and quadrilingual clergy we have italian parishes we have portuguese parishes and so on uh but a wonderful community of devoted priests and deacons a wonderful vicar bishop was ordained just a couple of years ago to serve in switzerland and of course a very historic territory uh the european diocese was one of the first forms in the church abroad uh for a time it encompassed the synod who was in the territory there so it's celebrating the diocese is celebrating its 100th anniversary well now 101st slightly delayed because of the pandemic uh which is exactly the same as the church abroad herself so it's in in fact the church in london we've had a parish in london long before the church abroad existed on her own so the parish in london which is where my main cathedral is the parish has existed there for over 300 years uh though the actual building that we're in now is new it was built only 20 or so years ago consecrated uh only a few would you tell us a little bit about how orthodoxy itself is going in europe is the church growing is the church statistically shrinking how is it being accepted by europeans it very much varies from place to place because in some places orthodoxy has always been there even if in tiny numbers so the british isles are a good example of this where orthodoxy first arrived with the holy apostles saint aristobulus and was there in one form or another often in very great numbers for a millennium and then even past the turn of the millennium the norman invasion still existed the most of the country became catholic and then there was a protestant reformation that further intensified the isolation of orthodox people in the isles but they've never not been there and certainly for the last 100 150 years it's been growing rapidly within the british isles uh on the mainland this the situation has sometimes been very different there are parts where there has almost never been a consistent orthodox presence there are other places where orthodoxy has been woven into the culture for a long time italy is a good example everyone thinks of italy as being a roman catholic country but the orthodox presence there goes back centuries we have a beautiful and very historic church in florence as well as one in san remo and in france and switzerland the orthodox presence goes back quite a long time also it was in a bit of decline towards the end of the 20th century beginning of the 21st i don't think for any specific reasons just the ebb and flow of history but that has dramatically changed over the last 10 or so years and most dramatically over the last year and a half the pandemic has caused huge problems practically speaking in terms of travel between countries and so on but it's also rekindled a seriousness about the faith that has seen i believe that with only one or two exceptions every single perish in my diocese has grown often dramatically over the last year doubling in some cases in size parishes have had to start having more services because we have so many people now coming and this trend we hope will continue we've opened several new parishes just in the last uh few years that i've been there including one which was open during the pandemic so where there's a will there's a way could we speak a little bit more about the covet crisis i thank you for bringing that up this uh international crisis which has affected the church not just in the distant west but in all orthodox lands in a very fundamental way has left i think the faithful and many of the clergy rather reeling rather disoriented with lots of questions i'm sure that in the coming uh months and perhaps years we will continue to reflect on what we've lived through but it's been a unique experience in most contemporary bishops and priests lives they've never witnessed such a thing and lived through such a health crisis can you talk with us a little bit about how you perceive the ways of god's providence through the covet crisis what might god be doing for the benefit and salvation of his people through this sure firstly i would say that from a religious point of view the covet pandemic has been a tremendous blessing by and large obviously there have been many terrible elements of it the disease itself i think we still do not really have any concrete sense of just how damaging the disease has been in comparison to other diseases but it certainly is something that has affected the health of people many people have died from it but we always have diseases we always have sicknesses we always have people who are dying from an orthodox point of view from a religious point of view that is a part of our existence that we're accustomed to what is less customary has been the social environment of the pandemic and this has been something that as you say has been for most people unprecedented we've had outbreaks of various viruses sars bird flus and so on but this is the first one for most people in living memory unless you can go back all the way to smallpox where it radically changed the way society was functioning on a global scale now while this may be unprecedented to use a word that we've heard far too much of over the last year what it shouldn't be is at all surprising to anyone who has been observing society and the human condition over the last 50 years the one thing that has struck me the most poignantly about the whole pandemic has been the way in which fear has been the governing principle of the world really in almost every level the reason i say this shouldn't be surprising is societies all around the world have been increasingly focusing on fear for decades most governments most cultures have increasingly defined themselves by telling people what to be afraid of how much to be afraid of it and how to base the choices of their lives on that fear and this has been something that we've seen really since the two world wars cultures more openly defining every aspect of their life by what what is the thing to be afraid of today and the moment that we're done being afraid of that we identify something new to be afraid of this is antithetical to christianity christianity is a religion built on the confession that in christ fear is cast away because the ultimate wrong and evil that can come upon us is death and death is destroyed so if one really believes this fear becomes anathema to a christian life that's not to say one can never experience the emotion of being afraid of something but to let fear become a governing principle of life is fundamentally unorthodox and yet it is what has ruled society increasingly and increasingly and we've seen it in everything fear of war fear of the economy fear of families or non-families fear of changing social values fear of immigrants fear of natives fear of everything and so it shouldn't surprise at all that when a new virus comes along that no one has seen before and that no one really understands fear completely takes over and we've seen unfortunately this not just in the political sphere of governments caging up their populations out of the fear that they might get each other ill and in the end result causing so much more damage to society and to people but even in the church unfortunately we've seen fear ruling far too many people and their decisions we've seen people become afraid of even coming into churches because they're worried about illness or fear of touching things or embracing each other or elements of our worshiping life that we consider normative venerating icons receiving the holy mysteries saying your confession in the presence of a priest so many of these things people have allowed fear to control how they look at their life in the church and this i think is a sad indictment of the weakness of our faith that a real christian doesn't allow fear to govern his or her heart as i say that's not to say there are no moments of being afraid of course but we don't allow those things to turn into the governing principles of our life your grace i've witnessed as every pastor i think has to more or less degrees real damage done by this fear uh to the to the psychology of uh our people some people i would say almost in a in a state of psychosis per perpetual fear disconnected from any sort of uh scientific reality and others who have been less impacted by it but certainly none without some level of confusion as a result of the actions both civil actions and ecclesial ecclesial actions that have been taken by their rulers how do you see a restoration process happening what can people do who are who are struck by this what can people do who are con are not bothered and have not been gripped by the psychosis but want to help their friends uh get past this fear and settle and not think that maybe this is going to happen again next year but you see even that is a kind of being governed by fear we're afraid that this could happen again or we're afraid that the promised release from restrictions won't come and the moment we're told that the second wave is over we're told to fear the third wave and to fear the next virus and the next mutation but there's no end to this as soon as you've quelled all of those fears you'll have found a dozen more because the heart is accustomed to being afraid how do we help people out of this well you can't turn around a ship on a dime as the saying goes right when a heart has spent years and years and years customizing itself to living by the dictates of fear you can't just say stop any more than a heart that has spent a whole lifetime being selfish you can't just say to yourself stop being selfish be humble the heart doesn't work like this you have to retrain the heart you have to retrain the soul to take comfort in other things because fear can be in a sick way comforting at least one knows that there are things to be afraid of and the more i know them the more i can identify them the more comfortable i feel it's an illusory comfort it never actually brings you peace but it's familiar we have to refamiliarize our hearts with the stability of the gospel so there's an especial responsibility laid upon christian people and especially leaders in the church whether they be priests and deacons and the ministers of the church or whether they be people who in other ways are leading in the church status as church wardens church counselors and so on all of whom have an influence over what happens in the life of the parish there needs to be an unwavering commitment to trust in the will of god right now society trusts in its own self-understanding of what's happening in the world and even christians have lost to a large degree the willingness to say my life is in god's hands and how much discussion have you heard i'm sure father over the last year of questions like is it possible to get sick in church is it possible to catch a disease in the temple questions like this always confound me because whatever the answer to such a question might be the question is wrong the question ought to be if the lord wants me to be sick how do i embrace my sickness if the lord wishes me to suffer how do i make my suffering redemptive not how do i escape suffering because it frightens me if the lord wants me to be healthy how do i use my health to give him glory and to lead others into that glory but that idea that the will of god should be embraced rather or in spite of the circumstances whatever they might be that is something that people have become unaccustomed to so there's a special responsibility on everyone in the church to teach themselves and to teach each other to have confidence in what god says and does we are the children of a god who never once promises to take away our suffering much less prevent us from ever suffering he promises to transform our suffering into something that can bring joy the world tells us you must be afraid of anything that resembles suffering and so we are constantly running in fear and constantly joyless [Music] [Music] you

Channel: PatristicNectarFilms

Views: 14,778

Rating: 4.9333987 out of 5

Keywords: COVID Crisis, COVID and Christians, Fear and Faith, Bishop Irenei, Bishop Irenei Steenburg, Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe, pandemic, fear, christians, Patristic Nectar Publications, Patristic Nectar, Fr Josiah Trenham, Josiah Trenham, Orthodox, Orthodox Christian, Orthodox church

Id: jDGAe0jlRIg

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021