Our Christian Names

In our quasi-revolutionary, neo-gnostic culture, including most especially academia, and especially still religious academia and its amateur counterpart among those of us who read books, it is popular to refer to every scholar (and eventually everyone who has said anything at all) by surname. “Ecco’s thesis is…” “Jaki is daring when…” “Cantor actually challenges the notion…” The depersonalization of the individual, the treatment of the person as genus – as nature or essence – is in fact heretical to Holy Orthodoxy, which is why we do not refer to Saints in such a manner. Applied to the Holy Trinity, this reversal is in fact the reason for the Great Schism by which Holy Orthodoxy has repudiated all heresy, and the heresy of heresies. Person is not interchangeable with genus. So to speak that way, it truly to speak as a heterodox. It is barbarian speak, it is the speech of the unlearned, of the irreverent, of the thoughtless and impious.

Still, you hear dapper religio-academics referring to “Fr. Schmemman” or just “Schmemman” when they’re being particularly “down to earth”. The sing-songy tone is one of perhaps unintended disdain – the kind of disdain that is inherent in a trivialization of personality, intended or not. One hears it in hip-hop speech, hippie slang, and the “bro” and “dude”-ness of insipid “guy-speak”. And why shouldn’t we expect it among Orthodox, when in some Orthodox Churches you hear of people being called, in the Roman Catholic vein, “Father Anderson” (at least they don’t toss out just “Anderson”), not to mention “Fr. Bill” (who would ever dare to refer to a Saint Bill), or even just “Bill” (“Bill’s not coming to the men’s breakfast today.”) – I think I just threw up. It’s either the heretical anti-personal anthropology of the heterodox or the vain ultra-personalism of their social descendents, thoroughly Protestantized, as if we were joining hands together, singing campfire gospel songs, and listening to the mystical insights of the Fr. Larry or Brother Lenny or even Linda. (well, we have yet to see Father Lisa, but the attitude is the same). The imposition of cultural flippancy on one hand, or cultural utilitarianism on the other, is a great show of religiosity but really a mediocrity of Faith.

I won’t argue this endlessly with naysayers. You are of your tradition, and I am of mine. Be what you are; let’s not argue. I don’t have to eat with you, and you certainly won’t be sitting at my table, if you’re claiming we share the same Faith. And yes, I do eat with out and out Protestants, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Witches, Warlocks, Atheists, and Spiritualists. I don’t eat with people who, pretending to honor Christ, dishonor his Church, claiming it’s all one big religion and I’m (quite unwillingly) a part of it. Rank me among the unbelievers, if that’s the case. Give me Samaritans any day. Those I can pat on the back and make friends. So before you say, “Christ ate with sinners,” think also about who was *not* at his table. Did he break bread with all the false Christs?

The truth is that speaking in this manner ultimately belies the Holy Incarnation of Christ. Christ shared our nature. Christ became man. And his name is Jesus. When you say in your heart that name, you teach your mind how to say all names, and how to think of all your brethren. Why then, this disdain which masquerades as disregard, mere casualness, and laziness? Piety, as my old Bishop used to say, is taking little pains. What pain it was for God to be born with a man’s name.

But there are those who do not wish to dishonor all that is dishonored by using these inappropriate designations. And sometimes they ask how to cultivate a habit of proper attribution. I’m no wise person to consult, but I think it’s helpful, when you think in your mind of “Fr. Alexander” (Schmemann) or “Fr. John” (Romanides) to think of them in the light of “Saint Alexannder” or “Saint John” for whom they are named. Who among us would have the spite to refer to a Saint Maximovitch or a Saint Hotovitzky? If we can’t bring ourselves to what we know and should sense is irreverence toward the Saints, how dare we do it of anyone among us, especially not those icons of the saints who are our teachers and clergy, those who bear Saint’s names? When you say the name of your brother in Christ, think “he will be glorified” if he is living or, if he is reposed, add “pray for me” to your thoughts when you say his name. Fr. John (“pray for me”) Romanides. Fr. Alexander (“save me by your prayers”) Schmemman. Then, over time, you will find it hard to speak shamefully of such people and, perhaps, with mercy, of anyone (“grant me such mercy, Lord”). In fact, what we’ve been doing is speaking of people in a naturalistic way, as though they are dead, or as though they will not live forever. This is, perhaps, part of the cure for our blindness. And of each other, perhaps especially if we find it hard to honor one another in our thoughts, it is good to remember, to be mindful, of such gentle sayings: “he will be saved, and I will be condemned” Matthew, “by his prayers save me” Michael, “remember me, St. Barbara” Barbara, “pray for me her Angel” Micah.

Keep in mind that we call it your “Christian name” for a reason. The name you received at Baptism is the new name, written on a white stone, the name by which you will be called in paradise, the name that in the Kingdom, this economy of Christ’s Incarnation,  you are known by and are referred to. Doesn’t the priest say this name when you receive Holy Communion? Isn’t it written into the prayers said at the altar, behind the iconostasis? The pride it takes to disregard the name, and shake it off, preferring “Homer” and “Kelly” to the names of your patron Saints who watch over you and pray for you, should you make it pride upon pride by applying it likewise to others?

We sometimes hear the xenophobes among us complain that this is an “ethnic” tradition – that it’s Russian or Greek. Such statements beg the question, besides which they are inaccurate. This is the ancient tradition, the living tradition, the one tradition. This is not “your” tradition or “mine”. It’s “ours”. How can we claim such things? It is the tradition of paradise, active in Heaven, and indeed throughout the whole of the One Church, undivided and indivisible by Death, which we repudiate, speaking life everywhere. If the Saints speak to each other this way, gathered around us, when we pray, what arrogance says that the bonds of our Death, the cultural of our natural birth, or the affected culture of pseudo-academia is the basis for what comes out of our mouths? The whole man is made new, speech and all. All must be deified – you must not cling to anything and say, “Not this. Except this.”

And do remember your mother in the Faith, the Church whose missionaries founded your Church. It’s impossible to listen to “Americans” (which are not a people, nor a race, nor even a nationality), refer to traditions as Russian when they received the *entire* Orthodox Faith from the Russians in the first place.  Shame. Sadness. Blindness. Again, I won’t argue this here – not today. One thing at a time. Blindness and foolish talk are everywhere – they are cheap and abundant – trying to cover every argument at once makes truth into a commodity also, and I won’t do it. I will say that I think you know, in your heart, when you’re espousing ideology (be it communist, deconstructionst, neo-fascism, or some glib amateur cultural anthropology), and when you are in fact striving to walk in the footsteps of the Saints down through the ages. It is so much easier to be a succesful rhetorician of ideology than a failed but determined adherent of better men who lived wiser lives.  Easier to be the fathers’ widely heard critic than their poor and obscure imitator. Bleh.

Anyway, I write here for a few reasons. To give people answers who bother me with questions, so they’ll go away, and also so I can think through and give answers clearly, be transparent in what I’ve said, submit it to others to correct, and not let the impulses of the moment govern my response, and so I don’t often have to repeat it. I write also to record thoughts for my own memory, because it’s poor (I am neither mindful nor therefore righteous – I’m forgetful of everything I hope to remember). I am writing also to confess my sins – not the specific circumstances of them, but the sins (Whenever someone accuses you falsely, say “I am guilty”, even if you did not do what they say – say “I am guilty of sins like these” and “Yes, I am prideful. I am an angry man. I am impatient and thoughtless. I have committed all the sins you say except, perhaps, renouncing the Orthodox Faith.”) Here is one place I say such things because, saying them, I hope to believe in them fully and be saved. I write here also to think, because, for me, the two things (writing and thinking) are so tightly interwoven and bound. I need to think, and I need a place to think, a place conducive to the kind of thinking I’m doing. I create such places wherever I want to do a new kind of thinking.

Have you ever picked up a bottle of something and it said not to use it for what it was designed for? Like a children’s toy, clearly designed for a certain age group, that says not to let that age group use it? Or batteries that say not to leave them in the device after use? I wish I could offer a disclaimer like that – “This may poison you. What I say may be not only completely useless but actually harmful. And yet, if you want to use it, it’s here. I won’t stop you.”