Encouragement

The Church must encourage her children

It deeply saddens me when I see some in the Church taking the stand that the Church must be the enforcer of God’s law. In this view the Church becomes like some arm of the military, dishing out punishment, or excluding some of her children as ill fit for anything but condemnation.

I remember a fellow high school teacher, some thirty-six years ago, who had a good list and a bad list. The good list was comprised of students he liked, the ones who consistently got their homework in on time, and whose grades were above average. Then there was the bad list. These were the students who were academically challenged, and who more often than not had a very low self image.  When this teacher wrote an A+ on an exam, it was written with a preciseness, elegance, that bespoke of his admiration for this student. Yet when he wrote a D+ or an F, you could read the anger in his style.

Students would walk out of his class with their spirits soaring, or with the knowledge that they were a total failure, even worthless, in this teacher’s eyes. Many of these students would walk into my classroom the following period, and I could tell their grades from the look on their faces, and it would take considerable effort on my part to lift the spirits of the “bad” student.

An older, more experienced teacher had once shared with me her approach to grading, and I followed her grading plan. If there were twenty questions on a test, and the student got only four correct answers, I wrote 4+, with a little smiling star next to the number. I’d tell the student that four correct answers was a good start, and the grades went up from there!

As the hospital for the soul, the Church should view everyone who walks through the narthex in the same light. Some people are, for whatever reason, living the Gospel, and willing to commit one hundred percent to their life in Christ. They are always early for services, make good confessions, receive the Holy Mysteries frequently, and volunteer for whatever task is set before them. Others struggle with the Christian life, and are barely identifiable as belonging to Christ. These people are stuck in patterns of living not in concert with the teachings of the Gospel. Yet both sets of people are in need of the same healing that comes in an encounter with the Living God.

If the Church loves only those who are in the first list, we will have failed, for those in the second list are in need of more attention and love then the first list. It is like the mother who once told me she loved her youngest son the most, not because he was smart, or polite, or obedient, or handsome, like her other two sons, but because her youngest son was troubled, homely, disobedient, and angry. The youngest son needed the encouragement of his mother. He needed his mother’s love more than the others.

This is why I have always loved the image of the Church as being our mother.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon