Dear friends,
Ten men in total were ordained readers at the 2023 ROCOR-WR conference, which took place in a hotel conference room in Sarasota, Florida. See the featured photo above, which shows nine of them including myself, second from the right. The tenth is obscured by Fr. Mark’s hand.
Bishop James of Sonora, second vicar of the Western American Diocese of ROCOR performed the rite. Prior to that he also spoke very inspiringly and with great authority and dignity about St. John Maximovich. See below:
He also introduced the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, which was the highlight of the conference for myself and for everyone I’m sure. Here the priests sing an akathist just before everyone is invited to venerate the icon:
The smell of the myrrh, together with the knowledge that it is a miracle is overwhelming and brought me to tears. Here I am being tonsured. Fr. Mark (Rowe) stands to my left:
We new readers were all required to read a portion of scripture. I was given the passage Galatians 5:16 -24, which begins: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Once we were given the passage we turned around, facing the front of the room where the other readers were standing, and read. (My daughter, Edith, just pointed out to me that Bishop James is wearing the same robe in the photo bellow as St. John Maximovich wears in our icon of him.)
If you were to ask me what is my biggest takeaway from the conference, it would be how hard Fr. Mark works to build charity between the members of the Western and Eastern Rite within ROCOR. This truly is his goal.
Fr. Mark gave a talk that was for just the priests, but he let me come since I asked and since there is no one else from our mission to represent me. And I do not think he will mind if I report here what the meeting was generally about. He spoke about how he attended a meeting of the bishops of ROCOR after the passing of His Grace Metropolitan Hilarion. He and Fr. David (Prestridge) of Chattanooga Tennessee both attended. And at this meeting, the future of the WR within ROCOR, if I understand it correctly, perhaps didn’t exactly hang in the balance, but bishops were given a chance to weigh in and either bless or suppress the Western Rite. There was one bishop who said, “Western Rite!—more like Western wrong!” (I’m not giving out any names of bishops and I don’t remember them anyway.) But Fr. Mark allayed their concerns and won the bishops over one by one. It helped that there has been considerable interest in the Western Rite including new missions forming in recent years. Our mission in Oregon happened to be approved just after this meeting. And now, as I understand it, the Western Rite is blessed more than ever before. Although, it ought to be mentioned that we still do not have our own bishops.
It was also obvious that Fr. Mark works very hard as essentially a missionary of ROCOR, extending a welcoming hand to mostly Anglican, Episcopalian and Roman Catholic priests and their followers and the occasional oddball such as myself who is not yet a priest. The approximately 50 attendees, mostly clergy, at the conference from all over the nation were proof of this. And sometimes his followers end up becoming Eastern Rite, so he truly is fostering charity and understanding between different traditions and is probably one of the most effective evangelists within ROCOR.
Mother Andrea of the Queen of All Skeet in Rochelle Virginia (queenofallskete.org) gave two talks that I wish I had recorded, basically a whirlwind tour of everything that is going on in the general society and how it affects us and suggestions for what we as a church can do about it. And while St. Paul says that he does not suffer a woman “to teach or have authority over a man, but to be in silence,” (1 Tim 2:12) she might be excused for violating this principle because she is a nun who went back to her skete after the conference was over and is thus not aspiring to any position of authority over men. And it was nice that someone provided practical suggestions for how to move forward as missions! (This is not to discredit the main other speaker, Bishop James, because his talk focussed on St. John Maximovich’s piety and not on mission building per se.) The thing that Mother Andrea said that stands out most in my mind is that she mentioned a study from American Demographics Magazine from the 80s or early 90s which asked people to order the factors that helped them to choose their church. This was undoubtedly a broad study including all churches in the United States. The top four factors were (1) the choir, (2) parking, (3) the restrooms, and (4) programs for children, and she specifically plugged the importance of church schools. In other words, being right is only half the battle. Basically her message was a warning cry. How much are we really escaping the destructive milieu of technocratic progressivism, which is basically a religion unto itself? How much are your kids escaping it? And what are we going to do about it?
(This is a problem for homeschoolers and public schoolers both, not just public schoolers. How much is the children’s day to day program of life managed by church members and how many of their friends are church friends? This is to say that schools by themselves do not educate. Curriculums by themselves do not educate. Communities educate. We shall reap what we sow. Do our corporate prayers inspire awe and wonder and action—including action on behalf of our children? Are the children of the church being ministered to as a little tribe belonging to the church or are they treated as individuals who are each responsible for their own salvation—in other words mostly neglected by the church? Homeschool and government school kids can both suffer in environments that are not as conducive of creative learning as they could be due to the systemic marginalization of children from modern society. Thus I believe it is the responsibility of the clergy to provide leadership in education; however feeble our initial efforts may be. )
Finally, as I was leaving the conference I believe God put something on my heart and mind, which is that the ROCOR-WR is a narrow path and as such there must be a message which goes along with that, which we need to distribute far and wide! (Firstly, to qualify just how narrow our path is. As of 2020, about 675,000 people identified as Orthodox Christians in the US, about 0.2 percent of the population. About half of these are attendees. ROCOR itself has about 216 separate listings on its United States directory of churches and missions and about 10,000 regular attendees. Of these listings, 32 are Western Rite and I’m not sure how many regular attendees we have, but not very many.) What’s our message?
I believe we need to have a message of peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. In a time when the United States is viciously politically polarized, where YouTubers such as Dr. Steve Turley (an Orthodox Christian who I otherwise really like listening to) are talking about a coming breakup of the United States and civil war with glee, we need to be saying, “Stop!” Stop making everything about left vs. right. Stop either demonizing or glorifying Russia. We need to fear God! Let’s be peacemakers, offering people a middle way forward. Trump is not our Savior. Putin is not our savior. Neither one is the boogie man though either. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I’ll be giving Trump my vote, but I’ll give to God what is God’s, my kids and my family. I can do this by orienting our lives around the church’s prayer services and our own private enterprises and programs for kids instead of the media, the corporate world and government programs.
In the Western Rite, we can speak positively about the Russian church and Russia and also critique Russia, while also building on our own distinctively English Orthodox Christian heritage. And we can speak positively about any national church and its own nation or critique it from our own unique vantage point. I believe we are at the very center of what God is doing in the world. We have something to offer. We are Christ’s body as much as any other Orthodox jurisdiction!
By the way, one way that I endeavor to speak as a member of Christ’s body and never merely as a cultural conservative is that I never post anything on social media that doesn’t have a Christian hook to it and which doesn’t specifically plug our mission parish or at least the Orthodox Church in general. Indeed our biggest danger is vanity. I hope that others will endeavor to build with me to escape this vain world!
We have a mission in Brookings and Harbor, Oregon! It’s just up to us to come and pray and grow and pray for God’s blessing on ourselves and our neighbors. May God bless us!
For Christ & the Kingdom,
Martin
