CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: ‘Many young people see the problems the UK and Europe are facing as symptoms of a wrong turning away from the spiritual beliefs’
The first young man said: ‘I feel this is where I need to be right now.’
For four weeks, he’s been meditating deeply about ‘surrender’ to Christ. ‘What’s happening in me feels very precious, like an inner transformation,’ he tells me. It’s as if ‘suddenly something makes sense, or dare I say, everything makes sense.’
I also met Bradley. Brought up as a Christian, he later drifted away from faith. But recently, prompted by unsettling events in the world and in his personal life, he sought a robust, uncompromising faith, and a way of worship with its roots in the very earliest years of Christian belief.
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He found a welcome in the multi-national congregation I attended one snowy morning recently. ‘It’s so peaceful,’ he tells me. ‘It makes me feel like I’m connected to the Almighty.’
I’d heard of a growing interest in Orthodoxy among young people - especially young men - in the UK and Ireland. The Highland Orthodox Community of Saint Columba is frequently contacted by people interested in exploring Orthodoxy. Intrigued, I visited St John’s Episcopal Church in Southside Road, Inverness, where the community gathers on Saturdays.
To Bradley, one of the most appealing aspects of Orthodoxy is that it isn’t ‘modern’: it hasn’t altered its beliefs over the years to conform to the expectations of a liberal society. It’s for people who, as he puts it, ‘don’t want modernity, who want to be traditional and not change’.
Many young people see the problems the UK and Europe are facing as symptoms of a wrong turning away from the spiritual beliefs which once shaped European culture. Like Bradley, they want to return to an authentic Christianity. They relish the challenges of Orthodoxy, the spiritual disciplines, the fasting. Above all, they value that sense of living connection with God.
The priest, Edinburgh-based Father Antonios Kakalis wore a robe patterned with clusters of grapes. A reminder that, as Jesus said, Christians are as intimately connected to him and dependent on him as are grapes to the nourishing vine.
The liturgy, though in English, is ancient and wonderful. Father Kakalis is accompanied by a trio of women chanting and singing, and at times the congregation join in. It is hauntingly beautiful, timeless. With the words an enveloping stillness descends, a nourishing mystery draws close.
Only full members of the Orthodox Church take part in the Eucharist, but at the end of the service everyone is invited to receive the bread which has been blessed. When I stand in front of him, Father Antonios, his face alive with welcome and with love, presses into my outstretched palm two sizable pieces of bread. For me, it symbolises the vastness of God’s gracious generosity.
