Or rather, the challenges that one face in being Orthodox here in the Philippines. Since Orthodoxy is fairly new here, resources and material are hard to get by. The internet, thankfully, is there for research, but somehow it is still different if you have a real book in front of you. Books are hard to come by--bookstores have many books about the Catholic Church, about Protestantism. There are even books about Buddhism and some other, but sadly it is very rare to find books about the Orthodox Church here. There are online sites where one can buy books like Amazon, but then one needs credit card and of course, something to pay it. The Philippines isn't exactly an affluent nation, so most Orthodox here can't even order online, let alone have internet.
The same goes for material such as vessels used in Divine Liturgy, vestments, etc. Again, if one is Catholic there are practically many stores to go to. Ditto for Protestants. But for Orthodox clergy, it's either you have to order online, if one can afford it, or else have it made--again, if one can afford it.
The challenge of course gets compounded by the fact that most Filipinos either just have enough for their family, or not even much. When one goes to a community, the very first thing one has to look after isn't just the spiritual aspect, but as well the welfare of the people there. As the pastor, one looks after both the spiritual and the needs of the people.
Going beyond that though is introducing the Orthodox Church itself. It is new to most people. I will take a moment here to say that most Filipinos are not aware of their Eastern brethren, be it Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, or Eastern Catholic. Eastern Christianity is foreign to many Filipinos. Their used to Western Christianity, from the Latin rite of the Catholics to the various forms of Protestantism. So Eastern Orthodox clergy dressed in black rassa would somewhat be new to them. More so since the Vatican has given an indult to Catholic clergy here to wear white cassock and white clerical shirt; hardly any Filipino now know that Catholic clergy also wear black and that in other countries Catholic clergy wear black (or else the color used of their religious order for their habit).
All of these challenges make for one interesting mission, and at the end of the day, even with these challenges, one thank God for these, as challenges are an opportunity to present the Orthodox Faith in a more vivid way. Being different isn't bad, and in fact it can be good as it can be a good focal point for introducing the Faith to people, though it can be a challenge in itself to explain about why we Orthodox do such and such.
I will go into why this is so in my next post, but perhaps it might help to know that Filipinos can easily be taken in to strange beliefs. It has much to do with the average Filipino's rather lack of knowledge about Church history, for one thing. This in turn leads to them being taken in to strange beliefs, since they have little inkling as to what has been actually handed down by the Early Church Fathers to us.
But that is for a later topic. These challenges I have said here is just to make one understand what the Orthodox face here in the Philippines. We face the challenge, above all, of overcoming the ignorance of many Filipinos about his own Christian faith--from the history of Christianity, to what the early Fathers believed in. Again, it is something we Orthodox can shed a light to, done of course to lead them towards the Truth which our Lord has said we should guide men towards.
