“Daily Lives” had an interesting commemoration for today that wasn’t on the OCA Website: it’s the consecration of the Church of the Resurrection in the Holy City:

Emperor Constantine and his mother Helen built this church and had it consecrated in the year 336. However, the Persians set fire to it and destroyed it in 614. Twelve years later, Abbot Modestus, who would later be patriarch of Jerusalem, rebuilt it. In 934 the Saracens set fire to part of the church of Pascha, and again thirty-five years later, the Moslems set fire to the dome, stole all of the sacred objects within, and burned the patriarch of Jerusalem in the flames. Then in 1010, the Moslems destroyed the church down to its foundation. Eighteen years later, Emperor Argyrus of Constantinople began construction of a more modest version of the original, which was completed in 1048. Fifty-one years later, the Crusaders stormed Jerusalem and ruled for 88 years, but the church has remained intact since its last reconstruction.

Man, only we Orthodox could commemorate a 1600+-year-old church that’s been completely trashed six times. Of course, we’re not giving it a special day because it’s been so ill-treated. We’re giving it a special day because it’s still standing.

This kind of thing reminds me of the surprise I had when I first started delving into the history of the Orthodox Church.

I was looking for a lot of heroic rescues from the brink of disaster, a lot of near-misses that indicated that God wouldn’t let us “dash our foot against a stone” and explain how the Ancient Church survived intact to the present day.

Instead, I got a recurring theme of destruction, conquest, failure, with the Orthodox Church on the losing side every time. From the Mongols to the Saracens to the Persians to the Turks to the Crusaders to the Communists, the Orthodox Church seems like it just can’t catch a break.

As I read through these disasters, my ideas were challenged, and finally they were just plain dumped into an ashcan. But in their absence, a kind of wonder grew that has had a lot more power for me. Here’s the Orthodox Church — beaten, suffocated, humiliated, trampled, robbed, put to the torch, left for dead countless times — but like the (very aptly named) Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, it’s still here. What in the world could sustain something that should have died over and over and over? What but the grace of God, the truth of Jesus Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit could have kept something alive that had been deprived of everything that gives life to an organization or religion?

It would seem like a miracle to worship in the Church of the Resurrection. In actuality, it’s a miracle to worship in any Orthodox Church, from the humblest mission to the grandest cathedral. I hope we appreciate it. Failing to do so — and to give God glory and thanks for it — may be the only things that could really finish off a church.