“I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to My name, and you did not deny your faith in Me” (Revelation 2:13)
The world led by the media seems to assume that the Middle East is a land where only Muslims abide, except for Israel. We easily forget that many Christians, especially a multitude of Orthodox Christians, survive there despite the ongoing persecution inflicted upon them, and the multiple attempts to drive them out of their homelands. Recently an article appeared in the press by an Armenian Orthodox Christian woman describing what it is like to live in Iran surrounded by Muslims, many now having aligned themselves with the fanatics. Yet she is filled with hope, faith, optimism and even humor. She writes: “We have a little hole here, but we’re very good at filling it with happiness.” Can you imagine this statement without the gift of the Holy Spirit? Is it not an indictment of those who have everything western society provides, yet have no joy in their hearts? She asks for nothing. She personifies the blessings of Christ’s beatitudes: The poor in spirit, the meek and the merciful, those starving for justice and receiving nothing like it, and all the rest. What is her secret? How do those like her endure the ongoing oppression and suppression of their rights? How can they go on day after day knowing each morning that the day will end like the last did, with no chance for a political change that would benefit their status? And yet they go on expecting nothing, receiving nothing, and praising the Lord for everything.
This was the way of the early church before the time of Constantine the Great. Here is how many today in the Balkans have repeated the past. Serbs in their native land of Kosovo, Greeks in Istanbul, Copts in their own traditional homeland of Egypt—all bear and endure the political situation and thank God for the opportunity to give Him glory.
We sing of the first immigration of Slavs to America, scraping together what little they could salvage from their meager earnings from the mines or mills to erect a church like that they had left behind, then petitioning for a pastor. Consider the dramatic transformation of life style for those driven out of Russia by the Bolsheviks, barely able to survive in the “Lagers” of western Europe, then finding ways to praise the Almighty despite the conditions of life among strangers.
Dare we not recall those left to survive the brutal treatment of life under godless Communism in Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and elsewhere? Consider their prayers: “We have no hope but you, blessed Mother of God—” they sang to the Holy Theotokos, knowing that she would identify with their plight and save them by her prayers, together with those of the saints, the angels and of course Jesus Christ Himself.
How indeed do we define happiness? Let’s start our quest by passing silently past the superficial and banal. More than warm clothes, full stomachs, access to entertainment and other such creature pleasures, beyond first love, the thrill of bonding with those we are sure we had fallen in love, we turn the corner of pride in achievement, job satisfaction, security and respect of peers. Leaving those things behind, let us see if we have the experience of abandonment, suffering, persecution, alienation from society, life without the possibility of much more than daily dealings with mere existence—in a word, all that those above had endured willingly, gladly, faithfully, in order to survive and to thank the blessed loving Lord for the opportunity to go on enduring through and beyond whatever comes, just to praise God in the Orthodox way in this world and into the next.