12 Questions with 3 Metropolitans

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

CHRIST IS RISEN!     

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

Pascha - The Thirtieth Day

This morning, I am simply forwarding a YouTube presentation of three Orthodox Metropolitans offering "sound bite" words of wisdom together with a dose of humor here and there.This was sent to us by our dear friend, Mother Paula. I believe they are addressing themselves to Orthodox Christians who have recently graduated, I believe, from college. But everyone can enjoy what the three hierarchs have to say on a variety of topics. It is only slightly over seven minutes long, so take a short "break" and hear something you won't hear elsewhere.

Fr. Steven

 

Commencement Week 2021: 12 Questions with 3 Metropolitans

 Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF) YouTube Channel

https://youtu.be/cgb7Y9KoMAA

 

 

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. So, we will hear this justly-famous passage yet again at the Divine Liturgy on Sunday. Something to actually look forward to!

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].

 

Mid-Pentecost: 'Glistening with splendor!'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!      INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

Admittedly, this is an older meditation that I have sent out more than once since initially writing it. But, we always have new members in the parish; and our liturgical cycle remains, of course, unchanged. So, hopefully there are some reflections found here that may seem to be worthwhile. As we have reached the midpoint between Pascha and Pentecost, we realize it all goes by rather quickly.

As Orthodox, we are "Paschal" and "Pentecostal" Christians. At least in theory. It is up to each and every one of us to also be so in practice.

____

Mid-Pentecost: 

'Glistening with splendor!'

 

Today finds us at the exact midpoint of the sacred 50-day period between the Feasts of Pascha and Pentecost.  So, this 25th day is called, simply, Midfeast or Mid-Pentecost.

Pentecost (from the Greek pentecosti) is, of course, the name of the great Feast on the 50th day after Pascha, but the term is also used to cover the entire 50-day period linking the two feasts, thus expressing their profound inner unity.  Our emphasis on the greatness of Pascha—the “Feast of Feasts”— may at times come at the expense of Pentecost, but in an essential manner Pascha is dependent upon Pentecost for its ultimate fulfillment.  
 

As Prof. Veselin Kesich wrote:

 

“Because of Pentecost the resurrection of Christ is a present reality, not just an event that belongs to the past.”  Metropolitan Kallistos Ware stated that “we do not say merely, ‘Christ rose,’ but ‘Christ is risen’—He lives now, for me and in me.  This immediacy and personal directness in our relationship with Jesus is precisely the work of the Spirit.  Any transformation of human life is testimony to the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. God constantly creates new things and glorifies Himself in His saints, in order to make it known that the Word of God became flesh, experiences death on the cross, and was raised up that we might receive the Spirit”  (The First Day of the New Creation, p. 173).

 

Be that as it may, there is a wonderful hymn from the Vespers of the Midfeast that reveals this profound inner connection: 

 

“The middle of the fifty days has come, beginning with the Savior’s resurrection, and sealed by the Holy Pentecost.  The first and the last glisten with splendor.  We rejoice in the union of both feasts, as we draw near to the Lord’s ascension—the sign of our coming glorification.” (Vespers of the Midfeast)

 

Pascha and Pentecost “glisten with splendor” – what a wonderful expression!  Yet, this very expression which is indicative of the festal life of the Church, may also sound embarrassingly archaic to our ears today.  This is not exactly an everyday expression that comes readily to mind, even when we encounter something above the ordinary!

However, that could also be saying something about ourselves and not simply serve as a reproach to the Church’s less-than-contemporary vocabulary.  Perhaps the drab conformity of our environment; the de-sacralized nature of the world around us, together with its prosaic concerns and uninspiring goals; and even the reduction of religion to morality and vague “values,” make us more than a little skeptical/cynical about anything whatsoever “glistening with splendor!”  How can Pascha and Pentecost “glisten with splendor” if Pascha is “already” (though, only 25 days ago!) a forgotten experience of the past, and if the upcoming feasts of Ascension and Pentecost fail to fill us with the least bit of expectation or anticipation? 

To inwardly "see" how Pascha and Pentecost "glisten with splendor" then our hearts must "burn within us" as did the hearts of the two disciples who spoke with the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus (LK. 24:32).  At the empty tomb, the "two men ... in dazzling apparel" told the myrrh-bearing women to "remember" the things that the Lord had spoken to them while He was still in Galilee (LK. 24:6).

Only if we "remember" the recently-celebrated Holy Week and Pascha can any "burning of heart" that grants us the vision of the great Feasts of Pascha and Pentecost "glistening with splendor" possibly occur.  With an ecclesial remembrance, only prosaic and drab events - or those that are superficially experienced - are quickly forgotten.   

The Lord is risen, and we await the coming of the Comforter, the “Spirit of Truth.”  These are two awesome claims!

The Apostle Paul exhorts us, “Set your minds on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2).  This exhortation from the Apostle is a great challenge, for experience teaches us that “the things that are on earth” can be very compelling, immediate and deeply attractive, while “the things that are above” can seem abstract and rather distant; or that they are reserved for the end of our life as we know it “on earth.”

The Apostle Paul is exhorting us to a radical reorientation of our approach to life—what we may call our “vision of life”—and again, this is difficult, even for believing Christians!  Yet, I would like to believe that with our minds lifted up on high and our hearts turned inward where God is – deep within our hearts – not only will the feasts themselves “glisten with splendor,” but so will our souls.  Then, what the world believes to be unattainable, will be precisely the experience that makes us “not of the world.”

May the days to come somehow, by the grace of God, “glisten with splendor!”  As it is written:

 

“The abundant outpouring of divine gifts is drawing near.  The chosen day of the Spirit is halfway come.  The faithful promise to the disciples after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ heralds the coming of the Comforter!” (Vespers of the Midfeast)

 

 

Do You Want To Be Healed?

 
Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

"Do you want to be healed?" (JN. 5:6)

 

At yesterday's eucharistic Liturgy we heard the account of the Paralytic being healed by Jesus at the pool near the Sheep Gate called Bethesda (or Bethzatha) in Jerusalem (JN. 5:1-15). This is the prescribed Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Pascha. "Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ" once again at Pascha; and now believing in, experiencing, proclaiming and "worshiping the holy Lord Jesus, the Only Sinless One;" we read the "signs" recorded in the Gospel according to St. John with and through the eyes of faith. This means that we know that the words and deeds recorded in the Gospel are those of the Word made flesh, Who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God (see JN. 1:1-18; 20:30-31). This grants us insight into the Person of Christ and the truth of His words as expressive of the will of God for our salvation and that of the entire world (JN. 3:16).

Following the healing of the paralytic, a dispute, in the form of a dialogue, ensued between Jesus and the religious authorities who are scandalized because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. When Jesus declared to them that "My Father is working still, and I am working," the authorities were incensed to the point of seeking to "kill him" because Jesus "called God his Father, making himself equal with God" (JN. 5:18). In the revelatory monologue that follows this dispute, the "words of the Word" further proclaim that He is the Son of God who perfectly fulfills the will of His Father in giving life to those who believe in Him:

 

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all that he himself is doing; and greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (JN. 5:19-24)

In reading this passage carefully, it becomes clear from the Son's own testimony that He is equal to the Father in all of those "activities" toward humankind and the world that we would consider "of God" or divine, confirming for believers the intuition of the authorities said in unbelief.

Returning briefly to the healing of the paralytic that set the stage for the dialogue of dispute and the revelatory monologue of Christ to follow, we hear of how Jesus approached this poor man "who had been ill for thirty eight years" (JN. 5:5). In an 'open-ended approach" to the paralytic, Jesus asked him a piercing question: "Do you want to be healed?" (v. 6). Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote the following about this exchange with the paralytic:"This is not a question of someone intent of forcing, convincing or subduing others. It is the question of genuine love, and therefore, genuine concern." Yet, the affirmative answer of "yes" may not be as obvious as all that when we look beneath the surface.

To be healed means to be changed, and this means that all that was familiar, even though burdensome, must be replaced by a new mode of existence. Even the paralytic seemed to acknowledge a grudging acceptance of his incapacity to act quickly enough in putting himself into the healing pool "when the water is troubled" and its healing effects became prominent. (v. 7) His life had taken on a certain fixed and unchanging pattern that had its own rhythm and predictability to it. Breaking through all of that, Christ tells him authoritatively: "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk" (v. 8). The healing ministry of Christ was holistic, in that the whole person - body and soul - was restored not only to physical well-being, but to a living relationship with the living God. This is probably behind the words of Christ to the healed man when He found him afterwards in the temple: "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you" (v. 14).

When applied to ourselves, are we absolutely certain that we would readily answer Christ affirmatively if He were to directly ask us: "Do you want to be healed?" Actually, as members of His Body, the Church, that is an ongoing question directed to each and every one of us on a daily basis. The Church is the place where sinners and troubled souls are healed and restored to fellowship with God. The "medicine" of healing - from the Scriptures to the Sacraments - are graciously available to us a gifts within the Church. Yet, our desire, as co-workers with God, is integral to the whole process of healing. Do we really want to be healed by Christ; or are we "comfortable" with a more-or-less routine form of Church membership and a more-or-less generic Christian way of life that is not that demanding?

That church membership and way of life is very much on our own terms - and not necessarily Christ's. We have our own "comfort zone" when it comes to how far we will extend ourselves in "prayer, almsgiving and fasting." We will love God and our neighbor, but within the bounds of what is socially acceptable in terms of "religious practice." After all, we are not fanatics! We prefer remaining neutral on explosive issues of a moral and ethical nature so as not to appear extreme. We like to choose our own lifestyle - from sexuality to consumerism - without a great deal of reflection on the Gospel and the commandments of Christ. As long as other persons perceive us to be "good Christians" then we are satisfied. Sensing that "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," and that "God is a consuming fire" (HEB. 10:31; 12:29), we withdraw to a safe distance, away from the healing power of Christ, so that we can avoid that encounter and everything that it would demand of us.

In other words, how bothersome such "healing" would prove to be! We would really need to change. We would need to reassess our consumeristic lifestyles and thus radically reformulate our priorities. We would have to give more of ourselves to God and neighbor and less to the "self' that we so lovingly protect, defend and adore. We would have to put Christ before everything else that we hold dear in life. We would need to say "no" to our passions. Yet, in the final analysis, how liberating all of this would be! 

As the Lord said: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (JN. 8:32). Christ, as always, asked the paralytic -and asks us today - the perfect question: "Do you want to be healed?" This perfect question just happens to be a bit more complicated under the surface of its initial appeal. We can, of course, remain within the fixed and unchanging patterns of the paralytic's life and "get by" like he managed to do. Or, we too can rise and take up our "pallets" and gladly tell others - even those who may be indifferent or hostile to Him - "that it was Jesus who had healed" us (JN. 5:15).

---

Why Was the Stone Rolled Back?

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!     INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

 

 Pascha - The Eighteenth Day

Why Was the Stone Rolled Back?  

CHRYSOLOGUS: An angel descended and rolled back the stone. He did not roll back the stone to provide a way of escape for the Lord but to show the world that the Lord had already risen. He rolled back the stone to help his fellow servants believe, not to help the Lord rise from the dead. He rolled back the stone for the sake of faith, because it had been rolled over the tomb for the sake of unbelief. He rolled back the stone so that he who took death captive might hold the title of Life. 

Pray, brothers and sisters, that the angel would descend now and roll away all the hardness of our hearts and open up our closed senses and declare to our minds that Christ has risen, for just as the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven, so also the heart in which Christ remains dead and buried is a grave. 

May it be believed that just as he died, so was he transformed. Christ the man suffered, died and was buried; as God, he lives, reigns, is and will be forever. SERMONS 75.4

 

Krista West: The Sacred Art of the Vestment

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Paschal Meditation - The Seventeenth  Day

CHRIST IS RISEN!      INDEED HE IS RISEN!

This sounds like a very interesting interview on Luminous Podcast. As many of you know, Krista West has been making my priestly vestments for years now; and she led a lenten retreat in our parish just a few years ago. The recent Holy Week vestments she made for me were particularly beautiful, and I received many comments from many of you saying just that during our recent Holy Week.  Sorry I can only wear them for a week! I am sure that her comments on "beauty" will be most insightful, for beauty is a concept and reality that is very essential to Orthodoxy. Our liturgical worship has an aesthetic dimension, so that Truth, Goodness and Beauty are conveyed to us as we worship as a Body

Follow this link for the interview. Kh. Krista's brief introduction is below the photo.

 

I recently had the honor to be interviewed for the Luminous podcast which is offered by the Institute of Sacred Arts at St Vladimir's Seminary. Dr Peter Bouteneff and I chatted about aesthetics, the place of textiles in sacred art, the interaction of patterns and symbols, and why beauty is so important.

Click here if you'd like to listen to our conversation.

 

 

 

The 'Apostles to the Apostles'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

CHRIST IS RISEN! 
INDEED HE IS RISEN!

We are in the week of the Myrrh-bearing Women, as we extend Sunday's commemoration of these extraordinary women throughout the entirety of this week. At all the Vespers and Matins services for this week, the Church will sing and chant primarily about the myrrhbearing women and their role as apostolic witnesses, implying their role as "apostles to the apostles." 

Their eyewitness testimony of both the empty tomb and the Risen Lord continues to amaze me, and I can only imagine the excitement and intense response with which this testimony must have been greeted when they shared their experience with the other members of the earliest Christian communities. Their timeless witness is with us until "the end of the world." As the New Testament scholar, Richard Baukham writes:

"These women, I think we can say, acted as apostolic eyewitness guarantors of the traditions about Jesus, especially his resurrection but no doubt also in other respects. As we have seen, that their witness acquires textual form in the Gospels implies that it can never have been regarded as superseded or unimportant. For as long as these women were alive their witness, 'We have seen the Lord,' carried the authority of those the Lord himself commissioned to witness to his resurrection... 

"They were well-known figures and there were a large number of them. They surely continued to be active traditioners whose recognized eyewitness authority could act as a touchstone to guarantee the traditions as others relayed them and to protect the traditions from inauthentic developments." (Gospel Women, p. 295)

If "fear and trembling seized them" when they departed from the empty tomb (MK 16:8), perhaps in our more focused moments we, too, can experience that same "fear and trembling" when we again read or listen to St. Mark's account in the Gospel.

There is something unforgettable and awe-inspiring about that ever-memorable morning when the sun was just rising and the stone to the tomb had been rolled away; followed then by the appearance of the "young man" dressed in "white robes" announcing:

"Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him" (MK. 16:8). 

The angel understood their amazement, because the women sensed the numinous presence of God filling that empty tomb with an other-worldly reality. Their own disorientation at this unexpected turn of events when they left the tomb is probably behind their initial silence. (This does not mean that the women failed to fulfill the command of the angel to tell the disciples that they would see Jesus in Galilee. It probably means that they did not share this news with others until the time the risen Christ appeared to His disciples confirming the proclamation of the angel that He had indeed risen).

We, in turn, have to always guard against over-familiarity dulling our response to the Good News of Christ's Resurrection from the dead. This is not a message to be nonchalant about! The Resurrection has changed the world and certainly change the lives of Christian believers. And we, too, are "witnesses of these things" (Lk 24:48). 

The role of the Myrrh-bearing Women has always been treated with great respect and recognition within the Church. In one of our most beloved paschal hymns, "Let God Arise," two of the stanzas are dedicated to the myrrh-bearers and their witness. These hymns build upon the scriptural accounts of their visit to and discovery of the empty tomb, poetically developing those terse scriptural verses in a more embellished manner that weaves together a host of scriptural messianic images together with the Gospel accounts:

 

Come from that scene, O women,
bearers of glad tidings,
And say to Zion:
Receive from us the glad tidings of joy,
of Christ's resurrection.
Exult and be glad,
And rejoice, O Jerusalem,
Seeing Christ the King,
Who comes forth from the tomb like a
bridegroom in procession.

The myrrh-bearing women,
At the break of dawn,
Drew near to the tomb of the
Life-giver.
There they found an angel sitting upon 
the stone.
He greeted them with these words:
Why do you seek the living among the
dead?
Why do you mourn the incorrupt amid
corruption?
Go, proclaim the glad tidings to His
disciples. 

As an aside of sorts, when listening to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Russian Easter Overture," I always feel that he musically captures the excitement and energy of the myrrh-bearers discovering the empty tomb. 

The myrrh-bearing women did not mysteriously disappear following the Resurrection of Christ.There were many of them, and we have the names or a reference to at least the following:

 

• Mary Magdalene, 
• Mary the mother of Joseph the Little and Jose, 
• Salome, 
• Mary of Clopas, 
• Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, 
• Susanna, 
• and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. 

And, of course, the "mother of Jesus," as she is referred to by the Evangelist John (19:25), was at the foot of the Cross. They must have shared their experience innumerable times, and their credibility is what lies behind their inclusion in the Gospels. They must have therefore been very prominent figures in the apostolic era of the Church.

I would again stress their presence in the liturgical services of Pascha. Their presence permeates these services as the empty tomb is always an object of pious and reverential celebration:

 

Before the dawn, Mary and the women came
and found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
They heard the angelic voice: "Why do you 
seek among the dead as a man the one who is
everlasting light? Behold the clothes in the grave.
Go and proclaim to the world: The Lord is risen.
He has slain death, as He is the Son of God, saving
the race of men." (Hypakoe)

 

To again include a fine summary by the New Testament scholar, Richard Baukham:

"As prominent members of the early communities, probably traveling around the communities, they were doubtless active in telling the stories themselves. They may not usually, like the male apostles, have done so in public contexts, because of the social restrictions on women in public space. But this is no reason to deny them the role of authoritative apostolic witnesses and shapers of Gospel traditions, since there need not have been such restrictions in Christian meetings and since they could witness even to outsiders in women-only contexts such as the women's quarters of houses." (Gospel Women, p. 302-303)

 

Jesus turned things upside down by proclaiming joy to the world through the Cross. Overcoming social prejudices, He raised to great prominence these humble women who would otherwise be unknown to the world. He granted them an integral role in proclaiming the Good News to the world that the sting of death has been overcome through His rising from the dead. As long as the Gospel is proclaimed, we will venerate and celebrate the memory of the Myrrh-bearing Women and rejoice with them. Women have always been integral to witnessing to Christ and the truth of the Gospel. Over time, that witness has been diminished by "traditions" that can only be perceived as "the precepts of men." (Mk. 7:7) Their full voice and their role in the ministries of the Church need to be re-established for the very spiritual health of the Church and its witness to a world starving of divine presence.