By f. Spyridon Skoutis
Church attendance is beneficial when I go to the church in order to meet Christ and my brothers in the house of God.
If I go to the church in order to perform a religious or supernatural task, we strive in vain. Church attendance comes from your thirst, your burning desire for union and communion with God. It takes that unrequited love to communicate with God and people. Nowadays, we go to the church for many reasons such as socializing, but not to unite with Christ and our brothers. When the priest holds the Holy Chalice in order that we receive the Holy Communion we are totally indifferent rather than thinking: “Why did not I receive the Holy Communion today? If it was my last day on Earth, what would be the apology to Jesus?”. Besides uniting us with God and fellow human beings, church attendance is also a continuous journey in our inner self. We come into contact with the troparia, the canons, the synaxaria, the Gospel, the Book of Acts, the priest’s prayers. And Jesus offered and did me an honour by giving to me his sacramental bread and wine, his body and blood, to me, a sinful creature, in every Divine Liturgy. There I meet living and the dead in the arms of God. Church attendance is a thirst for relationship, a thirst for life, a need for eternity. Let’s try with our weaknesses to get into this beautiful relationship. The value of going to church is beautiful, as God’s grace secretly overwhelms me and whispers the truth in your soul. Your wounds are revealed, and through the ascetic struggle you will find the healing cure through the journey of the Orthodox way of living.
The struggle is important, this constant struggle against the will associated with one’s character. Perhaps we will never be able to defeat it definitively, we might not become perfect ascetics and saints, but let us be constantly fighters within us. The biggest failure is to be in the church, not listening to its prophecies, and not struggling to defeat its deliberative will in order to reach unselfish love. What will one and the others benefit from such a man who by selfishness goes to the church and acts by self-interest without the slightest suspicion of his position and mission?
“Do not ignore the gifts of the Holy Spirit, do not make them useless, do not underestimate the prophecies that the Holy Spirit reveals through the faithful, all to test them but in a good manner. You must leave behind all sorts of wickedness. The God of peace came to Earth to make you perfect and saint and your entire spirit and soul and body can be preserved unconditionally and blamelessly in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
*The article was originally published in ikivotos.gr
