Coffee with Sister Vassa -- BELIEVING ONE ANOTHER

 

“… Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” (Jn 20: 26-31)

“ These are written,” – thus St. John explains to us the purpose of his Gospel, – “ that you may believe…, and that believing you may have life…” We do not “see” the risen Lord in the same way that Thomas and the other eye-witnesses saw Him. But we believe their eye-witness accounts, their life-giving testimony to His new life, because God willed it so, that we receive the gift of faith from one another, from other human beings. “ Blessed are those who have not seen,” He says about us, “ and yet believe” because of the testimony of other human beings. In Christ’s one Body that is the Church, His Spirit breathes new life into us, by fostering faith not only in Him, but also in one another, in human testimony to Him. This is a particularly precious gift in our “ post-truth” world of “ fake news,” which threatens to destroy our faith in the human capacity to receive and pass on truth; to bear trustworthy witness to God’s “ good news” that is Truth.

“ That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship/communion (κοινωνίαν) with us,” St. John reminds us elsewhere (1 Jn 1: 3). Thank You, Lord, for uniting us, and teaching us to trust one another, by entrusting Your good news to merely-human beings. Holy Apostles, pray to God for us!

Monday Morning Meditation -- The Glorious First and Eighth Day of the Week

Source: oca.org

 CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

In St. John's account of the first appearance of the Risen Lord to the disciples as a group (Jn. 20:19-31), we find the liturgical structure of the Church as it exists to this very day in his account of this incredible encounter. For St. John records: "On the evening of that day, the first day of the week ..." (20:19). The first day of the week is the day after the Sabbath, and that would be our Sunday.

It was on this day that the risen Christ appeared to his bewildered, dejected, and frightened disciples in order to convince them that He was risen from the dead. "Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord" (20:20). Jesus returned to further convince the unbelieving Thomas that He was indeed risen. And significantly, this next appearance was "eight days later" (20:26). Which means, of course, the following Sunday.

Since those memorable two days until today, we use the language - with all of its symbolic meaning - of the First and Eighth Day of the week for our liturgical assemblies on the Lord's Day - Sunday. In a deep sense, the first day of the week is the eighth day, if we understand the "eighth day" as taking us beyond the seven days of the week as a kind of anticipation of the Kingdom of God which is beyond the "time" of this world.

St. Gregory Palamas (+1359), Archbishop of Thessaloniki, in a homily entitled "On the Sabbath and the Lord's Day," explains it like this:

You will see that it was Sunday when the disciples assembled and the Lord came to them. On Sunday He approached them for the first time as they were gathered together and eight day later, when Sunday came around again, He appeared to their assembly. Christ's Church continually reflects these gatherings by holding its meetings mostly on Sundays and we come among you and preach what pertains to salvation and lead you towards piety and a godly way of life.

Yet, as a pastor, St. Gregory continued his homily with this admonition:

Let no one out of laziness or continuous worldly occupations miss these holy Sunday gatherings, which God Himself handed down to us, lest he be justly abandoned by God and suffer like Thomas, who did not come at the right time. If you are detained and do not attend on one occasion, make up for it the next time, bringing yourself to Christ's Church. Otherwise you may remain uncured, suffering unbelief in your soul because of deeds or words, and failing to approach Christ's surgery to receive, like divine Thomas, holy healing.

To our modern sensibilities, even these words of pastoral admonition may seem over-stated if not harsh to us today. But the saint was trying to reinforce the sense of commitment that the believer needs to have to the Lord's Day Liturgy which brings us directly into the presence of the Risen Christ - "Christ is in our midst!" - as we joyfully exclaim at the Liturgy.

St. Gregory's homily clearly places commitment over convenience. This is our first priority. He was writing to a Christian society that was not as pluralistic or diverse as our own, there is no doubt. That means that the pressure for us is "out there" to conform to those "worldly occupations" that St. Gregory warns us about. Today, that could even have a bearing on our presence at the Sunday morning Liturgy. As one example from among many: How many Orthodox parents have to deal with their child's sports events scheduled these days on Sunday morning? So, we can see that the challenges are out there.

In the light of the Gospel revelation about the glorious first and eighth day of the week, we should at least think hard about any such choices.

Fragments for Friday

Source: orthodoxroad.com

 Christ is Risen!

Today we should give thought to one important thing that not everyone remarks upon when turning to Holy Scripture, when reading about those bright days during which the Lord appeared after His Resurrection. He appeared to many, and to each person differently. In one circumstance it was the weeping Mary Magdalene, lonely and grieving at the empty tomb; in another it was Peter, bewildered and confused, having returned from the garden where He had found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then we see the disciples on the sea. John senses Him in his heart and recognizes Him, while Peter throws himself into the sea and hurries to Him. And, as we read in the epistles of the Apostle Paul, among the last to whom the Lord appeared was he, Paul-Saul, who had persecuted the Church of God. 

This continues even now. Christ, risen invisibly, appears tangibly to each person. In the lives of each of us who has felt the proximity of other worlds if only for a moment, a meeting with the Risen Lord.

Fr. Alexander Men

_____

Fr. Alexander was an Orthodox priest who was brutally murdered in 1990. Born Jewish but raised Christian, he and his mother were part of the underground church in Russia. He was instrumental in speaking to a new generation of young people, and he brought many back to the Church.

A Reflection -- IN DEFENSE OF THE POPE

Source: oca.org

 Christ is Risen!

"Peace be with you!" (Jn. 20:19)

As Orthodox Christians, we have some real differences with the Roman Catholic Church. Simply stated, these are both ecclesiological and theological. Yet, in the recent ongoing tension between the Pope and the President - played out very publicly through interviews and social media communications - I would clearly defend the pope for injecting an authoritative "religious" voice into this debate. In a Christian spirit, the pope criticized the choice of war in Iran (which does not meet the criteria in the Roman Catholic Church for a “just war”), and in the process he exhorted all world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to the seemingly endless conflicts engulfing the contemporary world. The pope brought a voice of sanity into an increasingly insane world. 

It would be purely cynical to mistrust his sincerity in upholding the Gospel teaching that "blessed are the peacemakers." His voice represents the voice of Christ speaking to the world a word of peace and reconciliation. This is not pious or ethereal idealism. It is the Gospel proclamation of the "peace of God which surpasses all understanding" (Phil. 4:7) to a world deeply wounded by sin and death. And whatever one thinks of the papacy, the pope is clearly the most renowned universal religious figure in the world. His voice is respected.

It would also be cynical to challenge his honest claim that he is not making political pronouncements, or trying to determine any government's foreign policy. When life and death decisions are being made on a political level, profound moral and ethical issues are at the heart of these decisions. And those moral and ethical issues cannot be ignored. If they are, we can make no claims at being civilized. War means death and destruction, and beyond that, profound mistrust and open hostility against one's enemies that endure for generations. As Pope Leo recently reminded us: “Too many innocent people are being killed. Someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way.” 

Public voices invoking the Old Testament image of a "Warrior God," or quoting Old Testament texts to the effect of vanquishing one's enemy are hardly consistent with the image of Christ in the New Testament. In fact, once the bombs start raining down, I prefer that the sacred Name of Jesus Christ remain unspoken. 

Attacking the pope for his plea for peace makes no real sense, especially when accusations are made against him with no basis in reality. Such accusations go far beyond genuine disagreements. We should bear in mind that the pope is not speaking only of America's involvement in the Middle East and the current war with Iran. He is clearly speaking to such dictators as Vladimir Putin and his murderous assault on Ukraine, in which thousands of innocent Ukrainians have been and are being killed, wounded or displaced on a daily basis. 

In early 2025, I defended an Episcopal bishop for challenging our administration to treat immigrants with "compassion." There was nothing wrong with that challenge, and it was not an example of a religious person meddling in politics. It also was a call to moral and ethical thinking and action. The current pope, Leo XIV, is simply doing the same thing about our war of choice with Iran and beyond. That is far more helpful than harmful.

Death's Dominion Has Been Shattered -- The Two Icons of the Resurrection and the Destruction of Death

Source: sttekla.org

CHRIST IS RISEN!      INDEED HE IS RISEN!

The souls bound in the chains of hades, O Christ, seeing Thy compassion without measure, pressed onward to the light with joyful steps, praising the eternal pascha.
(Matins, Paschal Canon of St. John of Damascus)

The awesome mystery of the Lord’s bodily resurrection from the dead was providentially kept hidden from human eyes. Although there were many eyewitnesses to the Resurrected One, there were none of the actual “moment” of the resurrection. There was no access to the tomb until the stone had been rolled away and its emptiness was revealed to the myrrhbearing women. The emptiness of the tomb was a “sign” of the resurrection of Christ; while the angelic voice – “He has risen, he is not here” – was the first announcement of the Gospel of the Risen Lord, thus interpreting the sign. The Lord then appeared to both the myrrhbearing women and the disciples, fully affirming the meaning of the empty tomb and the angelic proclamation. Yet, to repeat, the “moment” of the resurrection remains inaccessible to human perception.

For this reason, artistic depictions of Christ emerging from the tomb, banner in hand, rising in a blinding light over the hapless and sprawling bodies of the guard, are “later” and inauthentic images of the resurrection, though they contain the truth that the “Lord has risen indeed!” In the Western artistic tradition, the most famous of such depictions is probably that of Matthias Grunewald. Such images have also become popular in Orthodox iconography over the centuries, as seen on processional banners, portable icons and walls. Once such images enter the Church, they stubbornly refuse to leave!

There do exist two authentic icons of the Resurrection, one being of a more historical nature and the other theological. The historical icon of the Resurrection is that of the myrrhbearing women gazing in wonder at the empty grave cloths of Christ lying in the tomb while an angel (or two) is further depicted sitting inside the tomb as recorded in the Gospels. This icon captures the startling moment when the myrrhbearers are overcome with “fear and trembling” together with wonder and concern at not seeing the body of the Lord in the tomb.

The theological icon simply entitled the “Anastasis” or “Resurrection,” is also referred to as the “Descent Into Hades.” Here the victorious Christ, resplendent in white garments, Cross in hand, is depicted shattering the gates of the biblical realm of the dead (sheol in Hebrew; hades in Greek; often, though imprecisely, translated as “Hell”) decisively and forcefully grabbing Adam and Eve – representative of humanity and the righteous awaiting deliverance (cf. HEB. 11:39-40) – by the hand and pulling them out of this darkened realm restored to fellowship with God. As iconography and hymnography complement one another, a paschal hymn from the Vespers of Holy Saturday illuminates the meaning of this powerful icon: 

Today Hell cries our groaning:
My power has been trampled upon.
The Shepherd is crucified and Adam is raised.
I have been deprived of those whom I ruled.
Those whom I swallowed in my strength I have given up.
He who was crucified has emptied the tombs.
The power of death has been vanquished.
Glory to Thy Cross and Resurrection, O Lord.

The Fathers found a clear allusion of this descent into hades in a passage from I Peter:

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formally did not obey … For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God. (I PETER 3:18-4:6)

Surprisingly, however, the main source for this icon appears to be the 2nd c. apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Here we find a dramatic and rather humanly touching description of this profound theological truth:

And behold, suddenly Hades trembled, and the gates of death and the bolts were shattered, and the iron bars were broken and fell to the ground, and everything was laid open … Then the Lord Jesus, the Savior of all, affectionate and most mild saluting Adam kindly, said to him: “Peace be to you, Adam, with your children, through immeasurable ages to ages!” Amen.

Then father Adam, falling forward at the feet of the Lord, and being raised erect, kissed his hands, and shed many tears, saying, testifying to all: “Behold, the hands which fashioned me!” And he said to the Lord: “You have come, O King of glory, delivering men, and bringing them into Your everlasting Kingdom.”

Then also our mother Eve in like manner fell forward at the feet of the Lord, and was raised erect, and kissed His hands, and poured forth tears in abundance, and said, testifying to all: “Behold the hands which made me!”

In other words, “Death’s dominion has been shattered.” Can Christianity survive without this being the ultimate “Good News:”

That through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. (HEB. 2:14-15)

What of the non-resurrected Christ emerging from certain biblical scholars and other circles now demanding equal time in the popular press and visual media? Is this even remotely consistent with the full content of the New Testament? Does such a “Christ” truly inspire and offer hope to the hopeless? I would answer my own questions with decisive “NO!” 

However, the apostle Paul reminds us that: “all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” (II COR. 1:20) This 'Yes' seems fully convincing when we acknowledge Christ as:

… the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings of the earth.

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!