June 10, 2025, time has gone by so quickly in the last decade. There have been things that I have accomplished, there are ways I have grown. There are also things I would have anticipated that I would have achieved; certain milestones.
There has always been “something” in me to serve others. To lose myself in this purpose of “greater good” – as I grew older, I realized that this “good” was always Christ. I am fully satisfied with this conclusion.
As a child when posed with the question by my grandmother of what I wanted to be when I grew-up, my instant response was to be a Priest. Here I am over forty years later not a Priest, rather a Deacon. Still within my capacity of fully serving Christ, just not in the capacity that has been reoccurring to me in thoughts, in a gentle yearning that encapsulates itself in my own image of what it feels like to have a sense of fulfillment. A remembrance of my first love that has recurred in this past decade.
I have taught myself to believe that not achieving this is OK. Because it is. I do not require this title for I am in no position to require anything. I fight the thoughts that appear to me that urge frustration, blame, anxiety, remembrance of wrongs. Because our position should be God’s will, always.
Furthermore, we should always question our ambitions. Why do I actually want this? Is it to serve myself, or to serve Christ? This is a crucial question to always ask ourselves.
It is difficult to witness the ways things transpire. Yet, the efforts and accomplishments of others are not in question. For we do not know what others have gone through. What battles they have burdened, pain they have endured; what God really has in store. In the end, they are more worthy than I am.
Our sense of what is just or right is marred in our sin. Because of this, there is no justice in this world. We should not overburden ourselves in quest for it. Yet, we should rejoice and give all glory to God when we witness nuggets of this virtue. Even then, this joy seems empty when you reflect on your own fallenness knowing full well that any justice in this world pales in the face of the Justice that awaits us! Oh, how frightening the Great and Terrible Judgment Seat must be, and yet at that moment, even as sinful as I am, I do not believe there would be any other place I would want to be. Like the great Svetlana. Right there, before the feet of Christ.
This goes against the American grain, but we should not seek to be the winners in our lives; we should seek God’s victory. We should not view ourselves as the centers of our communities, households, missions, parishes, diocese, archdiocese, patriarchates. Rather, we should place Christ in the center. We should not seek titles, accolades, exaltations, for we are not the pinnacle of any of this. We are mere servants, as we say when we put on our vestment garbs, those who would be first among you, let them be servant of all. This is the mindset we seek when serving Christ’s Divine Services.
Therefore, let us not think highly in the fact that we are Priests, Deacons, Archpriests and Archdeacons, spiritual fathers, theologians, renderers of all things holy, we are servants serving their Master in the bodily Icon of our Bishops. We are workers, doing the work of the people. There is nothing more simultaneously lowly, yet more glorious in the world.
Let me say here that if we are truly in Christ, then we follow our Bishops. Not in our versions of their directive, not in our favorite flavor, but that as a rule. Otherwise, we remain followers of a gilded, vested, reformation. We seek our own will, not that of Christ. We continue to be mired down with the thoughts of what was not given to us. We turn into neo- reformers and protestors of the faith with Church Towers and liturgical chants. This is not me; this is not Orthodoxy.
No Father, I seek not my own sense of what position I should be in for I am not who I imagine myself to be, I am who You truly see me to be. None of us are who we see ourselves to be, what the digital lords magnifies in us. We must transfigure ourselves to the Truth. Override this façade of Ersatz Love to the True Love of Christ.
Humble ourselves, show reverence, that is, if we truly want Christ. If we truly want His flock to do the same.
Source: Versification and Wanderings Substack
