Posted on 01/18/2005 9:46:17 AM PST by sionnsar
The Rev. Louis Tarsitano--rest in peace.
The Rev. Louis Tarsitano, rector of St. Andrew's Church in Savannah (a Continuing Anglican church) and noted writer and thinker, passed away this past Saturday, January 15. His loss will be keenly felt in North American Anglicanism, as he was sound in doctrine and practice.
This sermon by him, True Worship and True Morality, is a good example of his preaching. Basing his sermon on Amos 8:7, the Rev. Tarsitano wrote:
The difference between true and false worship is the difference between life and death. The choice between the true worship of himself that God has established and the inevitable moral degradation that must follow false worship is terribly real, whether we are speaking of Jeroboam’s time, 2800 years ago, or contemplating our own situation today.
Since the 1960s, a great many households within the Christian Church have replaced the form of worship that their ancestors had received from God in his providential governance of his Church with new inventions of their own. These new forms of worship may seem, as Jeroboam’s invented religion did, rather like the old religion, but they have in practice turned out to be the worship of men, the idolatry of men’s ideas and politics, and slavery to the fads of intellectuals. And what has happened?
Church after church is racked with scandals of immorality, including the abuse of children—a sin we always find connected with false religion and paganism in the Bible. New priesthoods and ministries have been invented, and they have divided the Church in ways that we are only now discovering, as we only begin to remember that female priesthood and inverted sexuality were always signs of false religion and rebellion against God in the Holy Scriptures. People claiming to be “Christians” join the clamor to remove the Ten Commandments from public view.
But enough. We know the symptoms. What we need to be clear about this morning is the disease that causes them. And that disease is the disease of Jeroboam and the Northern Kingdom, condemned by God this morning. That disease is the abandonment of the true worship that God has provided for us to offer praise to the glory of his Name for inventions and self-expressions of our own. And once we are disobedient in worship, we have given up the God-given means of our moral reclamation when we go astray.
Truly this was a prophetic voice, and he will be missed. May we learn from his life and example.
Posted by Will at 12 : 09 am | Leave a note {N}
"Dog collars and spanky clean shaven faces to "disguise" the origin, I guess " is passing for white" Anglo-Saxon and not sticking out in a crowd."
LOL!!! Not our priests. Both are fully beared and wear their rasos and clerical headgear. There's never a question around here who the Orthodox priests are. They receive great respect on the streets by everyone. One buddy of mine, a Roman priest, tells me he envies them. The fact that my spiritual father is 6'5" in his stocking feet doesn't hurt. With his kalimavki on he looks 7' tall!
No, I'm not talking big numbers here, probably not even a dozen in the DC area. Due to the Pentagon being here, we do have a concentration of them that you just would never see anywhere else.
It isn't just the military chaplain thing. Most of the OCA (and certainly nearly all in the northeastern section of the country) is Carpatho-Russian in background. Their forebears, about 100,000 strong converted en masse from being Uniates back to the Orthodox Church in the late 19th century. They had been heavily Latinized in certain ways during their centuries of union with Rome, and one of these things was in clerical dress and facial hair. Goatees seem to be the Carp thing. The OCA Diocese of the West, on the other hand, is dominated by the heritage of the Harbin emigration of Great Russians -- photos of our diocesan assemblies show that it is a very hirsute affair there. Convert clergy are also not afraid of growing beards. With time, this, too, is all becoming more traditional.
When I was a child, I was so terrified of our priest, I kept calling him "Good god, good god!" He just looked like soemthing from a fairytale.
"When I was a child, I was so terrified of our priest, I kept calling him "Good god, good god!" He just looked like soemthing from a fairytale."
I have a nephew who, when he was about three years old was really into super heroes. On Sunday he was at church and asked my sister, "Mommy, why does the "bureest" wear a cape? Is he a super hero? Is that his hide out (pointing to the altar)?"
A superhero or a magi from a fairytale -- no matter how you turn it, the Orthodox Church back home was always magic and awe-inspiring.
Before Metropolitan Christopher was Metropolitan Christopher he was Father Vel and he was my priest from birth all the way up to high school. He was born and raised in Texas so to this day I always expect Serbian Orthodox priests to speak with a Texas drawl :-D
I never met Metr. Christopher, but I was received into the Orthodox Church under one of his priests, so he will always be my first bishop... I have met Bp. Longinus. I think he is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. In our one conversation face to face, he was, not to mince words, clairvoyant.
Ah see!
Thanks FormerLib for keeping this ping list.
Keep me on it!
regards,
-Thoreau
SPOTREP - True Worship
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