East of Byzantium

"But the Comforter the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you" (John 14:26)

What practical meaning do these words have, if not that it is necessary that we pray daily that the Holy Spirit be sent to us just as we pray every day for our daily bread? God is willing to send us the Holy Spirit every day but He seeks that we pray daily for the Holy Spirit. For as, in regard to bread which is, at one time abundant and at another time scarce, so it is also in regard to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to us and departs from us, according to our zealousness and our slothfulness in prayer, according to our good deeds and our patience. That is the reason why the Church established that morning services begin with an invocation of the Holy Spirit: "O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Come!", and after that comes the prayer: "give us our daily bread!" Why? Because, without the Holy Spirit, we do not even know how to use bread as it should be used for our salvation.

"He shall teach you all things." That is: every day and every night, according to the conditions and circumstances in which you will find yourself in, He will direct you, counsel you, teach you what you should think, what you should say and what you should do. For that reason, implore from God only the Holy Spirit and all else He Himself will bring with Him all that you will need at that particular moment. When the Holy Spirit shall descend upon you, you will know all, understand all and you will be capable of all that is necessary.

"And bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you." That is: do not be afraid that you will forget my teaching and my words. The Holy Spirit also knows all that I know so when He will be present in you all My teaching will be present in you, together with Him.

O Lord, Holy Spirit deign to descend upon us not according to our merits but according to the merits of the Lord Jesus and according to Your infinite goodness.

Against all sense of reason, I have started a new blog here. It will be completely in Chinese, which is why I need correction and translation help from those who know, and prayers from everyone else. The title, 省亲回家 (xing qin hui jia), roughly translates as The Homecoming.

The journey will take place through the Church calendar, travelling and experiencing the Incarnation, the shadowing of Christ’s coming, and the lives of the Saints (concentrating specifically on the lives of the Chinese saints).

The blog starts at Pentecost and it will finish there too, one long year from now.

So, please, I am very serious about the prayers. Thank you.

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth; who art everywhere and fillest all things; Treasury of blessings, and giver of life: come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.

This is a prayer to the Holy Spirit said by countless Orthodox Christians throughout the world everyday. It is a prayer asking for the Spirit of God, promised by Christ and delivered on the feast of Pentecost 2000 years ago, to indwell us and direct our lives. We ask for God to rest in our hearts, not move us around from the Heavens, like pieces on a chess board. He is here, and He is with us now.

Between Easter, 50 days ago, and now the prayer is not said. Christ is Risen and with us, but He has not yet sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us. I must say that I missed this prayer as every night I skipped over it and onto the Lord’s Prayer. Pentecost is the coming of the Holy Spirit and the return of this prayer.

Nineveh, 721 B.C.

The people in the marketplace look away as the two men approach. The younger man, the son, walks ahead pointing the way but then slows up as they both approach the body slumped with his face against the wall. The father approaches his fallen kinsman quickly, as though perhaps there is still hope, but bows his head in sadness as he sees the purpling bruises upon his neck. The father stoops and takes the mans head, delicately closing mouth and eyes and whispering:

"Give rest, O Lord, to the souls of Your servants, where there is no pain, no sorrow, no grieving, but life everlasting."

Turning to his son he says, "pick him up."

Both father and son labour under the weight of the fallen man as they leave the market place, the people parting in waves so as not to touch the dead man.

"Will this man Tobit never learn," they mutter. "Once before he was hunted down for execution because of this very thing: burying Israelites, the enemies of the king, so that he could not take satisfaction at their murder. And now after escaping, he is here doing the very same thing!"

But Tobit gripped harder the clothes of his kinsman and with his son returned home. They laid out the body in one of the rooms, once again Tobit whispering his prayers for the man:

Seen on a rush-hour bus recently: young man, mid-20’s, curled up on a seat with head against window, plugged into his i-pod, notebook on lap, carefully and patiently practicing his own signature. As I stood there and watched this man, in deep concentration (a tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth may be an apocryphal memory), adding flourishes to his own name and oblivious to the life around him, an overwhelming feeling struck me:

That there could be no one scene more definitive of the individualistic, selfish, all-pervasive navel-gazing that plagues our society today. 

‘Really,’ I thought, ‘Could there be anything more depressingly solipsistic?’

And then I thought, ‘Yes there could: someone could write about it in their own self-important blog.’

So here we are.

Lord have mercy!

Who are you? Most of us would reply with our name because, after all, that’s who we are. At the moment, an American colleague is trying to find a "Chinese name." Beijing has people from opposite hemispheres all mumbling, weeping, whispering and muttering out their lives in mutually unintelligable languages. Of course most make an effort to learnt the other’s language, but it will always cause some discomfort to force our mouths into shapes they shouldn’t be in, or place infections on syllables where they have no right to be. This is why most Chinese people working in foreign companies will adopt an English name, and why almost every foreigner willing to live here for any length of time will get their own new baptismal name. Qutie simply, our names - our identities - are too important to be mispronounced.

But, as my workmate is finding out, choosing a name is not easy. Almost every carefully chosen name he offers to others for consideration is met with either blank stares or outright laughter. Either the name is too obscure, too grandiose, or in one case, also the name of a local DVD maker. A self-chosen name can sometimes be revealing, but it is rarely truthful. Poor guy, he doesn’t want to labour for his own name; all he wants is for it to be given to him by someone else.

It is our parents, or a close relative, who names us. It a thousand or more good witnesses whose quiet voices througout our entire lives either raise up or strike down that name. We cannot name ourselves, only be named. Which, I suppose, means that we cannot truly know who we are unless we listen to the inumerable many who meet us along the way. And to those who manage to return home to our Lord, a promise is given regarding our name, and our identity:

"I shall also give a white stone upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it"

我们称呼“耶稣”并且得以在富裕完整之地得以休养生息，这一切都将不再被人剥夺。基督之名由此便成为一切主的代名词。它将我们带到主的面前。 在主面前，一切真实都被发现，基督之名被赋予多种意义：拯救和宽恕，优异和理想的化身，教堂和圣餐，圣父和圣灵。然后向我们显示："都在基督里面同归于一"

只要我们紧随基督之名，我们将收到一份特殊的祝福，正如圣经上所言："怜悯我，好象你素常待那些爱你名的人" 

愿上帝像说保罗一样来评述我们: " 他是我所拣选的器皿, 宣扬我的名 "