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Written by Fr. Christopher Metropulos
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One
of my favorite Broadway plays is "Fiddler on the Roof." I can relate to Tevye
as he sings the show's trademark song, "Tradition." But, are all traditions of
equal importance? Is there Big T Tradition, binding on all, and little t
tradition, simply a remembrance of "how we do things"?
Yes, I do believe there is. There are some Traditions in the faith of 20
centuries that cross language, cultural and even time barriers. These
Traditions of the faith are what St. Paul
talks about when he wrote to the Thessalonians to "hold the traditions which ye
have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." (2 Thessalonians 2:15)
But
there are also small "t" traditions we shouldn't be too quick to abandon. These
traditions are sometimes based on local superstitions, to be sure, but there
are other local traditions that preserve for us a mindset, a way of living,
that draw us to the simple, but profound connections to our brothers and
sisters who have gone before us.
Traditions both provide for us, and protect us.
Tradition provides for us in giving us continuity with the faith as it has been
held and lived for 20 centuries. Our modern Christian expressions suffer from
what I call "historical amnesia." Because many Christians today are ignorant of
the history of the Faith, of our Christian doctrine and worship, they tend to
keep repeating the mistakes of the past. Ignorance of the Church's Traditions
exacts a high price as modern believers suffer without the maturing influence of
the ancient wisdom of the Church in shaping their lives and warding off bad
theology.
Tradition protects us from disunity, shown so vividly in the over 25,000
different Christian denominations we have today. A lack of continuity with the
Traditions of the Church of the ages produces a consumer mentality for the
faith and reduces Church and Worship to a commodity to be tailored to the
consumer demands of the day. In the end, Continuity insures a mature faith to
pass on to the next generation.
Tradition fosters communion between the members of the body of Christ. It is in
living the common life of the believer, in sharing events, feasts, fasts,
prayers, worship, and ultimately the Eucharist, that the Christian community
holds a common point of reference, a familiar way of life, which binds us to
one another. Without this common bond of belief and experience, we are tempted
to allow "every man to do what is right in his own eyes." But with this common
life, this shared experience of the Christian faith, we find our individual
lives challenged and enriched in ways we may have never thought about on our
own.
Tradition protects us from hyper-individualism.
The danger when this common life, this communion, is missing is that we
are tempted to reduce the Christian faith to simple individual interpretations.
This does not serve to increase the unity of the believers but actually weakens
the unified testimony of the Christian Church. We can see this in our own day.
In losing this common way of experiencing the faith and living the faith, we
have lost the God-given witness of the ages that would shape and mature us into
the Body of Christ. This present day poverty only feeds the shallow religious
experience of our day.
To be sure, there is also a danger that any tradition can become empty or even
evil superstition. Any truth can be
emptied of its meaning by our lack of faithfulness in holding to the wisdom and
discipline that give power and authority, but that isn't the fault of
tradition. That is the fault of our tendency to let the wisdom of the past slip
into shallow superstition.
Let us commit ourselves to holding "the traditions we were taught by word or by
letter," as St. Paul
encourages, and let us keep alive the vibrant Christian life these precious
Traditions of the faith preserve for us.
Fr. Christopher Metropulos
is founder, host, and executive director of the Orthodox Christian Network
(OCN) and the Come
Receive The Light national Orthodox Christian radio program (www.myocn.net). He is
pastor of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Fort
Lauderdale, Florida,
where he and his wife Georgia are raising their six children.
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