The Lenten monastery retreat is on Saturday at Holy Cross Orthodox Monastery, and we wanted to give you all the information you will need in order to attend.

Time: 10:00am-3:00pm

Address: 12 Blackstone ( Lawrence & Jane ) Toronto, On.

Tel.:  647 – 436-9786

Please RSVP by email or phone (416-889-4218) if possible before Saturday, so that we can let Father Nicolas know who is planning on attending the retreat. Please bring a bag lunch to go along with the soup provided by the monastery.

Schedule:

10:00 am   Arrival and getting acquainted with the monastery
10:30 am   Reflection on the prayer of St. Ephraim
11:30 am    Silent time
12:00 pm   Small Hour & Prayer of St. Ephraim
12:15 pm    Lunch (not in silence?)
12:45 pm   Silent time
1:30 pm     Jesus Prayer (one hour) (?)
2:30 pm     Silent time
3:00 pm     End of retreat

There is a reading that we will be discussing at the retreat that Father Nicolas has provided on the prayer of St Ephraim.  The full text of the reading follows this message.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at OcfUofT@gmail.com or call at 416-889-4218.

Hope to see you there!

The Lenten Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian

By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

 

Of all Lenten hymns and prayers, one short prayer can be termed the Lenten prayer. Tradition ascribes it to one of the great teachers of spiritual life – St. Ephraim the Syrian. Here is its text:

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness (despair), lust of power, and idle talk.  But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors (sins) and not to judge my brother; for Thou art blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen

This prayer is read twice at the end of each Lenten service Monday through Friday (not on Saturdays and Sundays for, as we shall see later, the services of these days do not follow the Lenten pattern). At the first reading, a prostration follows each petition. Then we all bow twelve times saying: “O God, cleanse me a sinner.” The entire prayer is repeated with one final prostration at the end.

Why does this short and simple prayer occupy such an important position in the entire Lenten worship? Because it enumerates in a unique way all the “negative” and “positive” elements of repentance and constitutes, so to speak, a “check list” for our individual Lenten effort. This effort is aimed first at our liberation from some fundamental spiritual diseases which shape our life and make it virtually impossible for us even to start turning ourselves to God.

The basic disease is sloth. It is that strange laziness and passivity of our entire being which always pushes us “down” rather than “up” — which constantly convinces us that no change is possible and therefore desirable. It is in fact a deeply rooted cynicism which to every spiritual challenge responds “what for?” and makes our life one tremendous spiritual waste. It is the root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source.

The result of sloth is faint-heartedness. It is the state of despondency (despair) which all spiritual Fathers considered the greatest danger for the soul. Despondency is the impossibility for man to see anything good or positive; it is the reduction of everything to negativism and pessimism. It is truly a demonic power in us because the Devil is fundamentally a liar. He lies to man about God and about the world; he fills life with darkness and negation. Despondency is the suicide of the soul because when man is possessed by it he is absolutely unable to see the light and to desire it.

Lust of power! Strange as it may seem, it is precisely sloth and despondency that fill our life with lust of power. By vitiating the entire attitude toward life and making it meaningless and empty, they force us to seek compensation in, a radically wrong attitude toward other persons. If my life is not oriented toward God, not aimed at eternal values, it will inevitably become selfish and self-centered and this means that all other beings will become means of my own self-satisfaction. If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own lord and master — the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgments. The lust of power is thus a fundamental depravity in my relationship to other beings, a search for their subordination to me. It is not necessarily expressed in the actual urge to command and to dominate “others.” It may result as well in indifference, contempt, lack of interest, consideration, and respect. It is indeed sloth and despondency directed this time at others; it completes spiritual suicide with spiritual murder.

Finally, idle talk. Of all created beings, man alone has been endowed with the gift of speech. All Fathers see in it the very “seal” of the Divine Image in man because God Himself is revealed as Word (John, 1:1). But being the supreme gift, it is by the same token the supreme danger. Being the very expression of man, the means of his self-fulfillment, it is for this very reason the means of his fall and self-destruction, of betrayal and sin. The word saves and the word kills; the word inspires and the word poisons. The word is the means of Truth and it is the means of demonic Lie. Having an ultimate positive power, it has therefore a tremendous negative power. It truly creates positively or negatively. When deviated from its divine origin and purpose, the word becomes idle. It “enforces” sloth, despondency, and lust of power, and transforms life into hell. It becomes the very power of sin.

These four are thus the negative “objects” of repentance. They are the obstacles to be removed. But God alone can remove them. Hence, the first part of the lenten prayer; this cry from the bottom of human helplessness. Then the prayer moves to the positive aims of repentance which also are four.

 

Chastity! If one does not reduce this term, as is so often and erroneously done, only to its sexual connotations, it is understood as the positive counterpart of sloth. The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselomudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust — the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit. Christ restores wholeness in us and He does so by restoring in us the true scale of values by leading us back to God.

The first and wonderful fruit of this wholeness or chastity is humility. We already spoke of it. It is above everything else the victory of truth in us, the elimination of all lies in which we usually live. Humility alone is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and therefore of seeing God’s majesty and goodness and love in everything. This is why we are told that God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

Chastity and humility are naturally followed by patience. The “natural” or “fallen” man is impatient, for being blind to himself he is quick to judge and to condemn others. Having but a broken, incomplete, and distorted knowledge of everything, he measures all things by his tastes and his ideas. Being indifferent to everyone except himself, he wants life to be successful right here and now. Patience, however, is truly a divine virtue. God is patient not because He is “indulgent,” but because He sees the depth of all that exists, because the inner reality of things, which in our blindness we do not see, is open to Him. The closer we come to God, the more patient we grow and the more we reflect that infinite respect for all beings which is the proper quality of God.

Finally, the crown and fruit of all virtues, of all growth and effort, is love – that love which, as we have already said, can be given by God alone-the gift which is the goal of all spiritual preparation and practice.

All this is summarized and brought together in the concluding petition of the Lenten prayer in which we ask “to see my own errors and not to judge my brother.” For ultimately there is but one danger: pride. Pride is the source of evil, and all evil is pride. Yet it is not enough for me to see my own errors, for even this apparent virtue can be turned into pride. Spiritual writings are full of warnings against the subtle forms of pseudo-piety which, in reality, under the cover of humility and self-accusation can lead to a truly demonic pride. But when we “see our own errors” and “do not judge our brothers,” when, in other terms, chastity, humility, patience, and love are but one in us, then and only then the ultimate enemy–pride–will be destroyed in us.

After each petition of the prayer we make a prostration. Prostrations are not limited to the Prayer of St. Ephrem but constitute one of the distinctive characteristics of the entire Lenten worship. Here, however, their meaning is disclosed best of all. In the long and difficult effort of spiritual recovery, the Church does not separate the soul from the body. The whole man has fallen away from God; the whole man is to be restored, the whole man is to return. The catastrophe of sin lies precisely in the victory of the flesh — the animal, the irrational, the lust in us — over the spiritual and the divine. But the body is glorious; the body is holy, so holy that God Himself “became flesh.” Salvation and repentance then are not contempt for the body or neglect of it, but restoration of the body to its real function as the expression and the life of spirit, as the temple of the priceless human soul. Christian asceticism is a fight, not against but for the body. For this reason, the whole man – soul and body  – repents. The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the “psycho-somatic” sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the Lenten rite par excellence.

 

Wednesday, March 9th: Joseph Youssef, PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Toronto will be speaking about his research on Coptic Orthodox monks and monasteries in Egypt. His talk will discuss both the academic and spiritual sides of his research.

The talk will be at 7pm and light refreshments will be provided.

Location: “Family Room”, U of T Multi-faith Centre (569 Spadina Crescent)

Please join us! Please call 416-889-4218 or email OcfUofT@gmail.com.

Sunday, February 27th: Volunteering with the Out of the Cold program at St John the Compassionate Mission (155 Broadview Avenue, Toronto Ontario, M4M 2E9). We will be cooking a meal for people looking to get “Out of the Cold” for Sunday evening. We will start cooking at 2:30, and then cook/serve until 5. You are welcome to stay after 5 to play games, watch a movie, etc. but no obligation! PLEASE LET US KNOW BEFORE THIS FRIDAY EVENING IF YOU ARE INTERESTED. I will be leaving from the U of T area if you need help getting there.

Saturday, March 5th: Volunteering with the Kid’s Klub program at St John the Compassionate Mission (address above). We will gather with 8-10 children from the surrounding neighborhood to read books and maybe do an art project from around 12-2 pm. Please confirm if you are interested and let me know if there is something specific you’d like to do (lend children’s books for the day, read, help with an art project, etc.)

Wednesday, March 9th: Talk by Joseph Youssef, PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Joey will be speaking about his research on Coptic Orthodox monks and monasteries in Egypt. His talk will discuss both the academic and spiritual sides of his research. The talk will be around 7pm and light refreshments will be provided. Location TBD, stay tuned to our website for details.

Saturday, March 19th: Lenten Retreat at Holy Cross Romanian Orthodox Monastery in North York, Toronto. We will gather at the Monastery in the late morning to reflect on the Prayer of St Ephraim, and a reading associated with this prayer. We will then share a lenten meal together, have time for quite, prayerful personal reflection and hopefully finish by praying the Jesus Prayer in a form that it is prayed at Holy Cross.

As of now, these are the events we have confirmed. If you have any questions, please contact us at OcfUofT@gmail.com or call me (Kyra) at 416-889-4218. We sincerely hope to see you!

Sorry for the very long winter break… and not very many posts!

We are currently planning upcoming events for OCF, and will be emailing all of those on our email list soon with the details.

These events tentitively include the following:

• Half-day Lenten retreat Holy Cross Monastery with Father Nicholas Giroux (reflection on the prayer of St. Ephraim, prayer, shared meal, and fellowship)
• A lecture on Coptic Orthodox Monasteries in Egypt
• Possible talk by Father Viatcheslav (see email below)
• Talk on prison ministry by Father George Tolias from Metamorphosis Greek Orthodox Church.

Stay tuned for details!

Monday, November 29th- Final book study of the semester! We will discuss the remaining chapters of Beginning to Pray by Archbishop Anthony Bloom. Please come even if you have not finished the book, as the discussions are always accessible to those who haven’t been able to read the chapters. We will meet in the 3rd floor Multi-faith Quiet Room from 7-9 pm. Light refreshments, coffee, and tea will be served. The Multi-faith Centre is located on 569 Spadina Ave.

Monday, December 6th- This is our last meeting of the semester! It also happens to be Saint Nicholas day, so we have invited Father Nicholas Young from St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Mission to serve Vespers in the Multi-faith Centre (569 Spadina Ave). We will meet in the 3rd floor Quiet Room from 7-8 pm. Please let me know if you have any questions about this event.

Hope to see you there!

Next Monday, November 22nd, we are planning to go to Carlton Cinemas to see a showing of the movie Conviction, a true story about a woman trying to save her brother from a wrongful accusation. Here is the link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1244754/.

We will be going to see it at 6:45 at Carlton Cinemas, which is a theater on Yonge and Carlton (which is College Street East of Yonge). The ticket price is $9.00. It will probably go until around 8:30 or so, and then we will go somewhere afterward for coffee, food, etc.

Please let us know if you have questions. You can email us at ocfuoft@gmail.com. Hope to see you there!

This coming Monday (November 15th) is going to be an exciting meeting for the U of T OCF, as we are hosting Father Nicolas Giroux from Holy Cross Romanian Orthodox Monastery in Toronto. He will be serving Vespers, the Orthodox evening service, from 7 pm to around 8 pm, and then afterward we will be having our regular bi-weekly book study of Chapter 4 of Beginning to Pray until around 9 pm.

We will meet in the U of T Multi-faith Centre (569 Spadina Ave), in the 3rd floor Quiet Room. During the book study, light refreshments will be served.

For those who are interested in knowing more about the Vespers service, please look at this link (http://www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=61) to read about the reasons behind the evening worship, as well as the specific prayers that are sung.

If anyone is interested in singing during the service, (and we would love for you to join us!), then please come a bit before the service starts, around 6:15 or so, as we will hold a small practice beforehand.

Regarding the book study: As always, if you have not done the weekly reading, please still come! The conversations are always applicable to those who haven’t read the chapter.

Looking forward to seeing you…

We will be meeting on the third floor quiet room at the U of T Multi-faith Centre (569 Spadina Ave) from 7-9 pm.

I hope you are able to make it!

Tomorrow we are meeting in the Multi-faith Quiet Room (569 Spadina Ave) on the third floor for our study of Archbishop Anthony Bloom’s book, Beginning to Pray and an akathist prayer service. Please come, even if you haven’t had a chance to complete the readings. The discussion should be accessible to everyone regardless.

If you have had a chance to do the readings, it would be great if you could bring a question or comment about the text to start off tomorrow’s conversation. That way we can address everyone’s ideas in the discussion.

There will be cookies and coffee/tea provided. The meeting will be from 7 pm to about 9 pm, and we will go to the pub afterward if people are so inclined.

See you then!

Just a reminder that OCF will not be meeting at the regular time and place today, since it is Thanksgiving, and many people have family events.

If anyone is available and interested, Sameh Saad, one of the OCF members will be attending an event with the Coptic Orthodox church in the North York area of Toronto, which begins at 6:30pm (please see other details on website, http://ocftoronto.wordpress.com/). He will be leaving from the U of T area, if anyone would like to attend the event with him. The event continues with a second night tomorrow at the same time.

Regular OCF meetings will continue next Monday, Oct. 18th with Peter Brubacher’s talk on “The Orthodox Life as Pilgrimage”. It will be held in the second floor multipurpose room, where our kickoff event was.

Hope to see you there!