Abundance

As we approach Pascha, we will soon have the blessing of the meats and cheeses from which we have fasted during Great Lent.  The Church fasts in order that the Church might feast.  In talking with my priest last week, he brought up something that has stuck with me since.  Having had time to reflect on it a bit, I wanted to write about abundance.

This was not in the context of worldly abundance, such as we will enjoy in a little over a week from now.  Rather, it was in the context of the things of God -- grace, repentance, forgiveness, and love.  The discussion was about how we tend to categorize things in terms of what is just good enough when it comes to spiritual things, but we're eager to get more than enough of worldly things.  And in talking about those spiritual gifts, Father said "why can't we think more in terms of abundance?"  What he meant was not that we should hoard God's gifts, nor that we should be prideful in how many we can "collect," because that is the wrong framework.  Orthodoxy has never been about balancing out good deeds versus evil deeds, or measuring how well we are keeping up with the various gifts the Church has to offer us versus our neighbor.  Rather, he was saying that we should stop thinking in terms of checking boxes, or doing the minimum required, or how much we receive versus how much our neighbor receives.  Do you attend every service, say all your prayers, keep the fasts strictly, do prostrations and say akathists and all that to your heart's content?  May you ever be blessed.

But if you do not, as most of us do not, then instead of mourning that you do not have time, or that you are inattentive, or that the world drags your attention away, why not instead be thankful for what you are able to do, and where you think you might fall short, resolve to do more?  Not someday, but today.  For those services you can attend, the prayers you do say, the fasting you can do, the love you can give, the service you can provide, be thankful.  God meets you there, and any encounter with God's grace is a good encounter.

The entire Christian life is this way.  We are not collecting chips to cash in on judgment day.  We are actually entering into His life, encountering Him, and walking with Him.  If we're doing that a little, then we still have it all, for God is with us.  If we do it much, then all the more blessed are we, not because we will one day gain Heaven, but because Heaven starts right now.  In the Church.  At our baptism.  In this life.  And the more we enter into it, the more we understand how blessed we are to encounter Him at all, and the more we want to continue in this blessed life He has given to us.  To ask the question "how much grace is enough grace" misses the entire point.  God gives you all the grace you require however and wherever you meet Him.  

So instead of wishing we could do more, or mourning that we do not do enough, or thinking we have done more than others, let us stop thinking in terms of measuring salvation at all and begin thinking in terms of entering into the life of God. He will soon enter Jerusalem on the foal of an ass, and as Father said last year at this time, it is not so that some pagan king can be executed, but so that death itself can be executed.  And a week later, He will be crucified, die, and be buried, so that He may rise again on the third day giving life to the world.  It is that life we seek.  Measuring how fully we receive it runs the risk of either denigrating the gift (if we think we have done less than we ought) or discouraging us from entering into it more fully (when we think we have done enough).  Instead, we should be thankful for His abundance, in whatever measure it finds us.  It is in that simple act of thanksgiving, and not in boasting or mourning in the measure of His abundance, that we will find ourselves wanting to enter into His life more deeply.