Fragments for Friday - Let Us Recover the Greatness of the Feast of Pentecost

 

stmaryorthodoxchurch.org

At last Sunday's liturgy, we heard from the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES the following passage concerning the Apostle Paul: "For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost"(20:16). 

For the Apostle Paul, that would mean a very challenging journey by sea, which always included the threat of storms, shipwreck and/or attack by pirates. But St. Paul was determined to celebrate the great feast of Pentecost with his brothers and sisters "in Christ" in Jerusalem - the home and center of the newly-established Christian Church, now making its impact felt in the Graeco-Roman world of his day.

Pascha and Pentecost were the two major feasts of the apostolic Church.They were powerful communal commemorations and celebrations of the decisive acts that established the Church in the world once and for all: the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, and the descent of the Holy Spirit into the world. 

It would be wonderful and deeply encouraging if we could match the zeal of the Apostle Paul for eagerly anticipating this commemoration and making it as certain as possible that we will also gather together with our brothers and sisters "in Christ" for the Feast of Pentecost. Liturgically, that would mean Great Vespers on Saturday evening and the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning. 

Pascha, of course, is huge and greatly anticipated; but Pentecost is not. It is treated as a "normal" Sunday, which means most parishioners will be in church (thank God Pentecost is on a Sunday), unless some other "pressing concern(?)" keeps them away without, perhaps, any sense of loss. But the role of Pentecost in the economy of our salvation very much needs to be recovered. Pascha does not simply dissolve into the cares and concerns of our daily lives. It does not just disappear once we no longer sing "Christ is Risen!" Rather, Pascha is completed and fulfilled in the twin Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.

The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles is the goal of the paschal mystery of the death, resurrection, ascent and glorification of Christ. We actualize the coming of the Holy Spirit through our liturgical commemoration on an annual basis. 

The Holy Spirit is the energy of the Church. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church that makes the Church so unique and unlike any other worldly institution. (The Orthodox Church is the "Pentecostal Church"). This is the Holy Spirit with which we were chrismated after our baptism into the Death and Resurrection of Christ. We seek the renewal of the Holy Spirit in our lives on the Day of Pentecost. Here is also the basis of "parish renewal." We pray to God for that personal and communal renewal each year in the special Kneeling Prayers of the Vespers of Pentecost that we serve immediately following the Liturgy. This is all a great blessing.

Looking forward to celebrating the great Feast of Pentecost with the parish faithful!

Monday Morning Meditation - Science and Awe for the Healing of the Man Born Blind

Source: oca.org

 Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Paschal Meditation - Day Thirty Seven

"Healing a person blind from birth was indeed an act of creation, not simply a repair. Contemporary medical science knows more clearly how difficult it would be than was known in the first century. When a boy is born, he can only see far enough to behold his mother's face when held in her arms. It will take several years of practice for him to learn to use his eyes, to make the connections among nerves and his brain that will enable him to see well. Medical technology is working on building an artificial eye that would enable a blind person to see at least light and darkness. This might work for one who lost vision in adulthood, but not for one who was blind, who never developed the infrastructure of nerves for seeing in the first place. Indeed, Chrysostom in his own way hints at these facts:

"'Furthermore, not only did [Christ] fashion eyes, not only did He open them, but He also endowed them with power to see. And this is a proof that He also breathed life into them. Indeed, if this vital principle should not operate, even if the eye were sound, it could never see anything. And so he both bestowed the power to see by giving the eyes life, and also gave the organ of sight completely equipped with arteries, and nerves, and veins, and blood, and all the other things of which our body is composed.

"This passage contains another echo of Adam's creation in Genesis 2:7: 'Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being'."

- Sister Nonna Verna Harrison from her article, "John Chrysosom on the Man Born Blind (John 9)."
______

This short medical/scientific digression into the function of the complexities of the eye can only enhance our admiration and awe at the great sign of Christ restoring sight to a man born blind! Interesting to read of St. John's own perception of what was involved.

Monday Morning Meditation - Rivers of Living Water

Source: bostonmonks.com

 

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].

Midweek Morning Meditation

Source: prayerrope.co

 "My Lord and my God!" (Jn. 20:28)

"Who do people men say that the Son of man?" asks Jesus of his disciples (Matt. 16:13). This is a question that still demands an answer to this day, as the figure of Jesus of Nazareth continues to engage the world, if not "haunt" the imagination. In the immediate context of that question being asked, Peter spoke up, seemingly on behalf of the other disciples, and declared: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (v. 16). Today, using a bit of jargon, we would call this a Christological confession of faith. At that moment, and if only momentarily because of his later betrayal of the Master, Peter the fisherman and disciple discerned the true identity of the Son of man, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus makes it clear, though, "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (v. 17). 

Perhaps not quite as well known, but no less powerful in its Christological confession of faith, we hear these words from Mary, the sister of Lazarus: "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world" (Jn. 11:27). Overwhelmed with grief because her beloved brother had just died, Mary had the insight to proclaim these words to Jesus, trusting that he could still do "something" on behalf of her brother. This second confession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God, now comes from a woman who was close to Christ during his ministry. Jesus then demonstrated the truth of her confession by raising her dead brother back to life again.

These two confession of faith in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God had been made before the Passion and Resurrection. They were deep and incisive confessions of faith that will resonate wherever this Gospel is preached until the end of time. And these confessions of faith shape the way that we see and understand who Jesus is in our personal lives and in our liturgical and theological traditions. 

Yet, following the Death and Resurrection of Christ, there is another confession of faith that reveals the fullness of the identity of the Lord. For Thomas "one of the twelve, called the twin," (Jn. 20:24) will be transformed from unbelief to belief when he encounters the risen Lord in the upper room eight days after the other disciples saw their Lord risen from death. And they "were glad when they saw the Lord." (v. 20) When Thomas encounters Christ and after he is invited to touch the wounds of the Lord, he cries out: "My Lord and my God!" (v. 28). Accepting this confession of faith from Thomas, Jesus utters words that are directed to all of us who throughout the centuries come to faith in him: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (v. 29). 

At the beginning of the Gospel, the evangelist John reveals the true nature of Jesus Christ as the Word of God incarnate (Jn. 1:1-18). At the end of the Gospel, a human being - the disciple Thomas - now accepts that revelation and knows if for himself within the depths of his being. When we make that same confusion of faith - openly or inwardly - we join countless believers throughout the ages who believe "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (Jn. 20:31).

Monday Morning Meditation: Golgotha is Alive

Source: omhksea.org

 We accompany Christ to Golgotha during Holy Week:

As the Lord was going to His voluntary passion,He said to the Apostles on the way,"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him."Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind ...

(Praises of Holy Monday)

We make this journey to Golgotha in our liturgical Holy Week services and in the relative safety of our lives here in America. But we can rest assured that the people of Ukraine - and other people around the world (as "wars and rumors of wars" continue to proliferate) - are experiencing a genuine "Golgotha reality," as they continue to be mercilessly assaulted by bombs and drones on a daily basis. In Ukraine, making a decision to leave one's home for a Holy Week church service can be a dangerous one. While Ukraine has proposed an "Easter truce" for next weekend, Russia has intensified its bombing of civilian targets, recently killing six civilians and wounding 40 others. President Zelensky has called this an "Easter escalation." We have yet to discover what Russia will agree to for next weekend - the "Orthodox Easter" as the press describes it. None of this killing is being tempered by a Christian consciousness, apparently. 

It must be stressed that the bombing of civilian infrastructure targets is against international laws and norms, and is essentially a war crime. This is true for any country that makes the fatal and illegal decision to bomb another country's civilian targets. We all know that "war is hell;" so to further destroy innocent civilians is to violate every norm of a civilized state. These are crimes against humanity, and no amount of misguided Christian rhetoric can hide that ugly truth. 

Holy Week reveals the great truth of divine "power" through powerlessness. That is the way of Christ, as He "empties Himself" on the road to Golgotha. That is the way that we embrace when we leave our homes and drive to the church to immerse ourselves in the intense services of Holy Week. As we chanted yesterday evening: "Let your order be contrary to that of the Gentiles ..." It is important that we remain consistent in our Christian confession of faith in Christ. What we encounter and hear in the church through the services of Holy Week, needs to taken with us into our daily lives as a vision of life that is worthy of the great name of "Christian." 

As I have written before, as we pray for peace and wait on God, apparently God is waiting on us to come to our senses and "turn" and become decent human beings. Yet, with God, "all things are possible.:

Midweek Morning Meditation

Source: saintgregorythetheologian.org

 On the Death and Resurrection of Christ

Yesterday, I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him.

Yesterday, I died with Him today I am made alive with Him.

Yesterday, I was buried with Him, today I am raised up with Him.

Let us offer to Him Who suffered and rose again for us ... ourselves, the possession most precious to God and most proper.

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.

Let us become Divine for His sake, since for us He became Man.

He assumed the worse that He might give us the better.

He became poor that by His poverty we might become rich.

He accepted the form of a servant  that we might win back our freedom.

He came down that we might be lifted up.

He was tempted that through Him we might conquer.

He was dishonored that He might glorify us.

He died that He might save us.

He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were thrown down through the fall of sin.

Let us give all, offer all, to Him who gave Himself a Ransom and Reconciliation for us.

We needed an incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live.

We were put to death together with Him that we might be cleansed.

We rose again with Him because we were put to death with Him.

We were glorified with Him because we rose again with Him.

A few drops of Blood recreate the whole of creation!

   -- St. Gregory the Theologian, Easter Orations

Fragments for Friday

Source: oca.org

 CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless One ...

It is already Bright Friday, but I would like to look back at Holy Week and Pascha - just celebrated last week! Thus, we have so recently completed our annual celebration of Holy Week and Pascha after the forty days of Great Lent. I have now served this, the "Feast of Feasts," here in the parish from 1990-2025. That would include our "Covid Pascha" of 2020, during in which only three of us - Presvytera Deborah, Ralph Sidway, and I - served the entire Holy Week and Pascha alone when Covid restrictions were at their peek. That is now thirty-five years, and it remains a joy to be able to continue serving this great annual feast on behalf of, and with all of the faithful of our parish. 

There is always the danger that each annual celebration can simply become indistinguishable from all the others, as they are the same in terms of structure and content. But each year is unique and it is that uniqueness that fills us with the energy and effort to make the Pascha we are serving as fresh and enlivening as possible. Or rather, it is the presence of Christ that accomplishes that on our behalf.

The Feast of Pascha is meant for the entire parish community: the clergy, the servers, the choir and the congregation of the faithful. Each person has his/her ministry within the parish. Truly a communal effort as we assemble together as the local Body of Christ to praise the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. There are different levels of reality, but at the apex of those levels is Christ crucified and risen. Only the paschal mystery brings meaning to the rest of our lives and to our final destiny of life with God. 

The holy doors on the iconostasis have remained open all during Bright Week, to visually express the reality of the Kingdom of God, "open" to us all and in our midst. Those holy doors will be closed on Saturday right before we begin Great Vespers as we bid farewell to Bright Week and as a bit of the light of the Resurrection begins to dim as we move away from the "night brighter than the day." So, we most always translate the visible to the invisible interior of our minds and hearts; and the outward to the inward. That leads us to examine our faith and ask ourselves where the treasure of our heart is.

As the incomparable Canon of Pascha announces to us:

Let us purify our senses and we shall see Christ shining in the unapproachable light of His resurrection. We shall clearly hear Him say: Rejoice, as we sing the song of victory.

Leavetaking of Pascha: 'Did our hearts burn within us?'

The Risen Christ and the Meal at Emmaus

Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen, and Happy Leavetaking of Pascha today

Today is the Leavetaking of Pascha as we draw near to the Feast of the Ascension. According to the Acts of the Apostles: "To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God." (1:3) Of course, the apostles had the distinct advantage of actually seeing and touching the Risen Lord over these forty days whenever he appeared to them. As their certainty was built up and their faith strengthened as men who "built their house upon a rock" (Matt. 7:24), this was all meant to prepare them for their arduous mission to the world to proclaim the Gospel of the crucified and risen Lord. When the rain, and flood and winds of persecution threatened the very foundation of their lives and faith (cf. Matt. 7:25), they remained steadfast, "even unto death." Their "houses" were not shaken.

We have just had forty days to strengthen our faith in the risen Lord. At every liturgical service we sang: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death." We proclaim at every Liturgy that we have "beheld the resurrection of Christ." And even though we did not have that privileged direct presence of the Lord as did the apostles, the Lord, when speaking to Thomas, according to St. John's Gospel, not only reminded us, but once-and-for-all assured us that we have lost nothing because of this: "Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe'." (Jn. 20:29) We are all part of the endless generations of believers who "have not seen but believe."

At this point, perhaps we can ask ourselves about the extent of our effort to "see" the risen Lord during these sacred forty days which are now ending. Was the Lord uppermost in our minds and hearts? Did our hearts "burn within us" when we thought of Christ risen from the dead? (Lk. 24:32) Did we probe the Scriptures as Christ invited the apostles to do, so that they/we would find him there: "These are my words which I have spoken to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to the Scriptures ..." (Lk. 24:44-45) The opportunities to see the risen Lord have surely been many and varied. 

Hopefully, we have not followed the surrounding social and cultural environment in which any significant event or celebration is reduced to "one and done," as the demands of life - but also the daily enticements and distractions - press upon us for our attention. Whatever the case may be, we now arrive at the Feast of Ascension and the glorification of the Risen Lord and our human nature "in him." The opportunities to draw nearer to Christ and to strengthen our faith in him, never really cease in the grace-filled life of the Church.

PASCHA - Day Thirty Eight — Understanding Death... and the Resurrection

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!

"Strictly speaking, a system of ethics which does not make death its central problem has no value and is lacking in depth and earnestness." (Nikolai Berdyaev) 

"Our one and only war ... is the sacred battle with the common enemy of all people, of all mankind - against death." (Archimandrite Sophrony)

Recently I met with some folks from Norwood - both Orthodox and non-Orthodox - for what we rather laconically called a "theological talk." The basis for our discussion was an article written by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, entitled "The Christian Concept of Death." The title may not capture the full weight of the essay, since it is a look at the Christian concept of death in the light of the Resurrection of Christ.

With such a powerful theme, enriched by Fr. Alexander's usual style that combines insightful penetration into the given theme, a captivating style of literary expression, and a series of challenging assertions that question our unexamined assumptions, our discussion proved to be an intense one that led us in many directions. All in all, a good way to spend an atypical Thursday evening. 

Obviously, the theme of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ digs deep into the very foundations of Christianity. Who does not know the powerful words of the Apostle Paul:  "If Christ is not risen, then your faith is in vain." It is the Resurrection that ultimately makes the Gospel "Good News" - in fact the "best news" conceivable and outside of which all "other news" sounds rather vague and lifeless!

It is this joyous Good News that imbues the entire life of the Church according to Fr. Schmemann:

The joy of early Christianity, which still lives in the Church, in her services, in her hymns and prayers, and especially in the incomparable feast of Pascha, does not separate the Resurrection of Christ from the "universal resurrection," which originates and begins in the Resurrection of Christ.

 

Yet, a good deal of the essay is taken up with something of a "lamentation" from Fr. Schmemann over the fact that many Christians are unaware of the ultimate consequences of the Resurrection of Christ, and that is the "universal resurrection" just mentioned above and which means the resurrection of the dead at the end of time with the "spiritual body" that the Apostle Paul speaks of in I COR. 15. Jesus, bodily risen from the dead, is called the "first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,"thus anticipating and pointing toward the resurrection of the dead at the end of time.

But is this, in fact, what Christians believe? Fr. Schmemann's trenchant criticism is expressed as follows:

The Resurrection of Christ comprises, I repeat, the very heart of the Christian faith and Christian Good News.

And yet, however strange it may sound, in the everyday life of Christianity and Christians in our time there is little room for this faith. It is as though obscured, and the contemporary Christian, without being cognizant of it, does not reject it, but somehow skirts about it, and does not live the faith as did the first Christians.

If he attends church, he of course hears in the Christian service the ever resounding joyous confirmations: "trampling down death by death," "death is swallowed up by victory," "life reigns," and "not one dead remains in the grave."

But ask him what he really thinks about death, and often (too often alas) you will hear some sort of rambling affirmation of the immortality of the soul and its life in some sort of world beyond the grave, a belief that existed even before Christianity. And that would be in the best of circumstances. In the worst, one would be met simply by perplexity and ignorance, "You know, I have never really thought about it."

 

Fr. Schmemann is not speaking of non-believers in the bodily Resurrection of Christ, but of an unfortunate transformation of Christian thought about death itself and the impact of that unfortunate transformation on the understanding of the body, or of the relationship between "body and soul." 

Basically, Christians have resorted to a kind of warmed-up Platonism that claims that there is a real and natural division between the soul and body, a division which renders the body almost meaningless, or as a prison that the soul needs to escape from. 

In opposition to this dualism, the Church's Symbol of Faith (the Nicene Creed) affirms our belief in "the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." 

This is far from merely claiming a vague belief in the "immortality of the soul." Again, this is a resort to pre-Christian modes of thought and this way of thinking is foreign to the Biblical revelation. 

Here is how Fr. Schmemann puts it:

Indeed, all non-Christian, all natural religions, all philosophies are in essence occupied with our "coming to terms" with death and attempt to demonstrate for us the source of immortal life, of the immortal soul in some sort of alien world beyond the grave. Plato, for example, and countless followers after him teach that death is a liberation from the body which the soul desires; and in this circumstance faith in the resurrection of the body not only becomes unnecessary, but also incomprehensible, even false and untrue.

 

Such a pre- or non-Christian way of thinking will make us blind to the Apostle Paul's affirmation that death is the "last enemy;" and that God desires the whole person - both body and soul - to be saved and transformed in the Kingdom of God. Such a belief even renders the Resurrection of Christ as a kind of superfluous miraculous event that does not really affect our destiny.

Orthodox Christian thinking at its purest resists and rejects this way of approaching death, but rather it drives home with a powerful realism the tragedy of human death.  

Again, in Fr. Schmemann's words:

Christianity proclaims, confirms and teaches, that this separation of the soul from the body, which we call death, is evil. It is not part of God's creation. It is that which entered the world, making it subject to itself, but opposed to God and violating His design, His desire for the world, for mankind and for life. It is that which Christ came to destroy.

Man, as created by God, is an animate body and an incarnate spirit, and for that reason any separation of them, and not only the final separation, in death, but even before death, any violation of that union is evil. It is a spiritual catastrophe. From this we receive our belief in the salvation of the world through the incarnate God, i.e. again, above all, our belief in His acceptance of flesh and body, not "body-like," but a body in the fullest sense of the word: a body that needs food, that tires and that suffers.

 

In a relatively short essay, Fr. Schmemann presents us with the distortions of Christian thinking on death which have twisted our whole conception of the meaning of the Gospel, and which, more specifically, undermine the great power contained within the Resurrection of Christ.

Yet, if Fr. Schmemann was anything, he was a life-affirming person and thinker who, in his expressive manner, always spoke and wrote of the "Good News" proclaimed throughout the New Testament and liturgical life of the Church. He thus pointed out defects that have entered our way of thinking so that we could recover the Gospel in all of its power:

He alone rose from the dead, but He has destroyed our death, destroying its dominion, its despair, its finality.

Christ does not promise us Nirvana or some sort of misty life beyond the grave, but the resurrection of life, a new heaven and a new earth, the joy of universal resurrection. Christ is risen, and life abides, life lives ...

That is the meaning; that is the unending joy of this truly central and fundamental confirmation of the Symbol of Faith: "And the third day, He rose again according to the Scriptures." 

According to the Scriptures, i.e. in accordance with that knowledge of life, with that design for the world and humanity, for the soul and body, for the spirit and matter, for life and death, which has been revealed to us in the holy Scriptures.

This is the entire faith, the entire love, and the entire hope of Christianity. And this is why the Apostle Paul says, "If Christ is not risen, then your faith is in vain.

 

As a kind of appendix affirmation to the above, I would like to include, and thus conclude, with a passage from one of the most prominent Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, the Romanian-born Dumitru Staniloae. Attempting to capture the essence of the Orthodox Church's absorption of, and appreciation for, the gift of Christ's Resurrection, Fr. Staniloae chose the word "salvation" as the best to summarize the Church's interior knowledge of ultimate reality:

Salvation expresses the deepest, most comprehensive and many-sided meaning of the work which Jesus Christ accomplished. In this last dimension, that is to say, understood as the destruction of man's death in all of its forms and the assurance of full and eternal life, the word "salvation" produces in the Orthodox faithful a feeling of absolute gratitude towards Christ to whom they owe the deliverance of their existence and the prospect of eternal life and happiness.

For those who would like to read the entire essay from Fr. Alexander Schmemann, the link below is for your convenience:

http://oca.org/reflections/fr-alexander-schmemann/the-christian-concept-of-death

PASCHA - Day Thirty Five — Our Blindness-es from Birth

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN

OUR BLINDNESS-ES FROM BIRTH

 

“Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’” (Jn 9:2-5)

As Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth, - while His disciples only saw a puzzling theological problem. The Lord’s response to their question, Who sinned…? and His subsequent healing of the man indicate to the disciples (and to all of us) that they saw the wrong question. Their question should have been: How can we help? Or: How are the works of God to be revealed in him, to us and through us?

Let’s consider this approach to our own “blindness-es from birth,” or to those “blindness-es” that others in our midst might have, which make us or them different from the mainstream. Let’s say, we were never athletic, or studious, or we were always tone-deaf and not musical, or were really good at some one thing, like dedicating ourselves to one political cause, but entirely not interested in other causes; or we were always loners and/or not “the marrying type,” for whatever reason.

Do we accept ourselves and one another, as we are, with our strengths in one area and weaknesses or, if you will, “blindness-es” in other areas? Do we generally accept these common differences among us, without grappling with the theological “why?” or “why me?” or “why my child?” Or do we get on with life, and see how we can help ourselves and one another, when we can help, so that “the works of God can be revealed” in us and through us? I mean, the works of God like patience, love, compassion, humility, and, finally, Church.

That final one, Church, is the sacrament of unity, revealed through the unity of many different people, as St. Maximus the Confessor writes in his Mystagogy: 

For numerous and of almost infinite number are the men, women, and children who are distinct from one another and vastly different by birth and appearance, by nationality and language, by customs and age, by opinions and skills, by manners and habits, by pursuits and studies, and still again by reputation, fortune, characteristics, and connections: All are born into the Church and through it are reborn and recreated in the Spirit. To all in equal measure it gives and bestows one divine form and designation, to be Christ’s and to carry his name.

This morning I pray, Lord, help me to accept myself and others, in our differences, that we may see how we, together, can work the works of You who sent us into this beautiful world.

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Another fine meditation from Sister Vassa. But pay particular attention to the passage that she includes at the end from St. Maximus the Confessor (+662). This is considered one of the great description/definitions of the Church: the Church as the Sacrament of Unity, in which a multiplicity of human persons from every conceivable walk of life, are united in the Body of Christ. In the Church, the paradox holds true in a way no other human institution can claim: Unity in diversity; diversity in unity.

PASCHA - Day Thirty Four — 'Free to be wooed'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!   INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Referring back to yesterday's Paschal Meditation, we discovered that Jesus is the heavenly "Bridegroom" that fulfills the "types" of meetings and marriages that occurred in the Old Testament around a well (Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob and Rachel). This theme of the true "husband/bridegroom" emerges again in the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, when Christ asks her about her current husband. After letting her know that this, her sixth husband, was not truly her husband (Jn. 4:17-18), Christ will speak to her of the true worship of God. But if we pause on this someone awkward part of their dialogue - the personal life history of the woman of Samaria - perhaps we can uncover the Lord's motives in exposing her irregular marital history. In again turning to Brendan Byrne from his commentary on St. John's Gospel - Life Abounding - we find a very nuanced and balanced approach, which shifts away from moral condemnation, to the deeper issues of one's longings in life:

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""Feminist exegesis has rightly taken male interpreters to task for letting their imagination run riot in detailed reconstruction of the woman's sinful way of life. On the one hand, it seems impossible to avoid all sense of scrutiny of her way of life - albeit with Jesus as conversation partner rather than master and judge. Dorothy Lee observes, "These verses function, not to expose moral guilt, but to uncover the pain of the woman's life in her relationships with men." True, but such pain in human relationships is perhaps a symptom of the deeper "thirst" that Jesus is attempting to uncover, a longing for "life" that only the experience of intimacy with the divine can give. It is hard to eliminate from the conversation all sense of a need for conversion from a way of life that is to some degree morally suspect. The woman's dismissive disclaimer, "I have no husband" (v. 17a), has expressed the truth (v. 17b-18). She has had five husbands and, unsuccessful in all relationships, is ironically now free to be "wooed" and brought to the truth of Jesus."

From Life Abounding by Brendan Byrne, p. 84.

PASCHA - Day Thirty Three — 'Jesus comes now to woo a people beyond Israel'

 

 by Theophanes the Cretan, Stavronikita, Mt Athos, 16th c.

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen!   Indeed He is Risen!

At the beginning of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, St. John "sets the scene," so to speak, in the following manner:

"So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was the sixth hour." (Jn. 4:5-6)

Besides the deep historical significance of Jesus sitting by Jacob's well, what other biblical and typological themes are profoundly present in this scene? A very fine biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, in his commentary on St. John's Gospel, entitled Life Abounding, uncovers the following:

"A particularly rich source of allusion is a pattern in the patriarchal stories where "courtship meetings," leading eventually to marriage, take place at wells. In Genesis 24:1-27 the servant whom Abraham has sent to Aram-naharaim to find a wife for his son, Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well and asks her for a drink. Generously, she offers to draw water for his camel as well. (Also in common with John 4:7-30 is the fact that the woman is carrying a water-jar - hydria; Gen. 24:15, etc.; cf. John 4:28 - and that the success of the mission leads the servant to "worship" the Lord: Gen. 24:26-27; cf. John 4:19-24). In Genesis 29:1-14 Jacob is beside a well when his future wife Rachel approaches to water the sheep that she tends. Recognizing her as the daughter of his uncle Laban, Jacob removes the stone that covers the well, enabling her sheep to be watered; then he kisses her, his cousin and future wife. These biblical associations hover around the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Already present as "Bridegroom" (of Israel) at the wedding in Cana and explicitly named as such by John (3:21), Jesus comes now to "woo," in the person of this woman, a people (the Samaritans) beyond the confines of Israel, anticipating in this way the first mission of the later church (cf. Acts 8:1b-25)."

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The scriptural text is so rich even before the woman of Samaria arrives to meet her "Bridegroom!" 

From Life Abounding by Brendan Byrne, p. 80

 

 

PASCHA - Day Thirty One — 'The Spring came upon the spring...'

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

Christ ... the source of the breath of life for

   all, when he was

Weary from a journey, sat down near a spring

   of Samaria.

And it was the season of burning heat. It was

   the sixth hour, as the Scripture says,

It was the middle of the day when the Messiah

   came to illumine those in darkness.

The Spring came upon the spring, not to drink

   but to cleanse.

The fountain of immortality was near the

  stream of the woman as though it were in need.

He is tired from walking, He who tirelessly 

   walked on the sea.

He who furnishes exceeding great joy and 

   redemption.

St. Romanos the Melode

Kontakion of the Woman of Samaria 9.4.

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We can always trust that in the poetic theology of St. Romanos the Melode we will find an endless stream of images, allusions and types to fill us with wonder over the fact that the eternal Word of God became flesh. Here, in the encounter with the Samaritan woman (Jn. 4:1-42), it is the paradox of the Spring (of Life) coming to a spring in the wilderness, not only to quench his thirst, but to "supply" an endless stream of water that wells up to eternal life in its recipients.