A Reflection by Father David Khorey
As we begin a new year in the Church, once again we anticipate the familiar liturgical cycles of preparation and fulfillment, of repentance and renewal, that enliven our ministries. These things offer not just meaning to our spiritual children, but light, life, and truth itself.
While so much about this time of year is familiar—its sense of newness and purpose, its feasts, even the angle of the early autumn sunlight—this year, throughout the Church, new faces and families have proliferated in our growing communities, bringing great blessings and presenting unprecedented challenges.
Today’s new inquirers typically do not come to our parishes without exposure to viewpoints and practices they have heard or seen online. In other words, while this may be the first ecclesiastical year they experience in a parish setting, they have already consumed up to hundreds of hours of online content and have been influenced accordingly.
As a result, our catechesis at the parish level must anticipate this earlier orientation. There must be efforts beyond traditional catechesis in order to not only integrate the newcomers into the community, but also to promote the development of an Orthodox frame of mind that goes beyond doctrine and ritual, to seek mystical union itself.
No doubt those who seek the Church genuinely seek such union. Indeed, they realize, ultimately, they must seek it in parish life, in the community.
Yet when they finally arrive in this community (after their virtual introduction), many consider themselves already Orthodox, or at the very least, “ready” to be initiated into the faith.
How do we respond? How do we bring them into the fullness of faith, to show them the treasury of riches that is life in the Church, to convert the fire of zeal from heat to light?
The Church presents endless opportunities for all of its children to be formed by it. But we must work with the Church to make these opportunities available and accessible.
One such opportunity—and one effective spiritual antidote to an excessively online formation and way of life—is the merciful work of charity, of care for the poor and those in need. This is the life’s work of Christians who take Matthew 25 seriously.
Thank God for IOCC which allows us, through the support and participation of our communities and parishes, to bring the global work of mercy to those in need.
Preach about IOCC and what it does. Teach about IOCC and how it does it. Show this love. Offer this communion. Spread this saving Gospel, in this new season, for it grows not old.
Father David Khorey
Associate Pastor
St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church
Grand Rapids, Michigan
