CAT & MOUSE – ORTHODOX STYLE

A lovely little story to lighten your hearts during Lent. It’s reproduced by kind permission of the writer Alex Riggle. His website, The Onion Dome, is well worth a visit if, like me, you don’t think Orthodoxy and a sense of humour are incompatible. http://theoniondome.com   

Dynamouse and Magnificat

Dynamouse lived in the All Saints Greek Orthodox Church and ate crumbs of prosfora that people dropped during the Divine Liturgy. She didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to. This was a great way of life for Dynamouse until the new priest arrived, and caught her at it. He decided to bring his cat, Magnificat, to the church to “clean up that rodent problem,” as he said.

Thus it was that Dynamouse met Magnificat on a Sunday when all the humans were down in the basement drinking coffee. Magnificat chased Dynamouse up one side of the church and down the other, and finally caught her.

“Any last words before I eat you?” asked Magnificat.

“No, just let me prepare to die,” said Dynamouse. “If you will relax your grip a bit, I shall be able to cross myself.”

So Magnificat relaxed his grip, and Dynamouse disappeared down a hole in the baseboard.

“That won’t happen again!” said Magnificat to himself.

The next time they met was on the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross. Magnificat chased Dynamouse up one side of the church and down the other, and finally caught her.

“I’ve got you now and I’m not going to ‘relax my grip,’ so you need to prepare to die without crossing yourself,” said Magnificat.

“You can’t eat me today, it’s a strict fast day,” said Dynamouse.

“Oh, I forgot about that,” said Magnficat. “I’ll have to wait until next time.”

So he let her go, and she disappeared down a hole in the baseboard.

The next time they met was on a Sunday again. Dynamouse was wearing a necklace with a cross on it. Magnificat chased her up one side of the church and down the other, and finally caught her.

“You can’t eat me while I’m wearing a cross,” said Dynamouse. “Let me take it off.”

“Of course,” said Magnificat. But as he let her go, she disappeared down a hole in the baseboard.

“Tricked again!” sighed Magnificat.

The next time they met was on a Saturday after a baptism. Some of the holy chrism had dropped onto Dynamouse’s head when the priest was chrismating the baby. Magnificat chased her up one side of the church and down the other, and finally caught her.

“You can’t eat me with holy chrism on my head, it wouldn’t be right,” said Dynamouse.

“I suppose that’s true,” said Magnificat.

So he let her go, and she disappeared down a hole in the baseboard.

The next time they met was on Christmas Eve.

“Strict fast,” said Dynamouse.

“Sigh,” said Magnificat.

The next time they met was on Theophany. Magnificat chased Dynamouse up one side of the church and down the other, and finally caught her. Dynamouse didn’t have a cross on. It wasn’t a strict fast day. She didn’t have holy chrism on her head. And she knew better than to ask to cross herself.

“I guess you’ve got me this time,” she said. “Try and keep the crumbs cleaned up when I’m gone, will you?”

“I can’t do it,” confessed Magnificat. “I’ve had more fun catching you than I’ve ever had in my life. If I eat you, whatever will I do with my spare time? I’m going to have to let you live. As long as you promise not to move away.”

“You mean we’re like — friends?” asked Dynamouse.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” said Magnificat. So he let her go, and she disappeared down a hole in the baseboard.

But she came back in less than a minute with a necklace with a cross on it for Magnificat.

“I’ve never had a friend before — can I give you this present?”

And she put the cross around his neck.

“Thank you,” said Magnificat. “Happy feast!”

“Happy feast!” said Dynamouse.

Both Story and Picture are Copyright © 1997-2013 Alex Riggle. All Rights Reserved.

FASTING

Well, today is 'Clean Monday', the first day of the Orthodox Lent, and the beginning of the great fast always poses something of a problem for me. When I became Orthodox, I was surprised and a little shocked at the extent and severity of fasting in the Orthodox Church. As a fairly wishy-washy Anglican, fasting to me had involved not eating meat on Good Friday, perhaps giving up chocolate for Lent (a shorter period anyway in the Anglican Church) and on one occasion not smoking for the whole of Ash Wednesday: what incredible self sacrifice, the age of asceticism was not dead! Well, how was I to approach the rigours of Orthodoxy?

I have no problem with the idea of fasting which can be justified for a number of reasons. I have discussed in an earlier blog the lack of opportunity to test the strength of one’s faith in modern Europe. This has, of course, occurred in previous eras and the Orthodox Church has always acknowledged that asceticism is a form of martyrdom, represented on icons by the ascetics often holding a martyr’s cross: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Secondly, fasting makes us conscious of our dependence on God. Metropolitan Kallistos writes, “If practised seriously, the Lenten abstinence from food … involves a considerable amount of real hunger and also a feeling of tiredness and physical exhaustion. The purpose of this is to lead us in turn to a sense of inward brokenness and contrition; to bring us, that is, to the point where we appreciate the full force of Christ’s statement, ‘Without Me you can do nothing’ (John 15;5).” Finally, at least a few times a year, one can feel some affinity with the vast numbers of people who are literally starving. Fasting is not a choice for the people of Dafur!

MARTYRS – A FEW MORE THOUGHTS

Metropolitan Benjamin

I ended my last posting with the conclusion that I'm probably not the stuff of which martyrs are made. However, I also made the point that nobody can be sure of how they will react in any given circumstances. Most of my examples were drawn from the early persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire but, bringing things up to date, I find the story of Benjamin, Metropolitan of Petrograd at the time of the Russian revolution, particularly poignant. As the turmoil of the revolution was beginning, he welcomed the opportunity to bear witness to the Gospel in a more meaningful way than had been possible in the relatively comfortable life of a bishop in pre-revolutionary Russia. “In my childhood and adolescence,” he wrote, “I immersed myself in reading the lives of the saints, and was enraptured by their heroism and their holy inspiration. With all my heart I sorrowed over the fact that times had changed and one no longer had to suffer what they suffered. Times have changed again, and the opportunity has been opened to suffer for Christ both from one's own people and from strangers!” For his resolute opposition to the excesses and injustices of the early days of the revolution, he was shot in 1922.

Another point worth making about martyrdom is that it is a willingness to give one's life for a cause and does not involve taking life. I find it extremely sad that, in recent years, ‘martyrdom’ has become almost a dirty word, associated with killing oneself and innocent bystanders as a political act of terror rather than the voluntary sacrifice of one’s own life to bear witness to one’s faith. As Gandhi said: “For this cause (abolition of South Africa's pass laws) I too would be prepared to die but there is no cause for which I would kill.” The recently canonized Orthodox saint Alexander Schmorell, even while fighting the horrors of the Nazi regime, vowed never to kill ‘either Russian or German.’