Blog of the Dormition

Blessed are those like Christ

2012-01-28T00:00:00.019-05:00

In his hymn, “On the birth of our Lord,” the thirty-first of the Hymns of Virginity, St. Ephrem the Syrian, whose feast is today, employs many images to describe poetically the one who surpasses our everyday speech. He describes Christ as atoning Hyssop, Libation, and Lamb (str. 4-5). Christ is the Priest and the Sacrifice (str. 5). He is the Treasurer and the Treasure (str. 2, 7). He is Fountain, Instruction, Remembrance, Trust, Rock, Curdled Milk, and Justifying Wall (str. 7-8). He is the Gate and the Yoke (str. 9, 11). He is represented by the Eucharistic images of the Grape-Cluster of mercy and the Ear of Wheat (str. 13-14). He is the Furnace, the Mirror, and the skilled Sailor (str. 10, 12, 15). It would be easily possible to multiply images of Christ endlessly, and Ephrem has begun to try. “Christ [is]… above every name that is named” (Eph 1:20-21). No single poetic image, however profound, can ever completely contain or express the inexhaustible mystery of Christ. The use of many, therefore, benefits the attempt to grow in understanding.

Icon of St. Ephrem writing

Each of Ephrem’s images of Christ has in common a salvific character. Characteristically, in this hymn, he presents an image of Christ at the beginning of each strophe and ends each strophe with the exclamation, “Blessed is…” the one who benefits in the way particularly emphasized by this particular image. In other words, blessed is the one whom Christ saves or blessed is the one who becomes more like Christ. Many of these images emphasize Christ’s redemptive and atoning role. Others, three in particular, especially struck me and seem to emphasize theosis – becoming like Christ – as the means of salvation. These are the Furnace, the Mirror, and the Sailor (str. 10, 12, 15).

Ephrem uses the image of the “reproving Furnace that does not accept on face value – that investigated and tested and distinguished between the people and the peoples” (str. 10) to represent Christ the Judge. Interestingly, the “furnace of fire, [where] men will weep and gnash their teeth” (Matt 13:42) may inspire this image. If this is the case, Ephrem sees the fire of hell as the presence of Christ to those who reject him, rather than as the absence of Christ. At any rate, fire is a good judge of the quality of material – a cleansing fire burns away impurities from metal, for example, leaving only what is pure – and so is a fitting image of the Judge between “the deceit of the people” and “the truth of the peoples” (str. 10). Ultimately, Ephrem ends this strophe: “Blessed is he who becomes his own judge and in you reproves himself!” (str. 10). Here is the first example of theosis in this hymn. As Christ is the Judge, we are to become our own judges. Rather than being reproved by Christ and being cast into the “furnace of fire” (Matt 13:42), we ought to reprove ourselves – purify ourselves as with a cleansing fire, burning away any vices within our hearts. In this way can we be saved: by becoming like Christ.

The mirror, perhaps most explicitly of these images, exemplifies theosis as a model of salvation. Christ is the “clear Mirror that was set up for the peoples!” (str. 12). Looking in this Mirror, we see our “own detestableness” as compared to the “beauty” of the Mirror (Christ) and (hopefully) “reproach” ourselves (str. 12). “Blessed is he who reproaches his detestableness in your beauty and imprints your image on himself!” (str. 12). To imprint the image of Christ, the image of God, upon ourselves is a clear reference to becoming like Christ, even one with Him according to grace. The clear Mirror is the clearest example of theosis in this hymn.

When one considers the numerous scriptural references to the sea and Christ’s mastery over it, it is easy to see how Ephrem could call Christ the “skilled Sailor, who has conquered the troubled sea” (str. 15). The image of the skilled Sailor seems inspired most explicitly by Christ’s calming of the sea (cf. Matt 8:23-27). Implicitly, his other encounters with the sea also inspire this image: his walking on the water (cf. Matt 14: 22-33), his preaching from the boat, and his causing Peter to yield a great catch of fish (cf. Luke 5:1-7). Even in the first creation narrative of Genesis, “the waters that were gathered together he called Seas” (Gen 1:10). It is by Christ the Word that God created the seas, and all things. He called the waters the seas. In Genesis, naming a thing expresses dominion over that thing. Christ, Pantocrator, has dominion over the seas, and all things. He is truly the skilled Sailor. Each of these scriptural passages demonstrate Christ’s mastery of water and by extension his mastery over all elements and all things, which reveals his divinity. “Even winds and sea obey him” (Matt 8:27).

Ephrem continues to develop this image: “Your illustrious cross came; it became the rudder of life. Your wind of mercy blew, it steered the ships away from the troubled sea to the harbor of peace” (str. 15). The image of the cross as “the rudder of life” recalls Christ’s injunctions that we take up our cross and follow him (cf. Mark 8:34-35). If we would rise with Christ, we must die with him. To steer the ships of our lives through the tumultuous sea of the world into the harbor of everlasting life, it is necessary to use our cross as the “rudder of life.” Only by accepting the difficulties of life courageously will we successfully steer our course true.

Ss. John of Damascus and Ephrem the Syrian are depicted here together under St. George on this fragment of a 14th century triptych, currently in Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai.

Ephrem ends this strophe characteristically: “Blessed is he who becomes his own sailor and keeps and brings out his treasure!” (str. 15). Here is another example of theosis in this hymn. If Christ is the skilled Sailor, blessed is the one who becomes a sailor. Blessed is the one who becomes like Christ. If Christ’s cross is “the rudder of life,” our crosses must become the rudders of our lives. The individual must reflect the archetype of Christ – must become one with Christ – if he or she is to enter into the eternal life in Christ.

One could go on forever meditating upon even these few images of Christ presented for us by St. Ephrem the Syrian. God “fills all in all” (Eph 1:23) and “may be everything to every one” (1Cor 15:28). In Christ, he has become describable, as St. John of Damascus wrote in his work On the Divine Images. These images testify to his describability, much as do the icons John was defending. They are, in a sense, poetic icons of Christ that show us the possibility of becoming one with him.

Some thoughts on Job

2011-10-14T13:29:00.002-04:00

The Book of Job does not allow any disparagement of Job’s innocence. As Wisdom scholar Roland Murphy points out, “Job’s innocence is assured by divine pronouncement.” All attempts by his friends fail to place any blame on him for the agonies he suffers. The Lord turns against him “without cause” (Job 2:3). Job, while being unique and even rather inhuman in the perfect blamelessness attributed to him from the beginning of the text (1:1), is remarkably human in his insatiable, unanswerable demand to know why he is crushed “without cause” (9:17).

I do not think this demand of his lessens his uprightness. It seems to me that it is good to struggle with God and that Job’s very struggle with God is a part of his righteousness. His struggle with God makes him an Israelite in heart if not by birth (see “יִשְׂרָאֵל, Israel” in Gen 32:28).

To justify and circumlocute the agonies of human life rather than crying out with them to God is the business of Job’s friends, who “never speak to God,” but only about God (Murphy 38, emphasis mine). What is more, what they say about God is not right, says the Lord (42:7). Contrariwise, Job continually speaks to God, complains to God, challenges God, accuses God. Throughout all, he sincerely and honestly maintains relationship with God, however turbulent, regardless of what God has let happen. There is no fault in Job.

Human suffering is a mystery that “humans do not have the wisdom to solve” and that God does not solve for us even when he at last replies to Job’s entreaties (Murphy 41-42, Job 38). It seems to me that the wisdom of Job is to fear the Lord in all eventualities and to maintain relationship with God unconditionally, even and especially when we do not understand.

The scene in the following video clip from The Apostle (starring Robert Duvall) is a good illustration, I believe, of relating to God from within our inexplicable suffering.

Encouraging Children

2011-08-13T13:46:00.004-04:00

The Proverbial Rod of Discipline

My mother raised me with the proverbial rod of discipline. What I mean is that my behavior while I was growing up frequently merited corporal correction from my mother. She used a wooden paddle. Upon this paddle, which has now passed to me, is carved the following: “Prov. 22:15.” So, when I say she raised me with the proverbial rod of discipline, I mean that she raised me the proverbial rod of discipline. I did not know at the time the words of this verse, but I knew what it meant. Because of my mother’s just, moderate, loving, and even-tempered use of this paddle, its message was not lost on me. I knew paddling not as an act of angry violence, but as a response to behavior that I myself knew to be foolish. I knew better was expected of me than I had provided.

Proverbs 22:15 – “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” – helped me in the path away from folly and toward virtue even before I knew its words. I still think it is an important verse and that many in the modern age dismiss it too quickly, but it is not this Old Testament verse I want to focus on at the moment. Rather, I want to look at a New Testament verse that provides an important balance to the more numerous passages of Scripture that encourage the discipline of children, Colossians 3:21: “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”

This verse often comes into my mind when I find myself being too hard or harsh with my children, or when I set my expectations too high. It is an important reminder that the role of the parent is primarily one of encouragement, rather than force. I can force my children to memorize information and I can force my children to behave properly – to a limited degree – but it is more important to help form my children into people who freely choose a life of virtue and faith.

First page from the first edition of Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky, November 1880.

The most important way to help form my children into Christians is by example. First, I must be a good Christian myself, so that my children will know what a good Christian is like. The lawyer Fetyukovitch, in The Brothers Karamozov, puts the matter well (even if he is in the midst of defending parricide):

I cry aloud to all fathers: 'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.' Yes, let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise, we are not fathers, but enemies of our children.

This interpretation of Col 3:21 is a stark reminder that to be a good and loving father, I must first be a good and loving Christian. I must love my children the way that Christ does – unconditionally and self-sacrificially. Patience with their foibles is only a beginning. I must first love and seek to please the Lord.

In his commentary on this verse, St. John Chrysostom points out that love for our children is implicit and assumed. He writes, “He said not, ‘Love your children,’ for it had been superfluous, seeing that nature itself constrains to this.” I would certainly agree with Chrysostom that love and concern for my children comes by nature. Even I, who am evil, know how to give good things to my children (cf. Matt 7:11). Something beyond this is required.

Namely, I must seek to do for my children that which pleases the Lord. This is a theme of the passage from Colossians on the Christian household. Paul (or the Pauline author) reiterates this many times in a short space. “Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (3:17). Behave “as is fitting in the Lord” (3:18). Do what “pleases the Lord” (3:20). Act “fearing the Lord” and “serving the Lord and not men” (3:22-23). It is in this context of living in the Lord that I, as a father, am to neither provoke my children nor discourage them. I am to make my household also the home of Christ, where my children can get to know Him.

After encouraging my children with a good example of Christian life, I must also bring Christ into our home is by His teaching. The passage in Colossians states, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” (3:16). So teaching one another in the way of the Lord and in virtue is also an important part of the Christian household. After affirming this, Paul immediately points out a means of teaching: “Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (3:16). So, he encourages the prayerful use of Scripture and hymns in the home. In our home, we follow this injunction literally, singing psalms and hymns as a family every night (though my little children participate only by listening at this point). My mother’s paddle comes to mind again as another interesting use of Scripture in the home. As a family, we must allow the precepts of Scripture to teach and guide our behavior.

Icon of John Chrysostom
in Veljusa Monastery, Macedonia
XI - XIV c.

Scripture admonishes us to practice virtuous and moderate behavior. It teaches me as a father both to discipline my children and to avoid excessive punishments or demands. Chrysostom, in his commentary on Colossians 3:21, gives an example of this moderation toward children, writing, “Make them not more contentious, there are occasions when you ought even to give way.” In other words, because I have the authority of God over my children, I must wield that authority as He would. The verse immediately prior tells children to “obey [their] parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” (Col 3:20). For this obedience to truly please the Lord, I, as a father, must not be stubborn, demanding, and rigid, but merciful, magnanimous, and yielding. I must not be over-yielding or over-indulgent either, but just, balanced, moderate, and even-tempered.

St. Paul

2011-06-29T00:00:00.039-04:00

Saint Paul
6th century Byzantine
ivory relief
(Musée de Cluny)

Today being the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul and I having recently finished a semester studying Paul, I thought I would share some of my reflections on this great and infuriating figure of Christian history. His power to unite and divide remains strong even after the passing of nearly two thousand years. Just last month, a friend shared with me that he wouldn’t mind at all if the Church tossed out all his epistles and he never had to listen to one again. Well. That’s not going to happen.

My image of Paul has shifted considerably over the years. Perhaps fittingly enough, my introduction to Paul’s writings was in the context of religious contention between a Protestant mother and a Roman Catholic father. Paul was my father's confirmation name and my mother's inspiration. Raised between these divergent perspectives, somehow I ended up initially with a mostly Protestant lens on his writings. Paul always sounded like a sola fide Protestant to me, and having embraced a rather polemical form of Roman Catholicism at the time, I consequently did not like him. I found him bristly and rankling to my doctrinal sensibilities. Mainly, I thought his statements about people being justified by faith and not by works (e.g. Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16) conflicted with certain opinions I held radically to the contrary, e.g. that people are justified by faith and works. I preferred the discussion of faith and works in James 2, and found it a comforting counterpoint to Paul, even interpreting it as anti-Pauline. Once, my anti-Pauline fervor rose to such a pitch that I found it necessary to confess the sin of sacrilege against Paul to a priest, who responded, “that’s one I’ve never heard before.” All this is to say, Paul and I have a history. We have had words. I usually directed all this bile against his ideas – as I poorly understood them – and not against his person, but there was never anything “warm and fuzzy” about the image I held of Paul. I remained mostly ignorant about the life of Paul, as opposed to some of his ideas, until comparatively recently.

Now having read – academically, devotionally, and liturgically – all of Paul’s epistles, my image of Paul has evolved considerably both doctrinally and personally. I have come to love him. What I love most among his writings is his emphasis on love in 1 Cor 13. I have discovered also that this passage serves as a good examination of conscience

I now see Paul as a broken and magnificent creature, turned from his own intentions and understandings and taken over by Christ Jesus (cf. Phil 3:12) to establish his kingdom. Rather like a mule in the hands of a skilled trainer, he was stubborn and powerful, but also lowly – “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:19) – and obedient to his master. Raymond Brown, in his Introduction to the New Testament, gives an image that particularly struck me:

Here was a Jew with a knapsack on his back who hoped to challenge all [the grandeur and power of Greco-Roman culture] in the name of a crucified criminal before whom, he proclaimed, every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth had to bend.

Paul was a wise man, an educated man, an intelligent man, made to speak like a fool (cf. 2 Cor 11:21) for the Christ’s sake. Here is one trembling in awe before his crucified former enemy who comes before him as his God and trembling not at all before any other. He is fearless and resolute at times, but not immutable, ever. He is entirely, beautifully, infuriatingly human. He entirely, beautifully, wholly belongs to God and to God’s Son Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

I am now overwhelmed with gratitude to Paul and his spreading of the gospel to us Gentiles. Paul gave us Jesus. Or else, Jesus gave us himself through Paul.

St. Paul, pray for me , a sinner.

There is One

2011-06-10T15:01:00.001-04:00

St. Paul. From the Acts of the Apostles
printed in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1709

The Fathers of the Church consistently echo the Lord’s prayer for His people, the Church, “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). As surely as we know that the Father hears and answers the prayers of Jesus Christ His Son, we know that this petition describes a reality and not only a hope. The Church is one, as much now as in the patristic age. That unity manifests on several levels. St. Paul writes, “There is one body and one Spirit…, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all” (Eph 4:4-6). Reflecting the unity of God, there is unity of doctrine, unity of the Church, and unity of all in charity. Much of what occasioned the Fathers’ writings and the biblical writings on the subject of unity were attacks on that unity by heresies, schisms, and personal squabbles between Christians. These faults betray the oneness of the Body of Christ and vainly seek to rend it asunder.

St. Ignatius of Antioch

“There is one body” (Eph 4:4). This Body of Jesus Christ is the Church and its unity is visible and manifest particularly among believers united under the episcopacy. This image of the one body united under one head was particularly favored by Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35 – 98 A.D.). He wrote, “Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” It is by our unity with the bishop, the visible representative of God, according to Ignatius, that we are one Church and one Body. Ignatius also employs a pastoral image of the shepherd to describe the role of the bishop in the Church. He counsels, “Where the shepherd is, there do ye as sheep follow.” Leo the Great (400 – 461 A.D.) later also testifies to the role of the bishops in preserving and signifying the unity of the Church. In a letter to certain Egyptian bishops, he uses a similar pastoral image and begs them “to assist in maintaining unity and bringing back wanderers to the fold.” There have always been wanderers from the fold, lost sheep gone astray and in need of a shepherd to draw them back to the true faith.

Pope St. Leo the Great

“There is… one faith” (Eph 4:4-5). This faith the Fathers of the early Church earnestly strove to defend against the myriad heresies that threatened it from the very beginning. Answering an accusation of Petilianus, a Donatist bishop, Augustine (354 – 430 A.D.) writes, “The unity of Christ, indeed, is hungering and thirsting after all of you; and I would that it might swallow you up, for then would you be no longer heretics.” This image is a kind of inverted Eucharist, which is the manifestation of the unity of the Body of Christ. Heretics are no longer doctrinally partaking of Christ, but rather a misrepresentation of Him. They need therefore to return to the doctrinal unity of the Church, the Bride of Christ, by repenting of errant beliefs. Doctrinal unity is a perennial concern of the Church, which continues to deal with heresy just as it did in the times of the Fathers.

Though heresy does indeed present a threat to the unity of the Church, there is an important distinction between heresy and difference of opinion. Speaking of the appropriate relations between parties with differing doctrinal opinions, Augustine writes,

With anxious piety, they showed toleration towards each other, though without violation of Christian charity they entertained different opinions, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace till God should reveal to one of them, were he otherwise minded, even this error of his ways.

Greek icon
of St. Augustine of Hippo

The whole of truth on every matter is not revealed. We do not know everything and it is important not to pretend as if we did and allow this to threaten our unity. Augustine here reminds me of the motto of an unknown irenicist: "In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas." In other words, in things about which revelation is indisputably clear, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, we must maintain a unity of doctrine; in things about which revelation is not clear, it is important to tolerate a diversity of opinions (at least until the truth becomes clear) and not allow these to threaten our unity; and in all things and at all times, we must be charitable and loving to one other.

“There is one… Father of all” (Eph 4:4, 6). Therefore, we are all brethren. "Let us say Brethren, even to those who hate us," writes Gregory the Theologian, for the sake of the Resurrection of the Body of Christ. This celebrated phrase is inserted into the Resurrection Canon which the Byzantine Churches repeat joyfully each Pascha. It well expresses the type of unity which is greatest – the unity of love for all, even for our enemies. This is the unity that is testified to even by the Psalmist long before the coming of Christ, when he writes,

Russian icon of Aaron
from the 18th cen. Iconostasis
of Kizhi monastery
in Karelia, Russia
How good and how pleasant it is when brethren live in unity. It is like precious oil upon the head, running down the beard, running down upon Aaron's beard, upon the collar of his robes (Ps 133).

The biblical and patristic claim that we are all brethren and all children of one God who is Father of all aspires to a unity deeper even than that which is accomplished by unity of faith and ecclesiastical unity. As Paul writes, “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). Truly, each aspect of unity is essential and supports the whole. Notwithstanding, there are three kinds of unity – unity of belief, ecclesiastical unity, and unity of charity – but the greatest of these is charity.

Monasticism and the Baptized

2011-06-05T18:14:00.002-04:00

Blessed Pope John Paul II on Mount Sinai, where, on Feb. 26, 2000, he visited the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine, which, he said, "stands indomitable as a witness to divine wisdom and love."

One significant work of the recently beatified Pope John Paul II for the Eastern Churches is his Apostolic Letter, Orientale Lumen. In this letter, Blessed Pope John Paul II identifies monasticism as “a reference point for all the baptized.” One could look at each Christian way of life and see in it a model for all Christians, without denying the distinctiveness of particular vocations. Another way of putting it is that there is not one spirituality for monks, another for priests, and another for the married. There is one Christian spirituality and theology, just as there is one Christianity, one Christ, and one Church. “There is… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of all” (Eph 4:4-6). A monk is not living just a part of the Christian life, but the whole of Christian life. The same is true of a priest, a married person, and each Christian. Looking at Christianity as expressed and lived in each vocation instructs each Christian in their own living of Christ. Monasticism, however, is particularly suited to this type of examination.

“In the East, monasticism was… presented as a symbolic synthesis of Christianity,” writes John Paul. This is for good reason. The life of the monk or nun is one of total absorption in Christ, shown by their commitment to prayer, their apostolically communal way of life, and their radical observance of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is not to suggest that these elements are unique to monasticism, but that they are expressed by monasticism with rare clarity. As John Paul writes, “The monastery… is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people.”

Monasticism, like martyrdom before it, stands as a radical sign of the coming kingdom, in which all people are called by God to participate, and which monastics, in a sense, already experience. The martyrs and the monastics count their sacrifices nothing, even a joy, as they know they are imitating the Lord and going to Him. “The Church invokes [the] return [of the cosmos to the Father], and the monk and the religious are its privileged witnesses,” according to John Paul. They witness and experience this recapitulation of the universe primarily in their lives of prayer, both liturgical and individual. John Paul continues, “As a living sign of this [eschatological] expectation, the monk continues and brings to fulfillment in the liturgy the invocation of the Church… a maranatha constantly repeated… with the whole of his life.”

The very breath of a true monastic is prayer. In the East, the witness of the hesychasts’ silent prayer of the heart particularly exemplifies this. “Silence (hesychia),” John Paul notes, “is an essential component of Eastern monastic spirituality,” and each Christian ought to incorporate, to that degree they are able, this prayer into their life.

Lest individual prayer come to dominate the life of the monastic, or any Christian, participation in the liturgy and in the community of the Church is an equally vital part of their lives. “Monasticism… is always a personal response to an individual call and, at the same time, an ecclesial and community event,” writes John Paul. This parallels quite well with other vocations within the Church. Witness, for example, the ordination of a deacon, privately called to a life of service to the Church in this way, publicly ordained to the purpose. Also, the Church publicly blesses the private calling to married life in the mystery of crowning. Each Christian’s life is marked by a personal relationship with our Lord, lived out within the community of the Church. John Paul points out that “a monk's way is not generally marked by personal effort alone.” This certainly is true for all other Christians as well. St. Basil the Great favors the communal life for his monastic communities and also insists that every Christian ought to have a spiritual director, writing, “to believe that one does not need counsel is great pride” (I Cap. I Isaiae).

While spiritual direction is necessary to avoid over individualization and self-conceit, it also enables the individual to more personally respond to Christ within the Church than otherwise, which John Paul admires. He writes, “A spiritual father… gives Eastern monasticism an extraordinary flexibility: through the spiritual father's intervention the way of each monk is in fact strongly personalized.” Monasticism presents the individual with a balanced way of life as a member of the community, then, not distorted by either extreme as he or she seeks to live out the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Every Christian needs this balance. The temptations – both toward individualism and toward depersonalized, external membership in the community – exist outside the monastery walls as much as within.

The monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are not exclusively monastic, but universally Christian. The Church, it seems, has traditionally associated them with monasticism because of the monastics’ radical and unimpeded commitment to them. John Paul does not directly refer to these vows in Orientale Lumen, but they are clearly not far from his considerations.

He writes, “Standing before the abyss of divine mercy, the monk can only proclaim the awareness of his own radical poverty.” This is the poverty of spirit our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed, “blessed” (Mat 5:3) and to which all Christians are called. This awareness of the emptiness of self awakens one to the absolute need for the salvation only Christ offers.

In his discussion of monasticism as a universal model, John Paul never directly mentions chastity. Perhaps this is because it is in this quality that monasticism is expressed most distinctly from other vocations. However, about the reality of purification, accomplished for the monastic in part by the discipline of celibacy, John Paul writes, “This process of becoming ever more moderate and sparing, more transparent to himself, can cause him to fall into pride and intransigence if he comes to believe that these are the fruits of his own ascetic efforts. Spiritual discernment in continuous purification then makes him humble and meek, aware that he can perceive only some aspects of that truth which fills him.” The purpose of chastity, as well as of ascetic efforts, is the development of single-heartedness toward God. The monk and each Christian must endeavor to develop this with all humility.

Obedience, in a certain sense, is the beginning of the Christian life. John Paul writes of this, “The starting point for the monk is the Word of God…. When a person is touched by the Word, obedience is born, that is, the listening which changes life.” To “obey” is to “listen to” (ob audire) and “faith comes by hearing” (Rom 10:17). Faithfulness and obedience, then, are much the same thing. Each Christian striving to live the faith must embrace obedience, just as the monastics do. Jesus Christ told those who would follow Him, “"If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The monastics strive to live this out radically and, in doing so, serve as an example to all Christians.

On Prayer to Our Father

2011-06-03T00:59:00.034-04:00

Mosaic of St. Gregory of Nyssa in Constantinople

All Christians repeat the Lord’s Prayer, taught to do so by Jesus Himself (Matt 6:5-15). Fittingly, then, Gregory of Nyssa devoted five sermons to a reflection on this fundamental prayer of Christianity. Often, regrettably, we repeat the Lord’s Prayer by thoughtless rote, but our repetition need not be meaningless. The prayer teaches us much about prayer itself, especially upon repeated reflection, and Gregory’s text is a useful guide to such reflection. One theme that Gregory particularly focuses on in such is the necessity of virtue and holiness on the part of those who make bold to call God by the familiar name of Father.

In his first sermon, Gregory provides an enlightening exegesis of the Lord’s neologism βατταλογέω in the Gospel according to Matthew (6:7). Gregory claims that Jesus “invented this… word.” Some – for example, the King James Version and the American Standard Version – have problematically translated this word as “use vain repetitions,” which for some might call into question our practice of frequently repeating the very prayer which our Lord then teaches us to pray (Matt 6:9-13). This “strange novelty of a word,” as Gregory calls it, occurs only once in Scripture and consequently those who seek to understand its true meaning require some explanation. Gregory’s ideas about this word are helpful in the contemporary context because so many have encountered its use by Protestant critics of the Catholic and Orthodox custom of prayerful repetition. Repetition, in fact, does have a certain value. “Through frequent repetition,” Gregory writes, “we may be given to understand some of [the prayer’s] hidden meaning.” Repetition, if prayerful, is not vain but an aid to the human spirit seeking to focus on God in the midst of a temporal world filled with distractions, especially the incessant desire for pleasures. Gregory tells us that the Lord is not advising us to avoid repetition, but to avoid indulging “vain desires” by praying for “empty pleasures.”

This is what He means by βατταλογέω, or babbling. One example Gregory gives of this is the prayer of some to God “for the crown in the games.” This, certainly, is an example many can relate to in our own time and place. Our football culture has even named a certain type of play – one particularly unlikely to succeed – the “Hail Mary pass.” Those who pray for such things “babble nonsense,” as Gregory says, and it is this type of babbling, not repetition, that our Lord commands us to avoid in prayer.

This is neither to say that simple pleasures are wrong nor that they do not come from God as blessings but that our prayer, especially as we spiritually mature, should be ever more devoted to the higher purpose of union with God. We would do well to realize, as Gregory points out, that if we have “by Divine Providence… obtained these childish toys” it is only so that they might learn to “offer the Father petitions for the greater and more perfect things… that profit the soul.” We must learn to focus our prayer less on fulfilling our own desires for wealth or high status or other such things and more on becoming true children of God the Father.

Before we can truthfully call God our Father, we must establish similarity to and familiarity with God by virtue and impassibility. This is a central theme of Gregory’s sermons. God is not our Father simply because He has created us, but also because and to the extent that we are like Him. The earth, from which God made us, though created, does not call God its Father. Our Lord’s command to so address God is also an exhortation to be His children – to live as children of so great a Father. “It is physically impossible,” writes Gregory, that “the Holy One [should be the Father] of him whose life is impure.” Kind begets kind. If God is our Father, then we must be like God. On this theme, Gregory even strongly states, “Those who approach God should themselves become gods.”

We cannot approach this paragon of holiness and virtue by our own unaided efforts. We all have need for God’s help. We cannot even pray without Him first assisting us. “We can obtain nothing of the things for which we are anxious,” writes Gregory, referring to the things, including prayer itself, by which our lives give glory to God’s name, “unless the good be accomplished in us by Divine aid.” Therefore, we must pray to become virtuous so that we can become worthy to unite ourselves to God in prayer. Gregory writes, “A man can glorify God in no other way save by his virtue which bears witness that the Divine power is the cause of his goodness.” Only in weakness may a person give glory to God, and we are all weak. Not by our own power do we overcome the sinful passions and our adversary the devil, but only by our free cooperation with the grace of God. “Strong, indeed, is the adversary, formidable, yea, invincible to those bereft of Thy help,” Gregory prays. Yet, those who seek God’s help shall find it.

God is with us and He will purify us if we do not resist His grace. While discussing that part of the Lord’s prayer asking for forgiveness of our debts, Gregory writes, “It seems to me that the Word teaches us through the prayer never to speak too boldly to God as if we had a pure conscience, however far from human sins a man may be.” So, even though we must be holy before we can rightly call God our Father, we learn from the Our Father itself that none are so holy as to be free from the need for forgiveness. Mercifully, Gregory reminds us, “the Father forgives sins, the Son takes away the sins of the world, and the Holy Spirit cleanses from the stains of sin those in whom He dwells.”

Gregory’s thoughts here echo the usual beginning prayers of the Divine Praises. We ask the “Spirit of Truth” to “come and dwell within us” and “cleanse us of all stain.” Paralleling Gregory’s pattern, we invoke the “Most Holy Trinity,” praying, “Lord, cleanse us of our sins; Master, forgive our transgressions; Holy One, come to us and heal our infirmities for your name’s sake.” Importantly, we offer these prayers before we pray the Our Father. Before we can rightly call God our Father, His Son must take away our sins and the Holy Spirit must cleanse us and make us holy. Only the holy are rightly called the children of the Holy One. Only the power of God can make us holy. Therefore, before we pray, we pray. That is, before we call God our Father, we pray Him, through His Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make us His children.

Heavenly Marriage

2011-06-01T00:00:00.069-04:00

11th century Georgian miniature of St. John Chrysostom

In his earlier letters to Theodore, John Chrysostom mourns for the soul of one who has decided to marry. In his later letter to a young widow, he counsels an end to mourning for the body of a good husband who has died. These situations are opposite in many respects. He addresses his former letter to a young man planning marriage – his latter to a widowed young woman. Each reflects considerably and distinctly on the theme of marriage. He writes the former letters as an ascetic monastic with limited experience – the latter as a cleric with more experience. A comparison of these letters does much to show both the evolution and the consistencies of Chrysostom’s thought and ministerial approach.

Chrysostom’s earlier letter to his friend Theodore is more accusatory and harsher in tone than his more temperate and gentle letter to the young widow. For example, he accuses Theodore of opening his mind, which “the devil has now set on fire… to all manner of soul-destroying and shameful thoughts.” However, he does not write to condemn. In an effort to strengthen Theodore against despair, he gives many examples from scripture of figures that have fallen and repented, returning to their former glory. He then threatens Theodore with a long description of the fires of hell and the torments of the damned, tempered somewhat by an attempt to inspire him with a description of the blessedness of heaven.

Only after thirteen long pages of such bulwarks and admonishments, does Chrysostom get to the point

Hermione likes Ron better anyway.

that occasioned his concern for Theodore’s immortal soul: “Thou art now admiring the grace of Hermione.” Theodore, who apparently had formerly committed himself to a celibate and ascetic life of devotion to Christ, has been smitten. Chrysostom’s scorn for this lady is unmatched. With an intense scorn for the body bordering on dualism, he calls her “well-shaped body” a “whited sepulcher” filled with “uncleaness” and nothing but one of the “storehouses and depositories of [phlegm or spittle].” He calls the potential marriage to her an “accursed bondage” and seems to imply, by comparing it to the fall of David, that it would be adulterous. Only in his second letter to Theodore do we learn what he means by this.

Probably following his reception of Chrysostom’s first letter, Theodore attempts to defend himself by pointing out that “marriage is right.” Chrysostom responds,

It is no longer possible for thee to observe the right conditions of marriage. For if he who has been attached to a heavenly bridegroom deserts him, and joins himself to a wife the act is adultery, even if you call it marriage ten thousand times over; or rather it is worse than adultery in proportion as God is greater than man.

Chrysostom here makes it clear that he regards Theodore as already married, in a greater mysterious sense, to Christ, “the heavenly bridegroom.”

In his zeal to convince Theodore to repent and return to his former holy and celibate way of life, Chrysostom hyperbolically and intemperately disparages marriage itself, writing: “It is an evil thing to wed…. It is a grievous thing to have children…. Is this then life, Theodore… when a man has to serve so many, to live for so many, and never for himself?” This statement is flabbergastingly contrary to the Christian message of serving others, well taught, for example, by St. Basil, who wrote of monastic life as best lived in community, serving many.

Theodore, when he receives these harsh admonishments from Chrysostom, “has not yet completed [his] twentieth year.” In today’s world, most representatives of the Church would probably say that he made his prior commitment youthfully and without full and proper discernment. Such is the contemporary understanding of compassion. Chrysostom, however, seems firmly convinced that he can see the condition of Theodore’s soul and knows that it is in great peril. “Not in vain” does Chrysostom threaten Theodore “with hell fire,” he says. Compassion certainly motivates Chrysostom to admonish the one he believes to be sinning.

He better expresses his compassion in his later, gentler, and more mature letter to the young widow of Therasius. This letter purposes “consolation” and “comfort” rather than admonishment. It would be interesting to see how Chrysostom would handle a necessity of admonishment after some years of experience, but this letter does not give us that opportunity. Nonetheless, his change in approach is palpable and probably not only due to the difference of intention, but due to his growth as a person and as a minister to the needs of others.

Chrysostom has not changed in every respect. He has maintained, for example, an assurance of his own ability to judge the condition of other people’s souls, but in this letter applies that power to laudatory rather than condemnatory ends by veritably canonizing Therasius, the departed husband of the young widow. Chrysostom writes that “he has… sailed into the tranquil haven,” that his “death is not death,” and that he has emigrated “from earth to heaven.” This man’s example of virtue and goodness in (or despite) marriage may have helped improve Chrysostom’s estimation of marriage itself.

Showing development of his thinking, Chrysostom speaks approvingly of marriage in this letter, writing, “As long as that blessed husband of thine was with thee, thou didst enjoy honour, and care and zealous attention; in fact you enjoyed such as you might expect to enjoy from a husband.” Chrysostom here describes marriage as a blessed condition that one might expect to enjoy rather than as a grievous evil.

If he approves of the state of marriage, however, he prefers the state of widowhood, which he describes as “a position of honor and dignity” (122). “They who have lost their husbands are wedded to Christ in their stead,” Chrysostom tells the young widow, having earlier made it clear that a second marriage would be “her fall.” In this respect, widowhood is very like the state of celibacy in which Theodore earlier found himself. It is a state of heavenly marriage.

The widow’s marital union is not to Christ only, but also continues with her departed beloved husband. Chrysostom advises her:

The affection which you bestowed on him you can keep now just as you formerly did. For such is the power of love, it embraces, and unites, and fastens together not only those who are present, and near, and visible but also those who are far distant.

Chrysostom here elucidates the Byzantine understanding of marriage as a lasting, even eternal, relationship. It is a relationship of such closeness that he even hopes the young widow will have visions of her departed blessed husband (124) and he still invariably refers to him as her “husband.” Death has not ended their marital relationship, and nothing will. In fact, Chrysostom ends this letter on this note:

You may… be united to him again through the everlasting ages, not in this union of marriage but another far better. For this is only a bodily kind of intercourse, but then there will be a union of soul with soul more perfect, and of a far more delightful and far nobler kind.

On all counts, this later letter is kinder and more pastoral than those he wrote to Theodore earlier in life. Its view of marriage is more refined and elevated. Its purpose is more charitable. Chrysostom’s experience in ministry has softened his heart, it seems, and much for the better.

After the Likeness

2011-05-29T14:13:00.021-04:00

God made us in His image and after His likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). Already this confession acknowledges that there is in humanity from the moment of creation both similarity and dissimilarity to God, for we are “in” His image, but we are “after” His likeness. The word “after” can be understood to mean “in pursuit of” or “moving towards” or “following.” God created us in a state of growing in likeness to God – in an eternal ascent of our created nature toward the uncreated Lord. Our likeness to God is not and cannot become an absolute likeness to the essence of the One-Who-Is, but is rather an ongoing process of deepening union with God – of becoming an ever-clearer divine image.

Necessarily, we must understand the likeness of humanity to God in tension with God’s absolute transcendence. Dynamically, mysteriously, “man, this mortal, passible, short-lived being [is] the image of that nature which is immortal, pure, and everlasting,” as St. Gregory of Nyssa writes in his work On the Making of Man. It is difficult to understand how the one could image the other.

11th century mosaic icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa

God is not passible and does not change, but is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13: 8). According to Gregory, “Human nature is the mean between” divine nature and animal nature – between a purely spiritual nature and a purely bodily nature. Humanity, precisely in its mutability – which is a characteristic of its flesh, as opposed to a purely spiritual or angelic nature incapable of change – has the opportunity to recover from its separation from God and to unite, with and by grace, itself with God. Passible – i.e. impassioned or subject to the passions – as we know we are, we must change (μετάνοια) and grow toward impassibility or dispassion (ἀπάθεια) to recapitulate our likeness to God.

Mutability inherent in bodily human nature negatively manifested itself in the Fall. “That which was made ‘in the image’ is one thing and that which is now manifested in wretchedness is another,” writes Gregory. Perhaps consequently, Gregory appears to deny that the bodily side of human nature participates in the image of God. Before I put forth a disagreement with this conclusion, a reminder of Gregory’s humility in expressing his ideas: “we … do not set forth that which occurs to our mind authoritatively, but will place it in the form of a theoretical speculation before our kindly hearers.” Neither do I claim my disagreement with Gregory is authoritative.

Gregory sees in the division of sexes and the plurality of human nature a “departure from the Prototype: for ‘in Christ Jesus,’ as the apostle says, ‘there is neither male nor female’" (Gal 3: 28). In this he fails to perceive the image of God in the human body, it seems to me. He goes so far as to suggest that God created man in His image without sex and then added the distinction of sex, thus somewhat removing man from the image of God. He writes, “He devised for His image the distinction of male and female, which has no reference to the Divine Archetype.” Gregory identifies, reasonably enough, sexual distinction as a necessary attribute of the physical nature of humanity – for reproduction – but then suggests that it did not belong to man as created in the image of God. God added it later. First, God created “man” without this distinction. Could we even call this hypothetical sexless creature human?

Tertullian

Gregory is affirming that the Prototype – God, in whose image we are made – is not physical, which is, of course, true. However, if God anticipates the incarnation in the creation, as Tertullian suggests in his work On the Resurrection of the Flesh (VI), this would allow physicality in the image of God, even to point of sex differentiation, for Christ “was like us in all things” (Council of Chalcedon (451), cf. Heb 4:15.), this included. Then we could say that not only was man made in the image of God, but that the image of God is male and female, rather than saying that the image of God is neither male nor female. God is not male and female. Importantly, He is neither, just as Gregory insists. Nonetheless, the differences between the sexes add to, rather than taking away from, the capacity of humanity to reflect the nature of God. Precisely because God is triune, He is relational in His nature. The image of God in humanity must also be relational.

The differences between persons and their notwithstanding capacity for union is an image of the plurality of persons and the oneness of essence in God. God said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26). If God, then, refers to Himself in the plural, an entirely singular nature of man would be an imperfect image of God. The two and one matrimonial union (or three and one if we consider the oneness of the family with children) becomes an icon of the three and one God. In this sense, the image of God is embodied, male and female.

Human nature is an image of God in that it is relational, and in every way that it is good, because God is the all-good One. He is Goodness Himself. As Gregory writes, “He creates man for no other reason than that He is good… Man was made ‘in the image of God,’ [which] is the same as to say that He made human nature participant in all good.” Among the many good attributes humanity shares with God, Gregory finds the image of God preeminently shown forth in that “we are free.” By this freedom, we, who are sinners, can choose to partake of “the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) freely offered by God from the moment of our creation until now. Because we are free, union with God is possible because virtue is possible and we can accept God’s mysterious and sacramental grace through the Church. Indeed, God offers this grace even in the moment of creation, at which, as Gregory writes, by God’s foreknowledge, “the whole race was spoken of as one man.”

The Lord is Coming Soon.

2011-05-20T10:29:00.009-04:00

In light of the imminent beginning of the end, I thought I would share some recent thoughts about the coming (παρουσία, parousia) of the Lord as it is described in the writings of St. Paul.

A central eschatological event for Paul is the parousia, the coming of the Lord. “Parousia” becomes in the New Testament a technical term for the future coming of the Lord – every non-Pauline use of the term parousia in the New Testament refers to this specifically – but at first, for Paul, its meaning is more fluid.

In its Hellenic origins – and, interestingly, it has no exact equivalent in Hebrew – it has both a sacred and a profane sense. Literally, it simply means presence, arrival, or coming. It comes from the compound verb πάρειμι (pareimi), which, while it is occasionally also used in the technical or sacred sense of the coming of a great personage or a god, often simply refers to “being present” in the most pedestrian sense. In kind, the noun parousia sometimes also has this plain or profane meaning in the writings of Paul. In his book Paul: Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ, Thomas Schreiner makes the point that in each of these instances and everywhere “in the New Testament the word coming always has the idea of physical presence” (455). This sense is particularly strong in 2 Cor 10:10, which refers to “παρουσία τοῦ σώματος,” that is, “bodily presence” (RSV). Schreiner points out that its use in referring to the physical presence of ordinary human beings, such as Titus or Paul himself, points – when it does refer to Jesus’ coming – to the physicality of Jesus’ return to earth (454).

Paul’s first use of this word is in the oldest book of the New Testament, 1 Thess. Its four uses in this epistle (2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23) refer exclusively to the coming of the Lord, making this its earliest New Testament sense. Paul also mentions it in this sense in 2 Thess 2:1, 8 and 1 Cor 15:23. I will focus mainly on the relevant passages in these three epistles.

Therein, Paul provides vivid, sonorous descriptions of the parousia of the Lord. He writes, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thess 4:16). Paul reiterates the trumpet blast in 1 Cor 15:52 and the presence of angels in 2 Thess, writing, “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels” (1:7). These images combine to give the impression that the parousia is going to be loud (many of the images are sonic), public, visible, and bodily. There will be shouting and angels and trumpets.

These images also appear in the descriptions of the theophany at Sinai (Exod 19:10-18; Deut 33:2) – the trumpet, the cloud, the voice, the holy ones – and were continued in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. Paul’s use of these images associates his understanding of the parousia with an existing tradition, though with important differences. For example, the cloud in Exod acts as a covering or a veil and so affects a kind of separation – but for Paul, the people are taken up to meet the Lord in the clouds. Joseph Plevnik, author of Paul and the Parousia, even thinks that Paul understands the clouds to be the very vehicles “of transportation between heaven and earth” which take the faithful up to the Lord (64).

Before this, at the parousia of the Lord, the departed faithful arise. Resurrection is in fact what occasions Paul’s writing of 1Thess. As in each case, Paul is addressing a pastoral concern, not writing a theological treatise, so it is important to take what he says about the parousia in the contexts in which he discusses it. The Thessalonians appear to have doubted whether those who have died will be able to benefit from the parousia and so Paul describes the resurrection of the dead as its first result. 1 Thess 4:16 says that immediately after the aforementioned trumpet blast at the Lord’s return, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” Their participation in the Lord’s parousia will not be compromised in the slightest. In fact, those “who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:15). 1 Cor also associates the resurrection with the coming and the accompanying trumpet blast: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable” (1 Cor 15:51). Because Christ has already risen, “the age to come has invaded the present evil age,” as Schreiner puts it (456). Christ’s resurrection is the “first fruits,” as it says in 1 Cor (15:20, 23), of the resurrection that is coming. Again, the end – the ἔσχατον (eschaton) – has already begun, but it is not yet consummated. “Christ [is] the first fruits, then at his coming those that belong to Christ” (1 Cor 15:23, emphasis mine). For Paul, it seems, it is the moment of Christ’s parousia that believers are raised from the dead.

It is not entirely clear to us what Paul thinks will happen regarding those among the dead who are not believers. As directly connected with the parousia, the resurrection he refers to is that of believers, or those “in Christ” (1 Thess 4:16, 1 Cor 15:22) seeming to exclude those who are not believers. In 1 Cor, however, he also writes, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (15:22). 1 Cor 15 has a tone of resurrection for all – not just believers – here and elsewhere. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (15:26). All die – whether or not they are believers – all will rise again to the utter destruction of death. This seems to us to be Paul’s message. Again, however, when he speaks directly about the parousia, he seems to refer only to the resurrection of those in Christ. Does he envision a separate moment of resurrection for non-believers? It simply is not clear.

It does seem clear to me that, according to Paul, only believers will be “taken up.” After the dead rise, then the believers who are still living and those who had died together are lifted up and glorified equally. “Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with [those who have died and been raised] in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thess 4:17). Paul also writes concerning this coming glorification and immortality in 1 Cor. He writes, “I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (15:51). Death is not coming to all. Some will live until the parousia and will be taken up and glorified without having died.

Demonstrating that an immanent eschaton is not a new idea, Paul vacillates on whether he will be among those who lives until this moment. In 1 Thess, he says “we shall be taken up” (4:17, emphasis mine). Yet later, Paul considers dying, which he believes will enable him to be with Christ (Phil 1:20-23). Paul does not say whether the being with Christ accomplished by the taking up at the parousia differs from the being with Christ accomplished by dying.

Despite his apparent early expectations that the parousia would occur during his life, he also consistently points out that he does not know. He writes, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess 5:2). That sounds to me like it will come suddenly and unexpectedly. When he then says that the believers will not be surprised by the day of the Lord in 5:4, I do not think that he means they know when it will happen, but that they live in constant expectation. This, I think, is the whole point. I believe Paul wants his communities – I even think that he would want us – to live in constant expectation of the parousia. This informs his thought on many levels.

Though Paul is clear that the time of the parousia is not known, he does mention certain things that must happen first. To cool an “eschatological frenzy,” as Schreiner puts it (464), Paul describes in 2 Thess certain events that must take place before the day of the Lord. Apparently, even if we do not know when the end is coming, we can know that it is not here yet. Specifically, first, the “lawless one” or the “son of destruction” must appear, set himself up in the temple and call himself “God” (2 Thess 2:3-4). Interestingly, the term used to describe the “coming” of the lawless one by the activity of Satan is also "parousia" (2 Thess 2:9). The knowledge that these highly noticeable events must take place before the parousia seems to contradict the notion of parousia occurring suddenly and surprisingly. While discussing 2 Thess, of course, it is important to bear in mind that scholars are evenly divided over whether or not Paul actually wrote it, according to Raymond Brown in his Introduction to the New Testament (591).

Another event that Paul later seems to set up as a prerequisite to the parousia is the salvation of all Israel. Paul’s discussion of the ultimate conversion of Jews to Christ is limited to Rom, in which he writes, “all Israel will be saved; as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.’” There are a couple of interesting things to note about this verse. Firstly, salvation, Paul expresses clearly in this epistle, is for those who have faith in the gospel (Rom 1:16). Consequently, when he says here that Israel will be saved, it seems to me that he means they will come to believe in Jesus Christ. Using the metaphor of branches broken off from an olive tree, he writes, “if they do not persist in their unbelief, [they] will be grafted in… again” (Rom 11:23, emphasis mine). Secondly, he quotes Isa that the deliverer will come from Zion and banish ungodliness from Jacob. The deliverer, for Paul, is none other than Jesus Christ. The deliverer has already come but, for Paul, his work is not finished yet, because many Jews have not accepted the gospel. Not only has he come, but he is also coming. The eschaton is now and not yet.

Paul, I expect, when writing Rom would have experienced more and more frustration of this hope in the short term – due to increasing tensions and divisions between the Jewish and Christian communities. This tense and divisive context gives the claim that all the Jews would accept Christ – and not only Christ, but Paul’s preaching of Christ for the Gentiles – an eschatological sense. That is, such an event would represent a radical change from the present experience, just as the parousia and the resurrection would be a radical alteration in experience.

Further, Paul connects this to a more explicitly eschatological event: resurrection from the dead. In Rom 11:15, Paul indicates that his fellow Jews’ acceptance of his ministry, which is his gospel of Jesus Christ, means “life from the dead.” Perhaps Paul means that the resurrection will not occur until this event takes place

This looks to me like another large and noticeable event that, in Paul’s thinking, must take place before the parousia. Rom is a late work of Paul, whereas 1 Thess, which contains most of his writing about the parousia, is early. As life went on and Paul came close to death on more than one occasion, his expectation of the Lord’s return and the coming resurrection did not diminish, but his expectation that it would happen in his own lifetime seems to have ebbed and he began to expect more events to take place prior to the consummation of the eschaton.

Whenever it does come, Paul rightly wants us to be ready. So, my advice to all now hearing the claim that the Lord is coming back tomorrow is to go ahead and panic. That is, repent, set your life in order, live as if the end were very soon, be loving, kind, good, and holy.

Clerical Asceticism

2011-05-19T04:00:00.003-04:00

This historiated initial contains a bust portrait of a haloed figure, probably intended to be St. Gregory the Great, carrying a cross and a book. It appears in the Saint Petersburg Bede (Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18), which is famous for containing the earliest such initial in European illumination.

St. Gregory the Great was first a monk and, in some respects, this remained his ideal, yet he was a monk who willingly submitted to the decision of Pope Pelagius II to pluck him from his monastery so that he could serve in the ordained ministry. His own willing response to this became a model of his ministerial ideal expressed in his Book of Pastoral Rule (PR), in which he sought a life of balance between asceticism and serving others in the world. For Gregory, a cleric, like a monk, must have ascetic experience, must embrace suffering and adversity, must struggle to overcome passions and vice, and must become dispassionate and virtuous. Gregory’s advice in these areas is of enduring value in the present age. “How he may please the Lord,” (1Cor 7:32) must always be the cleric’s first concern and the cleric is one called by the Lord to a balance of withdrawal from the world and service to those in it. It seems that, for Gregory, one of “the things of this world” that should not distract the cleric from his vocation is concern for “how he may please his wife” (1Cor 7:33). One aspect of his balance of asceticism with service is his advocacy of clerical continence. Though not addressed directly in the Book of Pastoral Rule, his opinion on the matter is clear enough. Elsewhere, (Epistles I, 44 and IV, 36) he promotes a rule of clerical continence and within this text he speaks negatively of sexual desire (PR III, 27). Even here he seeks a balance however and refers to the state of marriage as “most honorable” (PR III, 27). Further, he makes much use of bridal imagery in his descriptions of clerical life. This too is in keeping with the monastic tradition, which often makes similar use of this imagery.

St. Gregory the Theologian, 12th-century mosaic. Pendant on the eastern arch (northern side) of the crossing of the transept, La Martorana, also known as Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio in Palermo, Sicily. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

Gregory’s ideal of balanced clerical asceticism had some precedent. The numerous parallels between Gregory the Great and Gregory the Theologian, and the latter’s influence on the former, bear some mention. Biographically of note, both descended from clerics, in fact from bishops. Gregory the Theologian’s father was the bishop of Nazianzus. Gregory the Great’s great-great grandfather was the bishop of Rome, Pope Felix III. This is especially interesting given the preference both seem to exhibit for clerics following a quasi-monastic way of life, which tends to exclude the prospect of progeny. Had their ancestors strictly held to this ideal, they might have deprived world of its eloquent exposition. In seeking a way of life that balances clerical duties with such ascetic practices, Gregory the Great follows the Theologian, in many respects, who, perhaps, was among the first to advocate a life of quasi-monastic withdrawal from the world for clerics, or at least for himself, in his Defense of his Flight to Pontus. Gregory the Great is clearly familiar with this writing, and references it more than once in his own work on ordained ministry, the Book of Pastoral Rule, notably at the beginnings of parts one and three.

Following this model, then, Gregory systematically – “as if step-by-step,” he writes (PR, Letter) – expounds on the life of a cleric as a balance of the internal and the external, of the ascetical and the ministerial, of the religious and the secular. The Book of Pastoral Rule is composed of four parts. The first deals with who should and who should not seek or accept ordination. The second deals with how ordained clerics should live and guide those under their care. The third and longest part and deals with how ordained clerics should teach and minister to each of many kinds of people. The fourth very briefly reminds ordained clerics to flee arrogance and maintain humility before God, especially as they excel in the practice of virtue to the degree that Gregory insists a cleric must. Throughout, Gregory seeks the middle way, almost the Aristotelian mean, for clerics, who he says should neither be too severe nor too lax, neither too negligent of secular cares nor too invested in them.

Ascetic renunciation of the pleasures of this world – for example, excesses of food, sleep, possessions, and sex – does not have the condemnation of these things as its goal, but rather the cultivation of virtues and true freedom from the enslaving passions. Gregory considers those who have thus labored and acquired these “incredible virtues” (PR I, 5) the most suitable for ordination. “Men who are spotless in the pursuit of chastity, stout in the vigor of fasting, satiated in the feasts of doctrine, humble in the long-suffering of patience, erect in the fortitude of authority, tender in the grace of kindness, and strict in the severity of judgment” are the ones worthy of advancement to “a position of spiritual leadership” (PR I, 5). Suffering, fasting, and chastity form part of the ascetic discipline necessary to acquire virtues such as humility, kindness, and judgment. Kindness and “severity of judgment” are virtues of contrary purpose – each is needed to balance the other, which is just the thing Gregory emphasizes throughout his Book of Pastoral Rule. In his view, the only way to acquire such a perfect balance of virtues is through ascetic effort, which involves a certain degree of withdrawal from the secular world.

In one of the first of many allegorical interpretations of Scripture found in the Book of Pastoral Rule, Gregory identifies secular life and worldly habits with vice – especially vicious when exhibited by an ordained cleric, whom others are liable to imitate. Referring to Matthew 18:6, he writes, “The ‘millstone’ symbolizes the circuitousness and labor of the secular life,” which can drag a cleric down to “the ‘depth of the sea’ [which] suggests final damnation” (PR I, 2). Gregory does not want clerics to utterly cut themselves off from secular concerns, as he demonstrates later, but here he makes it clear that they are dangerous occasions of vice if overindulged to the neglect of “the study of holy meditation”(PR I, 2).

Gregory often repeats that there is a need to embrace the adversities of life and shun prosperity because the latter tends to bind a soul to worldly things to the neglect of God. Gregory writes that Jesus’ rejection of earthly kingship and embrace of the cross was meant to teach his followers “to value adversity for the sake of truth, and to decline prosperity fearfully. This final concern [i.e. prosperity] often corrupts the heart through pride, while adversities purge it through suffering” (PR I, 3). While allegorizing about the Ephod robe of the Jewish priest, Gregory later tempers this by acknowledging that there is some need for protection from adversity as well as from prosperity. Protection from both comes to the priest from “the ornament of virtue” (PR II, 3). The virtuous cleric should neither “be elated by prosperity, nor dismayed by adversity. Let not flatterers soften his resolve, nor the cruel lead him to despair, so that by not cowering to the passions, he will display the great beauty of the Ephod that covers both his shoulders.” The realities of a cleric’s life put him in daily contact with both flatterers and the cruel and so he must possess the proper virtues for responding to both kinds of people. Adversities and offerings of prosperity are a part of every person’s daily life, perhaps the cleric even more so, and so the cleric must learn to regard adversities as ascetic opportunities for spiritual growth and offerings of prosperity as temptations to abandon the heart of his vocation. For example, a pastor must not preach simply to please the biggest donors to his parish, but must fearlessly proclaim the gospel, even if it results, as it often does, in a certain degree of adversity.

For the most part, this is the kind of asceticism Gregory has in mind for clerics: that of an ascetic attitude toward daily life as it happens. His asceticism is not exactly the same as that of the monk who adds many labors to his life for the good of his spiritual progress, but is rather more pragmatic and balanced – a willing embrace of the sufferings found in each day – these are enough. For example, speaking of the proper way to teach people who are enduring bodily illnesses, Gregory encourages an ascetic embrace of such suffering. He writes, “The sick should be advised how beneficial bodily affliction can be, because it both cleanses sins already committed and prevents others from being accomplished. Moreover, by external lashes, bodily affliction inflicts the wounded mind with the wounds of penance” (PR III, 12). While Gregory speaks here of the purifying effect of lashes, he does not seem to recommend the ascetic discipline of flagellation or other self-inflicted physical penances. Rather, in characteristic moderation, he interprets the cleansing lashes of Proverbs 20:30 allegorically. These “secret lashes of the belly,” which Gregory understands to be the mind’s remembrance of sins, are occasioned by the “external suffering” of illness and produce internally, “the hidden wound of lament [which] cleanses… iniquities” (PR III, 12). Gregory here teaches the ascetic acceptance of the inevitable sufferings of life as opportunities to grow in purity and virtue. This is not to say that Gregory does not also advise certain ascetic labors that are chosen rather than simply accepted. He does. For example, he advocates wearing out the flesh with fasting (PR II, 3) and sexual continence for clerics.

Gregory’s thoughts on clerical continence expressed in a letter to Peter, a subdeacon of Sicily, are worth examining in order to reveal his perspective and assumptions regarding this because they inform to some extent his Book of Pastoral Rule, which does not address the issue directly. In response to a then recent ruling whereby the married subdeacons of Sicily were “forbidden all conjugal intercourse with their wives,” he, ever seeking balance, writes that it was “hard and improper” to impose this on those who were not “accustomed to such continency” (Epistle I, 44). Importantly, however, his solution to this problem is not to permit married clergy to continue their conjugal relations. Rather, he writes that any who “have been unwilling to abstain from intercourse with their wives” should not “be advanced to a sacred order” (Epistle I, 44). Interestingly, he never suggests that married men should not be ordained, but only that they should promise to be continent. It is easy to imagine, however, how this evolved into the current discipline of the Roman Church. Marital continence is “hard,” as Gregory earlier suggested. Better, then, to simply ordain those who are celibate in the full sense of the term. At any rate, Gregory does not seem to consider marital chastity of the usual kind to be a perfect or sufficient chastity when he writes, “bishops should… not… make any one a subdeacon who does not promise to live chastely,” or, “no one ought to approach the ministry of the altar but one who has been of approved chastity before undertaking the ministry” (Epistle I, 44). The only chastity of which Gregory approves as appropriate to ordained ministry is a perpetually continent chastity. Gregory makes this explicitly clear in a later letter to Leo, bishop of Catania in Sicily, again addressing the issue of married subdeacons. They, he writes, “should choose one of two things, that is, either to abstain from their wives, or on no account whatever presume to exercise their ministry” (Epistle IV, 36). Here, again, Gregory upholds an ascetic, self-denying ideal for clergy.

Always moderate, however, in this same letter he defends the right of a subdeacon to choose the latter, that is, to give up serving as a cleric in favor of continuing marital relations. One who had done precisely this was the occasion of this letter. Gregory defends and promotes marriage itself. For example, he objected to “immoderate fees… received on the marriages of peasants,” (Epistle I, 44) perhaps partly because this could be prohibitive. In his Book of Pastoral Rule, he devotes a section to the proper pastoral care of “those in the most honorable state of marriage” (PR III, 27).

Further demonstrating his admiration for marriage, Gregory often speaks of the life of cleric, allegorically, in matrimonial terms. An excellent example of this is his allegorical interpretation of levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:10. “The deceased brother,” according to Gregory, “is the One [i.e. Christ] who appearing in glory after the resurrection said, ‘Go, tell my brothers’ (Matt 28:10). For he died without children, so to speak, because he had not yet filled the number of his elect” (PR I, 5). The widowed wife, then, is the bride of Christ, the Church and “the surviving brother” is the cleric. “The surviving brother is assigned to the wife, which is the most fitting, because the care of the holy Church is imposed upon the one who is the most able to govern it well”(PR I, 5). In other words, the cleric is married to the Church in order to “beget children in his brother’s name” (PR I, 5), i.e., in order to bring others to rebirth in Christ.

For Gregory, however, the cleric’s necessary ministerial consideration of matrimony in the literal rather than the allegorical sense is always a condescensio and never something that he should fully participate in himself. As a model of this type of ministry, Gregory puts forth Paul, who was celibate and yet was willing to permit the members of his communities to marry. Gregory writes, “Through his intense economy (condescensio) [Paul] willingly investigates the marriage bed,” or, as another translation puts it, “the bed of the carnal”(PR I, 5). This, as Gregory sees it, is clearly a lowering from the heights of spiritual contemplation to the depths of concern for earthly things, but it is to just such a ministerial lowering of self that God calls the cleric.

The cleric must always live with one foot in the world and the other in heaven. He must never focus on one to the absolute neglect of the other. His vocation is neither exclusively one of internal prayer and contemplation, nor is it exclusively one of external service to the earthly needs of his flock. Gregory teaches that the cleric must always attend to both. His allegorical interpretation of Ezekiel 44:20 concerning the length of priests’ hair, which is to be neither shaved nor long, is a good example of his ideal of balance between these opposing concerns. He writes, “The hairs on the head [of the priests signify] thoughts about external matters” (PR II, 7). The cleric can never abandon these thoughts entirely but neither should they overindulge in them. “The priests are rightly forbidden to shave their head or let their hair grow long – this is so that they will not cut themselves off from all consideration for the flesh on behalf of the laity and also so that they will not allow it to grow once again out of control” (PR II, 7). Therefore, “Let them cut their hair” (Ezek 44:20), that is, priests should seek a balance of external and internal concerns. “External concerns of the laity must be kept to a certain limit,” (PR II, 7) as must withdrawal from them.

Gregory lamented that many monks who were suitable for ordination were unwilling to be ordained because of their excessive love of ascetic withdrawal from earthly cares and pleasures while many worldly men who were unsuitable for ordination sought the sacred office for the sake of honor and prestige. His solution is to advocate a balanced life, a life of contemplation and service, not one or the other. Asceticism enables such a life. It is easy, today as much as in Gregory’s time, for a cleric to become consumed by the cares and pleasures of this world. “Busied back and forth, these men forget that they have undertaken the care of souls” (PR II, 7). Ascetic practices call the cleric back from consuming passions and earthly cares. Renunciation of certain pleasures together with acceptance of daily struggles and sufferings help to moderate to cleric’s life, provided that he does not allow himself to be drawn completely away from the concerns of those he serves to the extent that he is no longer of any use to them. The cleric is not a monk, but he has something to learn from the monk. Further, a monk with ability to serve should be willing to do so, as God wills. Jesus himself condescended to serve others, washing their feet and feeding their bellies, even as he unfailingly preached the gospel, fasted, remained continent, and withdrew often to pray. Here is the perfect model for the cleric.

Obey your bishop.

2011-05-14T17:19:00.023-04:00

Sometimes, that is a joy. Other times, it is painful or even questionable. At all times, it is what St. Ignatius of Antioch would want you to do.

St. Ignatius of Antioch demonstrating how much it meant for him to be a bishop. He is wearing an omophorion, which, being made of wool and worn around the shoulders, symbolizes that he is a shepherd to his flock. He is also being torn apart by lions.

He regards the role of the bishop (επίσκοπος, which means “overseer”) as greatly significant for the unity of the Christian communities to whom he was writing. The unifying, even divinizing, role of the bishop, along with the presbyters and the deacons, is a major theme of six out of the seven epistles of Ignatius. Yet, even as he constantly speaks of the bishops with exultant tones, he admires in them silence and meekness, and as a bishop himself, he gives an example of humility. The great importance of the bishop for Ignatius can scarcely be overstated, though, even while he points this out, he would have them avoid self-importance.

Ignatius often speaks directly of the relationship between unity in the Church and the bishop. For example, he writes to the Ephesians, “I reckon you happy who are so joined to [your bishop] as the Church is to Jesus Christ… so all things may agree in unity” (5). The Pauline Epistle to the Ephesians applies this same image to the unity of a husband and wife (cf. Eph 5). With that comparison in view, it appears that Ignatius understands the union between a bishop and his flock to be real and intimate. The Magnesians, too, Ignatius exhorts to unity with their bishop, writing: “Let nothing exist among you that may divide you but be ye united with your bishop” (6). Division from the bishop, for Ignatius, is division in the Church, and even division from God. He writes to the Philadelphians, “Turn in penitence to the unity of God, and to communion with the bishop” (8). Unity with God and communion with the bishop appear here as two sides of the same coin. If a Christian would seek union with God, that Christian must also submit to the bishop.

The bishop unifies the community as a shepherd – an overseer to whom believers must submit like sheep. Referring to the bishop, Ignatius writes, “where the shepherd is, there do ye as sheep follow” (Philadelphians 2). A sheep follows a shepherd with great docility and obedience. Have you ever held a lamb? Every Christian should have that experience, I believe. Picking one up, I found the lamb to be the most yielding of creatures I have ever touched. It indescribably, shockingly, unhesitatingly, absolutely surrendered itself to me. I was moved. That Christians owe a similar response to their bishop Ignatius makes clear in his epistle to the Ephesians: “By a unanimous obedience ye may be perfectly joined together… and… being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, ye may in all respects be sanctified” (2). Obedience or self-subjection is the source of both unity and sanctity.

Ignatius would have the churches submit to the bishop and the presbyters united to him rather than to some other authority because he regards episcopal authority as divinely appointed. He tells the Magnesians to submit to their youthful bishop, “or rather not to him, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, the bishop of us all” (3). This is one of many times that Ignatius identifies submission to the bishop with submission to God. To the Ephesians, he writes, “We should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself” (6). He writes that the “bishop presides in the place of God” (Magnesians 6) and that “ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ” (Trallians 2). The bishops, he writes, has “been appointed according to the mind of Jesus Christ” (Philadelphians) and he tells the Smyrnaeans to “follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father” (8). These several examples make clear the divine origin of episcopal authority in Ignatius’ thought.

The bishop also unifies and sanctifies with his work at the altar . Ignatius writes to the Ephesians, “If any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God…. Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop” (5). Here Ignatius makes clear that union with the bishop enables one to receive “the bread of God.” Elsewhere he calls this bread, “the medicine of immortality” (Ephesians 20). These terms refer to the Eucharist, which Ignatius, in his letter to the Philadelphians, also associates with the altar and describes in unifying terms. He writes, “Have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to show forth the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop” (4). Unity with the one bishop (μόνος επίσκοπος) and the one Eucharist, makes the community one. Further, for Ignatius, the one Eucharist is not possible without the one bishop. He writes to the Smyrnaeans, “Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it” (8).

Ultimately, the bishop is the guarantor of unity in all things. Ignatius says repeatedly to those communities he writes to, “Do nothing without the bishop” (Philadelphians 7, see also Trallians 2, and Magnesians 7). Speaking of deacons and presbyters as well as bishops, Ignatius writes, “Apart from these, there is no Church” (Trallians 3). For Ignatius, the bishops are the very basis of the Christian community. Without a bishop, there is no Christian community.

The great importance of the bishop for Ignatius, then, is indisputable. Yet, the natural tendency of a person in a position of great importance to become all too aware of their own importance Ignatius would have bishops resist. In a bishop, Ignatius repeatedly admires the virtues of silence and meekness. He writes, “The more any one sees the bishop keeping silence, the more ought he to revere him” (Ephesians 6). Writing to the Philadelphians, Ignatius admires their bishop, “at whose meekness I am struck with admiration, and who by his silence is able to accomplish more than those who vainly talk” (1). He further compares this meekness with that of “the living God” (1). Ignatius writes of the bishop of the Trallians, “His meekness [is] of itself a power” (3). I see in these expressions some sense of how one ought to be a bishop, which is interesting to note in the midst of Ignatius’ extensive writing about how one ought to obey a bishop.

Ignatius teaches most about how to be a bishop by example. Only once in his letters does Ignatius specifically mention that he is a bishop – in his letter to the Romans (2). Perhaps he does not point it out frequently in part because he is “ashamed to be counted one of them." He writes further, "for indeed I am not worthy, as being the very last of them” (Romans 9, see also Trallians 13 and Magnesians 14). This echoes the humility of Paul, who says that he is “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9), but Ignatius goes still further and indicates that he should not issue commands as if he were an apostle (Trallians 3) nor even as if he were some great person (Ephesians 3). Frequently, he refers to the deacon (διάκονος, which means “servant”) as his “fellow-servant” (σύνδουλος) (Ephesians 2, Magnesians 2, Philadelphians 4, Smyrnaeans 12). The bishop Ignatius referring to himself as a fellow-servant of servants seems to me to be another example of his humility.

In fact, Ignatius is among the greatest of bishops, and all the great things he says of bishops should be said of him. The humility he exemplifies is a good model for all Christians to follow, whether or not they have been made bishops, and goes a long way towards unifying the Church. The Church would also do well to remember the testimony he gives to the importance of the bishops in maintaining unity, particularly in this fractured age.

Mystery of Mysteries

2011-03-18T15:55:00.003-04:00

When the earliest Fathers of the Church first considered the means that brought them closer to God – the mysteries of the Church – they did not find it necessary to enumerate or systematize them. They were committed to living, rather than simply explaining, the mystery of the life of the Church, the Body of Christ. Nonetheless, from the sixth century on, it became increasingly necessary to offer some kind of reflection on the nature of the mysteries of the Church. Various members of the Church began to propose lists of sacraments. These lists varied to a surprising degree in number and content. According to Kallistos Ware,

Before [the seventeenth century], Orthodox writers vary considerably as to the number of sacraments: John of Damascus speaks of two; Dionysius the Areopagite of six; Joasaph, Metropolitan of Ephesus (fifteenth century), of ten; and those Byzantine theologians who in fact speak of seven sacraments differ as to the items which they include in their list.

Perhaps reflecting the fluidity of the prevalent understanding of sacrament, these lists were not at first intended as exhaustive, but only as informative and spiritually nourishing. Eventually, first in the West, many members of the Church came to believe that there are seven, and only seven, sacraments. Even among those who accepted this number, however, there was not always agreement on which sacraments were included in the list. There are a number of rites that were once frequently included among the mysteries of the Church that few now think of in those terms. There are both uses and limitations of dogmatically enumerating the sacraments.

As John Meyendorff writes, “Byzantine theology… never formally committed itself to any strict limitation of the number of sacraments.” It occasionally became necessary to defend particular rites, when heretics denied their sacramentality, but the motivation for limiting the number of sacraments is less clear. Perhaps it was out of the simple desire for clear understanding.

This does not appear to be the motivation of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500), who is probably the first to discuss the sacramental mysteries in a systematic way. In his work, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he writes, “A manifold variety of sensible symbols… raise us hierarchically, in proportion to our capacity, to the oneness of deification, to God and divine virtue.” This “manifold variety” leading to “oneness” he then discusses at length, giving six specific examples of sacramental rites: the mysteries “of illumination,” “of synaxis,” “of the oil,” “of sacerdotal consecration,” “of monastic consecration,” and “over those who fell asleep.”

1) By “illumination,” Pseudo-Dionysius refers to baptism. He includes what many would later call chrismation under this heading. As baptism and chrismation are parts of one rite, he presents them as parts of one mystery. After he describes the rite of baptism, he writes that the newly baptized person is brought again before the bishop and the bishop “has sealed the man with the oil that produces divine effects.” If one considers “illumination” to contain two sacraments, one could make a case that there are seven sacraments in Pseudo-Dionysius, rather than six. At any rate, they are not the same seven sacraments currently widely accepted.

2) By “synaxis,” he refers to the Eucharistic communion.

3) By the mystery “of the oil,” he does not refer to the unction of the sick, but rather to the consecration of oil for use in baptism, chrismation, consecrating altars, and anointing the dead.

4) By “sacerdotal consecration,” he refers to the ordination of bishops, priests and deacons.

5) “Monastic consecration” is just what it sounds like.

6) By the mystery “over those who fell asleep,” he refers to the funeral rites.

He does not say that there are neither more nor less than these mysteries and his discussion is not an attempt at enumeration. Rather, he refers to the quantity of these “symbols” nonspecifically as “manifold” and does not actually give them a number. Consequently, his interesting omission of certain sacraments – such as unction of the sick, confession, and marriage – does not necessarily mean that he excludes these from among the mysteries. More interesting, perhaps, is his inclusion of certain rites – consecration of oil, monastic consecration, and funerals – that few now understand as sacraments, per se. Thus, this first of many historical sacramental syntheses presents a number of surprises to the modern reader.

Following Pseudo-Dionysius closely, right down to the order and names of the sacraments, Theodore the Studite in the ninth century presents the same list of six sacraments. Demonstrating clearly, however, that neither did he mean this as any kind of a denial of other mysteries, he himself received the unction of the sick before he died. Furthermore, he writes that the faithful of his time often went to confession. Once again, this second early example of a sacramental synthesis is not an attempt to limit or absolutely enumerate the sacraments.

At first, this was no different in the West than it was in the East. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) is one of the last members of the Latin Church to express an understanding of the sacraments that includes more than the well known seven. In his sermon In Coena Domini, he says that there are many sacraments and he appears to count among them the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday. This opinion, while seemingly unique to Bernard, makes a certain amount of sense. The foot-washing is a liturgical action observed throughout the Church and directly instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ at the Last Supper (cf. John 13:5-14).

There are different Western claimants to the original seven-fold enumeration of the sacraments. A certain Herbord, writing before 1168, claims that Otto, bishop of Bambery (c. 1127) first composed the list of seven sacraments. Gregory, bishop of Bergamo (1133-1146) and Pope Alexander (c. 1150) present the same list. Some hold that Peter Lombard (c.1100-1164), writing around 1150, popularized the list of seven sacraments now commonly accepted in the Latin Church. He writes,

Let us come now to the sacraments of the new covenant; which are baptism, confirmation, the blessing of bread, that is the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, ordination, marriage.

Whoever is most directly responsible, it is clear that from the middle of the twelfth century until the present day, the Latin Church accepts seven, and only seven, sacraments. It is just as clear that before the twelfth century, there was no such developed sacramental system in the West or the East.

Not for a century after this are there any records of this opinion in the Eastern Church, and its first appearance seems to be under direct influence of the West. The Emperor Michael Paleologus’ Profession of Faith to Pope Clement IV in 1267 contains the list of seven sacraments in use by the Latin Church. Meyendorff points out, “the Profession had been prepared… by Latin theologians.” Consequently, this is still not an example of the enumeration of the sacraments in Byzantine theology. Under the same kind of influence, while the Council of Lyons was attempting to restore unity in the Church (1274-1279), Patriarch John Vecco of Constantinople made a similar statement to Pope John XXI (1277).

About this same time, the Byzantine Church began a centuries-long process of independently developing its own synthesis of the sacraments. It is hard to imagine that initial concurrent interactions with the West did not at least in part motivate this development, perhaps even as a counter to – rather than as an imitation of – the Latin sacramental system. However, Meyendorff writes that the Eastern acceptance of a strict numbering of the sacraments, “resulted not so much from the influence of Latin theology as from the peculiarly medieval and Byzantine fascination with symbolic numbers,” and Casimir Kucharek states, “Orthodox writers reject any inference that the Byzantines borrowed the doctrine of seven sacraments from the Latins.” Given the plurality of Byzantine perspectives on the subject for a great while longer, it does not seem especially likely that they “borrowed” anything from the Latin Church, but it does seem possible that they were reacting to the doctrinal development in the Latin Church.

The monk Job provides a list of seven sacraments around 1270. Following Theodore the Studite, he continues to list monastic tonsure among the sacraments, but he combines penance and the unction of the sick. In the sacramental system of Symeon of Thessalonia, written before 1429, the seven sacraments also include monastic tonsure. He joins penance with monastic tonsure, rather than with unction of the sick. Joasaph, Metropolitan of Ephesus, writing before 1437, also includes monastic tonsure in his sacramental enumeration, along with the well-known seven, the consecration of a church, and the funeral rites, thus listing ten sacraments.

Not until the seventeenth century does the list of sacraments commonly provided in the Eastern Churches begin to mirror consistently the list accepted since the twelfth century in the Latin Church. In the present age, somewhat at odds with the majority of Christian history, Kallistos Ware can write, “the Orthodox Church speaks customarily of seven sacraments, basically the same seven as in Roman Catholic theology.” While there is a contemporarily heightened awareness of the historical fluidity of the sacramental system, the Church in the present age nonetheless must deal with the current widespread acceptance of the list that the West introduced more than eight centuries ago. There are both benefits and challenges resulting from this reality.

Meyendorff identifies a primary reason for the Byzantine theologians’ frequent acceptance of seven sacraments. He writes that there was a “peculiarly medieval and Byzantine fascination with symbolic numbers: the number seven, in particular, evoked an association with the seven gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah 11:2-4.” In fact, this symbolism is one of the strengths of the seven-fold enumeration of the sacraments. The biblical significance of the number does not end with gifts of the spirit in Isaiah, though these do fittingly refer to the sacraments, which are also, in a sense, gifts of the Spirit – significantly, each of them contains an epiclesis. Additionally, the number seven biblically represents fullness or totality. In Genesis, God completes His creation and rests on the seventh day (Gen 2:2). In the genealogy in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, the beloved Son of God, is the seventy-seventh generation from Adam (Luke 3:23-38). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells Peter to forgive “seventy times seven times” (Matt 18:21), in other words to forgive always and completely. These are just a few of the biblical examples of the significance of this number. Extra-biblically, as a Byzantine Catholic catechism, Light for Life, points out, “the seven mysteries represent a symbolic perfection, the union of God (the Holy Trinity) with the four elements,” that is, the sacramental union of the divine with creation. If one were to choose a number to symbolize the totality of the one sacramental mystery that is the life of Christ, seven would be a suitable choice. The Byzantine theologians who accepted this number (e.g. the monk Job and Symeon of Thessalonica) had good symbolic reasons for doing so.

Ware identifies another reason the Eastern Church makes some use of the originally Western synthesis of the seven sacraments. He writes, “Even today the number seven has no absolute dogmatic significance for Orthodox theology, but is used primarily as a convenience in teaching.” In other words, the well-known list of seven sacraments serves as a catechetically useful and simplified introduction to the sacramental life of the Church. For just one among many examples of the catechetical use of the seven sacraments in the Orthodox Church, there is in the Sacred Catechism of the Orthodox Church written by Greek Orthodox lay theologian in1869 the following question and answer:

Ques. How many are the Divine Mysteria, and which are they?
Ans. Seven. (i) Holy Baptism, (ii) Holy Chrism, (iii) Divine Communion or Eucharist, (iv) Confession, (v) Holy Orders, (vi) Holy Matrimony, and (vii) Evchelaion.

The aforementioned more recent Byzantine Catholic catechism, Light for Life, also refers to this list, though not without some qualifications. For example, it points out, “We no longer especially value numeric symbolism.”

In the everyday life of the Church, seeking to evangelize the world, proper understanding of the sacraments is most important catechetically. If presented by catechists as a dogmatically exhaustive list, the idea of there being seven and only seven sacraments may do a certain degree of harm to the life of the Church. Christians thus educated may become resistant to grace communicated by other means and may develop an unhealthy, even magical, understanding of the efficacy of the sacraments, as if by these means the Church could force God’s hand and by no other means would He communicate His uncreated energies to the Church. While recognizing the catechetical usefulness and symbolic significance of the seven sacraments, then, catechists must also bear in mind that sacramentality extends beyond this list.

Light for Life remembers, “The Church at various times in its history has recognized other offices…, though they may not be… one of the seven, nevertheless [as] ‘sacramental’ moments.” Ware says something similar: “When we talk of ‘seven sacraments,’ we must never isolate these seven from the many other actions in the Church which also possess a sacramental character.” These statements exemplify the challenge put forth by the widespread acceptance of the seven-fold sacramental system. Simplification for the sake of symbolism and catechetics is valuable, but can have the detrimental effect of limiting the understanding of God’s sacramental working in human lives. When one treats the list of seven sacraments as if it were exhaustive, it excludes sacramentality from all other things.

Alexander Schmemann seeks to recover the all-inclusive understanding of sacrament. He writes, “In a way, of course, the whole life of the Church can termed sacramental.” Later, he points out that there is a “‘sacramental’ potentiality of creation in its totality, as well as in each of its elements.” All of creation, in the life of the Church, has the potential to become a means of union with God, which is what a sacrament is.

Finally, there is one seven-fold sacramental mystery: the Church, the Body of Christ. There is one mystery, the life of Christ, expressed in innumerable ways. Meyendorff writes of this singular mystery as expressed by manifold mysteries. The “possibility of ‘being in Christ’ [is] essentially manifested in the sacraments, or mysteria, of the Church. These sacraments are… aspects of a unique mystery of the Church, in which God shares divine life with humanity.” The divine life is the mystery of mysteries – the mystery made possible by the mysteries. Ultimately, no one can ever absolutely systematize this mystery. Grace abounds within and without the widely accepted categories. The sacramental mysteries of the Church are an expression of God’s deification and recapitulation of the cosmos, the incarnational union of divinity with creation, which makes possible living in ever-increasing union with God. As Ware writes, “The whole Christian life must be seen as a unity, as a single mystery or one great sacrament.”

A Christian Understanding of Earthquakes

2010-01-15T15:12:00.002-05:00

In all their anger directed toward Pat Robertson’s comments about the earthquake in Haiti, what many fellow Christians have missed is that he is not simply wrong, but has distorted a truth:

Sin is the cause of death.

What Robertson has done, in declaring a particular sin the cause of a particular disaster, is neglect the communal nature of this causality. What he should realize is that the sin that brings about all the suffering and death in the world is his sin - and it is my sin - and it is your sin. It is Adam’s sin.

“…Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned...” (Romans 5:12).

Robertson will die too, and his death will not be different from the deaths taking place in Haiti – it too will be the result of sin – his sin, my sin, your sin.

Just as all us sinners bear together the guilt of our Lord’s suffering and death upon the Cross, so do we share the blame for all suffering and death. God did not want us to suffer and die. We humans, as a people, have brought it upon ourselves – the natural consequence of acting against our created nature – a nature created in the image and likeness of God and ultimately directed toward union with Him.

We should not think that their greater misfortune indicates their greater sin. Indeed, the opposite is often the case - it is often the saints who suffer more greatly.

Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ Himself suffered a torturous death. “And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. And behold… the earth shook, and the rocks were split…” (Matthew 27: 50-51). Those who witnessed this earthquake did not take it as a sign that Jesus was a great sinner. Rather, those who “saw the earthquake and what took place… were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this is the Son of God!’” (Matthew 27: 54)

One is Holy

2009-07-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

Everyone is bad. Everyone is good. Everyone is a sinner. Everyone is a saint.

Each person bears the image of God, the only One Who is Good, in their being.
Each person bears the falleness of Man, that loss of likeness to God, and has all demons within.

Restoration of likeness to God is achieved only in union with Jesus Christ, the God-Man, brought about by grace, available to all. In this moment of union and only in this moment (may it be eternal), one is good and only good.

There is a moment in the Divine Liturgy that well expresses these truths. Just after the bread and wine have been changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, the priest elevates the Eucharist and proclaims, "Holy Things to Holy People." To which the people respond, "One is Holy, One is Lord, Jesus Christ." Thereby the people acknowledge their own holiness in the Lord's, outside of which there is no holiness.

The people are holy to the extent that they are one with the one Body of Christ. About to receive communion with Him in the Eucharist, they are truly holy, as the priest proclaims. Without the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, there is no holiness, no goodness, no life within, as they acknowledge. Our Lord said, "He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him" (Jn 6:56).

Our enemies are images of God

2009-06-12T16:30:00.000-04:00

Thou shalt not hate.
Okay.
God is Love.
Okay.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Okay.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Okay.

Many times, we escape our Christian duty to love our neighbors as ourselves by reasoning that we don’t have to like our neighbor – which, maybe, is true – we just have to love them. We don’t have to have warm feelings about everyone. It’s not our feelings that count – feelings change – emotional states are not as significant as moral states. So goes our reasoning.

Above all, we should love God. It is only in loving God that we can love our neighbors and our enemies. Love is self-sacrifice for the sake of the beloved.

But should we like God? – not just love Him, but like Him? We cheapen love if we say no. A child understands that “liking” is less than “loving.” Love is the important thing. Love is the commandment. But can we love whom we dislike? Does love have liking as it’s foundation?

Whether or not it is necessary, it is Good to like God - to nurture warm feelings and not just give Him some abstract love – to give Him personal affection. It is important to have affection for God. It may even be necessary.

And if it is necessary to have affection for God, then it is necessary to have affection for our enemies. Affection – warm feelings – for those who hate us. Why? – because our enemies are images of God.

Our enemies are images of God. Our enemies are images of God.

Ascension Thursday

2009-05-21T22:13:00.001-04:00

There is a sadness in this day. The Paschal season is over - no longer do we sing “Christ is Risen.” There is a sadness in this day. The plaschanitza is removed from the Holy Table and put away until next year. There is a sadness in this day. Our Lord has left us staring at the sky.

“O Lord and Giver of Life, when the apostles saw you ascending upon the clouds,a great sadness over came them; they shed burning tears and exclaimed: O our Master, do not leave us orphans; we are your servants whom you loved so tenderly. Since you are most wonderful, send down upon us your all–holy Spirit to enlighten our souls, as you promised.”

– a sticheron of the Ascension

But there is a joy in this day. Christ our Lord has ascended into heaven amid shouts of joy and trumpet blasts. The greatness of this day cannot be overstated. Not only are we saved by Christ’s Incarnation, not only by His death and Resurrection, but also by His Ascension. God became Man so that Man might become God. God took on our human nature. He died in His human nature. He rose in His human nature. And now He ascends in His human nature. Without the Ascension, our human natures do not go to Heaven. It is only in Christ that we are united to God and it is only in Christ’s ascension that our humanity has hope of Heaven.

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

2009-05-10T14:37:00.000-04:00

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23).

Christian worship is spiritual worship. “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth,” Jesus continued to say to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:24). No longer do we worship God on the mountain, as do the Samaritans, or in the Temple, as did the Jews, by sacrificing animals – a fleshly and bloody sacrifice. Our sacrifice is a spiritual sacrifice, an unbloody sacrifice, a sacrifice of praise.

We are spirits, images of God, Who is Spirit. We must worship God, Who is Spirit, in the temples of our own spirits, souls and bodies.

Jesus Christ - the Son of God - is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6). To worship the Father in Spirit and Truth is to worship the Triune God. It is to worship God the Father in the Holy Spirit and in God the Son.

True worship is worship of the Trinity.

Reunion

2009-03-07T08:10:00.000-05:00

Only when the Catholics acknowledge that the Orthodox are orthodox and the Orthodox acknowledge that the Catholics are catholic, will the Catholics be Orthodox and the Orthodox be Catholic.

Two Icons

2009-02-25T23:48:00.000-05:00

These are the first icons my wife and I have made under the instruction of Mother Katherine of St. Andrew Rublev Iconography School. They are also posted at Holy Image. I painted (or wrote, for those who prefer that terminology) the Virgin of Crete and my wife painted the Archangel Gabriel. It strikes me that, when placed side by side, they evoke the Annunciation - a solemn holy day that falls during the Great Fast that we have just begun.

Is overpopulation a self-correcting phenomenon? (question 3 of 3)

2009-02-07T15:14:00.001-05:00

Upon first consideration, this question struck me as rather heartless. One theory is that the world is already overpopulated and that it currently thrives by stealing from the future – that is, by using up non-renewable resources that will leave future, even more populous generations without the means to survive. Thus, the current growth of population is setting the stage for a massive death of human beings in the near future. This massive death, of course, will eliminate the problem of overpopulation - however few survive it will not be too populous. Thus, overpopulation is a self-correcting phenomenon - one way or another.

As Tertullian wrote in 210 A.D, “Pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the abundance of the human race.”

It then occurred to me, however, that there may be another, more positive, sense in which overpopulation could correct itself, not without some pain but certainly without so much death. And this sense touches on something Ian Gerdon wrote in his wise criticism of my previous post: “it is only industrialization that allows us to easily support so many people. Our ability to produce food vastly exceeds that of the pre-industrial world.”

Around 200 million people was considered overpopulous in 210 A.D. - a point I am trying to beat to death - but maybe it really was. Again quoting Mr. Gerdon, "When famine threatened in antiquity, it was not lack of compassion but actual lack of food that caused death." In reality, because of the ingenuity of humans, the very meaning of overpopulation has changed. This world can actually support more people now than it could eighteen hundred years ago - because of technological advancements in agriculture and transportation.

Just as the necessities of the past inspired human beings to invent ways of producing more food and finding more places to live, hopefully the necessities of the future will do the same. As soon as those with creative and inventive abilities perceive the necessity to once again advance our technologies and expand the world's capacity for supporting human life, they may respond with solutions we've not even imagined. Overpopulation would then have created the necessity that mothers invention and therefore, in a sense, corrected itself.

There are already plans for growing food in outer space and humans have been imagining colonizing other planets for more than a century: Galaxy Gardening More Than Hobby For Future Moon, Mars Residents

Is this getting a bit too kooky? Bear in mind, ships that can traverse an ocean were once an absurdity. Anyway, if overpopulation does need to correct itself, I hope it can do so this way rather than with the destruction of human life.

Is overpopulation a current reality? (question 2 of 3)

2009-01-28T13:28:00.001-05:00

I am neither competent to declare whether the world is currently in this situation nor whether it soon will be. Those in the sciences seem to be the ones best suited to answer this question. I will take a moment, however, to describe the situation as it looks from out here.

To start with, those in the sciences do not appear to be in agreement, as is typical in all disciplines, leaving those outside the discipline with clueless expressions on our faces. Well, in some cases, our expressions are smugly arrogant regardless of the subject being discussed, but that is another matter.

Speaking of intradisciplinary (to coin a word) disagreement, a reader pointed out that my comment about lemmings committing mass suicide to alleviate overpopulation is a disputed point. So it is. Scholastic unhesitatingly repeats the same old story: "The suicidal tendencies of the lemming to 'off' themselves in times of over-population is most assuredly the fact that characterizes this animal." Alaska Fish and Wildlife News, on the other hand, reports, "Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. It's a myth, but it's remarkable how many people believe it." This is actually an interesting article; I recommend following the link.

Enough of lemmings. As I’ve written, it is only possible to speak of an overpopulation of humans if the number of humans is depriving some of those humans of the necessities of life. As a fact, many many humans on this planet are deprived of the necessities of life. Hundreds of millions of people in the world do not have enough to eat. Millions die of starvation every year. That said, the same organizations that gather these statistics also tell us that the world currently has the resources to feed its entire population. It is not a problem of too many mouths to feed but a problem of too few hearts that care enough to feed them.

I believe it. According to Foodnavigator-USA.com, a study from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson indicates that the United States wastes forty to fifty percent of all the food it grows. According to The Guardian, the UK throws away thirty to forty percent of its food. I recommend Food for the Poor to any willing to help alleviate the problems of hunger and poverty in the world today. I also recommend a life less gluttonous and wasteful than the average American's.

It is worth remembering that there were people starving to death when the world was far less populous than today. Then, as now, the problem was not overpopulation but lack of compassion. There is no shortage of space. There is no shortage of air. There is no shortage of water. There is no shortage of food. There is no shortage of necessary resources. Yet, some claim the world is overpopulated. Those making that claim must either dispute the definition of overpopulation that I have provided or else they must know something I don't about resource shortages - which is entirely possible.

Overpopulation may be a fact of our near future even if it is not our present reality. The rate of world population growth has fallen every year since 1986, but even if it continues falling at its current rate, the world will reach more than nine and half billion people by 2050 - this according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 9.5 billion is a heck of a lot more than the 6.7 billion we have now. It may well be that 9.5 billion people will create a situation of genuine overpopulation. I don't know, as I stated at the beginning of this piece, but I will say that I doubt it.

I would like to know how many people the world can feed, clothe and shelter and I would like to assert that it is not until we have surpassed this number that earth will be overpopulated - however many inconveniences are brought about by the numbers of people, however few cars each person has to himself, however close the houses must be built, however little oil there is to run machines. I would rather see the world technologically reversed to before the industrial revolution than see one person's life sacrificed on the altar of convenience.

Is overpopulation a possibility? (question 1 of 3)

2009-01-25T11:12:00.001-05:00

Mother Theresa once asked, "How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers." While this is a loving and sweet perspective, it has always evoked to my mind images of vast fields of flowers choking all the crops and starving the world. There could be too many flowers, it seems to me. There could be too much of anything - even of a necessity like food - if the excess of one good led to the scarcity of another equal or greater good. The world operates on balance and it's occupants would do well to approach all things with moderation.

It strikes me as irresponsible, for example, for a man making $25,000 a year to keep a harem and father hundreds of children. There can be too much of a good thing.

That said, those children, once fathered, are good. Their humanity is equal to the humanity of any person. Wherever there is human life, all are obliged to love and provide for that life to the extent they are able, regardless of the circumstances in which that life was created. Which begs the question: is it even possible to speak of an overpopulation of humans?

We speak of an overpopulation of deer when the deer become so numerous they begin to strip other species of their livelihood, particularly if that species is human. We - humans that is - are mainly concerned with controlling deer population because of their potential threat to us and our livelihood should they become too numerous. A deer does not think that there are too many deer - nor is it willing to die to keep deer numbers down. We have to go out and kill them. Lemmings would be an exception to this instinct of self-preservation over and above species preservation, but humans would not.

You'll notice that those arguing for a reduction in human population are seldom volunteering to die for the cause. No, they want to kill other people or prevent them from being conceived. Makes sense - they're looking out for number one.

This fact does not make them wrong, however. It is possible, it seems to me, to speak of an overpopulation of humans. If humans became so populous as to deprive other humans of food, drink, clothing, or shelter, what else could this be called?

The human body is the greatest material good thing. Therefore, a number of human bodies could only be considered excessive when it reached the point of depriving life from human bodies.

Overpopulation continued

2009-01-22T18:05:00.000-05:00

I have often heard a claim that all the people in the world could fit into Texas with room to spare. First in 1997 and then many many times since. A friend recently stated that he did not believe that those numbers were accurate, so I decided to check out this oft-made claim for myself.

According to the Texas Almanac, the state's area contains 261,797 square miles of land.

1 square mile = 27,878,400 square feet.

261,797 x 27,878,400 = 7,298,481,484,800 square feet of land in Texas.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total midyear population of the world in 2009 will be 6,790,062,216.

7,298,481,484,800 / 6,790,062,216 = 1,074 square feet of land in Texas per person in the world in 2009.

So, there you have it. All the people in the world could fit into Texas with a fair amount of room for moving around.

Now, I doubt anyone intends this numerical exercise as a practical suggestion for what is to be done with the world's population. I suspect that if we piled the whole world into Texas most people would be dead within a month.

The Maternity of the Holy Anna

2008-12-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

Given that yesterday honored the Maternity of the Holy Anna (a.k.a. the Immaculate Conception and the Conception of St. Anna)I think it is appropriate to unveil my new painting here as well as on my studio blog.

My friend David O'Neil, scholar of classical languages, helped me in titling this painting. Our exchange follows.

Dear Dave,

So, Theotokos - a title of Mary - is Greek for "God-bearer" - correct? If I wanted to say "Bearer of the God-bearer" (indicating Mary's mother Ann), what would I say? Theotokostokos?

In Christ,
John

To avoid the neologism, I would rather add a second word. At first I was thinking of something like "tokos tEs theotokou" which would be a simple "bearor of the god-bearer", but 'tokos' doesn't really mean "bearer" by itself, but more like "the giving forth", so that wouldn't work. I kind of like "hE tiktousa tEn theotokon", lit. "the woman bringing forth the God-bearer"). There's precedent for 'hE tiktousa' meaning "mother" and it retains the cognate with 'tokos'. By the way, the capitals represent long vowels.

I don't know if you want something shorter than this. I doubt there's any precedent for the word you suggest, but the Greeks did like to make up big long words like that, and I think it would be understood. I'd take out the first 's', though, just like how the 's' is removed from 'theos' in the original compound--so 'theotokotokos'.

Dave

Dave,

As you can see, desirous of a title rather than a phrase, I went with the neologism. I find the use of a neologism appropriate given that the image is a "neologism" of it's own. Icons are often described as having been "written" rather than "painted." An icon is an image of the invisible Logos. This painting is an innovation and violates all sorts of iconographic canons, therefore it is a "new word."

In Christ,
John

Overpopulation

2008-09-13T02:02:00.000-04:00

The idea that the world is overpopulated is surprisingly ancient.

“The human race has progressed with a gradual growth of population. Some occupy different portions of the earth as natives…. Others occupy certain regions through emigration, which they call ‘colonies.’ These are established for the purpose of throwing off excess population, disgorging into other places their overcrowded masses…. What most frequently meets our eyes is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements. Our wants grow more and more acute, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, while Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In fact, pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the abundance of the human race.” –Tertullian c. 210

In 210 A.D., the world population is estimated to have been between 190 million and 256 million: Historical Estimates of World Population

Controversial Religious Art

2008-08-09T14:46:00.000-04:00

Dr. Christopher Allen of Sydney recently resigned from the judging panel for the Blake Prize for Religious Art (Australia's highest award for this kind of work) over his objections to a crucifixion painted by the artist Adam Cullen: Religious art prize judge quits in disgust

I happen to agree with Dr. Allen's assessment of Cullen's work: "It has a kind of deliberate ugliness which has been exploited as a gimmick." But I can't help but wonder whether he'd level the same attack against some of my work:

Similar words have been used to describe the above images I painted in 2002. In 1998, some of my work was banned from an exhibition in a Wesleyan church because it was "frightening people." Like Cullen, I've "become used to strong reactions to [my] work."

There is a stylistic similarity between our works, but I believe there is a profound difference of intent. If I intend to shock, it is with the reality of the crucifixion. Cullen works with disrespectful flippancy, quipping, "It's just a Jew on the cross." My hope with this kind of work is to reawaken the viewer to the violent sacrifice of God's Son made Man. Pretty, pastel, stiff figures on the cross may have a place, but I try to express the pain and ugliness He endured in becoming our Paschal Lamb.

Many Rites

2008-08-01T06:36:00.000-04:00

Among Catholics, I have often heard voiced the opinion that, if things were as they should be, the Church would have only one Eucharistic liturgy, ever the same, always and everywhere. The one true Church, it seems to many, ought to have one true liturgy.

The Holy Spirit, apparently, had something else in mind.

A friend and I were recently discussing the variety of liturgies used by the Church throughout the world and which of these could be said to be closest to the original liturgy. A mutual friend is of the opinion that the Classical Roman Rite, (a.k.a. the Tridentine Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, the “extraordinary form,” etc.) best preserves those traditions handed down to us from the apostles. Our Byzantine Catholic priest, on the other hand, is thoroughly convinced that it is the liturgies of the Byzantine tradition that most closely resemble those of the Apostolic Church. Neither of these opinions is provable or disprovable, though each is quite capable of stirring up a lot of anger and indignation from those who hold to the other. The purpose of such dispute, I imagine, is to settle the question once and for all of whose liturgy is the “best” and ought to be used always and everywhere.

Our conversation then moved to the original liturgy itself. I had supposed we were talking about the liturgies described by St. Justin Martyr (c. 160 A.D.) and the Didache (80 – 100 A.D.). My friend, on the other hand, was talking about the Last Supper as described in the Gospels. Even regarding what constitutes the original liturgy there is dispute.

Already in the first century we have two differing accounts of how the Eucharist is offered. The Didache (9: 1-5) instructs us to first give thanks for the cup and then for the bread. The Gospels describe Christ as first offering His body and then His blood (Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-25). There is difference from the first.

I see a parallel between the gift of tongues and the many rites of the Church. When the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on Pentecost, he gave to them the gift of "divers tongues" (Acts 2:4) In so doing, He lifted the curse of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Just as the Holy Spirit did not remove the curse of Babel by restoring one language to all peoples, so He also did not give the Church one liturgy for all peoples. Rather, He gave the Apostles many tongues and through them established many liturgies. Just as there is one Spirit who gives the gift of many tongues, there is one Church who gives the gift of many liturgies.

"The doors, the doors!"

2008-07-26T13:20:00.000-04:00

I’ve a growing concern for security around Our Lord’s Body and Blood. Here’s a reason why. There are others.

We (Catholics) will give the Eucharist to anyone who gets in line. “Satanists, blasphemers, pagans, excommunicants, step right up!” – seems to be a message we send by this practice.

This was not always so. Even today, there are Orthodox parishes where one is not able to receive communion unless the priest – to whom he has recently confessed his sins – knows him.

The Early Church was far more scrupulous regarding who may receive – or even attend during the consecration. There are remnants of this in the Divine Liturgy: “I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies,” all vow before communion; “The doors, the doors!” the priest calls out before the Liturgy of the Faithful (a.k.a. Liturgy of the Eucharist). This call is to signal that the doors must be guarded to keep out all intruders – pagans and catechumens already having been expelled by the deacon.

This expulsion fell away from the Liturgy in both East and West. In the centuries after the Edict of Milan, pagans and catechumens became hard to find in Christian Churches. Therefore, expelling them became mostly unnecessary.

This is no longer the case. Christendom has been crumbling for centuries, but has failed to respond liturgically to the situation. We are no longer a Christian culture. Surely this must be apparent? The many conveniences we’ve adopted over centuries of enjoying a Christian culture ought now to be abandoned.

Out of such convenience, the Roman Church has seen fit, by and large, to reinstitute an early Christian practice of communion in the hand, rather than on the tongue; along with this, they should reinstitute the expulsion of pagans and catechumens (and Satanists, atheists, unbelievers, Protestants, etc.). Communion in the hand makes theft and desecration of the Eucharist that much easier. None but fully initiated Catholics should even be permitted in the exposed Presence of the Eucharist.

We must recognize the truth of the situation: we are now surrounded by unbelievers, many of whom come into our churches and steal Our Lord’s Body and Blood – often unwittingly. In some cases, this is done with open malice, but usually this is no crime of the one who receives inappropriately, but our own negligence towards the One Who offers Himself for us in the Eucharist.

Eastern Christian Blog Awards

2008-05-14T23:37:00.000-04:00

This site provides a good list of blogs well worth perusing and the opportunity to vote for your favorite:

Eastern Christian Blog Awards

Happy Birthday Father Sid!

2008-05-08T19:24:00.000-04:00

Ordained at 76, today he’s 80 and spitting nails!

This is the man who joined my wife and I in holy matrimony by the Mystery of Crowning. He initiated my son into the Catholic Church by the Mysteries of Baptism, Chrismation, and Eucharist. He forgives my sins with Christ's forgivness and he feeds me the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. He blessed my house. He is a source of grace and I love him. May God grant him many blessed years in health and happiness!

Psalm 135

2008-03-14T11:05:00.001-04:00

The Kathismata for today, Friday, include Psalm 135 (or 136, according to Masoretic numbering):

It has occurred to me that its twenty-seven repetitions of the the phrase, "for his mercy endureth for ever" are an excellent example of what Christ did not mean when he condemned "vain repetitions" in prayer (Matthew 6:7).

A Political Pilgrimage

2008-01-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

Archbishop Elias Shakur, Archbishop of Akkra for the Greek-Catholic Melkite Church, recently asked President Bush whether he came to Israel as a politician or a pilgrim (Washington Times).

This question reminds me a bit of that riddle about the twin brothers, one of whom always lies, the other of whom always tells the truth. They both say, "I am the one that always tells the truth," so how do you figure out which is which?

Ask a politician, "Did you come as a politician or a pilgrim?" and he will reply, "I came as a pilgrim." Ask a pilgrim, "Did you come as a politician or a pilgrim?" and he will reply, "I came as a pilgrim."

Asked that very question, Mr. Bush replied, "I came as a pilgrim."

Is the Pope Orthodox?

2008-01-06T02:07:00.000-05:00

My latest bumper sticker:

Unlike the well-known rhetorical question that inspired this, this question gives one pause. I hope that one day the Orthodox world will recognize with me that the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Some, I know, take issue even with the claim that the pope is Catholic.

You’ve heard the old joke, “Is the Pope a Catholic?” The question of the hour seems to be, “Is he the only one?” - Thomas Russell

Russia and the Pope, part 3

2008-01-06T01:21:00.001-05:00

For absolutely no information at all about the Russian Orthodox position on papal primacy go to:

Russian theologians discuss papal primacy

If it's OK to murder the innocent, it's OK to assault them, too.

2007-12-30T01:59:00.000-05:00

On December 22nd, outside an abortion clinic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 69 year old Ed Snell was assaulted, knocked unconscious, and badly injured. His assailant attacked him for attempting to dissuade a woman from having an abortion.

Ambulance and police quickly arrived at the scene. Mr. Snell was rushed to the hospital, which later issued the following medical report:

“multiple trauma, right sub-arachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding in the area between the brain and the tissues that cover the brain), compression fractures of four vertebrae (T3, T4, T5 and T10), right scapula fracture and fracture of the fourth and fifth ribs.”

The police interviewed the assailant and let him leave. He was subsequently arrested after the full extent of Mr. Snell's injuries were made known.

When asked for comment, the receptionist at Hillcrest Abortion Clinic replied, "He got what he deserved! He earned what he got!"

more information at:

Tradition, Family and Property

O Holy Innocents, pray for us.

I Love Bad People

2007-12-27T00:36:00.000-05:00

For many years, I have wanted to design bumper stickers. I have now found a site that permits me to do just that. Here is my first offering (available at the Dormition Store):

If you love only the good, what thanks are to you? Everyone loves the good. But love even bad people and your reward shall be great, and you shall be the sons of God; for He is kind even to the evil. (c.f. Luke 6: 27 - 35).

"An Historical Account of the Birth of Christ"

2007-12-25T10:39:00.000-05:00

An account of the nativity you've probably never read before, from the Protoevangelium of James (ascribed to James the Lesser, Cousin and Brother of the Lord Jesus, chief Apostle and First Bishop of the Christians in Jerusalem):

17. And there was an order from the Emperor Augustus, that all in Bethlehem of Judaea should be enrolled. And Joseph said: I shall enrol my sons, but what shall I do with this maiden? How shall I enrol her? As my wife? I am ashamed. As my daughter then? But all the sons of Israel know that she is not my daughter. The day of the Lord shall itself bring it to pass as the Lord will. And he saddled the ass, and set her upon it; and his son led it, and Joseph followed. And when they had come within three miles, Joseph turned and saw her sorrowful; and he said to himself: Likely that which is in her distresses her. And again Joseph turned and saw her laughing. And he said to her: Mary, how is it that I see in thy face at one time laughter, at another sorrow? And Mary said to Joseph: Because I see two peoples with my eyes; the one weeping and lamenting, and the other rejoicing and exulting. And they came into the middle of the road, and Mary said to him: Take me down from off the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth. And he took her down from off the ass, and said to her: Whither shall I lead thee, and cover thy disgrace? for the place is desert.

18. And he found a cave there, and led her into it; and leaving his two sons beside her, he went out to seek a widwife in the district of Bethlehem. And I Joseph was walking, and was not walking; and I looked up into the sky, and saw the sky astonished; and I looked up to the pole of the heavens, and saw it standing, and the birds of the air keeping still. And I looked down upon the earth, and saw a trough lying, and work-people reclining: and their hands were in the trough. And those that were eating did not eat, and those that were rising did not carry it up, and those that were conveying anything to their mouths did not convey it; but the faces of all were looking upwards. And I saw the sheep walking, and the sheep stood still; and the shepherd raised his hand to strike them, and his hand remained up. And I looked upon the current of the river, and I saw the mouths of the kids resting on the water and not drinking, and all things in a moment were driven from their course.

19. And I saw a woman coming down from the hill-country, and she said to me: O man, whither art thou going? And I said: I am seeking an Hebrew midwife. And she answered and said unto me: Art thou of Israel? And I said to her: Yes. And she said: And who is it that is bringing forth in the cave? And I said: A woman betrothed to me. And she said to me: Is she not thy wife? And I said to her: It is Mary that was reared in the temple of the Lord, and I obtained her by lot as my wife. And yet she is not my wife, but has conceived of the Holy Spirit. And the widwife said to him: Is this true? And Joseph said to her: Come and see. And the midwife went away with him. And they stood in the place of the cave, and behold a luminous cloud overshadowed the cave. And the midwife said: My soul has been magnified this day, because mine eyes have seen strange things -- because salvation has been brought forth to Israel. And immediately the cloud disappeared out of the cave, and a great light shone in the cave, so that the eyes could not bear it. And in a little that light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared, and went and took the breast from His mother Mary. And the midwife cried out, and said: This is a great day to me, because I have seen this strange sight. And the midwife went forth out of the cave, and Salome met her. And she said to her: Salome, Salome, I have a strange sight to relate to thee: a virgin has brought forth -- a thing which her nature admits not of. Then said Salome: As the Lord my God liveth, unless I thrust in my finger, and search the parts, I will not believe that a virgin has brought forth.

20. And the midwife went in, and said to Mary: Show thyself; for no small controversy has arisen about thee. And Salome put in her finger, and cried out, and said: Woe is me for mine iniquity and mine unbelief, because I have tempted the living God; and, behold, my hand is dropping off as if burned with fire. And she bent her knees before the Lord, saying: O God of my fathers, remember that I am the seed of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; do not make a show of me to the sons of Israel, but restore me to the poor; for Thou knowest, O Lord, that in Thy name I have performed my services, and that I have received my reward at Thy hand. And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by her, saying to her: Salome, Salome, the Lord hath heard thee. Put thy hand to the infant, and carry it, and thou wilt have safety and joy. And Salome went and carried it, saying: I will worship Him, because a great King has been born to Israel. And, behold, Salome was immediately cured, and she went forth out of the cave justified. And behold a voice saying: Salome, Salome, tell not the strange things thou hast seen, until the child has come into Jerusalem.

21. And, behold, Joseph was ready to go into Judaea. And there was a great commotion in Bethlehem of Judaea, for Magi came, saying: Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him. And when Herod heard, he was much disturbed, and sent officers to the Magi. And he sent for the priests, and examined them, saying: How is it written about the Christ? where is He to be born? And they said: In Bethlehem of Judaea, for so it is written. And he sent them away. And he examined the Magi, saying to them: What sign have you seen in reference to the king that has been born? And the Magi said: We have seen a star of great size shining among these stars, and obscuring their light, so that the stars did not appear; and we thus knew that a king has been born to Israel, and we have come to worship him. And Herod said: Go and seek him; and if you find him, let me know, in order that I also may go and worship him. And the Magi went out. And, behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them until they came to the cave, and it stood over the top of the cave. And the Magi saw the infant with His mother Mary; and they brought forth from their bag gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned by the angel not to go into Judaea, they went into their own country by another road.

Swaddling Clothes

2007-12-22T06:06:00.000-05:00

"And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7)

swad·dle [swod-l] verb, -dled, -dling, noun
–verb (used with object) 1. to bind (an infant, esp. a newborn infant) with long, narrow strips of cloth to prevent free movement; wrap tightly with clothes.

As a paterfamilias I can testify that newborn babies love to be swaddled. I imagine the womb is a tight spot in those last couple of months and swaddling reminds them of home.

A fine example of swaddling is shown in the nativity icon (upper left).

Some have observed that swaddling clothes and death shrouds, as shown in the burial icon (right), have a similar appearance. "And taking him down, he wrapped him in fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre that was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid" (Luke 23:53). The swaddling clothes, then, prefigure the burial shroud; they remind us why He was born.

When my father was dying, he said to my newborn son, "You're coming and I'm going, but there are similarities between us."

Among the aberrations of Western religious art are images of the Infant Jesus like this:

Those are not swaddling clothes. He's gonna have those loose rags off in 30 seconds, then He'll be naked and cold. But, then, Italians have some kind of fascination with naked baby boys, filling their churches with putti masquerading as cherubs. Libera me, Domine.

"The New Traditionalism"

2007-12-21T22:16:00.000-05:00

from the cover of the most recent US News and World Report:

(h/t to AmericanPapist)

Catholics, Protestants and Jews are all taking greater interest in traditional religious practices. An interesting article on the subject that is worth a read: A Return to Tradition

The Wrath of God

2007-12-21T07:18:00.000-05:00

I tend to hold an angry image of God. I am choleric, so, in typical human fashion, I imagine the Almighty in my own image.

In justification for this point of view, I fondly point to Old Testament floods and fires, plagues and battles, all wrought by our Lord's own invincible will. And, of course, I do not forget to mention Jesus cleansing the temple of moneychangers. How I love to tell the story of His whipping folks with cord and overturning tables. How often I'd like to do the same.

My father has just reminded me that what our Lord does, He does with love:

When He admonished, He did so with love – not to vent His spleen because somebody crossed Him, but because they needed correction to make straight the way for their own salvation.

So often the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple is cited as the text to justify justifiable anger. It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus doing anything out of anger and not love. Zeal is a very different thing from anger. He had zeal for His Father’s house and the moneychangers needed to have that, too. The moneychangers needed to be admonished. Surely moneychangers are people, heirs to the Kingdom, children of God. Surely Jesus loved them. He did what He had to do. It’s not easy to make a point in a raucous din.

I am well rebuked.

O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ is rightly called zealous. He is also rightly called wrathful. Maybe the difference between zeal and anger pointed out by my father is in motive. "Anger" seems to stem from wounded pride, "zeal" from love.

I would do well to remember the difference. My own outbursts usually (not always) have been of the wrong kind, steeped and saturated as I am in willful pride, hubris, arrogance, boastfulness, and conceit.

The Dormition

2007-12-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

As an Eastern Christian, I am committed to the doctrine of Mary's death, resurrection and assumption.

I even chose the Dormition as the patronal feast of my blog.

Mary, model of Christians, imitated Christ in all things. She is His most perfect imitator.

I believe Elijah, too, will die. He has not yet died, but he and Enoch will return one day. And they will die and rise from the dead.

I bring this up because Andrew Sullivan recently wrote:

"As a Catholic, I am obliged to believe that the mother of Jesus was whooshed physically into the sky rather than dying" (hat tip to The Curt Jester), thereby demonstrating how prevalently misunderstood is the doctrine of Mary's assumption.

Though many Catholics choose to believe so, there is no implication in the doctrine of the assumption that Mary did not die.

“Rejoice, O Joyous One, in thy Dormition not having left us.”

Eucharistic Theology Quiz

2007-12-18T09:39:00.000-05:00

Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com

I scored as Orthodox

The Orthodox worship the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the great liturgy whereby Jesus is present through the Spirit in a real yet mysterious way, a meal that is also a sacrifice.

Orthodox

100%

Catholic

75%

Luther

56%

Calvin

56%

Zwingli

25%

Unitarian

Reconsidering certain answers, I took the quiz again. I find, with these sorts of quizzes, it helps to take them twice. I am comfortable with all the answers I gave. Here are my new results:

Catholic

100%

Orthodox

100%

Calvin

81%

Luther

63%

Zwingli

25%

Unitarian

After it scored me as 100% for both Catholic and Orthodox, it asked me a tiebreaker question. I was forced to go with the Orthodox response.

Racial Iconography

2007-12-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

There is an increasingly prevalent opinion among Christians that images of Jesus Christ ought to look Jewish. After all, He is a Jew. That is what He looks like. Seems reasonable.

He certainly doesn't have blonde hair and blue eyes. It is historically inaccurate to portray Him with such features. Some even regard such images of Him as racist.

A fewer number, it seems to me, regard as racist images of Him with African features (I am more fond of these images myself), but He is not African either.

He is a Middle Eastern Jew of the first century. But is it racist, or otherwise inappropriate, to depict Him as though He were a member of another race?

Icons are not images of what people look like. They are not and are not meant to be realistic images - at least not in the sense we tend to think of realism. They portray spiritual and theological realities over physical and historical realities.

This is why, perhaps, iconographers of the Church scarcely hesitated to make images of Jesus, His mother, His apostles, and others appear just as they did. Ethiopian iconographers portrayed Him as an Ethiopian. Greek iconographers portrayed Him as a Greek. Russian iconographers portrayed Him as a Russian. They were communicating a spiritual and theological reality. They were the Body of Christ.

If I am an early Christian Ethiopian and I know that Jesus is my brother and Mary is my mother and I am a member of the Body of Christ, it is meaningful, then, for Jesus and Mary to look like I do. Why should He look like an alien if He and I are one?

One reason we might put forward is that He is an alien to all but Middle Eastern Jews. There is a spiritual and theological reality to be communicated by this fact too: "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22) - a too often neglected reality among Christians.

I believe there is something to be learned from every trait of Christ. He is human. He is male. He is Jewish. He lived in the Middle East in the first century. It all matters. Everything about Him matters. Each particularity is significant, for He is the Logos, the incarnate Word; His is the flesh of God.

The contemporary situation of the Church is somewhat changed, at least where I live. Members of other races no longer appear alien. We go to elementary school with Hispanics, Blacks, Whites, Asians, Jews and every race and are surrounded by a plurality of races all our lives.

In this situation, when we make an image of Christ for our churches, what racial characteristics ought He be given? Members of any race are liable to behold it, pray before it, contemplate His Holy Face. It seems to me that, in this situation, it is most sensible to portray Him as a Jew.

That being said, there are contexts and subcultures to consider and there can be great meaning in an image of Christ bearing the features of any race. He bore our offenses, after all; surely He can bear our features.

Relics, Cremation and Organ Donation, Part 3

2007-12-08T15:01:00.000-05:00

Within the Christian tradition, to bury the dead is a work of mercy – to burn the dead a desecration. The bodies of our departed holy ones are rightly venerated in altars, catacombs, and cemeteries, in reliquaries and ossuaries in reverent expectation of the coming resurrection.

In the light of traditional Christian respect for the corpse, ought Christians to regard the transplantation of human organs as a desecration or a veneration of the body?

Most Christians are firmly in the latter camp, believing with neither doubt nor hesitation in this modern medical miracle. Others hesitate. I have hesitated for years.

A compelling argument against organ donation, it has seemed to me, is the resurrection of Lazarus. Imagine that, upon his death, Mary and Martha had carved him up and used his organs to save other folks’ lives. This would put a whole new spin on Christ's command, "Lazarus, come out!" Would his organs, in obedience to their Creator, have jumped from the guts of their recipients?

Lazarus is not unique. The Seven Holy Sleepers, too, rose from the dead. Peter raised the dead (Acts 9:40). The bones of Elias raised the dead (2 Kings 13: 21). How, if some organs of these lived on, would their resurrections have occurred?

Would Jesus have wanted His organs donated?

If, indeed, our bodies are to rise from the dead, are not our organs to rise with them? What is a body but a group of organs? Significantly, our bodies will rise from the dead – our souls are not given new bodies. Body and soul are linked. The soul is the life of the body. Our bodies rise and, if we are saved, are glorified. They are made new, but are not recreated.

Compelled as I have been by these arguments, in truth, “the free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious” (CCC 2301).

Saints Cosmas and Damian, unmercenary physicians, performing a miraculous transplant of a leg from a deceased Ethiopian. Attributed to Master of Los Balbases (15th Century).

What is more, the practice of organ transplantation actually has ancient Christian approval. Sts. Cosmas and Damian, as here illustrated, once performed a miraculous leg transplant as a means of healing an ulcerated leg.

The workings of resurrection are mysterious – unplumbable. Our omnipotent God has taught us the greatest love is the gift of self – self-sacrifice. For the sake of such love, God, Who is Love, will surely make a way. Where I have seen contradiction, there is none.

No greater reliquary could there be for the organs of a departed loved one than the body of another – here is a reliquary of God’s own creation, “more precious than the most exquisite jewels and more purified than gold” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, c. 135). Here indeed is a fitting place to deposit our remains.

Russia and the Pope, continued

2007-12-08T12:50:00.000-05:00

From Reuters, Africa:
Pope in rare meeting with Russian Orthodox cleric

So, the Pope and Metropolitan Kirill have met behind closed doors. Details are not forthcoming. Could be good. Could be bad.

Hopefully, this means things are not so bleak as I have feared. This same Metropolitan has been quoted as saying: "the big chill is over and it's thawing time" as regards Russian Orthodox relations with the Vatican.

Islam and Iconoclasm

2007-12-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

This week we celebrated the feast day of St. John Damascus (Dec. 4th), best known for defending orthodoxy against the iconoclasts. He famously wrote:

“In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with humans, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter: I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take his abode in matter: who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it but not as God.”

Less well known is the means by which he was able (without being killed, that is) to defy a heresy so prevalent among Christians that the Eastern Christian Emperor Leo himself forbade the use of icons.

12th century Sinaitic icon of St. Theodosia, a Constantinopolitan executed by the iconoclasts in the 8th century. from the Monastery of St. Catherine

St. John was immune to the persecutions of the iconoclasts because he lived under Muslim rule. That’s right, here is a Christian saint protected… from Christians… by Muslims.

A second defender of orthodox iconography during the time of the iconoclasts is the Monastery of St. Catherine, which preserves to this day many of the oldest icons in existence, most of the rest having been destroyed by the iconoclasts. Here in the Sinai desert, while much of the Christian world was breaking icons and killing those who used them, their veneration continued. This bastion of orthodoxy, too, was under Muslim rule.

From The Monastery of St. Catherine, by Dr. Evangelos Papaioannou:

"According to its tradition, the monks of St. Catherine sent a delegation to Medina, in 625 AD, to ask for Mohammed’s patronage and protection. The request was granted; a copy of the original document… proclaims that the Moslems would defend the monks, who were also exempted from paying taxes. Legend has it that Mohammed visited the Monastery on one of his journeys as a merchant. This may well be so, for the Koran does mention the holy places in Sinai. So, when the peninsula came under the rule of the Arab conquerors in 641 AD, the monks and their Monastery continued to live unmolested and emerged unscathed from the early Arab period."

The later Arab period was not so kind, but that is a different story. The Monastery remained under Muslim rule whilst the iconoclast heresy was prevalent (throughout the 8th and 9th centuries).

The irony of all this is that the heresy of Islam embraces iconoclasm as heartily as any of the iconoclasts (witness the desecration of Hagia Sophia). The Muslims, believing icons to be idolatrous, would have had no sympathy for the beliefs they were inadvertently protecting. But the presence of certain Christians among them was insignificant enough that they saw fit to leave them alone (at least during this time). Its icons of great antiquity (even then) were consequently left unharmed.

I am convinced that our Lord and God does not hesitate to use the adversaries of the Church to shape her and correct her, as with a stone against a blade.

Currently, Islam appears to have lost much of its former tolerance of Christians. I believe God is using Islamic persecution of Christians, as with the previous Islamic protection of Christians, to strengthen the Church. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are now faced with the need to unite or be overthrown. Unprecedented steps toward that reunion are made daily.

Dark Chocolate

2007-12-03T21:10:00.000-05:00

Today's sin ad is brought to you by Dove Chocolate:

I have observed that such ads are frequently for chocolate. What can this mean?

Combox Crit

2007-12-01T18:30:00.000-05:00

Tim Jones of the blog Old World Swine has come up with a wonderful idea I am here imitating: a "combox crit," as he calls it, of his paintings.

A critique (or "crit"), for those unexperienced in art education, is the capstone of a studio course wherein the artist's work is openly analyzed by a group of his professors and fellow students. Both strengths and weaknesses are discussed, with a view toward improving the artist's ability to recognize these as he is working.

Mr. Jones has just conducted something very like this on his blog.

He writes:

I thought I would see what might happen if I invited readers to offer combox critiques of certain of my paintings. You don't have to be an artist or a collector or anything, just offer an honest critique. The usual rules of combox etiquette apply, of course. Brevity is the soul of wit. Be as specific as possible. Give reasons for your response... "I don't like it" doesn't really help. If you just don't happen to like the kind of work I do, save it. This is about the merits of the individual piece.

Also, if you just really like a certain piece, or want to compliment my work in general, save that, too. Comments like "Wow, I can't even draw a stick man..." are appreciated, and all... just not for combox crits.

So, please, fire away. I eagerly wish to hear your honest assessement of this painting. It is titled, "Forerunner," and depicts St. John the Baptist or St. Elias.

Relics, Cremation and Organ Donation, Part 2

2007-11-25T20:45:00.000-05:00

Pagans like fire.

I can hardly blame them. Among earthly things, fire is significant. It creates, destroys, warms, burns, breathes, lives, and dies. Its connection to the spiritual is apparent.

God appeared to Moses as a Burning Bush. The Holy Spirit descended as tongues of fire upon the Apostles’ and Mary’s heads. Christians like fire too. Neither Catholic nor Orthodox Christians would consider a liturgy without candles.

But Pagans sometimes worship fire and burn the dead. That’s where our similarity ends.

The practice of cremation has been widely adopted in contemporary times among Christians. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks tersely of the issue: “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body” (CCC, 2300).

Not so in the early Church. From the earliest times, Christians buried their dead, in continuity with the Jewish practice. At first, this distinguished them from the practices prevailing in the larger Greco-Roman culture, although later a general cultural shift toward burial of the dead would take place. The practice of cremation was repugnant to Christians 1) because it was common among the pagans, and 2) because it appeared defiant of the Christian belief in the incarnation of God and the resurrection of the body.

During the Roman persecution of Christians, cremation of the martyrs was sometimes used as an official public mockery of these Christian beliefs.

That provision given in the Catechism ("provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body") is necessary, for it can certainly seem to so deny.

I’ll not be burning any of my relatives’ bodies nor requesting such for my own.

Relics, Cremation and Organ Donation, Part 1

2007-11-25T08:56:00.000-05:00

In her first novel about Brother Cadfael, Ellis Peters refers to the Christian Tradition of venerating the dead bodies of our holy ones as "a morbid taste for bones."

Maybe...

Nah, there's nothing morbid about us...

Ahem...

Anyway, Christian veneration of the bodies of the dead is as old as Christianity itself. It set Christians at odds with much of the ancient world around them, who, with a view toward hygiene, believed in getting dead bodies as far away as they could, as fast as they could. Burn them, bury them on the outskirts of town, just get rid of them before they spread whatever disease they died of.

Along come these strange little groups of Christians. We want to keep the dead nearby. Alright, we’ll bury them because we must, but not too deeply and not too far away. We want the graveyards here in the center of our community. Let’s go down to the catacombs to hold our liturgies on their tombs. And later, we’ll dig up the bones again and richly adorn them with gold and precious gems:

“We afterwards took up Polycarp’s bones – as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels and more purified than gold. We deposited them in a fitting place.” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, c. 135).

Why such veneration for an empty shell?

Well, for one thing, the bones of the just have the power to heal and raise the dead:

“And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Eli'sha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Eli'sha, he revived, and stood on his feet” (2 King 13: 21).

But whence comes this power?

Those bones are no empty shell. “This would not have happened unless the body of Elisha were holy,” record the Apostolic Constitutions (compiled c. 390), which further advise: “Do not seek after Jewish separations… or purifications upon touching a dead body…. For as to those who live with God, even their very relics are not without honor.”

It is, you see, because they live, and are not dead that their power remains with their bodies.

Fundamental to understanding our “morbid taste for bones” is the truth of the resurrection. Christianity is an incarnate religion. “I believe… in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.” – so concludes the Apostle’s Creed. Ours is not a shadowy afterlife of wispy shapes and clouds. There, our flesh is restored, to burn or to exult, as the case may be.

Soul and body are one. The soul is the body’s life. They will be reunited.

American Law vs. Shari’a Law

2007-11-17T06:37:00.000-05:00

Glenn Beck recently advised us to pick our battles. Allow me to paraphrase his statements:

Sure, he said, abortion is a bad thing, but we’ve got Islamofascism breathing down our necks. We need to elect a president who can quash the enemy that threatens us from the outside first. Vote for Giuliani.

You’ll get your illegal abortion all right, said Beck, you’ll get it when Islamic extremists have overthrown us and we live under Shari’a law.

Hmm…

Beck's comments have cause me to wonder which is worse: American law or Shari’a law. Unequivocally, they’re both bad.

But is Shari’a worse? I’m not so sure.

Glenn Beck is right, Shari’a does not permit folks to chop up babies in the womb. America does.

Shari’a does not allow production or exhibition of evil, foul and perverse hardcore pornography. America does. In fact, that’s one of the liberalities we’re exporting to Iraq.

Shari’a does not permit unspeakably lewd and God-offending sex acts. It does not permit drunkenness or adultery or immodesty. America does.

Shari’a acknowledges that God is the true source of Law and the ultimate authority. America does not.

Don’t worry. I’m not converting. Shari’a is, as I said, a bad thing. Religious liberty is one thing American law has on Shari’a law (you can be a Christian under Shari’a, but you can’t legally convert to Christianity or evangelize).

If the men in turbans do swoop down and overthrow the nation, I’m not sure how much I’ll weep. Some, surely, but such would be our just deserts. Merely a changing of the guard. One evil regime trading places with another.

We are such hypocrites. I believe we need to remove the planks from our own eyes before we can see clearly to remove the specks from others’. I believe we need to be Christians before we can rightly criticize Islam.

As with the spirit of a man, the spirit of a nation is within. We need to elect a president who will fight the enemies inside the walls before those without. Whatever you do, don’t vote for Giuliani.

Russia and the Pope

2007-11-15T12:46:00.001-05:00

Those who follow Orthodox and Catholic relations are well aware of the recent meeting between the hierarchies of said Churches in Ravenna to discuss the “The Ecclesiological and Canonical consequences of the Sacramental nature of the Church.”

The meeting was really about the Pope.

In fact, most meetings between the Catholics and the Orthodox are really about the Pope. Or, anyway, he is the white-cassocked elephant in the room at such meetings. There is no more significant blockade to reunion between the Apostolic Churches than their differing opinions on the proper use of the Petrine office (if, indeed, they can even agree that the papal office is Petrine).

Those who follow Orthodox and Catholic relations are also well aware that, before the beginning of the Ravenna meeting, the Moscow delegation respectfully departed. The stated reason for their withdrawal was the presence of the Estonian Orthodox Church, which the Russians regard as under their jurisdiction, despite the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople granted them an independent status. The Ecumenical Patriarchate had no right to do so, according to the Moscow Patriarchate, because the Estonians fell under their territory. Yadda yadda yadda.

Maybe this was the Russians’ genuine, heartfelt reason for walking out of an ecumenical discussion. Maybe not.

Prior to the meeting, the Russian Orthodox Church launched a workgroup to independently formulate her position on universal primacy. Also prior to the meeting, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria (he who would later lead the way out the door at Ravenna) told Interfax that the Moscow Patriarchate will defend its own position in the dispute and there will be no compromise at the upcoming meeting. Fair enough. What is Moscow’s position? I eagerly await the results of their workgroup.

Meanwhile, the meeting at Ravenna is ended, its document published. Prior to its official release today, Bishop Hilarion (there’s that name again), posted the commission's final document on his website. This according to Canadian Press and confirmed by the Vatican.

In addition to posting the document, Bishop Hilarion added his own comment that the document was adopted without the presence of representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate at the meeting, casting doubt over whether it could be considered to reflect Moscow's view. He further wrote, "The Moscow Patriarchate will analyze the Ravenna document and present its conclusions in due course."

I await these conclusions alongside the results of the workgroup mentioned above.

That amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? Moscow was already working on its response to the conclusions of the Ravenna meeting prior to the beginning of the Ravenna meeting. It's probably just me, but I find that suspicious.

The Patriarch of Moscow currently heads the largest body of Orthodox Christians in the world. When the representatives of Russian Orthodoxy leave an ecumenical discussion, that leaves a massive body of Orthodox Christians unrepresented. It's a big deal. In practical terms, the Patriarch of Moscow is the most powerful man in the Orthodox Church. Now, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has more history and more honorifics, but not so much raw power. Turkey isn't exactly a hotbed of Christianity in any form.

There's that, and there's this whole idea of the "Third Rome." Quite a while ago - six hundred and fifty years or so - some Russian Orthodox Christians decided that Moscow was the true center of Christianity. Once, they acknowledged, this was Rome. Then, Constantine moved the capitol of his empire to Constantinople, thereby creating a "Second Rome." After the fall of this empire then, where were Orthodox Christians to look for their paragon of orthopraxis? These Russians looked around themselves and - lo and behold - found Moscow's domes the highest.

So, when the Russian Orthodox speak of independently formulating their position on universal primacy and uncompromisingly defending that position, I have to wonder whether they don't have something like the "Third Rome" in mind. Which is to say that the primacy belongs to them.

I'm certainly no expert on these goings-on. All I know is what I read in the news and a little bit of history, but - for whatever it's worth - here's what I suspect:

Maybe the objection about the Estonian Church was just a convenient way to step out of the ecumenical talks, leaving the Russians free to independently develop their own ideas about primacy - quite independent of the man in the white cassock.

Patron and Forerunner

2007-11-11T20:16:00.000-05:00

Here are links to images of two recent paintings inspired by St. John the Baptist:

Patron by Katie Russell

Forerunner by John Russell

posted at: J & K Russell Studio

The Angel in my Backyard

2007-11-09T07:46:00.000-05:00

In early grade school one day, I sat with my classmates in the church – although not at Mass – listening to a Franciscan brother talk about angels. He began his talk by asking us, “Who in here has seen an angel?” I raised my hand earnestly (while I assumed seeing angels was only natural, I still considered it an honor). To my surprise, this was not what the Franciscan wanted to see. He wanted to talk about believing what could not be seen. And I was ruining his speech. As I looked around, I noticed there were no other hands up. The good brother then explained that he had not meant a picture of an angel, and my classmates laughed. I then said, “No, a real angel. I’ve seen an angel.” There was more laughter. After an awkward moment and a quizzical look, the brother simply continued with his prepared speech saying, “No one has ever seen an angel….” This was the day I learned that people don’t see angels.

For years I have doubted both my memory and my senses. But I always clung to some hope that I really did see an angel.

I’ve told the story so many times that I remember it in the telling more than I remember the actual event. This has been a source of much doubt. Of course, many doubt things they only know stories about. Jesus said, “Blessed are they who believe, but have not seen.” Sometimes, we can and do doubt even what we have seen.

I was standing on something next to my sister Jessica. We were looking out into the backyard through the downstairs bathroom window of our old house. We saw a glowing white figure in long, glowing white robes carrying a staff and walking behind our house. It was after dusk. The figure was like a silhouette of light against the darkness, so brilliant that his features were indistinguishable. I ran through the mudroom to the kitchen where my mother was washing dishes at the sink. I tugged on her pant leg and asked, “Mom, can people see angels?” She said, “I suppose, if God wants them to.” I believe I then asked her if angels have wings and she said, “not necessarily.” I went back to the bathroom and told Jessica it was an angel. We continued watching him walk through the yard.

“At the highest extremity of the visible world are the blessed band of angels,” says St. Clement of Alexandria. Interesting, I think, that he considers the angels a part of the visible world. Sometimes people see angels. Abraham did. Lot did. Jacob did. Joseph did. Sacred Scripture is filled with folks encountering angels – always with some great purpose, it seems. Even in modern angel tales, the angel shows up to save someone’s life in a car wreck or perform a much-prayed-for task. Clarence had great purpose in appearing to George Bailey.

Seldom do we hear of an angel walking through the yard on a casual stroll.

Why would an angel appear to a small boy and his sister one evening with no apparent task? The question has occurred to me. I am not certain of any answer.

But, I will say, angels exist at all times, not only when they are performing tasks of biblical significance. “Angel” means “messenger,” but, as Augustine points out, this is their office, not their nature. Their nature is spirit. Sometimes they just be. Maybe the angel just wanted me to know he was there.

Actually, I sometimes wonder if this doesn’t happen all the time. How many experiences we dismiss as fatigue, faulty memory, or hallucination are actually experiences of the spiritual world? I suspect more than a few.

The Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and All Angelic Powers

2007-11-08T09:14:00.000-05:00

Today, as in every November since the fourth century, the Eastern Church honors all Angelic Powers, six-winged Seraphim, many-eyed Cherubim, God-bearing Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. She honors the seven Archangels, known from Holy Scripture and Tradition as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Salathiel, Jegudiel, and Barachiel. Foremost among the angels and the leader of all heavenly hosts is St. Michael the Archangel.

In the film Gangs of New York, Priest Vallon points to the medallion around his son’s neck and says,
“Now son, who's that?”
“St. Michael.”
“Who is it?”
“St. Michael!”
“And what did he do?”
“He cast Satan out of Paradise.”
“Good boy.”

Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it (Revelation 12: 7-9).

The name Michael means, “Who is like unto God?” The name well signifies who Michael is. Satan claimed equality with God – “Michael” is Satan’s expulsion from heaven.

Western images of St. Michael often show him in furious combat with Satan, sometimes depicted as an enormous dragon (Rev. 12: 9), or sometimes as a horned, muscular, bat-winged man. Some examples of the latter:

Though defeated, Satan, in these images, appears well-matched to engage Michael in combat. In that central image - I can't say for sure - but it sure looks like Michael is running away to me.

I believe the truth is closer to this:

There - do you see him? that speck at the end of Michael's spear? - that is Satan. The petty black demon is utterly vanquished - not by Michael's might in battle, but by his mere presence.

Angels are spiritual beings; their way of battle is spiritual. St. Augustine says, “‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit.’”

Michael’s spiritual stillness, his singleness of heart, his oneness of vision – “always beholding the face of our Father who is in heaven” (c.f. Mat. 18: 10) triumphs over the frantic, grasping, envious, and vain energy of the morning star - Lucifer.

Once, Lucifer was the most brilliant of all Angels. Then he said in his heart: “I will scale the heavens; Above the stars of God I will set up my throne…. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will be like the Most High!” (Isaiah 14: 13, 14)*

The Lord’s rebuke is to make Man like the Most High. The Logos became Man to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (1 Pet. 1: 4; c.f. CCC 460). This Man, Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10: 18). And it was Michael who cast him down.

Brilliance is nothing to humility. The egocentric is nothing to the theocentric. Who can compare to God? “Lucifer” is nothing to “Michael.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The Church Fathers teach us that Isaiah’s taunt-song against the king of Babylon, from which this is excerpted, also, mystically, refers to Satan.

A lesson from Kroger

2007-11-07T18:48:00.000-05:00

in today's junk mail:

Proving once again that, while holiness may be more costly, it yields the better fruit.

"Bring the whole tithe" (Mal. 3:10)

2007-11-04T18:37:00.000-05:00

Catholics, I know, are not fond of the subject of tithing. My father once wrote, “One sure way to clear a wide empty space around one’s self, short of igniting a stink bomb, is to bring up the subject of tithing.”

I have never heard a message about tithing in church and not also heard some complaint about how there’s too much talk about money in the church. Any talk at all, it would seem, is too much for some folks. And yet, they discuss little else once they leave sacred ground.

What is it that makes our skin crawl when the priest dares say that word: “tithing?” Is it that money is too profane a topic for discussion in the church, like toilet bowls? Or is it that money is too sacred a topic to profane it by bringing it up at church? Do we serve mammon and not God (cf. Lk 16:13)?

Perhaps we’ve just seen too many televangelists.

A tithe is a tenth, ten-percent: that’s what the dread word means. It also means the first-fruits. If you pay your taxes and your health insurance and your life insurance and your 401K first and give ten-percent of what remains, you’re still giving, but you’re not actually tithing.

This is kind of like what Cain did, as opposed to Abel.

"In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the soil, while Abel, for his part, brought one of the best firstlings of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not" (Gen. 4: 3-5).

Cain only gave “in the course of time,” but Abel gave of the “firstlings.” It wasn’t that God liked meat, but not grain so much. It was that God wanted His children to trust Him and give first, not after they made sure they had enough for themselves.

Absolute trust in God is another unpopular topic.

But who says you have to tithe, anyway? The law is laid down in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Malachi, but that’s just Old Testament business, right? Once, in my ignorance, I confessed my failure to tithe to the priest, who quickly corrected: “That’s no sin. If that were a sin, the whole congregation would be in trouble.”

Difference of opinion as regards tithing is as old as St. Peter (cf. Acts 5: 1-10).

In the earliest Church, the Apostolic Church, nobody tithed. That’s because they didn’t have anything left to tithe on after “all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostle’s feet” (Acts 4:34, 35). In other words, nobody could give just ten-percent because they were all too busy giving closer to a hundred.

By the second century, gifts made to the church were seldom so extravagant. St. Justin Martyr (c. 160) wrote, “As for the persons who are prosperous and willing, they give what each thinks fit.” Tertullian (c. 197), unusually strident about other matters, laxly wrote, “If he likes, each puts in a small donation – but only if it is his pleasure and only if he is able. For there is no compulsion; all is voluntary.”

In old St. Peter’s day, folks were struck dead by the Holy Spirit for handing over less than everything (cf. Acts 5: 1-10) - quite the turn about in a mere century, it seems to me. The change in attitude did not go unlamented. St. Cyprian (c. 250) wrote:

"They used to sell houses and estates so that they might lay up for themselves treasures in heaven. They presented the proceeds to the apostles, to be distributed for the use of the poor. However, now, we do not even give the tenths from our patrimony!"

So it goes. So it is still going.

Now we call it one of the six laws of the Church: Catholics are obligated to “contribute to the support of the Church.” How’s that for vague? Yet, too many of us in the pews can’t in good conscience say that we do even this in a meaningful way.

Personally, I advocate a return to the good old understanding of the tithe – all that Old Testament business. After all, the Lord of hosts Himself says, “Bring the whole tithe… and try me in this… Shall I not open for you the floodgates of heaven, to pour down blessing upon you without measure (Malachi 3:10)?” Even if it’s no sin not to, that ought to encourage each and every one of us to cough up the dough.

“Fear God. Honor the King.” (1 Pet. 2:17)

2007-10-30T21:52:00.000-04:00

It has been said that the separation of Church and State is good for the Church. Worldly impotence, apparently, does wonders in keeping churchmen humble.

This is not a new idea. Lactantius (c. 304-313) wrote, “[God] would have Christians live under the power and government of others, lest they should become corrupted by the happiness of prosperity, slide into luxury, and eventually despise the commandments of God.” Ironically, Lactantius would later be appointed tutor to the son of the first Christian emperor, St. Constantine. I certainly hope that living under Christian government did not cause him to despise the commandments of God.

Everyone needs to be humble. Both churchmen and statesmen are meant to serve God. Who is going to keep the statesmen humble? Clearly, no one has been doing this for quite some time.

King Henry II, on the other hand, after he encouraged the murder of St. Thomas Becket, was made to walk barefoot through the streets of Canterbury wearing sackcloth while eighty monks flogged him with branches. He then spent the night in the martyr's crypt. The same kind of penance should be recommended to certain Presidents of the United States for their crimes against humanity. As the Church and State are separate, who is to recommend it? Together, Church and State could keep each other humble.

It has been said that the Government should listen to the people and the people should listen to the Church. Should the Government listen to the people if the people hate the Church or Her teachings? If most people favor the legalization of the murder of a certain class of people (which, debatably, they do) shouldn't the Government stand with the Church, rather than the people? The law must not be relative to the whims of the masses. Truly, the people should listen to the Church, but when have they ever done that?

In the 18th century, democracy was an idea unpopular among faithful Catholics - opposed by the Pope and those loyal to him. Clearly, this is no longer the case.

I have often heard justified complaint that Catholics in America are more concerned with worldly acceptance than with fidelity to Tradition. This is the direct and inevitable consequence of the Catholic adoption of an American culture based on democratic principles. How can bowing to the will of the majority ultimately be anything other than relativist?

Many American Christians balk at my notion that the authority and power to rule does not come from the people. This idea is shared by, of all people, Jesus Christ: "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above," He said (John 19:11). The power to rule comes from God. You know, Divine Right and that sort of thing. “For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God” (Rom. 13:1). A government that does not acknowledge this true source of its power fails to govern well.

“My opinion is this: that in this way a kingdom may be governed in peace – when the sovereign is acquainted with the God of truth. That is, if the ruler withholds from doing wrong to his subjects out of fear of God, and he judges everything with equity…. For, if the sovereign abstains from doing wrong to those who are under his rule, and they abstain from doing wrong to him and to each other, it is evident that the whole country will dwell in peace. Many blessings, too, will be enjoyed there, because among all of them the name of God will be glorified. For what blessing is greater than for a sovereign to deliver the people that are under his rule from error, and by this good deed render himself pleasing to God”
– St. Melito (c. 170).

The Way of Life

2007-10-20T10:59:00.000-04:00

“There are two ways, one of life and one of death.”

Thus begins the Didache (c. 100 A.D.), an ancient Christian text meant to preserve the teachings of the twelve apostles. Our way of life is of great significance, leading, as it does, to either everlasting glory or everlasting perdition. Choose, then, your way of life with care, with faith, with love.

Before Christianity was called Christianity, it was called the Way (Acts 18:26; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). Another ancient religion still carries this moniker: “Taoism” means “the right way” (there must be a wrong one, then).

Even as His Holiness battles the dictatorship of relativism, the phrase “way of life” is rigorously replaced with “lifestyle” by those who will tolerate no discrimination.

“Style” carries with it no judgment, neither condemnation nor approval. If I prefer action painting to color field painting, what’s that to you? If you prefer floral prints to paisley, what’s that to me? These are differences of style only; they carry no moral quality. There is nothing wrong with using the word “lifestyle” when referring to innocuous things.

On the other hand, the adulterers, predatory pedophiles, and sodomites of this world would have us believe their “way of life” is actually just an “alternative lifestyle,” as morally neutral as a preference for floral prints. Just type “alternative lifestyle” into Google (or don’t, rather). On page one I get links about swingers, bisexuals, bondage, sadomasochism, nudism, polyamory, fetishes, and personal ads for arranging anonymous affairs between married people. These are not styles of life; they are ways of death. On the same page appear links about vegetarianism and living in old houses. Our use of the term equates incidentals with perversions, good with evil, right with wrong. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).

In the 1970s, “the lifestyle” referred to what is now commonly called “swinging.” Today, “Lifestyle” is a brand of condoms.

The term “lifestyle” is as modern as “way of life” is ancient. Coined in 1929 as a specific psychological term, in much of its current usage it is a faddish, vapid, and worthless term. Even in many situations where it is appropriate, "way of life" expresses meaning better.

The phrase, “there are two styles, one of life and one of death,” is void of meaning. This, I believe, is our culture’s objective – to strip meaning and significance from all human actions – to make it so it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it’s “your own thing.”

But it does matter. It matters in the here and now and it matters in the hereafter.

Blessing of Animals

2007-10-04T21:05:00.000-04:00

Today, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron of animals, blessings of animals are taking place in parishes across the world. Our cat was suitably censed and soaked with holy water by the ordained hand of Fr. Sid Sidor as he spoke the words of blessing. We now have a holy cat. Our other cat remains unblessed, we being unable to handle two cats at the service. Tonight the holy cat bit the unholy cat’s neck.

There are many days traditionally associated with specific blessings:

Feast of the Holy Theophany / Epiphany – January 6th

– blessing of water / blessing of chalk (Western) / blessing of houses

Feast of the Presentation / Candlemas – February 2nd

– blessing of candles (Western)

Feast of St. Blaise – February 3rd

–blessing of throats (Western)

Flowery Sunday / Palm Sunday

– blessing of pussy willows (Eastern) and palm branches

Pascha / Easter

– blessing of Easter baskets (Eastern)

Feast of St. Elias – July 20th

– blessing of vehicles (Eastern)

Feast of the Transfiguration – August 6th

– blessing of fruit (Eastern)

Feast of the Holy Dormition – August 15th

– blessing of flowers (Eastern)

The Contra-vote

2007-09-30T01:38:00.000-04:00

I do not vote. Or, anyway, I never have. My reasons are many and far from political apathy. If, however, what I propose came to fruition, I, and I suspect others, would never fail to vote.

In Catholic circles, there is much talk of "non-negotiables." Support for abortion, euthanasia, or other evils automatically excludes a candidate from receiving an authentic Catholic vote. The list of non-negotiables provided me by my (overactive?) conscience is quite a bit longer than the official and, consequently, I am excluded from voting at all in most cases.

Yet, there are grades of evil and I do wish to oppose the greater evil with greater force, but I cannot, in conscience, do this by supporting the lesser evil. We must not do evil so that good may come of it (cf. Rom. 3: 8). I seek a way to vote against, without voting for: a contra-vote - the power to negate one vote. In this way, a person of conscience can always participate in the election process without moral conflict.

Under the two-party system, many people, in effect, have been voting according to this philosophy already. The candidate they oppose the more they vote "against" by simply voting for the candidate they oppose the less. As the two-party system (blessedly) begins to erode, the power to vote "against" erodes as well. What to do if, among three candidates, there is none worthy? Simply voting for the least offensive of the three has less power than contra-voting the most offensive.

If this results in a candidate winning an election with a negative number of votes, so be it.

Conception of John: Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist

2007-09-23T18:35:00.000-04:00

Icon of St. John the Baptist from St. Anne's Skete on Mount Athos.

Today is the Feast of the Conception of St. John the Baptist, my son's and my patron saint. So great and worthy a saint is he that my son and I are blessed with three name days. In nine months plus a day on June 24th, the Church will honor his Nativity, and on August 29th his Beheading is commemorated. Today's feast dates back to the fifth century, making it older than the Feast of the Conception of Mary. To add still further to the day's festivity, this is my son's first baptismal birthday (baptized on a feast of the Baptist!). We lit his baptismal candle and laid out his baptismal robe. We blessed him with holy water and holy oil and said a prayer of blessing. He was bemused, but no doubt blessed.

I am reminded, on this feast of a conception, of the three conceptions annually commemorated by the Church. Today's, though ancient, is least among them.

There is also that conception variously called The Maternity of the Holy Anna, The Conception of St. Anne, or The Immaculate Conception, on which we remember the conception of the All-Holy Mary in the womb of St. Anne on December 9th (or December 8th). Nine months later less a day, on September 8th, is the Nativity of the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.

Annunciation; Russian Icon of Ustyug, depicting Christ conceived within Mary

First among the three is the Annunciation, on which we remember the fiat of the All-Holy Theotokos (to mix my Greek and Latin), by which the Son of God became the Son of Man. Exactly nine months later (exact to indicate Christ's perfection in all things) is Christmas, The Nativity of O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ, the Nativity of nativities, on which the Daughter of Eve bore her Creator.

On a different note, several years ago, a woman and professor, arguing against the position of the Church on abortion, claimed to me that prior to the mid-twentieth century the Church had no teaching about life in the womb....

Soap Bubbles

2007-09-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

Being out of soap, today I was forced to bathe with my beloved wife's "Sensuality Bath and Shower Gel." That's right folks, not only is this cleansing gelatin sensual, it is Sensuality itself.

CCC 2727:

We must also face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of "this present world" can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant. For example, some would have it that only that is true which can be verified by reason and science; yet prayer is a mystery that overflows both our conscious and unconscious lives. Others overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless. Still others exalt sensuality and comfort as the criteria of the true, the good, and the beautiful; whereas prayer, the "love of beauty" (philokalia), is caught up in the glory of the living and true God. Finally, some see prayer as a flight from the world in reaction against activism; but in fact, Christian prayer is neither an escape from reality nor a divorce from life.

The Roman Catholic Church is not the One True Church

2007-09-08T14:20:00.000-04:00

The Catholic Church is the one true Church. The recent Vatican document on ecumenical relations does not claim this of Roman Catholicism, as certain commentators suggest. In response to one such commentator, David Yonke, I wrote the following letter:

In your article of Sunday, July 22, you repeat an error that has been widespread in media reporting on the recent document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

You write: "All Christian traditions except Roman Catholicism have “defects,” “wounds,” or are not true churches, according to the controversial document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."

The document does not indicate "Roman" Catholicism, but simply "Catholicism." There are more than twenty Catholic Churches in communion with one another. With the Roman Catholic Church being the largest of these Churches and it's Pope being the head of the universal Church, many people are confused into thinking that the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church are the same thing. They are not. If you read more carefully, you'll note that the word "Roman" does not even appear in the document (except in the fourth footnote).

To his credit, Mr. Yonke acknowledged his error, but he then dismissed it, writing, “It is of minor significance, however, when considering the numbers of adherents affected. As you know, the vast majority of Catholics are Roman Catholics.” If small numbers render a Church insignificant, then the Apostolic Church would be least significant of all Churches.

The Roman Catholic Church is not superior to or above the other Catholic Churches. It is equal to them. The Roman Catholic Church’s numbers are by far the greatest, yet greater numbers do not indicate greater importance. As established by the Council of Chalcedon, the Roman pontiff retains the primacy among the patriarchates of the Church. Yet, it is important that the Eastern understanding of the Petrine primacy is as “primus inter pares” (first among equals).

In reference to this, Grégoire III Laham, Patriarch of Antioch of the Melkites, once said, “With all respect for the Petrine office, the patriarchal office is equal to it.” When questioned about this controversial stance Patriarch Grégoire III elaborated:

"Really I always say: I am cum Petro but not sub Petro. If I were sub Petro, I would be in submission, and I couldn’t have a true frank, sincere, strong and free communion with the Pope. When you embrace a friend, you are not “below”. You embrace him from the same height, if not it wouldn’t be a true embrace. Unita manent, (united things last)….

"The papacy, since John XXIII, is the most open authority in the world. In no other Church is there such openness and such democratic praxis as in the Church of Rome. But then there are those who want to appear as the super-Catholics, and they then insist and always only on the sub Petro and sub Roma. And so, according to me, they contradict the true sense of the papacy itself, its office to confirm the brethren in the faith. We have suffered for our communion with Rome. For a hundred and fifty years we have said Mass in the catacombs, in Damascus, because we were forbidden do it in public because of our communion with the bishop of Rome. We’re more Roman than the Romans! That’s why we want to benefit from this communion as from a treasure, a gift, a help for our faith. As Saint John says, our faith is our sole victory."

Patriarch Grégoire III does not here say so, but as Patriarch of Antioch he, too, succeeds St. Peter. I will post more on St. Peter's other Church in the future.

Harry Potter and the Culture of Death

2007-08-09T23:57:00.000-04:00

The following contains spoilers:

Years ago, whilst at college, I wrote an absurd article concerning liberalism and Harry Potter, in which I dismissed the series’ liberal qualities – not to mention its absence of God – as simply part of the fantasy. I was and remain a fan despite my reservations regarding its politics and my oft-repeated suggestion that the books shouldn’t be read by their intended audience (children). It is not for a political reason that I, nor any other HP fan, read these books. Rather, I read them for their characters (particularly Snape, about whom these books are written whatever their titles or their author may protest) and for the immersive escapism they afford. Most of all, I read them because they are about love – and an uncommonly accurate understanding of love at that – or so I thought.

“Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Love is not a feeling or a passion. Love is self-sacrifice, pursuit of the other’s good with disregard of self. This theme movingly appears throughout the HP series. From the self-sacrifice of Lily Potter’s life to save her son, to Harry’s own sacrifice for the good of all as he walks to his certain death at Voldemort’s murderously acquired Elder Wand, it is clear that the Potters understand what love is and what courage is and what price they demand. Such depiction of unselfish love has become rare in contemporary storytelling, which often centers on passionate self-gratification rather than on the dispassionate self-sacrifice that is love.

I long held that HP was an exception to this – that it depicted love rightly. Here, at the very end, to my disappointment, I learn that the Harry Potter series is actually just another product of the culture of death.

There is a chasm of difference between laying down one’s life – which is the very definition of love – and suicide. Dumbledore’s suicide – Snape’s murder – is presented as heroic. Suicide, whether called assisted suicide or euthanasia, is never morally permissible, let alone heroic. Hey, he was going to die anyway, right? Besides, he did it to save Draco from Voldemort’s wrath, didn’t he? We must not do evil that good may come of it. We are not the masters of life and death. Acting as though we are is what creates the culture of death. Our lives are not our property to dispense with at will for what seems best to us. Lives belong only to their Creator.

Harry's response to Dumbledore's cry, "KILL ME!" in chapter twenty-six of The Half-Blood Prince is the moral one. He deceives Dumbledore by saying, "Just drink this... It'll be over...all over!" In fact it wasn't all over. Harry did not kill Dumbledore.

When Dumbledore makes the same request to Snape, thereby tempting a morally conflicted man with a great evil, Snape obliges. Dumbledore turns out to be an arrogant, manipulative, self-satisfied sinner who is doubtlessly burning in hell and has taken Snape down with him. Pity. And he was on the road to redemption too….

Passion

2007-05-12T21:45:00.001-04:00

Passion (Gr. pathos), I think, is the second most misunderstood word in the English language. By the word "passion," most mean "strong feeling" or "fervent commitment." Some mean "sex." Nearly everywhere, the term is used positively. We are told by every third advertisement to follow our passions, act on our passions, or live for our passions. Rekindling passion, we are advised, is the way to save a failing marriage. Fiery passion is admired. The meaning of our life, some claim, is our life’s passion.

The Early Fathers of the Church, on the other hand, have a generally negative and more useful definition of the term "passion." The passions are that which assault us – that which we must endure (compare to the word "passive"). They are products of our fallen nature – perhaps with a good original purpose now corrupted – that lead us into a life of sin. They must be transformed for us to live in Christ.

The following definition is helpful. Probably written by Bishop Kallistos Ware, it comes from the glossary in the English translation of The Philokalia:

Passion (pathos): in Greek, the word signifies literally that which happens to a person or thing, an experience undergone passively; hence an appetite or impulse such as anger, desire or jealousy, that violently dominates the soul. Many Greek Fathers regard the passions as something intrinsically evil, a 'disease' of the soul: thus St. John Klimakos affirms that God is not the creator of the passions and that they are 'unnatural', alien to man's true self (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26...). Other Greek Fathers, however, look on the passions as impulses originally placed in man by God, and so fundamentally good, although at present distorted by sin (cf. St. Isaiah the Solitary...). On this second view, then, the passions are to be educated, not eradicated; to be transfigured, not suppressed; to be used positively, not negatively.

As with other temptations, God permits corrupting passions to exist but does not desire them. By prayer of the heart and invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus, we can be free of them. Dispassion (Gr. apatheia) is an attribute of the holy. More than the absence of passion, dispassion is a transfigured self. It signifies purity of heart, spiritual freedom, and detachment from earthly cares.

The teachings of Early Fathers of the Church on prayer of the heart and overcoming the passions have changed my life and freed me in a way I never thought I could be free. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Those old men who sat in their desert cells nearly two thousand years ago – there battling powers and principalities – have all the answers we need. Who would have thought? Let us strive to hear their quiet voices over the worldly din – whispering truths that do not change despite the passage of eons.

“The assaults of my passions disturb me; they fill my soul with great discouragement. O Maiden, preserved from all stain, restore the balance of my soul through the peace of your Son, through the peace of your God!” (Paraklis, Ode 1).

Eastern Catholic Churches

2007-04-25T23:10:00.000-04:00

I have been asked to provide a list of Churches in union with Rome. Currently, there are twenty-one Eastern Catholic Churches. They are arranged here according to Rite:

Alexandrian Rite

Antiocene Rite

Armenian Rite

Armenian Church

Byzantine Rite

Albanian Church
Belarussian Church
Bulgarian Church
Greek Church
Hungarian Church
Italo-Albanian Church
Melkite Church
Romanian Church
Russian Church
Ruthenian Church
Slovak Church
Ukrainian Church
Yugoslavian / Serbian / Croatian Church

Chaldean Rite

Chaldean Church
Syro-Malabar Church

I have tried to provide relevant links for most of these Churches. I will improve them and add to them as I am able.

The Bread of Life

2007-04-24T20:10:00.000-04:00

The Eucharist is God.

Jesus is the Bread of Life and the Bread of Life is Jesus (cf. Jn 6: 35 & 48). The Eucharist is God become Man. It is Jesus: His Body, His Blood, His Soul, and His Divinity - the whole Jesus. The Eucharist is the Son of God and the son of Mary, the Son of Man and the son of David. The Eucharist laid in a manger and later let Simeon go in peace. The Eucharist walked on the water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and exorcised demons. It still does. The Eucharist ate and drank with sinners. Now, It is eaten and drank by sinners. The Eucharist was once nailed to the Cross for our salvation. The Eucharist died, broke the gates of Hades, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven. The Eucharist is seated at the right hand of the Father. The Eucharist will come again to judge the living and the dead. Through the Eucharist, everything that is was made and without It was nothing made. The Eucharist is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6).

This is the Eucharist on every altar of the Catholic and Orthodox Church; It is eaten and drank by the faithful everyday. Everyday, others “eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1 Cor. 11: 29) and, everyday, most of the world ignores Him.

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). If you are not Catholic or Orthodox, become Catholic or Orthodox, lest you have no life in you. If you are Catholic or Orthodox, properly and frequently receive the most precious Body and Blood of Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins and life everlasting.

Jesus Would Discriminate

2007-04-20T01:10:00.000-04:00

The heretics and blasphemers who brought us the “Would Jesus discriminate?” yard signs have become more aggressive. Perhaps the yard signs were only the preamble to their intended coup-de-grace. The day before yesterday I saw a new sign which read, “David loved Jonathan more than women. II Samuel 1:26,” and last night I saw a billboard very near my erstwhile house proclaiming to all, “Jesus said some are born gay. Matthew 19: 10 – 12.”

I would prefer the exhibition of gay pornography on a billboard to this, printed as it is next to an image of O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ. That, at least, might offer an honest image of active homosexuality. Pornographers and sodomites ought to be briefly imprisoned. Blasphemers ought to be shown the implements of torture, in an effort to inspire repentance. Failing that, they ought to be burned at the stake. Probably I overreact. Do I? Only, who would do the torturing and burning but some other sinner?

At the very least, some vandal ought to spray paint a meaningful alteration to this billboard - perhaps inserting the words “did not say” over the word “said,” or inserting the word “eunuchs” over the word “gay.” I would suggest setting fire to the whole thing, only we must not disrespect Christ’s image. Meanwhile, the written lie stands, even as I write this, disrespecting Christ’s image.

The best remedy to blasphemy is to glorify the name of the Lord. If we speak the truth unfailingly, maybe we needn’t destroy those who speak falsehood. I shall try to let these scriptures speak for themselves.

II Samuel 1:26:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother! most dear have you been to me; More precious have I held love for you than love for women.

Matthew 19: 10 – 12 (NAB):

His disciples said to him, “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” He answered, “Not all can accept this word, but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.”

Matthew 19: 10 – 12 (Douay-Rheims):

His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry. Who said to them: All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it.

Would Jesus Discriminate?

2007-04-18T01:53:00.000-04:00

Several months ago, blue and white yard signs began to dot lawns and street corners all over Indianapolis bearing the words, “Would Jesus discriminate?”

Though I am aware that “discriminate” is a buzzword, I did not immediately think of it in this context. Immediately, visions of sheep and goats filled my mind, as well as wheat and chaff, publicans and Pharisees, the Final Judgement, heaven and hell (cf. Matt 25:32-33, 3: 12; Lk 3: 17, 18: 10-14). I thought, too, of Jesus dining with sinners (cf. Matt. 9:11). Yet even these sinners whom He came to call, He came to change. To sinners he says, “sin no more” (Jn 5:14, 8:11). For this reason He dines with them: to discriminate against their former way of life. Yes, I thought to myself, if anyone would discriminate it would be Jesus.

Soon, of course, it occurred to me that not only was this yard sign asking me a rhetorical question, but that its answer was meant to be “no.” Many of our age “put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Is 5:20). Discrimination, our buzz-catechism teaches, is the greatest of all sins – and surely Jesus is guilty of no sin. What point the authors of this sign were making, I wasn’t sure.

I was unsurprised to discover, upon exploring the website given on the yard sign, the following:

“Would Jesus discriminate? Instinctively, we all sense that the answer must be a resounding No! Yet we live in a time when many churches are leading the effort to deny gay and transgender people equal...” blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Hmm… “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Is 5:20). Instinctively, my answer is a resounding Yes!

Actually, I am fond of discrimination, a quality of any intelligent mind. An undiscriminating chef, for example, would put rats and rat s--- in a stew when he ran out of chicken and peppercorns. An undiscriminating husband would f--- his secretary when he was working late and couldn’t get home to his wife at their regular hour. The inability to discriminate is a mark of madness. The unwillingness to discriminate is a mark of evil.

The Church

2007-04-10T01:59:00.000-04:00

Nothing is more important than the Church.

Most Christians will agree that God should be our first priority – family our second. The Church is both. Nothing is more important than the Church.

“God is more important,” some will protest. God and the Church are one. To say that God is more important than the Church is like saying that a husband is more important than his wife. In truth, a husband is the head of his wife, but she is not his inferior. It is in the same way that Christ is the head of His Church (cf. Eph. 5:23). Only through the Church can you come to Christ.

“You’re idolizing a man-made institution,” others will accuse. The God-Man made the Church. His Body is the Church (cf. Col. 1:24). The Body of Jesus Christ is no idol.

The Church is God and family. It is God’s family. The Church makes bold to call God, “Father,” – even, “Abba” (Gal. 4:6). The Church is the children of God. The Church is God’s Son – Jesus, the Son of God. The Church is the Mystical Body of Jesus. As God the Son is to God the Father, so the Church is to God. The Church and God are “one in being.”

The Church is the Bride of Christ. As in marriage, the two are made one (cf. Eph. 5: 31- 32).

What is this Church? It is not the guy in the next pew – nor myself, a sinner. It is not the priest, nor the bishop, nor the pope. I do not worship men. It is not the saints nor the angels that I worship. I do not worship flesh and blood, but the awesome God. But this God I worship is in the angels and the saints. He is in men. He is in the pope, the bishop, and the priest. He is in the guy in the next pew. And He is in me, a sinner. And all these are in God, too.

God is in the Church and the Church is in God. “There is no salvation outside the Church.”

Byzantine Catholicism

2007-04-09T23:53:00.001-04:00

I am often asked why I became a Byzantine Catholic. Like many, if not most, cradle Roman Catholics, I made it through my formative years in the Church unaware that there was more to Catholicism than Roman Catholicism – unaware, that is, of universal, complete and entire (Catholic) Christianity. Though most Roman Catholics are hardly aware of our existence and many, upon hearing of us, ask, “are you Catholic?” or “are you under the Pope?” or a hundred such questions, it is worth pointing out that most members of our Byzantine Catholic Church in Indianapolis were themselves raised Roman Catholic. I am not alone among Westerners in my decision to practice the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic faith according the traditions, liturgy, theology, and spirituality of the East.

The question is sometimes phrased: “why did you convert?” Becoming Byzantine, having been Roman, is not a conversion of religion. Personally, it resulted from a deepening of faith, an inner conversion perhaps, but we must always remember that there is but one true Church, one God, one faith, one baptism, and one Lord who is Savior of all. Each of the more than twenty Eastern and Western Churches has equal claim in the one true Church.

Though it is not conversion as such, becoming Byzantine is certainly a change. The liturgical, sacramental, and theological differences attracted me and my love for them draws me into ever deeper immersion in the Byzantine Church.

The Byzantine Church is an abundant Church, a Church of plenty, a Church of overflowing cups, a Church where anything worth doing once is worth doing three times in honor of the Holy Trinity. Here there is anointing and more anointing, blessing and more blessing, incense and holy water, blessed bread and blessed wine. We don’t just dip our fingers in the holy water; we drink the holy water. When we blessed the holy water, it was the day of Theophany – our Lord’s Baptism. The priest blessed the water with fire, with breath, and with the sign of the cross. We don’t just anoint the forehead; we anoint the forehead, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, the chest, the hands, and the feet. When the priest incenses during the Divine Liturgy, he incenses the whole church, up and down the aisles, everyone singing all the while, until the place is filled with smoke.

Byzantine Liturgy is always oriented – the priest faces God, the tabernacle, the altar, and the East, from whence O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ will return. Marana tha! The congregation chants and sings throughout the entire Liturgy – the congregation is the choir. We gather together to worship and to exalt the Lord our God. We have no concept of a Low Mass in the Byzantine Church.

The Byzantine Church makes use of four distinct liturgies: most commonly we celebrate The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; occasionally we use The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil; during The Great Fast (Lent) we use The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, written by Pope St. Gregory the Great – this is much like the Good Friday Liturgy of the Roman Church; and, rarely, we use The Divine Liturgy of St. James the Apostle and Brother of the Lord, which is the earliest liturgy of the Church. Each of these liturgies is a glorious sacrifice of praise. The use of different liturgies for different seasons or occasions adds richness to the yearly cyclical life of the Church.

Above these liturgical differences, I love the generous and abundant Byzantine approach to the sacraments. The three mysteries of initiation (Baptism, Chrismation (Confirmation), and Eucharist) are given in their original order to infants. My own six month old son, John Elias, having been Baptized and Chrismated, receives the Most Holy Body and Blood of O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ for the remission of his sins and for life everlasting every time he attends the Divine Liturgy. He will receive the Mystery of Penance when he reaches the age of reason, before which time he is a holy innocent.

The Anointing of the Sick is given to all who wish to receive it twice a year. We do not see it as a sacrament only for the dying. All are in need of healing – whether from physical, mental, or spiritual maladies – all can therefore be anointed.

The Holy Mystery of Crowning (Matrimony) is not a bar to the reception of Holy Orders. The Roman Church acknowledges this theologically, but for pastoral and practical reasons usually forbids the ordination of married men. The Eastern Churches do not forbid such ordinations – another example of generous distribution of sacraments. Yet, we also exalt celibacy as imitative of O.L.G.S. Jesus Christ and a calling higher than marriage – even to the extent of acknowledging the sacramentality of monastic vows.

Eastern theology has never officially limited the number of sacraments to seven, as the Roman Church did at the Council of Trent. Although, certainly, the seven sacraments are held in great reverence – the Eucharist above all others, but this does not keep us from regarding other acts and signs as sacramental. Fr. Sidney Sidor of our local parish, St. Athanasius, will tell you emphatically, “there are more than seven sacraments!”

These are but a few of the differences that attracted me to the Eastern Church. Probably I leave you with more questions than answers. Pope John Paul II had more answers than I. His encyclical, Orientale Lumen, is a good source of information. The Byzantine Churches are a source of truth and beauty in the Catholic Church which everyone should get to know better.

Theocracy

2007-03-30T22:47:00.000-04:00

There was a Polish movement recently to proclaim Jesus Christ the King of Poland.

Jesus Christ is already the King of Poland, whether or not they acknowledge Him as such. He is also the King of Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Japan, the United States of America, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, North and South Korea, Pakistan and, especially, He is the King of Israel. He is the King of all nations. He is the King of Kings. But in what sense and to what degree ought states to submit to His Kingship? Is Christian statecraft Christian?

When a Christian thinks or acts – whether religiously, socially, politically, or howsoever – he is beholden to imitate Christ Jesus. As regards politics then, a Christian must examine Christ's political proclamations and actions. There are few. Jesus Christ, though He is most certainly Man, is not a "political animal." Most of His few actions that can be interpreted politically are better interpreted spiritually. "Render unto Caesar," in its context, sounds more like indifference to worldly cares than good citizenship (Matt 22: 21). Many Christian politicos like to quote Jesus' point about Caesar without quoting its counterpoint: "Render unto God the things that are God's," which is the real meaning of the passage. The things of Caesar are inconsequential beside the things of God. "My kingdom is not of this world," He also says (Jn 18: 36).

Clearly, Jesus would passively pay taxes, even to a corrupt state, even without representation¹. If you take a Christian's coat, he's obliged to let you have it – just like that – not only his coat, but his shirt as well – because he isn't to have attachments to the things of this world, neither to his coat nor to his taxed income (cf. Lk 6:29). He's not supposed to care. Indifference and dispassion are to characterize a Christian's economic behavior. The Lord will provide as He does for the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air (cf. Matt 6:26-30). Do they own the rain and the sun? Is private property Christian?

In Christ's political indifferentism, there is an argument for anarchy and in His Kingship there is a better argument for monarchy. I am not convinced there is a Christian argument for democracy: Pagan in its origin, relativist in its outcome. Nonetheless, what are Christians, who find themselves in a republic where voting is popularly called a duty, to do? Vote? Vote for what?

Jesus said to Pilate, "You would have no power over Me, unless it had been given you from above" (Jn 19: 10-11). All power, even the power to kill or spare the Son of God, comes from God. Whatever powers we have been given we must use to serve and glorify God. Sin is abuse of power. The power to vote or not vote comes from God. Whether or not I vote, the officials who rise to power do so by God's consent.

Whether they are evil or less evil makes no difference – they have God's judgment to face for their crimes, not mine. I don't vote for them, I pray for them. The day that a candidate represents Christ, I'll vote. I have yet to hear of such a one as this.
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¹ If the American Revolution indeed hinged on objection to "taxation without representation," as I have been taught, it was neither a Christian revolt nor a just war. Probably it hinged on more than this. Rule by consent of the governed? Democracy? These are not Christian concepts. America is not a Christian nation. What interest ought Christians to have in America?