Withdrawal - It's a word we use too often to refer to the effects of someone who is under an evil influence, like drugs or alcohol or tobacco. But the word can and does apply to positive situations as well.
As this is being written, there is a high-definition speaker system above my head blaring rock music in Korean. I can't understand a word of it. And the strange thing is - it's almost as if it's not even there. The focus of the moment is not the loud music which surrounds, the odors of the food court in the airport, or even that western guy who seems angry at the poor Korean kid working at the Burger King because he can't understand "onion ring".....
No, what's important at the moment is the closure of being withdrawn from a "normal" spiritual life, from a week in which there is a rhythm, a schedule to which we pray, eat and fast, worship, and commune with God and with our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is this withdrawal to which this short tome refers, and from which this sinful priest will shortly be delivered (by God's grace) through His provision of a complex machine that moves through the air, His gift of skills to a crew of pilots and ground support, and His grace to have completed a work effort hopefully in concert with His expectations, but also hopefully in concert with the expectations of a secular employer and its customers.
Yes, the return is to a beloved wife, to children and grandchildren, and the reunion with them will be sweet indeed. But the return is also to a flock who is no less loved and cared for, to a building that we too often denigrate but remains yet another undeserved gift from God, to a job which provides support for all of these.
The more important return, though, is to Vespers, and Liturgy, and uninterrupted morning prayers, and Akathists, and visits to those in need.
For all of your prayers during this trip, for which I am unworthy, I offer humble thanks. Now, turn those same prayers to seeking God's will in the coming months for the mission of Saint Herman of Alaska in Hudson! Let us together seek God's will through our fervent prayers to Saint Herman and to the Theotokos!
Icon of the Last Judgment from an Orthodox Monastery in Kosovo
