Christ is Risen!

It is rare that one is quoted correctly, you succeeded with respect to me. It is even more rare that anyone remembers anything I say – I’m flattered. I remember the conversation which I think took place at the home of the Smith’s in Brentwood, TN. Like you, I have to live with the weight of the traditions and canons of the Church. You refered to me as “former Orthodox Priest” Paul Finley. I can tell you that not a liturgy goes by, not a day goes by, that I don’t long to be serving as an Orthodox Priest, active – not former. Many still refer to me as Father Paul, many advise me to seek to be reinstated, some have even offered to advocate for me in this regard. I have been reminded by Bishops and Priests alike that I am still a priest even though I operate under this present discipline as a result of having been divorced, “…thou art a priest forever…,” I am often told. As you say, “while I see these opinions as having some merit” – the fact remains that I continue to bear the cross of my present discipline and have not sought any relief from it. Why am I writing all this? Simply to say, I know how you feel. It is not easy to live with a limitation. I do think that divorce is more problematic than womanhood. Womanhood is not problematic at all, it is not a limitation (I know I am comparing apples to oranges here). But the feeling is the same, I really long to participate in a specific way and in a specific role, but I am constrained by the teaching and practice of the church. Like you, “I continue to love my church, struggles and all, and I pray for Mary’s help as I walk this journey.” Presently, I take this struggle as something given for my salvation. I don’t always understand it, I never like it. Nevertheless, I know I am home in the Orthodox Church and home is where I will stay. I do think that we will see things in a different way in the age to come. Perhaps not different, but fulfilled. The iconstasis won’t be there anymore, we will see the saints and be surrounded by them. We will see the Queen (the Theotokos) standing at the right hand of the Son of God dressed in garments of gold and many colors (as the scripture says) – that would be near the Heavenly altar/throne wouldn’t it? Space and time will not be experience in eternity. The body of Christ will be fully revealed, made up of men and women, Christ still the Head. The reality that Chrismation allows us to fully share in Christ’s ministry as Prophet, Priest and King will be fully realized. I do believe in the church’s position with respect to me and with respect to the role of women, but I also think the church’s position is often misrepresented and offered in a chauvinistic way. I have heard men say dogmatically, “Women aren’t allowed behind the iconostasis.” Well, they have obviously never been to a monastery for women or never observed the location of the icon of Mary “More Spacious than the Heavens.” They forget that men aren’t allowed behind the altar either without a blessing and unless they are in good standing with the Church with respect to that blessing. Ok, I am rambling. Please know that I throughly enjoyed reading your article. I appreciate the honesty. Let’s pray for each other, and may God grant you many years. Your fellow-servant in Christ, Paul Finley

“Today many people are hesitantly beginning to acknowledge that genuine answers are impossible without faith, without breaking through to what is transcendent and eternal. But even faith in God takes different shapes and can be merely some other way out, an escape, its own brand of psychological drunkenness. In other words it can be pseudo-faith, counterfeit faith. sadly, it is possible even in the name of faith and of God to hate and do evil, to pull down and not to build up. Christ himself said that “many will come in my name . . . and lead many astray” (Mt 24:5), and “not everyone who says to me ‘Lord’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 7:21). Therefore, from its very earliest days Christianity never simply asked, “Do you believe?” for it knew that even Christ’s betrayers and crucifiers also had believed in something, in some way. No, Christianity’s question was this: How do you believe? And in what?
It is right here, in attempting to answer this question so fundamental to genuine faith, that the image of the Virgin Mary almost unconsciously and involuntarily begins to grow before our spiritual eyes. Oh, this doesn’t mean that her image somehow eclipses the image of Christ, or that she is presented to Christianity as an additional object of faith set apart from Christ. Not at all, for it is from Christ and from Him alone that we receive this image as a gift, the unfolding of all that His teaching and calling means. And so we ask ourselves, what is the strength of
this image, what help does it give us?

My answer may surprise many people. What the Mother of God’s image gives us first of all is the image of a woman. Christ’s first gift to us, the first and most profound revelation of his teaching and call, is given to us in the image of a woman. Why is this so important, so comforting and so redeeming? Precisely because our world has become so completely and hopelessly male, governed by pride and aggression, where all has been reduced to power and weapons of power, to production and weapons of production, to violence, to the refusal to
willingly back down or make peace in anything or to keep one’s mouth shut and plunge into the silent depth of life. The image of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mother, stand against all this and indicts it by her presence alone: the image of infinite humility and purity, yet filled with beauty and strength; the image of love and the victory of love.

The Virgin Mary, the All-Pure Mother, demands nothing and receives everything. She pursues nothing, and possesses all. In the image of the Virgin Mary we find what has almost completely been lost in our proud, aggressive, male world: compassion, tender-heartedness, care, trust, humility. We call her our Lady and the Queen of heaven and earth, and yet she calls herself “the handmaid of the Lord.”

Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “On the Image of Woman” Celebration of Faith: The Virgin Mary, vol. 3 of the Sermons of Fr Alexander Schmemann translation by Fr. John Jillions, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995, pp 19-22

Overall, my experience with Orthodoxy has overwhelmingly countered the view of women that I came to the church with. I feel not just allowed, but encouraged to be strong and to simply speak, and that’s not something my family or previous church experiences really did. So I feel good about being where I am, even if I do still have occasional moments of frustration.