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.

_____

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:

_____

""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)."

_____

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.

____

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.

PASCHA - Day Twenty Eight — 'Give Me This Water'

 

Dear Parish Faithful

 

CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

 

““Jesus said to her (the Samaritan woman), ‘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.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir (Κύριε), give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.’” (Jn 4: 13-15)

At this point, the Samaritan woman does not yet understand what kind of “water” Christ is talking about. But I love how she immediately wants it, as a “spring of water” that will be “in” her, rather than in this well on the outskirts of her village, whence she needs to carry it home. And she believes that this Stranger can provide it, saying, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” But she hasn’t yet understood that her real “problem” is not physical thirst, which compels her to go to the trouble to “come here to draw,” but the spiritual thirst that has brought her far more trouble, as she has been trying to quench it in the wrong places, in relationships with men. As Christ will point out to her a bit later in this narrative, she has had “five husbands,” and now “has” a sixth guy, who is not her husband (Jn 4: 18).

I’m thinking today about this “spring of water welling up to eternal life,” which Christ offers to open “in” each of us, if we drink of His “water.” Unlike “drinking the Kool Aid” of merely-human teachers or gurus, my drinking of the “living water” of the grace of the Holy Spirit does not enslave or belittle me into human codependency. It empowers me to true usefulness to myself and others, as God, the Source of Life, liberates me from a crippling neediness or “thirst” for other people or things to fill that hole in my heart. Instead, He frees me to offer to others this very-extraordinary Something “in” me, but not “from” me, the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Lord, give me this water, that I may not thirst.” Amen!

Sister Vassa from her "Coffee With Sister Vassa" podcast

_____

This is a thoughtful meditation on "the spring of water welling up to eternal life" from Sister Vassa, in anticipation of the Liturgy tomorrow morning on the Fifth Sunday of Pascha - the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman. I, in turn, will focus on the reading from The Acts of the Apostles, specifically on Acts 11:26: "and in Antioch, the disciples were for the first time called Christians." Just what does it mean to be called - or to call oneself - a Christian in this day and age?

PASCHA - Day Twenty Seven — To Resurrect the Cosmos

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

"The work of Christ therefore presents a physical, one must even say, biological reality. On the cross, death is swallowed up by life. In Christ, death enters into divinity and is destroyed there, for "it does not find a place." Thus, redemption signifies the struggle for life against death and the triumph of life. Christ's humanity constitutes the first-fruits of a new creation. Through it a life force is introduced into the cosmos to resurrect and transfigure it for the final destruction of death. Since the incarnation and resurrection, death is unnerved, is no longer absolute. Everything converges towards the complete restoration of all that is destroyed by death, towards the illumination of the entire cosmos by the glory of God become all in all things, without excluding from this plentitude the freedom of each person before the full awareness his wretchedness, which the light divine will communicate to him."

From Dogmatic Theology by Vladimir Lossky (+1958)

_____

Vladimir Lossky wrote what today is still considered the classic of Orthodox theological literature of the 20th c. And that book is The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. That book had an enormous influence on me when I first encountered it as a young man. I have subsequently read through it many times, together with his other books, as the one from which today's paschal meditation is taken. 

For all inquirers and catechumens, I continue to recommend reading The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church for all those who are ready to study a more challenging work. Not "easy" reading, but deeply inspiring and a "taste" of the richness of the Orthodox Christian Tradition. Lossky combines eloquence of expression and theological depth in his writing, and this has the result of a theological vision that is not only intellectually attractive, but which also speaks directly to the heart and soul, and which creates in us a thirst for the living God encountered in the Church. And that is one of the main goals of theology.

PASCHA - Day Twenty Five — Mid-Pentecost, 'If Anyone Thirst...'

 

Dear Parish Faithful

Paschal Meditation - Day Twenty Five

CHRIST IS RISEN!

INDEED HE IS RISEN!

On the feast of Mid-Pentecost, marking the mid-point of our journey from Pascha to Pentecost, we celebrate these words said, nay, cried out, by our Lord to all of us: If “anyone” thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.

That also means me, if I recognize that I do, indeed, “thirst” for the Holy Spirit; if I am “poor in Spirit,” rather than self-sufficient (a.k.a. “full of myself”). Today let me once again join the thirsting Church, not the full-of-ourselves Church, that I may re-focus on my cross-carrying journey, toward the “glorified” Lord. He has been “glorified” in His death and His new life, in which He invites me to participate, also today. So let me come to Him this morning, and drink of His life-creating Presence, in some heartfelt prayer and reading of His word, because I can. “Anyone” can. And we can all have “rivers” flowing out of us of “living water,” – of compassion, kindness, wisdom, creativity, courage, patience, humility and love, in the generous Self-offering of the Holy Spirit in our world. “Come and abide in us” today, Lord, as we choose to come and abide in You.

COFFEE WITH SISTER VASSA - Wednesday, May 29

_____

The word is out there that the Orthodox Church in America has been  experiencing significant  growth in this "post-Covid" era that we are living through. That means that thoughtful persons are "thirsting" for the words of life that flow from Christ; and for the sacramental life that flows from His pierced side while dying for the "life of the world" on the Cross. The Church, in turn, is not offering a haven for progressive or conservative politics; or a protective wall in today's current "cultural wars." Entering the Church with this "thirst" is to enter the living Body of Christ. If we focus on the voice of the Good Shepherd, then all the "protection" that we need is offered to us as an unmerited gift that we remain ever thankful for.

PASCHA - Day Twenty — '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.