Rebuking the Tempter, and Following Jesus

 

Christ being tempted by the devil

Dear Parish Faithful, On Monday, we made the "Lukan Jump" into the third canonical Gospel. It was just yesterday, then, that the assigned reading was from Lk. 4:1-15: The Temptation/Testing in the Wilderness (also Matt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13) The nuances of the Greek word behind this event allows us to think in terms of “temptation” or “testing.” Perhaps we could say that Christ was tested when God allowed Him to be tempted by the devil. Either way – or with a combination of both terms – the forty days spent by Jesus in the wilderness will shape Him and His ministry to Israel and to the world by defining an image of the Messiah that He will reject and one that He will embrace. It is highly significant that it is the Spirit who “led” Jesus “into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Lk. 4:1). Nothing in the life of Christ is accidental. In all things He is led by His heavenly Father acting through the Holy Spirit, including this “face-to-face” encounter with the evil one. The austere and unsettling figure of the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky’s famous Legend embedded in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, refers to the devil as “the dread and intelligent spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-being.” It is this dread spirit who will tempt Christ through the three questions that will test the fidelity of Christ to His unique messianic vocation as willed by His heavenly Father.  Dostoevsky, through the tragic figure of the Grand Inquisitor, further reveals the power and non-human source of these powerful temptations, when the Inquisitor says in his monologue: “By the questions alone, simply by the miracle of their appearance, on can see that one is dealing with a mind not human and transient but eternal and absolute. For in these three questions all of subsequent human history is as if brought together into a single whole and foretold; three images are revealed that will take in all the insoluble historical contradictions of human nature over all the earth.” In other words, these three temptations were not “invented” or “made up” by the evangelists for dramatic effect. The very “perfection” of the temptations posed by the devil reveal their veracity. And what are these three temptations? According to St. Matthew’s account (the account that we are probably more familiar with, at least in terms of the order of the temptations), they begin with the following as Jesus is fasting and experiencing hunger in the wilderness: “And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread’.” This was followed by the second temptation to test God’s fidelity to Him after the devil “took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, less you strike your foot against a stone’.” The final temptation was grandiose and sweeping in its scope: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’.”  In Dostoevsky’s particular and profound interpretation of Christ’s encounter with the tempter in the wilderness, Jesus refuses to receive obedience through miracle, mystery and authority as represented in these three tantalizing temptations. By compelling human beings to believe in Him by overwhelming them with the miraculous; by exploiting a sense of mystery to attract human beings to follow him; and by appealing to the human need for security through external authority; Christ would have accepted and approved of a distorted understanding of human nature. In Dostoevsky’s understanding of Christ, as attainable as these “powers” may be for the Son of God, each one in its own way violates the gift of human freedom given to us by God and appealed to by Christ. It is for this very reason that Christ did not come down from the Cross as He was “tempted” to do by those who mocked Him. Even if freedom is a burden as well as a gift, it is the true vision of humanity created “in the image and likeness of God.” We, in turn, freely choose to follow Christ, the crucified “Lord of glory.” Dostoevsky had his particular concerns when he resorted to the temptation in the wilderness to dramatize the dialectics of human freedom and coercion in an unforgettable manner in The Brothers Karamazov. Within the context of the Gospels, we can say that Christ had to overcome the temptation to be a particular kind of Messiah that was not in accord with the will of God. He was not declared to be His Father’s “beloved Son” at the Jordan River so as to be a militant Messiah who ruled through power. The words of God the Father at the Jordan were clear echoes from the Suffering Servant songs from the prophet Isaiah. And the Suffering Servant would heal us by His “stripes.” His very suffering would be redemptive. And therefore that suffering (on the Cross) was essential to the divine economy. To overcome such temptations as man, the Lord resorted to prayer and fasting in the wilderness – the spiritual weapons given to us all in the Church for precisely the same purpose in the “wilderness” of a fallen world: to strengthen the “inner man” against false and pretentious promises. We can accomplish this by relying on “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (DEUT. 8:3). We further heed the words, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (DEUT. 6:16). And we also follow Christ who reminded us:  “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (DEUT. 6:13).   Christ refuted the evil one’s false counsel by the power of the scriptural word. Another clear lesson for us in our relationship with the Holy Scriptures. Meaning that we, also, when tempted or tested need to turn to the Scriptures - the living Word of God, "active, sharper than any two-edged sword" - to rebuke the tempter as did Christ. Uttered with faith, the scriptural word has real power. As the “root” of a new humanity, Jesus re-enacts the history of Israel, but He “passes” the type of test that Israel “failed” to pass in its earlier forty-year wanderings in the wilderness. In fact, as the New and Last Adam He reverses the effects of Adam’s disobedience through His faithful obedience to the Father. It may sound startling to us today, but Jesus was “perfected” precisely through obedience!  Our human will was healed by the human will that the Son of God assumed and united to His divine will in the Incarnation. Before the Garden of Gethsemane, the perfect expression of that healing through obedience may just be the temptation/testing in the wilderness. As the final temptation was beaten back by Christ, He was able to say to the tempter: “Begone, Satan!” Our goal is to be able to rebuke the tempter with the same words when we are also tempted/tested – perhaps on a daily basis!

Fr. Thomas Hopko: 'Christ & His Church'

 

Christ & His Church

by Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko

A] Jesus Christ is the God-man, the “Second Person” of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God become fully human, “for us men, and for our salvation.” This is the essence of the Christian worldview, the essential truth to which all witness must be born and all service rendered. Christians know this and bear witness to it, to Christ as being “all in all,” because they experience Him in the Church – His living Body. They experience Him, here and now, in the life of his church, as He is in all the fullness of His divine humanity.

B] Christ is with us now: this is the Christian encounter and witness. God is with us in Him. Others may have seen and heard and touched Him as He was in the days of his flesh, but we know Him as He is now in the fullness of His glory. The days of His flesh show over and gone. We have no need to strive and revive, retrieve or relive them, certainly not by scholarly, psychological, or even by meditative means. Jesus Christ is no longer as He was in his days on earth - in the form of a slave. He is present now in and with His people, and with God, His Father, by the power of God, the Holy Spirit and "the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who feels all in all" (Eph. 1:23).

C] For this reason, Orthodox Christians have nothing to offer people and the world but Christ and His Church. It is our conviction that there is nothing else to be offered and nothing else that is necessary. Our witness to this conviction, to this end. In our time, however, there are specific human needs, and desires, which cry out for fulfillment, specific cries, which arise in the hearts of men which reach our ears, clamoring for concern and attention. If we say that Christ and His Church are the answer to these needs, we must be aware of what they are and be prepared to demonstrate how their ultimate satisfaction can be attained only by Christ and through His Church. We must be ready to make every effort to verify our claims by our actions, witnessing and serving with the love "not in words and speech, but indeed, and in truth." (1 John 3:18).

D] Jesus was not a relativist. Neither was He a sectarian. Whatever someone happens to believe about His person and nature, one should see that he was not a "peddler" of some religious doctrine or a "Crusader" for some religious sect. He was a man – the man Who was also the incarnation of the Son of God – Who witnessed to the unity of mankind in freedom, in Spirit and in truth. He spoke not about ethereal "spiritualities" or about the need for "religion," but about goodness, truth, virtue, light and life itself. He was not a "tyrant" of any sort. He exercised no power or force of any kind – political, social, economic, psychological, or religious. He wrote no books. He left no earthly monuments as a record to His many miracles and accomplishments. But He believed that people could know the truth and do good, and so be free. 

Coffee With Sister Vassa: OPENING UP TO 'MYSTERY' AS WE AGE

Coffee With Sister Vassa

OPENING UP TO “MYSTERY” AS WE AGE 

 

“However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature (ἐν τοῖς τελείοις), yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God, in mystery, and (which was) hidden, and which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor 2: 6-8)

The “wisdom of God,” spoken by the Apostles and their successors “in mystery,” was indeed once “hidden” from all, “before the ages.” But it is not un-knowable, nor does it remain “hidden,” having been revealed (and continuing to be revealed) in the Person of Jesus Christ, to the “mature” or the τελείοις, which can also be translated as “full grown” or “finished.” I like the last translation, because as we age and are broken in a way, by our personal and communal tragedies, we tend to become “finished” with playing the power-games of our earlier years and to open up more to the power of God.  

When we talk about “mystery” in our Tradition, we do not mean, contrary to a popular misconception, something un-knowable to us. Mystery is something that is meant to entice us to discover its meaning; to receive the revelation of Truth and Light that is “hidden” in Jesus Christ, insofar as one doesn’t have the eyes to “see” Him for Who He is. Mystery, in our Tradition, also requires “mystagogy” (“μυσταγωγία” in Greek, or “introduction/initiation into the mystery”), which means that we need others to “introduce” us to, or lead us into, the knowledge of God’s wisdom, revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why, traditionally, the explanations of the “mystery” of the Eucharist, (like the one written by St. Maximus the Confessor in the 7th c.), are called “mystagogical.” And that is why our joys and sorrows on the cross-carrying journey, as we follow our vocation, can also be called “mystagogical,” because through them we “mature” in the deifying knowledge of our Lord and the Mystery of His death-trampling Way.

Let me be enticed by that which is concealed, “in mystery,” that I allow myself to be “led into” it, by the grace-filled “mystagogy” of living Tradition. Lord, I want to know more, not of the “wisdom” of “the rulers of this age,” who keep changing each election-cycle, but of Your unchanging wisdom. Help me be teachable today, and open to learning Your mysteries.

Great and Holy Saturday ~ On this Blessed Sabbath, the Son of God completes creation

 

 

Great and Holy Saturday Great and Holy Saturday is the day on which Christ reposed in the tomb. The Church calls this day the Blessed Sabbath. By using this title the Church links Holy Saturday with the creative act of God. In the initial account of creation as found in the book of Genesis, God made man in his own image and likeness. To be truly himself, man was to live in constant communion with the source and dynamic power of that image: God. Man fell from God. Now Christ, the Son of God through whom all things were created, has come to restore man to communion with God. He thereby completes creation. All things are again as they should be. His mission is consummated. On the Blessed Sabbath he rests from all his works. Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day—Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another—Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost. In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death that Christ continues to effect triumph. We sing that Christ is “...trampling down death by death” in the troparion of Easter. This phrase gives great meaning to Holy Saturday. Christ’s repose in the tomb is an “active” repose. He comes in search of his fallen friend, Adam, who represents all men. Not finding him on earth, he descends to the realm of death, known as Hades in the Old Testament. There he finds him and brings him life once again. This is the victory: the dead are given life. The tomb is no longer a forsaken, lifeless place. By his death Christ tramples down death. —Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Great and Holy Saturday

Great and Holy Friday — 'A Messianic Reading of Psalm 22'

 

 

Great and Holy Friday

About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27.46, cf. Mk 15.34) 

Into thy hand I commit my Spirit, thou hast redeemed me, Yahweh, faithful God” (Ps 31.5, cf. Lk 23.46) 

While agonizing in his last moments on the Cross, [Christ] experienced just what any one of us might experience, from a moment of despair and seeming solitude, to trust and joy that led him to praise Yahweh. The fullness and depth of his humanity, as revealed in his experience of the Cross, ought to serve as an example to us, leading us all to the same humility and perseverance. Just like the psalmist [King David], Jesus, the Messiah, did not die in solitude, abandoned by God, but rather he went to his death awash in a jumble of feelings, which were ultimately overshadowed by his trust that the God of his fathers had redeemed him: “From between the horns of the rams thou didst answer me!” (Ps 22.21, cf. Ps 31.5). 

—Archpriest Eugen J. Pentiuc, “A Crucifying Silence: A Messianic Reading of Psalm 22,” in Holy Week: A Series of Meditations

 

'A Human among humans...'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is Risen!

"The classic understanding of Christian orthodoxy - formed in the early church over seven or eight centuries of preaching and controversy and expressed in a growing stream of biblical commentary, theological argument, creedal confessions, and conciliar formulas - was and continues to be that Jesus is himself the Son of God: the eternal Word "by whom all things were made" (cf. John 1:3), who in time has become a human among humans, in order to transform and liberate the humanity he has made his own, even to offer humanity a share in the life of God. Classical Christian orthodoxy confesses that the Jesus who revealed God's will and God's love in works and words of power is "one and the same" as the Jesus who slept in a boat, who wept for Lazarus, and who suffered on the cross: God the Son, humanly "personalizing" the transcendent fullness of the divine Mystery in the body and mind, the relationships and limitations, of his own fully human life."

- Brian E. Daly, SJ

_____

I found this helpful paragraph in an article that Brian Daly wrote, entitled: "The Word and His Flesh: Human Weakness and the Identity of Jesus in Greek Patristic Christology." So, before plunging into the heart of his article, he offers us this fine, succinct summary of the paradoxical nature of the Person of Jesus Christ - both God and man. Brian Daly is a very prominent Patristic scholar, who has many of his translations published by SVS Press. He is a Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. If we turn back many centuries to the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), we find this already expressed in that rhetorical and polemical style that marked that era:

If anyone says that the Word of God who performed miracles was someone other than the Christ who suffered, or says that God the Word was with the Christ "born of a woman" (Gal. 4:4) or was in him as one in another, but does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh and made human, is one and the same, and that both the miracles and the suffering which he voluntarily endured in the flesh belong to the same one, let that person be anathema.

This is the One who was both crucified and raised from the dead!

 

Guest Meditation: 'Jesus wept'

 

Dear Parish Faithful, The following is a very fine meditation written by our own parishioner, Jenny Harkins. Jenny draws out the duality of natures in the one Christ, who is both God and Man, as the Lord reaches into the realm of death to bring back his beloved friend Lazarus, to life. In this, He anticipates His own resurrection that will occur after His life-giving death on Golgotha. _____     “Weeping for Thy friend, O Bread of Life, Thou didst raise him up.”  - Vespers of Lazarus Saturday “Jesus wept.” - Jn 11:35 After reading this passage several times, a few thoughts come to mind concerning verse 35 “Jesus wept.” One is the striking expression of the Lord’s human nature which is about to be contrasted with the powerful expression of his divinity in the resuscitation of Lazarus; fully man and fully God! His humanity is authentic- vulnerable and sensitive like any of us in the face of heartbreaking tragedy. It’s fascinating to me that though Martha and Mary say the same thing to Jesus, his response to each of them is very different; Martha receives encouragement in Christ’s reminder of what is true and Mary receives comfort in the empathetic compassion of Christ sharing in her tears. He is embodying the beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”  It seems to me that even though he knew Lazarus would die and that he would raise him up, he still mourned the fact that sin and death are a reality, and one that now had so viscerally touched his dear friends. It makes me think of Gen 6 when sin and wickedness had polluted his creation and “it grieved him to his heart.” Sin and death cause deep feelings in God. (That feels like a big statement!! It seems to be true, though!) I also thought about Jesus weeping in Gethsemane- how the weight of death is so unnatural and opposite of all that Jesus is! All creation was made through him and he upholds all life with the power of his word! He is the God of the living and not the dead! (Mk 12:27)  This scene in the Gospel feels like that intense moment in an epic movie where the hero is pursuing his enemy and that enemy gets the upper hand temporarily in a dark and disheartening turn. Jesus has come to utterly destroy death itself and yet here, right before the climax of the story, death strikes one so dear to him. I can’t imagine the righteous anger he must’ve felt and what meekness he embodied as he carried out his Father’s will in his perfect timing!

 

'I am Lazarus'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

GREAT LENT - The Fortieth Day

As Great Lent will be over later today, and as we approach Lazarus Saturday, I wanted to share some excellent comments by a contemporary biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, as he offers an in-depth exegesis (interpretation) of the incomparable narrative of Jesus raising Lazarus to life. His comments are so effective because of how convincingly he relates the entire episode to our lives today as Christians facing the exact same dilemmas and challenges - beginning with the challenge to faith that the reality of death raises.

Be that as it may, Byrne writes the following:

Lazarus is a character with whom anyone who reads the Gospel can identify. "I" am Lazarus - in the sense that Jesus left his "safe country" to enter this world, placing his life in mortal danger in order to save mefrom death, to communicate, at the cost of his own life, eternal life to me.

I am the "friend" of Jesus - he or she whom he loved. For meJesus has wept. Before mytomb, so to speak, he has wrestled with the cost of life-giving love. It is to call meforth into life, to strip from methe bands of death that Jesus has come into the world and given his life. So I am to read the forthcoming account of the passion and death of Jesus with intimate personal involvement, knowing that Jesus is undergoing all this insult and suffering for love of me and to give life to me." 
The story of Lazarus, with its full acceptance of human death and grieving, with its realism about the cost of giving life, with its invitation to enter upon a deeper journey of faith, speaks as powerfully to the present as it did to the past.

God is neither indifferent to the distress death brings nor unsympathetic to our struggles of faith. More than anything else in the gospel, Jesus' demeanor in John 11 expresses divine involvement in human grief and suffering. In the person of the Son, God becomes vulnerable physically and psychologically, to death. At its deepest level the story of Lazarus invites us to believe in God as the One who gives life in death and out of death.

To every believer, confronted like Martha with mortality, Jesus addresses his words: "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" (11:40) Each of us has a perfect right, indeed an invitation, to write ourselves and our world into the script - to be, each one of us, Lazarus, whom Jesus loved and for whom he gave his life.

 

When Christ goes to the Cross, He does so on behalf of all humanity, but each person can say: He is dying so that I can have abundant life. 

In the expressive icon presented here, we are given a real sense of the power of Jesus over death, as He authoritatively gestures toward the tomb to bring the bound Lazarus out. In the Gospel, we read that Jesus "cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out'." The word of the Word is life-creating and life-giving, so dramatically revealed in this event. Martha and Mary are at the feet of Christ imploring His mercy as the startled crowd of both disciples and fellow-mourners look on with amazement. This was the final "sign" in the first half of the Gospel that will now move toward an even more ultimate "sign" of Jesus offering His life "for the life of the world." 

Image of a True Disciple: The Gadarene Demoniac

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,      One of the most challenging narratives in the Gospels has to be the healing of the Gadarene demoniac (Mk. 5:1-20; MATT. 8:28-34; LK. 8:26-39). This dramatic event which reveals the power of Christ over the demons will appear to the 21st c. mind as either archaic or even primitive. We may listen with respect and sing "Glory to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee!" upon the completion of the reading, but "wrapping our minds" around such a narrative may leave us baffled if not shaking our heads.  The spectacle of a man possessed by many demons, homeless and naked, living among the tombs, chained so as to contain his self-destructive behavior is, to state the obvious, not exactly a sight that we encounter with any regularity. (Although we should acknowledge that behind the walls of certain institutions, we could witness to this day some horrible scenes of irrational and frightening behavior from profoundly troubled and suffering human beings). Add to this a herd of swine blindly rushing over a steep bank and into a lake to be drowned, and we must further recognize the strangeness of this event. This is all-together not a part of our world! Yet, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the narrated event, which does appear in three of the Gospels, though with different emphases and details - in fact there are two demoniacs in St. Matthew's telling of the story! It is always instructive to compare the written account of a particular event or body of teaching when found in more than one Gospel. This will cure us of the illusion of a wooden literalism as we will discover how the four evangelists will present their gathered material from the ministry of Jesus in somewhat different forms. As to the Gadarene demoniac, here was an event within the ministry of Christ that must have left a very strong impression upon the early Church as it was shaping its oral traditions into written traditions that would eventually come together in the canonical Gospels. This event was a powerful confirmation of the Lord's encounter and conflict with, and victory over, the "evil one." The final and ultimate consequence of that victory will be revealed in the Cross and Resurrection. Whatever our immediate reaction to this passage - proclaimed last Sunday during the Liturgy from the Gospel According to St. Luke (8:26-39) - I believe that we can recognize behind the dramatic details the disintegration of a human personality under the influence of the evil one, and the reintegration of the same man's personhood when healed by Christ. Here was a man that was losing his identity to a process that was undermining the integrity of his humanity and leading to physical harm and psychic fragmentation. I am not in the process of offering a psychological analysis of the Gadarene demoniac because, 1) I am ill-equipped to do so; and 2) I do not believe that we can "reduce" his horrible condition to psychological analysis. We are dealing with the mysterious presence of personified evil and the horrific effects of that demonic presence which we accept as an essential element of the authentic Gospel Tradition. The final detail that indicates this possessed man's loss of personhood is revealed in the dialogue between himself and Jesus: Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. (8:30)   To be named in the Bible is to receive a definite and irreducible identity as a person. It is to be "someone" created in the "image and likeness of God." It is the role of the evil one to be a force of disintegration. The "legion" inhabiting the man reveals the loss of his uniqueness, and the fragmentation of his personality. Such a distorted personality can no longer have a "home," which is indicative of our relational capacity as human beings, as it is indicative of stability and a "groundedness" in everyday reality. The poor man is driven into the desert, biblically the abode of demons.  Once again, we may stress the dramatic quality of this presentation of a person driven to such a state, but would we argue against this very presentation as false when we think of the level of distortion that accompanies any form of an "alliance" with evil -whether "voluntary or involuntary?" Does anyone remain whole and well-balanced under the influence of evil? Or do we rather not experience or witness a drift toward the "abyss"? Then we hear a splendid description of the man when he is healed by Christ! For we hear the following once the demons left him and entered into the herd of swine and self-destructed (the ultimate end of all personal manifestations of evil?): Then the people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. (8:35)   "Sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." This is clearly one of the most beautiful descriptions of a Christian who remains as a true disciple of the Master. This is the baptized person who is clothed in a "garment of salvation" and who is reoriented toward Christ, the "Sun of Righteousness."  The image here is of total reintegration, of the establishment of a relationship with Christ that restores integrity and wholeness to human life. Also an image of peacefulness and contentment. Our goal in life is to "get our mind right" which describes repentance or that "change of mind" that heals all internal divisions of the mind and heart as it restores our relationship with others. Jesus commands the man "to return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you" (8:39). We, too, have been freed from the evil one "and all his angels and all his pride" in baptism. In our own way, perhaps we too can also proclaim just how much Jesus has done for us (cf. 8:39).

The Fathers of the First Council and the 'Robe of Truth'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

"Let us look at the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers preserved. Upon this the Church is founded." ~ St. Athanasius the Great (+373)

 

At Sunday's Liturgy we found ourselves in between the two great Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.  However, on that Seventh Sunday of Pascha, we also commemorated the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea in 325 A.D.  It is virtually impossible to over-exaggerate the importance of this Council in the life of the Church.

The Council had not only to reject the Arian heresy that claimed that the Son of God is a "creature" and thus subordinate  in essence to God the Father; but the Council had to find the right terminology to demonstrate that the Faith of the Church from the beginning believed and claimed that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God equal in essence to God the Father (as is the Holy Spirit). Arianism and Orthodox Christianity are essentially two different faiths which is why the Church was at a crossroads in the fourth century: either become just one more "synthetic/syncretistic religion" of the ancient world, or proclaim the uniqueness of Christ as the eternal Son of God and the Savior of the world. 

The dramatic story of the Council of Nicea has been told and retold throughout the centuries.  Not wanting to repeat that story here, I will simply include a link to a good summary found on the OCA website.

Yet, I would like to add a few words about the manner in which we honor the great Fathers of the Church in our liturgical tradition.  To do so, I would like to bring to mind the Kontakion of the Fathers that we sang on Sunday:

 

The apostles' preaching and the fathers' doctrines 
have established the one faith for the Church. Adorned
with the robe of truth, woven from heavenly theology;
great is the mystery of piety which it defines and glorifies.

 

This kontakion is very close in meaning to what we read from St. Athanasius the Great (+373) - one of the leading lights of Nicene Orthodoxy - as quoted above.  There is a direct continuity between what the Apostles "preached" and what the Fathers later formulated as doctrines.

This continuity is not simply chronological - it is theological. It was the same Gospel - the same "robe of truth" - without illegitimate subtractions or additions. The Fathers did not change the content of the Faith that they were expressing through their doctrine. They were developing and expanding upon the apostolic preaching for their own times. But the content of the "one faith for the Church" remained identical with itself in this ongoing transmission of the Tradition. (Tradition means that which is "handed down" or "handed over").

The Nicene Creed does not add anything new to what the apostles preached. It rather witnesses to what they preached so as to preserve the Truth in the face of its possible distortion. To do so they had to come up with new formulations of that unchanging Truth. Thus, their bold introduction of the term homoousios to describe how the Son is "consubstantial" with the Father was not something innovative or "creative." It was a necessary development to again preserve that which was proclaimed from the beginning: God became incarnate in order to save us for only God can save. 

In one of his classic articles "The Authority of the Ancient Councils," Fr. George Florovsky brilliantly described the relationship between the apostles and fathers and their respective roles in transmitting the Tradition:

 

Apostles and Fathers - these  two terms were generally and commonly coupled together in the argument from Tradition, as it was used in the Third and Fourth centuries. It was this double reference, both to the origin and to the unfailing and continuous preservation, that warranted the authenticity of belief. On the other hand, Scripture was formally acknowledged and recognized as the ground and foundation of faith, as the Word of God and the Writ of the Spirit. Yet, there was still the problem of right and adequate interpretation. Scripture and the Fathers were usually quoted together, that is, kerygma (proclamation) and exegesis (interpretation).  

 

This is a "heavenly theology" because its ultimate Source is Christ Himself, Who reveals the will of the Father for the world and its salvation. And this is that "mystery of piety which it defines and glorifies," precisely as the apostles preached:

 

Great indeed is the mystery of our religion:
  He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels,
  preached among the nations,
believed on in the world, taken up in glory.  (I TIM. 3:16)

 

We venerate and honor the Fathers within the ongoing life of the Church.  To again turn to the same article of Fr. George Florovsky, he further writes:

 

"Fathers" were those who transmitted and propagated the right doctrine, the teaching of the Apostles, who were guides and masters of Christian instruction and catechesis... They were spokesmen for the Church, expositors of her faith, keepers of her Tradition, witnesses of truth and faith.  And in that was their "authority" grounded.

 

Most glorious art Thou, O Christ our God!
Thou hast established the Holy Fathers as
lights on the earth! Through them Thou hast
guided us to the true faith! O greatly Compassionate One, glory to Thee!

(Troparion of the Holy Fathers)

 

Meeting the Lord in the Temple

 
Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

This wonderful Feast of The Meeting of our Our Lord in the Temple (February 2) commemorates the event recorded in the Gospel According to St. Luke (2:22-40). This occurs forty days after the Nativity of Christ. Hence, this particular Feast brings to a close an entire cycle that began eighty days earlier with the onset of the Nativity Fast on November 15. The Circumcision of Christ that occurred eight days after His birth falls between the Feasts of the Nativity and the Meeting. 

One of the hymns for the Meeting nicely brings out this sequence of events, placing them in the context of fulfilling the Scriptures:

 

Search the Scriptures, as Christ our God said in the Gospels. For in them we find Him born as a child and bound in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger and fed upon milk, receiving circumcision and carried by Simeon: not in fancy nor in imagination but in very truth has He appeared unto the world. To Him let us cry aloud: Glory to Thee, O pre-eternal God. (Great Vespers, Litiya)

 

It is interesting to note how this hymn stresses the true humanity of the Lord by such expressions as "not in fancy nor in imagination but in very truth." Our Lord did not seem to be human, but He was truly human, otherwise He could not have saved us.  For, as St. Gregory the Theologian famously said: "What is not assumed is not healed."

Christ is brought to the Temple in Jerusalem by His mother and Joseph in fulfillment of the Law (LEV. 12). Unable to afford an unblemished lamb, they offer a pair of turtledoves. Yet, the Mother of God is carrying the unblemished Lamb of God in her arms and then offers Him to the righteous Simeon. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, St. Simeon prophecies to the Virgin Mary: "and a sword will pierce through your own soul also" (LK 2:35). This has always been understood as pointing to the maternal suffering of the Mother of God who will behold her Son dying on the Cross.

In a wonderful homily, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov (+1944), revealed the humility of the Lord as the beginning of the path that would lead to His ultimate sacrifice:

 

The Infant was born on earth - the eternal God in a humble manger, but there was a place for Him in the Temple, for the Temple was built for Him. And He was brought into His Temple, where it pleased His Name to dwell (I Kings 8:29). But He came there not to receive veneration, but to serve many, in the form of a servant, veiling the radiance of His Divinity with the abject humility of the flesh. He came there as a son under the law, obedient to the law which He Himself had given to Moses, manifesting Himself as the model of obedience; for He came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. His Mother came to dedicate Her firstborn Son to God, to give God the Son to God the Father, and to offer the redemptive and purifying sacrifice. In giving birth to the Infant, She did not know sin; but just as He, sinless, came to receive from John the baptism of repentance, so She too, in Her immaculate birth, came to offer a sacrifice for sin, having in Her arms the One who truly was the Sacrifice for the sins of the entire world... It is not for glory but for the offering of sacrifice that the Lord is brought into His house, which had to receive and encompass the One who cannot be encompassed. (Churchly Joy, p. 59-60)

 

If we search carefully, we discover that all of the Feasts commemorating the events in the early life of the Lord also point forward to the sacrifice of the Cross and the life-giving death of Christ. Bound in swaddling cloths and lying in a cave at His Nativity anticipates His later entombment when bound in burial cloths. The blood shed at His circumcision anticipates His blood shed upon the Cross. And being offered as a lamb in the Temple anticipates His sacrificial death as the Lamb of God.

In a very wide context, we realize that the Old Testament "meets" the New Testament when the Messiah is brought to the Temple, the dwelling-place of God. Jesus Christ is now the place of the divine presence, for His flesh is the "temple" of His divinity. The representatives of the Chosen People for this meeting are the righteous elder Simeon and the prophetess Anna. The elder Simeon received Christ into his arms and blessed God in the process.  The Old Testament (Symeon) meets the New Testament (Christ). We are all quite familiar with the magnificent hymn of St. Simeon, known as the Nunc Dimittis, chanted at every Vespers service:

 

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel. (LK 2:32)

 

If we, too, could depart from this life with those words on our lips and in our hearts, that departure would be glorious!

Sadly, the prophetess Anna would probably be seen as a "fanatic" today because "She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day" (2:37) for the greater part of eighty-four years! Both Simeon and Anna realized that this meeting was of the deepest significance possible, for the young Child promised to be "the redemption of Jerusalem" (2:38). For this reason, the prophtess Anna "gave thanks to God" (2:38).

Participation in the liturgical cycle of the Feasts is a major component of the "battle of the calendars."  This is especially true when "competing" with entertainment or sports events.

Considering the depth of the great Feasts of the Church's liturgical cycle, expressed in a kind of theological poetry that amplifies what is found in Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church; revealed in beautiful iconography; and further enhanced in our communal liturgical gatherings; it seems only natural for Orthodox Christians to avail themselves of the opportunity to come together in worship whenever possible.

Lacking in "fun," but filled with divine grace, the Feasts make present the events being commemorated by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Actually, nothing is lacking - except perhaps "instant replay." But this is more than made up for by the fact that there are no interminable "commercial breaks" that would break the flow of the service. Expert pre- and post-Feast "analysis" is provided by the writings of the Holy Fathers and contemporary Orthodox theologians who offer insightful commentaries on the deepest levels of meaning of the Feast.

There is no final score, but "those who keep my words to the end" are all considered to be "conquerors" promises the Lord (REV. 2:26).