Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. The week began with the Second Sunday before Lent yesterday (23 February 2025), and Lent begins next week on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025).
Today marks the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Before this day begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 9: 14-29 (NRSVA):
14 When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16 He asked them, ‘What are you arguing about with them?’ 17 Someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.’ 19 He answered them, ‘You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.’ 20 And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 Jesus asked the father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. 22 It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ 23 Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.’ 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!’ 26 After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. 28 When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ 29 He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
Today’s Reflection:
This morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 9: 14-29) includes that very powerful and memorable exclamation: ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ (see Mark 9: 24).
The prayers this week in the USPG prayer diary mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and are introduced by the Revd Dr Nevsky Everett, chaplain of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in Bucharest.
Some years ago, at the a summer school in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Dr Răzvan Porumb told how this exclamation, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’, was one of the great inspirations for the Romanian writer and theologian Father Nicolae Steinhardt (1912-1989).
‘If evil is bottomless, so goodness too is boundless,’ Father Nicolae wrote while he was in prison. Dr Porumb introduced his writings and thoughts at that year’s conference, which was looking at ‘Contemporary Fathers and Mothers of the Church (2016).
Nicolae Steinhardt, a theologian, hermit, confessor and dissident writer, is one of the great writers in Romanian literature, and is studied nation-wide. His great work, The Diary of Happiness, or The Journal of Happiness, is his literary testament and stands between literature and theology, culture and faith, but has not yet been translated into English.
He was born Aurelian Nicolae Steinhardt in Bucharest into a Jewish family and completed his PhD in constitutional law. On a holiday in Switzerland in 1937 or 1938, he met an Irishman who first stirred his interests in Christianity, although later he could not recall his name.
He was a writer and journalist, and was imprisoned in 1958 and was held in harsh conditions for 14 years. In jail, he taught English literature to other prisoners. There too he converted to Orthodox Christianity while he was a prisoner, and was baptised in prison in 1960.
He was fascinated by the paradox of faith, but he sought ambiguity rather than clarity: ‘Never have more astounding words been uttered than “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (see Mark 9: 24) I tell myself that if, of all words on the entire Bible we would only retain these, they would be enough to prove the divine essence of Christianity … They are paradoxical, they represent the very mystery of the act of faith …’
His baptism took place hurriedly in extraordinary circumstances, with his fellow prisoner, Father Mina Dobzeu, a Romanian Orthodox priest using a chipped enamel mug filled with wormy water from the water tank, and witnessed by two Greek Catholic (Uniate) priests, two Roman Catholic priests and a Protestant pastor. He would rejoice that his baptism had an ‘ecumenical character.’
He noted in his diary: ‘Those baptised as infants cannot know, nor can they suspect what baptism means. I find myself assaulted, second after second, by ever-stronger attacks of joy … I am a new man.’
He later had an Epiphany moment in a dream in his cold cell in the winter of 1962: ‘I do not see the incarnated Christ, but only an enormous light – white and bright – and I feel unspeakably happy. This light envelops me from all sides, it is complete happiness, and it ousts everything else. I am submersed in the blinding light, I float inside the light, I am in light and I exult. I know it is going to last forever, it is perpetuum immobile. The light speaks to: I am, not through words – but through thoughts. I understand it is the Lord and that I am inside the light of Tabor, and I don’t just see it, but I am living inside of it.’
He continued: ‘More than anything, I am happy, happy, happy. I am happy and I recognise that I am, and tell myself that. The light seems to be brighter than light and it seems to talk to me and tells me who it is. The dream seems to go on for long, very long. Happiness not only lasts forever, but increases constantly. If evil is bottomless, so goodness too is boundless.’
On his release in 1964, he remained a dissident and continued to write and publish. Late in life, he entered Rohia Monastery in 1978, where he worked as the monastery’s librarian and continued to write. There, his growing reputation as a counsellor and father-confessor attracted many visitors to Rohia. He died on 29 March 1989.
Dr Porumb has written the ‘Foreword’ to Nicolae Steinhardt’s Journal of Joy which was launched at St Vladimir’s Seminary, New York, last Thursday (20 February 2025).
At the launch, Dr Porumb delivered a public lecture, ‘An Orthodox Spirituality for Today: Reading Steinhardt’s Journal of Joy in Context’. A first-hand account of Father Nicolae was given by Father Ștefan Iloaie, Professor of Orthodox Spirituality and Bioethics at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The guests included the Abbot of Rohia monastery, Archimandrite Macarie.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 24 February 2025):
Today marks the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Grain of Wheat.’ This theme was introduced yesterday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Nevsky Everett, chaplain of the Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest, Romania.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 24 February 2025), on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine invites us to pray:
Lord, we lift the nation of Ukraine to you. We ask for your divine intervention to bring peace, healing, and reconciliation. Soften the hearts of leaders, bring an end to violence, and lasting peace.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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