Elder Ephraim of Arizona,
the great Elder of American Orthodoxy, was in fact not American himself. This elder
perhaps more than any other outside of Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen of America
has had more of an impact on my life coming to Orthodoxy. Elder Ephraim was and is a spiritual stalwart
of American Orthodoxy and has many things to teach us in his life and works. We
will explore some of those here today and hopefully understand better the man
and his life.
The
spiritual son of St. Joseph the Hesychast, Elder Ephraim began to become a
shining star of orthodoxy in the 1960s on the Holy Mountain, the garden of the
Theotokos, Mount Athos. Elder Ephraim was by all accounts a radiant joy of a
human. His face shone with light and a countenance that is not seen by many.
Perhaps one of my favorite things about Elder Ephraim was his constant call to
draw us to conversation with God, noetic prayer. Of course, what better prayer
than to do this with than the Jesus Prayer and the use of a prayer rope. I am
sure my love of the prayer rope of which I have gone through many in just my
five years of being Orthodox is because of Elder Ephraim’s call to use the
Jesus Prayer to be constantly enraptured with the Spirit of God. He carried with him a slow way of speaking,
not hurried, not derived of any earthly time but was focused on his future
life, the life beyond this one. He was contrite from my research, especially
after Compline, which if anyone has heard me speak, is my favorite service.
Elder Ephraim of Arizona was given the sacred hesychia as a spiritual inheritance
from his Elder, Joseph, and passed it to his spiritual children of which there
are many. But it is the spiritual inheritance of all True Christians, the gift
that allows us to unite ourselves with the Divine Spirit of God and to dwell in
that otherworldly realm while experiencing life here in the mortal realm. But
here in lies the heart of the matter that I want to delve into a little deeper.
While
America maybe considered a realm of Christianity, it is filled with Roman
Catholic and Protestant teachings that are at best scholarly and academic
approaches to God. Outlining the teachings, one must do to be a Christian and
reducing salvation to a basic formula. Orthodoxy, though with its great writers
and teachers is not devoid of academic and theological resources and texts is
more about experiencing God in His pure form, in having a relationship with God
as he intended…face to face. It is not about defining who God is, but just
understanding that God is. In Hesychia and noetic prayer we draw ourselves to
God into the Heaven Liturgy of which I have spoken about before. We ascend as
Paul did into the heavens and fall at the throne of God. We take the bucket of
our souls and fill it with the Living Water as St. Photini did at the Well. It
is not about knowledge, power, or grandeur. It is about living within Christ.
Take away the icons, the gold chalices, the vestments and the building of the church
and you would still have Orthodoxy. You would still have the scriptures written
on the hearts of all True Christians and life would still go on. Elder Ephraim knew
this. Therefore, when he was called away from the Holy Mountain all those years
ago, he traveled here, to America to bring the Light of Christ to a darkened
world. He brought with him the patristic teachings, the Faith of the apostles,
the hope of salvation.
I have
spoken at length in previous blogs about the spiritual decay that America has experienced
whether that be through the charismatic movement of which is not Christian, or
the Hindu and Buddhist traditions that call to reject Christ completely. America
though largely nominally Christian has lost its center, its perfect balance. While
many of the forefathers of America would claim Christianity, America is not a Christian
nation. It perhaps was thought of at one time as great Christian nation, one
that the West could look to for its scholarly and academic approach to
Christianity, but it was not one that ever truly fulfilled this purpose. It was founded for religious freedom, for the
ability to reject God or to accept Him. It never had in its morality the ability
to be called Christian. The leaders we have today reflect this, rejecting the
sacred writings of the Church, and the teachings of Christ in favor of luxury
and ease. We see this with calls for constant war, for the spread of “democracy”
and the acceptance of homosexuality and abortion, as basic human rights. Elder
Ephraim came to America to call it back home. He left his home, much as Christ
did when he came from Heaven to restore man to what it was meant to be. Yes,
his way of life is foreign to us here in America where Greek is not the
predominant language. Yes, his way of living was foreign to us in America where
more stuff, more items, more glory, more prestige is expected from those who are
career driven. But it is this call that makes it appealing to me.
As I have
said, hesychia is the goal to unite with God not by letting go as with the
Buddhist or Hindu tradition. We are not trying to become devoid of all feelings
and earthly thoughts, rather we are trying to instead become what God intended
for us. God is love. God wants us to love all people and all things as he loves
them. Each person is created in the image of God and should be greeted with
such fervor as you would even the Logos. But with the hatred we see today among
brothers this is certainly not the case. We are bickering and fighting with each
other because we wish to be proven right. Christ himself did not even fight
back when accused of crimes he didn’t commit. We are too engrained in scholarly
and philosophical debates and try to discover hidden meanings of things. We try
to brush our problems on other people, God, and anything but ourselves. We don’t
want to confront the reality that God has given us the standard in which we should
live and to embrace that standard as the only truth. We have become arrogant in
our luxury and arrogant in our ease.
Before
I end this treatise today on Restoring America, I again come to the man who
started this. Elder Ephraim. Elder Ephraim though a simple man, who wore the
simple schema of a monk was extraordinary. He founded 20 monasteries, bastions
of Christian prayer and thought in America. He lived in Arizona, the hot dry
desert, where many would consider it to be a wasteland. He taught and lived his
life, not for the glory of man, but for the Glory of God. Though the music,
speaking, and services were nothing like Americans are used to in their houses
of worship today, people flocked to St. Anthony’s to glimpse at the Elder, to seek
his counsel. I wish I had been one of them, but I did not get a chance to meet
him before his repose. If there is any regret in this life it is that I must
wait until the next to greet the Elder and to thank him for his work in trying
to bring America hope. May God through Elder Ephraim’s prayers have mercy on
us.
Amen.
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