The Harvest Is Plenty
The Lord said unto His disciples:
“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few; Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matt. 9:37,38)
Where are the fields? Within each and every human heart obviously; everywhere there is a human being created in God’s image there is a potential harvest for the Lord waiting to be had. Who are the workers? We are. How do we work? This is happening all around us each day, every day, and how little we notice. The cashiers we speak with, the delivery people and every other person the Lord brings our way, each is part of the harvest. Sure, it’s not always opportune to draw them into a discussion about the Gospel, but at least we can offer up a quick, silent prayer on their behalf: “Thank you Lord for bringing this person into my day, have mercy on us and lead us to Thee,” or anything of that sort.
There is one harvest field that is unique to our modern times though, and that’s the internet.
In America, Orthodoxy has become quite popular in the last ten years, and like anything else this has its pros and cons. It’s good that many people, sensing the lack of authenticity in Protestant and non-denom circles, yet at the same time put off by Romanism, are being introduced to ancient Christianity. At the same time, there is something amiss in many of the voices promoting Orthodoxy today: the more it becomes a culture, the greater the chance of its watering down; every time a new “orthodox apologetics” video drops on YouTube, we’re pushing closer and closer to the “Orthodoxy of the head” that Fr. Seraphim Rose warned about.
This discussion has even more ramifications for us in the GOC: there is one common denominator in nearly ALL of the online voices of Orthodoxy, and that’s that we, the “Old Calendarist schismatics,” are to be avoided at all costs. This narrative is prevalent to the point of suspicion, and young, well-meaning people are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
There is a discussion to be had on how much one should care about this; in the same way St. Theophan the Recluse admonishes about Protestants – that they have a God Who cares about their salvation, and that we should concern ourselves mainly with ours – the “world” Orthodox also have a God Who cares about their salvation as well. If we veer too far to the right in our efforts to “set the record straight” we risk becoming just another voice in the chorus that is the “Orthodoxy of the head.” At the same time, if we do nothing, we risk lost opportunities with those who sense the real problems in the mainline jurisdictions.
These people are out there. I’ve encountered them. They’ve visited our parishes. They are attacked on one side by the modernists who accuse us of schism, and on the other side by the ultra-strict who accuse us of “cyprianism.” They are suffering a genuine ecclesiological anxiety that threatens to paralyze them altogether.
Though I can’t quite quote it from memory, somewhere St. Basil mentions that if we stay silent when the faith is being attacked, we are basically accomplices to those who attack it. I’m not exactly sure what the “call to action” is here, but I know what it’s not, and it’s definitely not silence.
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