Proper Behavior in Church

Luke Mihaly  May 25 2009 12:00:14 AM

 When Christ began His public ministry His message was simple: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This simple message is also what should guide our behavior in church.  Repentance should be the background upon which we paint our every liturgical and spiritual experience with God.  Repentance means more than just being sorry for our sins.   It is more than just a recognition of what is wrong in our lvies, it more than just being sorry for what we have done.Repentance means even more than a trying to avoid evil in our lives like some debris that lies in the road ahead of us.  Repentance means a recognition that the road upon which we are traveling is heading away from God.  Repentance is the act of actually exiting the road and turning our lives back in God's direction.    Repentance implies recognition, sorrow and movement away from sin and back towards God.

Fr. Stephanos K. Anagnostopoulos in his book, "Experiences During the Divine Liturgy" (Pirraeus, 2008) says "First and foremost, we need to have repentance, sorrow and awareness of our sinfulness." (pg. 27)  Repentance is an internal disposition that allows us to see the obstacles that we have placed in our lives which keep us from drawing close to God.  These obstacles prevent us from hearing God and learning to recognize His voice amidst the cacophony of noise that surrounds us everyday.  Repentance allows us to properly identify our sins so that with God's grace we can direct our lives back towards God.  It is not a matter of simply removing the obstacle, but a humble admission that we are traveling in the wrong direction.  Repentance allows us to to admit we are going in the wrong direction.  Without repentance, at best we replace one obstacle with another one; at worst, we end up stacking more and more things into our lives until we have built a strong barricade between us and God.  

Repentance also has the affect of turning our attention inward towards ourselves rather than on the people and things around us.  Repentance forces us to see our responsibility in our relationship with God.  If we are truly repentant, we see our culpability rather than looking outside ourselves for blame.  Fr. Anagnostopoulos writes, "Thus, we shall not pay attention to the person standing next to us, in terms of what they are wearing, how they are behaving, not even if they are crying, sighing, kneeling, making the sign of the Cross ten or fifty times.  We shall only pay attention to what we are doing." (pg. 27).  It is this focus on the consequences of our sinfulness that turns our attention away from what others are doing, or wearing or saying.  Inattentiveness to our interior state is a symptom of a lack of repetnance.    

Proper Church behavior begins first of all with us, not the person next to us.  And once there, we must begin to delve inside ourselves with a true spirit of repentance.  It is a conscious recognition of our sins and the spiritual descent into our heart to reorient our life back towards God and not merely the plucking out of those things that are in our way. We have to first be sure we are on the right Way.  It is a recognition of our unworthiness before God and an acceptance of God's unconditional love for us as we strive to cooperate with God's grace on the road to salvation.  We need to be more interested and concerned about the interior disposition of our heart; clergy and laity alike.   This spirit of repentance must permeate our presence in church so that it can begin to affect our daily lives.  

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