Dave:

I had another thought. St. John of the Ladder indicated that there are many ladders by which we climb to Heaven. We are not all using the same ladder, but we are all trying to get there. So why worry about the ladder as long as it's sound?

Certainly the Eastern Fathers are as sound as the Western ones. The arguments we get into are usually about who's the boss and how the hierarchy ought to be structured. At the end of the day, that has little to do with prayer and one's face-to-face with the Lord. ISTM, we get too involved with worrying about the means and obscure the end--Jesus Christ.

Bob

Theophan,
I agree with all that you say. And its quite refreshing to read something other than the typical RC or EO rhetoric about "this" is "the True Church". Of course I am not saying that one is or isn't nor am I saying that all churches or equal either.
Around here we have a saying that its easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar... and so it is for me with rhetoric about true church.
I also believe that you shall know them by their fruits.

Dave:

Christ is Risen!!

My yardstick usually begins with the measure with which people or a congregation welcome others who are not like them. People who must hate or down others as a foundation for their faith have nothing to offer me. Maybe it's because of my profession where I've had to work with so many people of so many types of faiths, beliefs, and lack thereof. Basically people all ponder the same eternal questions. Who am I? why am I here? What's this all about? What about death and what happens afterward?

I really get nervous around the rigid types who have the idea that there are formulas, or, as a missionary once said to us during a retreat, "insurance policy" Catholics. In other words, if there is a God and I do certain things, I can negotiate. Please!!

I was once asked by my spiritual father to ponder what I would say when the Lord and I met face-to-face and I was asked about my life. I took from the Desert Fathers a story about an Abba with 10K monks under his rule. On his deathbed, they asked him what he was thinking and he told them he wasn't sure he had begun to live the Christian life or to live according to the Lord's commandments or according to the Gospel, after all his years in the monastery.

Taking off from his words, this is what I have come to with my spiritual father:

Your judgments, O Lord, are right and just; all of them holy. Your ways are not my ways, nor are your judgments my judgments. If, on examining my life, what You find is according to Your commandments, according to the Gospel, has edified my brethren, has built up Your Holy Church, has advanced You in the world, that I attribute to You, to Your gifts, to Your grace, and to the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit working in me simply as a vessel. I can claim nothing of that as my own work and can only say to You what You have instructed us, Your servants, to say in the Gospel: I have done nothing except that which I, as Your servant, am first commanded to do. Have mercy on me.

But, if what You find is not according to the Gospel, has scandalized my brethren, has disrupted or weakened Your Holy Church, has made You a mockery in the eyes of the world, that alone can I claim as my own doing and I have no defense, except Your mercy on me, broken and sinful. Have mercy on me.

I don't have time to get my nose into another's spiritual life and be prescriptive and rigid. I've given what I thought the Lord would have me say to build up another time and again, with the prayer that I would do no damage. I've worked with dozens of broken people damaged by rigid religious prescriptions. Thankfully I prefer to meet people where they are, pick them up, bind up their wounds, and get them pointed to greater authorities than the Lord has made me to be. A sort of Good Samaritan thing.

I've met good, God-fearing people everywhere I've gone. Be they Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu. I go to bed and thank God for where I am and thank Him for being Him and letting me deal with the little stuff.

Bob

Amen!

And I'll add that I've met some God-fearing atheists, although they'd be appalled that I consider them such ("god-fearing," that is; they wear their "atheist" badge proudly ... But I refuse to believe that they don't believe!). Their virtue and moral character has often put my own to shame.

Bob,
Wow... Thank you. Just what I needed to hear.

So what to do when its our very own Catholic church that has hurt is so much?

Bob,

You're very right about rigidity. I struggle with it myself. I have to say that it's generally about some form of insecurity the person is feeling. For me it takes the form of being afraid of God and angry at everyone who does things wrong. It's just a constant feeling of dissatisfaction and thinking you'll never be happy and things will never be right. I'm working on breaking free of it though. But for a person like me the Eastern emphases are a welcome break. The way I am, I take Roman traditions and bludgeon myself with them.

So, that being said, I'm going to finally obey my earlier leading and become Eastern. It's only a mile further to the nearest ByzCath parish and I like the priest to boot.

I've long felt that I wasn't given the grace to be Roman. No matter how hard I tried it was like running against a wall, or trying to figure out a huge equation. It just came undone whenever I tried. For people it works for, wonderful for them. Grace is something we take for granted in some sense, because we can't always feel it. When we resist temptation, we don't have a profound experience... it just kind of happens with some effort. But as someone who has been in multiple situations without grace, when it's not there we are so paralyzed that it's almost funny. I actually tried to live as a Christian for several years without baptism (long story.) It was... hollow.

Dave:

Christ is Risen!!

Forgive me. Have you never read the Gospels?

Where to start. "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." "Turn the other cheek." "Forgive your enemies so you will be known as sons of your Heavenly Father." "No student is greater than his Teacher and no servant is greater than his Master." (and following)

Every wound you have is part of your white martyrdom, as opposed to read martyrdom. Chekc out the suffering thread in Scripture and Patristics, the second most read thread in this whole forum in the last number of years.

No secrets about what we are to do with suffering or wounds or being marginalized or hurt. It's part of what we accept with Baptism. But it gains us eternal value because of what the Lord will give you in return. We shouldn't go looking for it, but do accept it when it comes as the Father's love for you--even when it comes from Christ's Bride, the Church.

Bob