A Time of Silence about the Mystery

St John the Theologian in Silence
Village of Vladimir, 18th Century
source

Well, they tell me some of the radio stations have already started playing Christmas music. It seems like everyone I know loves to complain about this. I mean really across the spectrum of ideologies and denominations, people love to complain about this. My secular friends and former coworkers sigh derisively and roll their eyes at the sound of “Silver Bells” in November, saying, "It's not even Thanksgiving yet!" Meanwhile, our Roman Catholic friends complain, "It's not even Advent yet!"

Of course, to us, that sounds a little odd because, well, it is. Our Nativity Fast began on November 15th after the feast of Saint Philip. Our altar covers are already red. The secular and commercial world has nothing on us when it comes to getting ready early.

But the way and the spirit with which we prepare to welcome the Lord and to celebrate his birth in a cave in Bethlehem is very different. Or, it ought to be. How ought we to prepare?

It is interesting to compare our Byzantine approach to this season with the approaches taken by the world and even by the other Churches.

It may surprise some to learn that our lectionary has no readings particularly associated with the coming feast of the Nativity - until the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, which, at the earliest, can fall on December 11th. This year, it falls on December 17th - its latest possible date. (By the way, it is traditional to intensify our fasting around this time - either on December 10th or December 20th). So, there's always about a full month of the Nativity Fast - and that's the majority of the fast - during which our lectionary makes no direct mention of the Nativity.

There are some liturgical changes that occur. For example, starting on November 21st, we sing the katavasiai from the Canon of the Birth of the Lord at Matins. There are also throughout this season occasional Days of Alleluia. These are particularly penitential days during which the Divine Liturgy may not be celebrated and the other services become longer and more penitential, with prostrations, the beautiful and convicting Prayer of Saint Ephrem, and other features you would expect, actually, from a liturgical service during the Great Fast.

Also, of course, in addition to these increased prayers, we are to be actually fasting - each of us to the extent that we are able - and we are to renew and intensify our practice of almsgiving - of sacrificial giving to those in need, to the poor, and to the real needs of the Church.

But, despite all of these changes to our way of prayer and life during the Nativity fast, our lectionary, as I say, makes no direct mention of the particular reason we are doing this in this season. The changes that do occur in our liturgical life often make it look more like Lent than Advent.

Now, some perceive this as a deficiency in need of correction. And maybe people do need more explicit reminders of what this season is all about. Perhaps to help with this, our own Eparchy's Archpriest David Petras has written a book of meditations for the Nativity fast, which I look forward to reading, but it draws on the lectionary of the Maronite Church for inspiration because, as I say, the Byzantine lectionary is silent at this time.

On the other hand, it's not so silent as it used to be, because now we celebrate beautiful services like the Emmanuel Moleben during the Nativity fast, which includes readings chosen for their relevance to the coming Nativity of the Lord. However, it should be known and remembered that this is no ancient Byzantine service. Its form and its original texts are the work of the Right Reverend Mitered Archpriest Conrad Dachuk, who just recently celebrated his 40th year of priesthood in the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Toronto. So, we have a great Byzantine hymnographer here in the West and among the living. Our tradition is not dead nor static. There is room for new prayers.

But before we go too far in filling up all of the absences we perceive in this fasting season, let’s pause for a moment and considered whether or not the silence itself might be meaningful for us. Perhaps it's only an accident of history that the Feast of Christmas developed first in the West and so other Churches have more to say about it. Or, perhaps, as I say, our silence is meaningful. But what could it mean?

Well, our understanding of the mystery of Christ grows better in the silence than in the noise. The noise of “Jingle Bells” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” is one thing - seemingly bent precisely on distracting us - but even the sacred sound of hymnody and holy words do not teach us what silence does. The mystery of Christ - his incarnation and his birth - is so great that one wonders whether every word we speak about it draws us nearer to it or moves us further from it. So perhaps a time of silence - a fast from words about the mystery - joined with quiet contemplation of that mystery - would do us good. It could help to empty us.

This is a fast - and a fast empties our bellies.

This is a time of almsgiving, which empties our wallets.

And this is a time of prayer - without so many words about the very inspiration for our fasting and our almsgiving and our praying - the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps this kind of prayer could help empty our hearts of earthly cares so that they may receive the king of all.

Fr. Jack Custer says that this is a "period of fasting by which we prepare an empty place for God to fill with joy, and by which we cleanse our lives of sin and selfishness so as to welcome our Savior." This kind of holy emptiness creates in us a receptivity to the Lord that we lack when we are overfull with food and possessions and self-satisfaction, like the rich man in today's parable, who pulls down his barns to build larger ones and there store all his grain and his goods (Luke 12:18).

It is especially in this season of the year with its pre-emptive holiday parties and rampant consumerism that we - especially those of us who are rich - are tempted to say to our soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry" (Luke 12:19). Let us remember that at any moment God may say to us, as he does to the rich man, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20).

When the Lord comes to us, as he comes to the world in his Nativity, may he find us hungry, empty, and yearning for him rather than satisfied, full, and taking thought of no one but ourselves and our own families. Then, he will be the one to satisfy us eternally. 

Instead of stuffing ourselves full with rich foods and stuffing our barns full with needless possessions, let us empty ourselves and our barns by fasting and almsgiving. And with the help of prayer, let us become rich in the things of God, rather than the things of the world, whatever avarice the worldly celebration of the holidays may seem to justify.

Instead of laying up treasure for ourselves, let us be rich toward God (Luke 12:21). Let us be rich in what matters to God. The Lord requires of us only to do right, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). The way is simple, really, though at times difficult. Now is the time to simplify our lives not complexify them, whatever the world may say.

Brothers and sisters, we are going to die.

As a new priest, I’m getting the opportunity to reflect often upon those who have died, because it is customarily the most junior priest who celebrates the Πρόθεσις or Προσκομιδή. This is a liturgy of preparation before the Divine Liturgy, during which the priest prepares the bread and wine to be offered for the Eucharist. The priest places particles on the diskos for the Theotokos and all the saints – who have died – and also particles for those among the living and among the dead for whom he wishes to pray. So it is, among many other things, an opportunity to remember death and those who have died.

Death also often comes to mind in this season of dying leaves and shortening days with sunsets coming earlier each evening.

On Tuesday, I attended the funeral of my grandfather-in-law. So lately, I remember him among the departed during the Πρόθεσις. He had a long and full life, 92 years, four children, seven grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. But there are others who were not so old. One was a classmate in his twenties. Another was a teenage girl. We know not the hour. Many of us – probably most of us – have been close to someone who has died. So we can sympathize with the mourners in today's Gospel. 

The 12-year-old daughter of Jairus was young, but she was dying and, while Jesus was occupied with the healing of another woman, she did die. A man from Jairus's house came and said, "Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore." The mourners gathered swiftly. Already by the time that Jesus reached the house, there were many there weeping and bewailing her.

Death can have this kind of effect on us. I remember getting the news that a friend of mine had died by text message over a year ago and I immediately fell to the ground. Sometimes there's an automatic physical response like that to grief. Sometimes there's not. There's no right or wrong way to feel when we hear that someone has died.

Death is a mystery. We think we know something about it but today our Lord shows us that even what we think we know we don't know, actually. One thing we think we know is that there's no point intervening anymore after a person has died. As the man said, "Your daughter is dead – do not trouble the teacher anymore." As if being dead meant that the Lord wasn't going to have something to say or do about it. I mean, that kinda makes sense to us. It's how we operate. Even if we don't admit it, we have a real tendency to think of death as the period at the end of the sentence – that beyond which there is nothing more to say – or that beyond which point there’s nothing we can do. That's how the mourners feel. 

They know that the girl is dead. These people know what death looks like – they were not so insulated from death as we are – and the gospel doesn't say that the people think the girl is dead but that they know she is dead. But then Jesus comes and says that the girl is not dead, but only sleeping. So they laugh at him. Doesn’t Jesus know the difference between sleep and death?

Well, Jesus knows the way things really are, well beyond the understanding available to those of a worldly mind. Remember, he is the God who calls the things that are not as though they are – who calls into existence the things that did not exist – who gives life to the dead (Rom 4:17). So, when Jesus says the dead are sleeping, he need only wake them up. And when someone has died and there remains no more hope, we can hope against hope because we have such a God as this – a God for whom death is equivalent to sleep (Rom 4:18).

So the Lord does just this. He takes the girl by the hand and wakes her up, calling to her, "Child, arise!” This girl was not sleeping in the usual sense. It’s not that her relatives foolishly mistook sleep for death, but that she really did die and that the Lord was prepared to call her death sleep – to call a thing that was not as though it was and thus to make it so. 

Remember that he is the word of God through whom all things are made. We know the girl is dead because the gospel says that when Jesus called her to arise, her spirit returned to her and she got up at once. Now, death is the unnatural separation of the spirit from the body. James says, “The body without the spirit is dead” (2:26). So, if her spirit had left her, such that it could return when Jesus calls, she had indeed died.

Death is a mystery – but something of it has been revealed to us. Our Lord has not left us entirely in the dark about death. Remember, Jesus Christ himself has experienced death and risen up from it. He knows about death in his omniscience as God and he knows about death experientially as a human in the only way that a human could know about such a thing – he himself has died. Also, the Holy Spirit reveals to us some facets of the mystery of death through the divinely-inspired scripture, all of which is God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16).

It is clear to us from scripture and the witness of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, that death is not annihilation. Atheists will say that what we are after death is just the same as what we are before conception – nothing. But the Lord through the scripture makes it clear that we are everlasting creatures. We begin but we do not end, regardless of whatever we may think, say, or do.

Much of what scripture reveals to us about death is that it can be compared to sleep, rather than annhilation. Already in the Old Testament, it was revealed to Daniel that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2). And listen to what Paul says to the Thessalonians, as we read at every funeral:

“We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep” (1Th 4:13-15).

Paul will often use the terms death and sleep interchangeably, as does Jesus when referring to the death of his friend Lazarus. Death can be compared to sleep mostly because every time we go to sleep we wake up again. And in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it becomes clear that we can say the same thing about death: we die, but we wake up again.

Yet, this metaphor of death as sleep can be misunderstood and taken too far. For example, death is not unconsciousness in the way that sleep is. It is not annihilation, and it is not unconsciousness either. The week before last, we heard the story of the rich man and Lazarus, who die and have two very different experiences, which make it clear that those who have died are not experiencing unconsciousness but are aware of what's going on – among the living as well as among the dead – and are able to communicate. Notice that Abraham speaks about Moses and the Prophets – people who were born and lived and died long after Abraham had died – making it clear that Abraham has been aware of goings-on among the living all along since his death.

Speaking of Moses, the consciousness of those who have died is apparent also from the fact that, at the Transfiguration of Christ, Moses is seen talking with Jesus (Luke 9). Now, the unconscious would not be able to carry on such a meaningful conversation about what Jesus was to do in Jerusalem. So, the dead are not asleep in the sense of being unconscious, but asleep in the sense of waiting to wake up.

We are going to die, but having died we will one day hear, as did the daughter of Jairus, “Child, arise!”