Acquiring the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"The aim of the Christian life is to return to that perfect grace of the most holy and life-giving Spirit, which was originally conferred upon us through divine baptism." (St. Kallistos and St. Ignatios Xanthopoulos)

Icon of St Seraphim of Sarov's Conversation with N. Motovilov, during which he is transfigured by the uncreated light of the Holy Spirit.

Although the Feast of Pentecost reveals the trinitarian nature of God, it is on this "last and great day of Pentecost" that we concentrate on the Holy Spirit. This is clear from the prescribed readings for the Sunday of Pentecost: ACTS 2:1-11 describing the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost; and JN. 7:37-52. 8:12, the Gospel passage which speaks of the giving of the Holy Spirit by the glorified Christ.

As Orthodox Christians we do not reduce the Holy Spirit to a kind of indefinite divine power or energy. Rather, we clearly proclaim that the Holy Spirit is God, the "Third Person" of the "holy, consubstantial, life-creating, and undivided Trinity."

We further believe that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father" (JN. 15:26) and "Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified" (Nicene Creed). As one of the many beautiful hymns of the Vespers of Pentecost expresses this truth:

The Holy Spirit was, is, and ever shall be
Without beginning, without end,
Forever united and numbered with the Father and the Son ...

The Holy Spirit, present within the dispensation of the Old Testament and more openly within the earthly ministry of Christ, descends into the world in a unique, but decisive and final way on the Great Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the Savior's resurrection.

The coming of the Holy Spirit gave birth to the New Testament Church and the Holy Spirit abides in the Church as the life-giving Power of renewal, rebirth and regeneration. The Church would grow old and die (as do empires, nations, cultures and secular institutions) because of our many human and historical sins, if not for this presence of the Holy Spirit, making the Church ever-young and cleansing us all "from every impurity" as the personal Source of sanctification.

We come to the Father through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Or, as St. Gregory of Nyssa puts it a bit more fully:

"One does not think of the Father without the Son and one does not conceive of the Son without the Holy Spirit. For it is impossible to attain to the Father except by being raised by the Son, and it is impossible to call Jesus Lord save in the Holy Spirit."

All authentic life in the Church is life lived in the Holy Trinity, and on the Day of Pentecost the coming of the Holy Spirit is the final revelation of precisely this greatest of mysteries - that the one God is "tri-hypostastic" (meaning "tri-personal"), being the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Here is a typical example from the Church Fathers of expressing the great paradox of the One God in Three Persons:

"The single divinity of the Trinity is undivided and the three Persons of the one divinity are unconfused. We confess Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, divided yet without division and united yet with distinctions." (St. Thalassios the Libyan)

The Sunday of Pentecost is, then, the Feast of the Holy Trinity, Pentecost Monday being the day of the Holy Spirit. Of the divine attributes of the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great enumerates the following:

"From this Source comes foreknowledge of the future, the understanding of mysteries, the apprehension of things hidden, the partaking of spiritual gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the choir of angels, unending joy, the power to abide in God, to become like God, and, highest of all ends to which we can aspire, to become divine."

This can strike us as abstract. But theology reveals to us the foundation and the vision on which and in which we order our spiritual lives. The dogma of the Trinity must impact our lives.

The beginning of this process of discerning the presence of God in our lives and in trying to live out that presence is to be found in the Sacraments of Baptism and Chrismation. Each and every human person, baptized and chrismated into the life of the Orthodox Church so as to receive the gift of salvation from sin and death unto life eternal, has participated in his/her own personal Pascha and Pentecost. To be baptized is to die and rise in Christ; to be chrismated is to receive "the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit." Alive in Christ, sealed and filled with the Holy Spirit! New life and the power with which and in which we are enabled to continue in that life!

Without Christ we "can do nothing" (JN. 15:5), and without the Holy Spirit - poured out upon us by the risen, ascended and glorified Christ at Pentecost - we cannot say that "Jesus is Lord." (I COR. 12:3)

As St. Seraphim of Sarov put it:

"The true goal of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Spirit of God."

Yet, I cannot but wonder if - or to what extent - we are troubled if we squander the "great grace of Baptism" that we received when we were buried with Christ in the baptismal font - both a tomb (dying to sin) and a womb (rebirth). It seems as if we can be insensitive to the withdrawal of the Spirit's presence from our minds and hearts through sheer inattention and lack of vigilance.

The saints would weep for their sins - in fact, this is called "gifts of tears" as the means of restoring that very baptismal grace forfeited by sin - while we shrug off our own sins as "normal" and practically inevitable considering the conditions and circumstances of life. If we are more-or-less "like other people" in conformity with a basic set of moral principles, and thus maintaining a good image in the eyes of others, then we are usually perfectly content with our own sinfulness. In this way, we domesticate and normalize sin by rendering it innocuous and easy to live with.

So understood, sin is no longer that tragic "missing of the mark" that renders sin so baneful a reality, a reality from which we needed to be saved by the death of our Savior. Thus, we re-define sin so that our notion of sin hardly resembles what we find in the Scriptures!

But how we may weep and gnash our teeth if and when we lose money, property, status, or simply "things;" how we mourn the loss of even a "trinket" if we have invested it with sentimental value. It is these types of losses that are meaningful and which demand our attention and concern, while the muting of the "voice" of the Spirit deep within our conscience will only draw a lukewarm sigh.

This is a most unfortunate reversal of values; for losing the "seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit" is tantamount to losing our "heavenly treasure;" while losing our earthly treasures is only to lose what "moth and rust consume" despite our heroic efforts to escape that process.

This is a paradox: When, by the grace of God, our spiritual lives have matured in such a way that we truly mourn (and even weep!) over our sins which strip us of the presence of the "Comforter and Spirit of Truth," then through genuine repentance, the Holy Spirit will "come and abide in us" to "warm our hearts with perfect love," according to the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

The Lord gave us the Holy Spirit, and the person in whom the Holy Spirit lives feels that he has paradise within. (St. Silouan of Mt. Athos)

The Breakthrough of the God-bearing Fathers at the beautiful city of Nicea

Dear Parish Faithful,

Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth...

Today is the Leave-taking of the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Looking back to last Sunday, in addition to our ongoing celebration of the Ascension, we also commemorated the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea. This is an annual commemoration on the Seventh Sunday of Pascha. This First Ecumenical Council convened in 325 and its great and timeless contribution to the Church is the first version of we call today the Nicene Creed.

Actually, what we use to this day in the Church is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, for the initial form of the Creed was completed at the Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381. But since the full title of the Creed is something of a mouthful, we shorten it to the Nicene Creed, with a hopeful understanding of the history behind it.

At Great Vespers for the Holy Fathers, we chanted a long aposticha verse that characteristically and simultaneously praised the Holy Trinity while teaching the faithful, through a summary form, the meaning of this commemoration. Often, the hymns of the Church combine praise, poetry, teaching and exhortation. This particular hymn is a very fulsome example of that.

I would like to present this aposticha verse together with my own commentary added to it, so as to further expand on the hymn and discover what it is primarily teaching us about this First Ecumenical Council and the theology behind it:

O Orthodox faithful, let us celebrate today the yearly memorial of the God-bearing Fathers who came from all over the inhabited world to the beautiful city of Nicea.

The opening sentence is a somewhat rhetorical call to worship and a reminder that this is an annual celebration of these great saints of the Church. They are said to be "God-bearing Fathers," something like flesh-and-blood "vessels of the Holy Spirit," inspired to proclaim theological truths that open up to the faithful members of the Church some of the great mysteries of the Christian Faith.

The Council Fathers came from all over the "inhabited world," a somewhat inflated expression that means that they came from within the boundaries of the Roman Empire - the oikomene - or "civilized world."

Nicea was an ancient city of what was called then Asia Minor, but what is today, of course, Turkey. The city was just across the Bosphoros and the great city of Constantinople. Nicea was renamed Iznik by the Ottoman Turks long ago. As Nicea it was also the meeting place of the seventh and last of the Seven Great Ecumenical Councils. But I have no idea if it is still beautiful!

They rejected the impious teaching of Arius as a Council, excluding him from the Church throughout the world.

Here is the first mention of one of the great arch-heretics of the Church - the presbyter Arius from Alexandria.

A heretic promotes false teaching as if it was a legitimate expression of the Church's Faith, which it is not. It is therefore dismissed as "impious." The title of "heretic" is very unpopular today, as we have relativized all "truth claims;" but the early Church had to distinguish true from false teaching, in order to maintain the "unity of the Faith" and its faithfulness to the witness of the Scriptures.

The teaching of Arius was challenged immediately when it became known publicly. For this teaching was clearly a real threat to the Church's understanding of who the Son of God actually is. For Arius, the Son is a "creature" unequal with God the Father. For Arius, "there was [a time] when He was not." That would mean that the Son of God is not eternal. This severely compromised the claim of the Church that it was the eternal and timeless God who entered into our world in order to save the world. For only God can save.

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world precisely because in His divine nature He is truly God. God, in the Person of the Son of God becomes incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, the "Word made flesh." We should also take note that "as a Council" Arius and his teaching was rejected. This reveals the conciliar nature of the Church, based upon the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem (ACTS 15). When the apostles deliberated there over the hotly-contested issue of how the Gentiles should be received into the Church, they acknowledged the role of divine grace leading them in their deliberations: "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us... " The Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council would make the same claim. The decisions of the Church gathered together in Council are not merely the results of human agency.

They clearly taught all to confess the Son of God, consubstantial, co-eternal, and existing from before all ages.

The "breakthrough" achieved by the Fathers at the Council was to clearly articulate that the Son of God is equal to the Father according to His divine nature. The Son is therefore "coeternal." He has always existed "from before all ages." As the Son, He is "begotten of the Father before all ages... begotten not made." There was never a "time" when He did not exist (as Arius claimed), just as there was never a "time" when the Father did not exist. 

The Son is "Light of Light; true God of true God." And this "breakthrough" was possible because the Fathers of the Council took the very bold step of using a word not found in the Bible, to defend what was stated in the Bible about the Son of God by means of other expressions, images and terms. This word is the Greek homoousios, translated as "consubstantial," or as we say "of one essence" (with the Father). What God is by nature, so is the Son of the identical nature. Yet, the Father and the Son are distinct as divine Persons.

They composed this explicitly in the Symbol of Faith.

The Holy Fathers of the Council expressed this in a creedal form - succinctly and explicitly - with a clarity that refutes the teaching of Arius so that any further misunderstanding can be avoided. The Nicene Creed now expresses Orthodox dogma, the very content of the Faith. 

This Truth is eternal and unchanging for such is the Son of God - "the way, the truth and the life." The Orthodox Church will proclaim this truth to the world until the end of time and then we will experience it "face to face" in the Kingdom of God. 

What we call the creed (from the Latin credo - I believe) is actually called the Symbol of Faith. This Symbol of Faith has stood the "test of time" as it is still our surest expression of Orthodox teaching after almost seventeen hundred years.

Following their divine dogmas in the assurance of the Faith, we worship the Son and the Holy Spirit together with the Father: the Trinity one in Essence, one unique Divinity!

This very expressive hymn closes with a call to worship the Holy Trinity. Actually, the hymn is incorporating what was further expressed following the Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381: that "we worship the Son and the Holy Spirit together with the Father." 

After the Second Council we have the full expression of our Faith in the Holy Trinity. (Thus was the work of such great Church Fathers as St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Gregory of Nyssa). 

And the Trinity is "one in essence." The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit share the identical divine nature from all eternity, thus being "one unique Divinity!" These are "divine dogmas." Dogmas have been described as "mystical facts" penetrating into the deepest layers of reality, because these dogmas reveal God to us to the extent that we can penetrate the mystery and majesty of God.

With the coming of Pentecost this weekend - and Pentecost Sunday is also called the Day of the Holy Trinity - we will be able to worship the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in and through the Liturgy and the coming of the Holy Spirit that we will experience in the Church. And that sounds exciting!

The Ascension: Our Destiny in Christ

Dear Parish Faithful,

In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed we profess,

Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man.... And the third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father.

What a wonderful expression of the great mystery of the "descent" and "ascent" of the Son of God! The eternal Son of God becomes the Son of Man, descending into our world to live among us and to teach us about, and prepare us for, the Kingdom of God. This is what we call the Incarnation.

This movement of descent is only completed when Christ is crucified and enters the very realm of death on our behalf. There is "nowhere" further to descend (in)to. Thus, there are no limits to the love of God for His creatures, for the descent of Christ into death itself is "for our salvation."

The Son of God will search for Adam and Eve in the very realm of Sheol/Hades. He will rescue them and liberate them as representative of all humankind, languishing in "the valley of death." Since death cannot hold the sinless -- and therefore deathless -- Son of God, He begins His ascent to the heavenly realm with His resurrection from the dead. And He fulfills this Paschal mystery with His glorious ascension.

As Saint Paul writes, "He Who descended is He Who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:10). The One Who ascended, however, is now both God and man, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified Jesus Christ Who is now seated at "the right hand of the Father," far above the heavens. It is the glorified flesh of the Incarnate Word of God which has entered into the very bosom of the Trinity in the Person of Christ.

As Saint Leo the Great, the pope of Rome (+461) taught,

With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of Heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest Heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father.

This is simultaneously our ascension and our glorification, since we are united to Christ through holy Baptism as members of His Body. Therefore, Saint Paul can further write, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). Out of our physical sight, we now "see" the glorified Christ through the eyes of faith.

Saint Leo further explains how important this spiritual insight is:

For such is the power of great minds, such the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eyes; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight. Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be justified by faith, if our salvation lay only in what is visible.

It is upon this ordered structure of divine acts that we have been firmly established, so that the grace of God may show itself still more marvelous when, in spite of the withdrawal from men's sight of everything that is rightly felt to command their reverence, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, charity does not grow cold.

The Great Feast of the Ascension is not a decline from the glory of Pascha. It is, rather, the fulfillment of Pascha, and a movement upward toward the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the joyful revelation of our destiny in Christ. 

By the time we reach the end of the special forty days of Pascha, a certain fatigue has set in, and the initial explosion of joy that characterized Pascha seems already like a dim memory (though experienced only forty days ago!). But is it possible for the Feast of the Lord's glorious Ascension to awaken us yet again to the great joy of our salvation and destiny in Christ?

We believe that we are not orphans in a universe devoid of meaning, but actually children of God, "who were born, not of blood nor the will of man, but of God" (JN. 1:13).  In his First Epistle, St. John further elaborates on this: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (I JN. 3:2).

We do not know "when" that will be, only that God will fulfill His promises already revealed in the risen and glorified Lord Jesus Christ.

'The decisive moment in the history of the world...'

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN! 

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Pascha - The Thirty-Ninth Day

"The instant of the Resurrection was the decisive moment in the history of the world. It was the event of deepest importance for every human being who ever lived. It was the supreme kairos, the definitive 'day of the Lord'. The Law and the Prophets were fulfilled in that moment, and the existence of the human race took on a radically new meaning."

- From The Jesus We Missed by Patrick Henry Reardon

The Two Icons of the Resurrection, and the Destruction of Death

Dear Parish Faithful,


As the paschal season draws to a close, here is a meditation that summarizes our over-all theological and iconographic understanding of the great paschal mystery:

The Two Icons of the Resurrection, and the Destruction of Death

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!

'This victory began on the night of the Resurrection'

Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen! 
Indeed He is Risen!

“If we ask ourselves once again what the essence of Christianity is, we must give the following answer: it is God manhood; that is, the union of the human spirit, which is finite and limited in time, with the divine, which is infinite. It is the sanctification of the flesh from the moment the Son of Man adopted our joys and sufferings: that which we construct, our love, our work, nature, the world in which He found Himself and in which He was born as man and as God-Man.

"None of that is rejected; nothing is humiliated. It is rather raised to a new level. In Christianity the world is sanctified: evil, darkness, and sin are vanquished. This is God’s victory. This victory began on the night of the Resurrection, and it will continue as long as the world exists.”

The quote above was Fr. Alexander’s last public words before he was brutally murdered while on his way to church (1990's).

Excerpt is taken from the book - Alexander Men: A Witness for Contemporary Russia.

'A genuinely blameless Christian death...'

Dear Parish Faithful,



CHRIST IS RISEN!  
INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Attached, you will find a short but remarkable account of the last days of Fr. Roman Braga, a genuine (Romanian) "elder" who lived, served and taught at the Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, MI. Dr. Dan Henshaw has left a moving reflection of how he ministered to Fr. Roman over what was essentially the "dying process" that Fr. Roman passed through at the end of his life. (It is now the third anniversary of Fr. Roman's death). 

We encounter not only a "good death," but a genuinely blameless Christian death that Fr. Roman embraced with faith, humility and powerful prayer. 

Again, I highly recommend that everyone read this short account, for there is more in these few short pages than in many theological treatises, spiritual reflections, etc.

Fr. Steven

Rivers of Living Water

Dear Parish Faithful,


CHRIST IS RISEN!
INDEED HE IS RISEN!


“So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city…” [John 4:28].

A Samaritan woman came to Jacob’s Well in Sychar, a Samaritan city, at the same time that Jesus sat down by the well, being wearied by His journey [John 4:5]. The evangelist John provides us with a time reference: “It was about the sixth hour” [John 4:6] - i.e. noon. The Samaritan woman had come to draw water from the well, a trip and activity that must have been an unquestioned daily routine that was part of life for her and her fellow city-dwellers.

The ancients had a much more active sense of equating water with life than we do today with the accessibility of water from the kitchen tap, the shower, or the local store. On the basic level of biological survival, Jacob’s Well must have been something like a “fountain of life” for the inhabitants of Sychar.

Therefore, it is rather incredible that she returned home without her water jar, a “detail” that the evangelist realized was so rich in symbolic meaning that he included it in the narrative recorded in his Gospel [John 4:5-42]. And this narrative, together with the incredible dialogue embedded in it, is so profound that every year we appoint this passage to be proclaimed in the Church on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the Fifth Sunday after Pascha. Why, then, would the Samaritan woman fail to take her water jar home with her?

Her “failure” was based on a discovery that she made when she encountered and spoke with Jesus by Jacob’s Well. For even though the disciples “marveled” that Jesus was speaking with a woman [v. 27], Jesus Himself began the dialogue with the woman perfectly free of any such social, cultural or even religious restraints.

As this unlikely dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman unfolded by the well, it was revealed to the woman that Jesus was offering her a “living water” that was qualitatively distinct from the well-water that she habitually drank [v. 11]. This “living water” had an absolutely unique quality to it that the Lord further revealed to the woman:

Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” [v. 13-14].

A perceptive and sensitive woman who was open to the words of Jesus, she responded with the clear indication that she had entered upon a process of discovery that would lead her to realize that she was speaking with someone who was a prophet—and more than a prophet: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw” [v. 15].

Her thirst is now apparent on more than one level, as her mind and heart are now opening up to a spiritual thirst that was hidden but now stimulated by the presence and words of Jesus. Knowing this, Jesus will now disclose to her one of the great revelations of the entire New Testament, a revelation that will bring together Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles:

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” [v. 23-24].

A careful reading of Saint John’s Gospel indicates that under the image of water, Jesus was speaking of His teaching that has come from God, or more specifically, to the gift of the Holy Spirit. For at the Feast of Tabernacles, as recorded in John 7, Jesus says this openly to the crowds that had come to celebrate the feast:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water." Now this He said about the Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified [John 7:37-39].

Overwhelmed and excited, inspired and filled with the stirrings of a life-changing encounter, the Samaritan woman “left her water jar, and went away into the city and said to the people, ‘Come and see a man Who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” [v. 28-29].

It is not that the contents of her water jar was now unimportant or meaningless. That would be a false dichotomy between the material and the spiritual that is foreign to the Gospel. The Samaritan woman will eventually retrieve her forgotten water jar and fill it with simple water in fulfillment of her basic human needs. For the moment, however, she must go to her fellow city-dwellers and witness to Christ! They, in turn, will eventually believe that Jesus is “indeed the Savior of the world” [v. 42]. Thus, the Samaritan woman became something of a proto-evangelist. Subsequent tradition tells us that she is the Martyr Photini.

There are indeed innumerable “wells” that we can go to in order to drink some “water” that promises to quench our thirst. These “wells” can represent every conceivable ideology, theory, philosophy of life, or worldview—in addition to all of the superficial distractions, pleasures, and mind-numbing attractions that offer some relief from the challenges and oppressive demands of life.

For a Christian, to be tempted to drink the water from such wells would amount to nothing less than a betrayal of both the baptismal waters that were both a tomb and womb for us; and a betrayal of the living water that we receive from the teaching of Christ and that leads to eternal life. It is best to leave our “water jars” behind at such wells, and drink only that “living water” that is nothing less than the “gift of God” [John 4:10].

Fellow Students of 'Christian Mysticism'

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN! 
INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Pascha - The Twenty-Sixth Day

One of my students at XU in my "Christian Mysticism" class chose to write his final paper on St. Augustine of Hippo. While quoting St. Augustine, he chose three particularly insightful texts that I would like to share. The first is very "paschal" in its emphasis on the contrast between mortality and immortality; while the other two are simply wonderful and justifiably famous words from the saint:

"We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living." 

"Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all."

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

For his final exam essay, another student chose to answer the broad question, "What is Christian mysticism?" The point was to get my students to synthesize what they learned through the course of the semester and put that in coherent terms as an essay.

Since most of my students could not adequately answer this question at the beginning of the semester, I thought that it would prove both challenging and interesting to read what they wrote after sixteen weeks with the subject. Be that as it may, one of the requirements for this question was that the student had to support his/her answer with at least there direct quotations from the course's primary text, The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Olivier Clement. This is the book that we read and studied together in last Fall's Adult Education Class.

So, here are the three quotations from the book that this particular student chose to include. All three are from the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement (+2008). No commentary on my part, just three deep thoughts that are worthy of meditation, or deep and hard thinking:

"God remains a beggar who waits at each person's gate with infinite patience, begging for his love. His silence, with which we sometimes reproach Him, only shows His consideration."

"God offers Himself, wishes to disclose Himself, but He does not force us. His power is the power of love, and love wants freedom from the beloved. God speaks and at the same time keeps silence; He knocks at the door and waits."

"The inaccessible God reveals Himself as the Crucified. He is by that very fact a hidden and incomprehensible God, who upsets our definitions and expectations."