Midweek Morning Meditation

Source: uncutmountainsupply.com

I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Nicene Creed

On Sunday, I continued with a series of homilies on the Nicene Creed, and the focus was on the Creed's declared belief in the "resurrection of the dead." Here is a succinct summary on that belief by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware from his book The Orthodox Way:

As Christians se believe not only in the immortality of the soul but in the resurrection of the body. According to God's ordinance at our first creation, the human soul and the human body are interdependent and neither can properly exist without the other. In consequence of the fall, the two are parted at bodily death, but this separation is not final and permanent. At the Second Coming of Christ, we shall be raised from the dead in our soul and in our body; and so, with should and body reunited, we shall appearbefore our Lord for the Last Judgement.

Thursday's Theological Thoughts

Source: legacyicons.com

 

The Ascension ~ The Meaning and the Fullness of Christ's Resurrection

Dear Parish Faithful,

"I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to my God, and Your God.”(JN. 20:17)

According to the mind of the Church, the Risen Lord is also the Ascended Lord and, therefore, in the words of Fr. Georges Florovsky: “In the Ascension resides the meaning and the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.” I would refer everyone to the complete article by Fr. Florovsky, a brilliant reflection on the theological and spiritual meaning of the Lord’s Ascension. This article is accessed from our parish website together with a series of other articles that explore the richness of the Ascension. In addition to Fr. Florovsky’s article, I would especially recommend The Ascension as Prophecy. With so many fine articles on the Ascension within everyone’s reach, I will not offer up yet another one, but I would like to make a few brief comments:

Though the visible presence of the Risen Lord ended forty days after His Resurrection, that did not mean that His actual presence was withdrawn. For Christ solemnly taught His disciples – and us through them – “Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (MATT. 28:20) The risen, ascended and glorified Lord is the Head of His body, the Church. The Lord remains present in the Mysteries/Sacraments of the Church. This reinforces our need to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist, through which we receive the deified flesh and blood of the Son of God, “unto life everlasting.”

Christ ascended to be seated at “the right hand of the Father” in glory, thus lifting up the humanity He assumed in the Incarnation into the very inner life of God. For all eternity, Christ is God and man. The deified humanity of the Lord is the sign of our future destiny “in Christ.” For this reason, the Apostle Paul could write: “your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (COL. 3:3)

The words of the “two men … in white robes,” (clearly angels) who stood by the disciples as they gazed at Christ being “lifted up,” and recorded by St. Luke (ACTS. 1:11), point toward something very clear and essential for us to grasp as members of the Church that exists within the historical time of the world: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” The disciples will remain in the world, and must fulfill their vocation as the chosen apostles who will proclaim the Word of God to the world of the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. They cannot spend their time gazing into heaven awaiting the return of the Lord. That hour has not been revealed: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.” (1:7)

The “work” of the Church is the task set before them, and they must do this until their very last breath. They will carry out this work once they receive the power of the Holy Spirit – the “promise of my Father” - as Christ said to them. (LK. 24:49) Whatever our vocation may be, we too witness to Christ and the work of the Church as we await the fullness of God’s Kingdom according to the times or seasons of the Father.

In our daily Prayer Rule we continue to refrain from using “O Heavenly King” until the Day of Pentecost. We no longer use the paschal troparion, “Christ is Risen from the dead …” but replace it from Ascension to Pentecost with the troparion of the Ascension:

Thou hast ascended in glory,O Christ our God,granting joy to Thy disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit;Through the Blessing they were assuredthat Thou art the Son of God,the Redeemer of the world.

Coffee With Sister Vassa: The Hole in the Heart

 

THE HOLE IN THE HEART

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan (στενάζομεν), and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” (2 Cor 5: 1-5)

St. Paul is talking about the mystery of our bodily resurrection, in which we will be “further clothed” in a transfigured, resurrected body. What will that body be like? I don’t know. What I do know is that in my present-day body, or“earthly tent,” a part of me feels insufficient, as it “groans” and “longs to put on our heavenly dwelling,” as the Apostle observes here. It’s the God-given (or“God-shaped,” as some have said), hole in the heart. It’s the part of us that feels a bit sad, when encountering beauty, whether in music or nature or people, because we’re reminded we want more of it, and that there’s more of it, in the Source of Beauty Who is God. On the cross-carrying journey, in the Holy Spirit, this is not an unhappy or unhealthy kind of “groaning” and “longing.” In the light of faith, it is forward-looking and hopeful, as we say in the Creed: “I look for/expect the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.”Outside of faith, on the other hand, and outside a connection with God, the“hole in the heart” is a dark pit that looks into nowhere, and we might fill that void with merely-human anxiety or even dread.

Let me not ignore the hole in my heart today, but prayerfully expose it to God’s light, “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life,”already in my here and now. Thank You, Lord, for shining Your presence on me today, and making me A-OK, even in my insufficiency.

Coffee with Sister Vassa: THE MOTHER OF LIFE

COFFEE WITH SISTER VASSA THE MOTHER OF LIFE   “Neither the tomb, nor death could hold the Theotokos, / Who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions. / For being the Mother of Life, / She was translated to life by the One who dwelt in her ever-virginal womb.” (Kontakion-hymn of the Dormition of the Theotokos) Just as St. Peter said about the Source of Life, our risen Lord, that it was impossible that He should be “held” by death (Acts 2: 24), we sing in the above-quoted hymn that death “could not hold” the Mother of Life. As one with a unique role in Salvation History, the Mother of God also has a unique, personal “salvation history”: She experienced Pentecost before anyone else, at the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1: 35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you…”), and she received the grace of bodily resurrection before the completion of time, being“translated to life” shortly after her repose “by the One who dwelt in her ever-virginal womb.”  In the one “Full of Grace,” the Mother of God, the usual “laws of nature are vanquished” (νενίκηνται τῆς φύσεως οἱ ὅροι / побеждаются естества уставы), as we chant in Ode 9 of the Canon of Dormition. Because grace turns things around, making the seemingly-impossible possible; making us strong in our weaknesses; and even making the “tomb” of the virginal womb a source of life. Today, as those of us on the New Calendar celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, and those of us on the Older Calendar enter the second day of Dormition Fast, I say thank you to the Blessed Among Women. Thank you for not abandoning us at your Dormition, at which even a death, your death, is a celebration of Life. Thank you, our one-and-only Mother of Life, for showing us this radical, transfigurative power of God’s grace, which springs life even from our potentially death-bringing places. Help me to turn things around today, as I choose to rely not on my own “power,” but on the transfigurative power of God, in Whom all things are possible. “By your prayers you deliver our souls from death.” (Troparion-hymn of Dormition)

'Beyond Death and Judgment' - The Dormition of the Theotokos

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,   The Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos has come to be experienced as something of a "summer pascha," and as such has steadily become an integral event of our parish life. And this is "meet and right." American Christianity has been shaped by the Protestant ethos, and that basically means that there is no real place for the veneration of the Mother of God. This was primarily based upon a reaction against the perceived excesses of the medieval West's Marian piety by the early Protestant reformers. In a short time, this reaction became a thorough rejection - at times quite vehement - in many Protestant circles. So the Virgin Mary pretty much disappeared from Protestant worship and piety. Perhaps the classic example within Church history of "throwing out the baby with the bath water." Orthodox Christians cannot succumb to any such truncated form of the Church's living Tradition. (However, there have been clear signs recently of a "recovery" of the role of the Virgin Mary in some Evangelical circles). One of my beloved professors from seminary always used to say that a sign of a spiritually strong parish is that parish's devotion to the Mother of God. For she is the personal image of the Church - warm, embracing, nurturing, protecting. Since the Dormition has no biblical source, this feast slowly developed over the course of the first five centuries of the Church's history on the basis of a wide variety of sources - primarily narratives, rhetorical homilies and theological poetry/hymnography. (Much of this material now exists in English translation). There is no one authoritative text or document. However, though details may differ, a tradition emerged that tells of how the apostles were miraculously brought back to Jerusalem in order to surround the bedside of the Virgin Mary as she lay dying. Upon commending her holy soul to her Son and Savior, she peacefully "fell asleep" in death (the meaning of the word dormition) in the presence of the apostles who stood weeping and grief-stricken by her bedside. With great solemnity they buried her pure body which had itself been the "tabernacle" of the King. The traditional place of her burial is a tomb close to Gethsemane. When the tomb was opened on the third day so that the Apostle Thomas, who arrived late, could venerate the body of the Theotokos, it was found to be empty. The "Mother of Life" was thus "translated to life!" Archbishop Kallistos Ware summarizes the Church's understanding of this tradition in the following manner: Without insisting on the literal truth of every element in this account, Orthodox tradition is clear and unwavering in regard to the central point: the Holy Virgin underwent, as did her Son, a physical death, but her body - like His - was afterwards raised from the dead and she was taken up into heaven, in her body as well as in her soul. She has passed beyond death and judgement, and lives wholly in the Age to Come.  The Resurrection of the Body, which all Christians await, has in her case been anticipated and is already an accomplished fact. That does not mean, however, that she is dissociated from the rest of humanity and placed in a wholly different category: for we all hope to share one day in that same glory of the Resurrection of the Body which she enjoys even now. ( The Festal Menaion, p. 64) Fr. Thomas Hopko further elaborates on the meaning of this beautiful Feast and how it "relates" to every generation of Christians: Thus, the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is the celebration of the fact that all men are "highly exalted" in the blessedness of the victorious Christ, and that this high exaltation has already been accomplished in Mary the Theotokos.  The feast of the Dormition is the sign, the guarantee, and the celebration that Mary's fate is the destiny of all those of "low estate" whose souls magnify the Lord, whose spirits rejoice in God the Savior, whose lives are totally dedicated to hearing and keeping the Word of God which is given to men in Mary's child, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Dormition, of course, means "falling asleep," the Christian term par excellence for how we approach the mystery of death. And here we further approach the paradox, from a Christian perspective, of death itself - the "last enemy" that causes great anguish and grief; but yet which now serves as a passage to life everlasting, and thus a cause for festal celebration in the death of the Mother of God. For the Virgin Mary truly died, as is the fate of all human beings; and yet "neither the tomb nor death could hold the Theotokos" who has been "translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb!" Without for a moment losing sight of the reality of death (notice the weeping apostles around the body of the Theotokos on the Dormition icon), from within the Church we can actually celebrate death during this "summer pascha" because of the Resurrection of Christ. Thus, the Feast of the Dormition clearly raises the issue of death and dying, and what we mean by a “Christian ending to our life.” For the moment, though, here is a challenging paragraph from Fr. Thomas Hopko about some of our own misconceptions – basically our fears – that often find us wandering far from an Orthodox approach to death and dying: I believe that the issue of death and dying is in need of serious attention in contemporary Orthodoxy, especially in the West, where most members of the Church seem to be “pagan” before people die and “Platonists” afterwards. By this I mean that they beg the Church to keep people alive, healthy, and happy as long as possible, and then demand that the Church assure them after people die that their immortal souls are “in a better place, basking in heavenly bliss” no matter what they may have done in their earthly lives. To add a bit more to this, here is a passage from Bp. Ilarion Alfeyev, that reinforces the Christian understanding – and hope – that accompanies us at the moment of death: For the non-believing person, death is a catastrophe and a tragedy, a rupture and a break. For the Christian, though, death is neither a catastrophe nor something evil. Death is a “falling asleep,” a temporary condition of separation from the body until the final unification with it. As Isaac the Syrian emphasizes, the sleep of death is short in comparison with the expectant eternity of a person. — FromOrthodox Christianity, Vol. 2, p. 496. St. Gregory of Nyssa states this Christian hope with clarity: By the divine Providence death has been introduced as a dispensation into the nature of man, so that, sin having flowed away at the dissolution of the union of soul and body, man, through the resurrection, might be refashioned, sound, passionless, stainless, and removed from any touch of evil. – Great Catechetical Oration, 35. This is precisely why we can call the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, “pascha in the summer!” The Virgin Mary and Theotokos died a “deathless death.” Now we have the opportunity to participate in this mystery in the celebration of this event as nothing less than a Feast. The Leave-taking of the Feast is on August 23. That means that we continue to sing and chant the troparion and kontakion of the Feast in our liturgical services until then, in addition to other hymnography of the Feast. I would strongly urge everyone to incorporate these hymns into your daily rule of prayer, including their use when you bless your meals as a family, replacing the Lord's Prayer up until the Leave-taking. If you can't sing these hymns, you can certainly recite them! The troparia and kontakia or the major Feasts are included in many Orthodox Prayer Books, but if you do not have the texts available at home, I am including them here: Troparion of the Dormition  In giving birth, you preserved your virginity!  In falling asleep you did not  forsake the world, O Theotokos!  You were translated to life, O Mother of Life,  and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death!  Kontakion of the Dormition  Neither the tomb, nor death, could hold the Theotokos,  who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions.  For being the Mother of Life, she was translated to life  by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb! The decorated tomb of the Theotokos, containing an icon of her sacred body in blessed repose, will be in the center of the church this evening for the Vesperal Liturgy; and then back in its usual place and open for our veneration whenever we enter the church until the Leave-taking.. The great Feasts extend in time, giving us the opportunity of integrating them into our lives in a meaningful way.

The Ascension: Our Destiny in Christ

 

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ, You were born, as was your will, O our God. You revealed Yourself, in Your good pleasure. You suffered in the flesh, and rose from the dead, trampling down death by death! Fulfilling all things, you ascended in glory ... (Vespers of Ascension)  Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man. And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. (Nicene Creed) The two texts above - one from the Feast of the Ascension and the other a portion of the Nicene Creed - are wonderful expressions of the great mystery of the "descent" and "ascent" of the Son of God. The eternal Son of God becomes the Son of Man, descending into our world to live among us and to teach us about, and prepare us for, the Kingdom of God. This is what we call the Incarnation. This movement of descent is only completed when Christ is crucified and enters the very realm of death on our behalf. There is "nowhere" further to descend (in)to. Thus, there are no limits to the love of God for His creatures, for the descent of Christ into death itself is "for our salvation." The Son of God will search for Adam and Eve in the very realm of Sheol/Hades. He will rescue them and liberate them as representative of all humankind, languishing in "the valley of death." Since death cannot hold the sinless - and therefore deathless - Son of God, He begins His ascent to the heavenly realm with His resurrection from the dead. And He fulfills this paschal mystery with His glorious ascension. As St. Paul writes: "He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things." (EPH. 4:10) The One who ascended, however, is now both God and man, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified Jesus Christ who is now seated at "the right hand of the Father," far above the heavens. It is the glorified flesh of the Incarnate Word of God which has entered into the very bosom of the Trinity in the Person of Christ. As St. Leo the Great, the pope of Rome (+461) taught: With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of Heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest Heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father. This is simultaneously our ascension and our glorification, since we are united to Christ through holy Baptism as members of His Body. Therefore, St. Paul can further write: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." (COL. 3:3) Out of our physical sight, we now "see" the glorified Christ through the eyes of faith. St. Leo further explains how important this spiritual insight is: For such is the power of great minds, such the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eyes; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight. Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be justified by faith, if our salvation lay only in what is visible. The Feast of the Ascension is not a decline from the glory of Pascha. It is, rather, the fulfillment of Pascha, and a movement upward toward the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the joyful revelation of our destiny in Christ. To return to the opening theme of the marvelous acts of God moving from the Incarnation to the Ascension, I would like to turn to St. Leo one more time for his understanding of that entire movement: It is upon this ordered structure of divine acts that we have been firmly established, so that the grace of God may show itself still more marvelous when, in spite of the withdrawal from men's sight of everything that is rightly felt to command their reverence, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, charity does not grow cold.   The Feast of the Ascension has a full octave, which means that we commemorate this great event until June 21 this year. According to St. Luke, once the disciples beheld Christ ascend into heaven, "they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God." (LK. 24:52) The "temple" is our common place of worship. Hopefully, we too, will soon be able to return to the temple blessing God. Yet, before that happens each one of us needs to bless God wherever we may find ourselves, because for each of us, our bodies are the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (I COR. 6:19). In our daily Prayer Rule we continue to refrain from using “O Heavenly King” until the Day of Pentecost. We no longer use the paschal troparion, “Christ is Risen from the dead …” but replace it from Ascension to Pentecost with the troparion of the Ascension: Thou hast ascended in glory, O Christ our God, granting joy to Thy disciplesby the promise of the Holy Spirit; Through the Blessing they were assured that Thou art the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world.

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 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 — '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.

PASCHA - Day Eleven — Break On Through (To The Other Side) !

 

Paul sees the Risen Christ on the Road to Damascus

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen

The Orthodox Church’s claim that Pascha is “the Feast of Feasts” is far more than poetic rhetoric. On the most basic level, it reminds us that the very existence of the Church is dependent upon the reality of Christ’s bodily resurrection “from the dead.” The Feast of Pascha makes that abundantly clear with an intensity that can be overwhelming. This, in turn, reinforces the blunt apostolic insight from the St. Paul: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (I COR. 15:14). No amount of modern “reinterpretation” of the Lord’s resurrection to the contrary can effectively silence or refute what the Apostle wrote. The Christian Faith – and the Church – stands or falls on the truthfulness of the bodily resurrection of Christ.

The Apostle Paul further warns us that a non-resurrected Christ has even worse consequences for those who would mistakenly proclaim a resurrection that never actually occurred: “We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God the he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true the dead are not raised” (v. 15). Finally, and with a brutal honesty that reveals the Apostle’s clarity of thought, he does not shrink from exposing the futility of purpose that a non-resurrected Christ would collapse into: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (v. 19). That assessment sounds just about right to me.

Yet after decisively dealing with such theoretical scenarios, St. Paul confidently proclaims the Gospel that he had himself received (literally that which was “handed over” or “traditioned” to him): “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I COR. 15:20). Therefore, when someone dies, we do not have to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (I THESS. 5:13). Christian hope is directed to the future and the eschatological fulfillment of God’s providential care for, and direction of, our common human destiny, culminating in a transfigured cosmos and “the redemption of our bodies” (ROM. 8:23). This is only possible if the “last enemy” – death itself – has been overcome from within, revealed to the world in and through the Risen Lord. Little surprise, then, that Pascha is the “Feast of Feasts” and “Holy day of Holy Days” if all of the above is what we indeed celebrate! Pascha has inaugurated the current paschal season of forty days – culminating in the Ascension - during which we intensify our focus on the Lord’s triumph over the sting of death. We, too, with the Apostle Paul exclaim with glad hearts: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I COR. 15:57).

The natural cycle of life and death can weary the human heart with the inescapability of its endlessly reoccurring patterns: “Vanity of vanities! … All is vanity…. A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (ECCLES. 1:2,4). “And therefore,” according to Fr. Georges Florovsky, “the burden of time, this rotation of beginnings and ends, is meaningless and tiresome.” Our dissatisfaction with this closed cycle undermines the very claim that it is all “natural,” and therefore acceptable to the human spirit. On the contrary, human beings are always seeking an escape into whatever “reality” will allow us at least some temporary relief from the oppressiveness of a closed universe forever marred by corruption and death. If not Stoic resignation – “the impassibility or even indifference of the sage” (Fr. Florovsky) - then perhaps a desire to transcend the limitations imposed upon us by “nature,” will lead to a desperate search for an ecstatic experience – the dionysian impulse.

If I may indulge in a pop culture reference from the heady rock music of the past (over fifty years ago now!), there exists a song that more-or-less captures this inchoate desire for liberation: “Break on Through (to the Other Side).” For the moment forgiving the fatal excesses and self-indulgent pretensions of the singer-songwriter of this popular song; we can hear in its strained lyrics the human need to pass over (“break on through”) into a realm (“the other side”) that promises a heightened experience of reality that our mundane world cannot deliver. Of course, this can begin with “religion” or what we call “mysticism” (often a dangerous combination of mist + schism as I have heard it described). 

On a more secular level, the search for transcendence can be attempted through science or art. Within the context of the song we are now discussing, however, this possibly/probably refers to the rebellion associated with transgressing moral and ethical norms that seem to be restrictive and not liberating. This would be the dead world of bourgeois middle-class values supported by an insufferably bland moralistic Christianity. In other words, to all that the word “suburbia” implied in the 60’s. This is justified by the individual desire for self-autonomy, “freedom,” or a stance against hypocrisy. Only God knows how much of this was only a self-justification for indulging the passions and acting irresponsibly. In other words, the quest for freedom can easily degenerate into “license.” When the imagination fails, there is always the more prosaic and ever-popular “eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow we die.” When practiced with serious abandon, though, this leads to a “breakdown” rather than a “breakthrough.” (Alas, this was the fate of our singer-songwriter).

All of these attempts to “break on through to the other side” can be both exhilarating and dangerous; heroic or pathetic; inspiring or disgusting. When pursued with a seriousness that reveals the human spirit’s refusal to submit, not only to mediocrity, but to the laws that eternally legislate the “house of the dead” that our world has become through human sinfulness, then such attempts at self-transcendence can earn our respect. Yet, an air of futility permeates all such autonomous attempts at self-liberation, for the human person has no such inherent capabilities apart from the power of God. A wholly different issue is raised by promethean pride that resists any “authority” greater than the self – including God. (It was the anarchist Bakunin who said: “If God exists, then I am a slave”). Here we cross over into the world of “mystical insolence” and demonic rebellion.

It is only Christ who has truly “broken through” to the “other side.” Again, this claim can only be made based upon the “fact” of His bodily resurrection.

 

Yet, it is only Christ who has truly “broken through” to the “other side.” Again, this claim can only be made based upon the “fact” of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Death itself – the fear of which subjects us to “lifelong bondage” - has been transcended in the voluntary death of Christ; a “resurrecting death” that was revealed to the Lord’s astonished disciples when He appeared among them following His burial and said: “Peace be with you.” (JN. 20:19) This was not a case of resuscitation and the resumption of natural life within the time and space of this world. For the Apostle Paul writes: "For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never did again; death no longer has dominion over him” (ROM. 6:9). 

The human spirit’s “natural” desire for self-transcendence is no longer wasted on rebelliousness, utopian dreams, or nihilistic despair. Now it is Truth itself which has set us free. And this Truth is Christ. It is actually the will of a merciful and loving God that desires this for us; and God has acted to make this possible by raising Christ from the dead, the “first fruits” of a general resurrection that we await in patient expectation of God fulfilling the promises made to us “according to the Scriptures.”

We can close these “fragments” with again turning to Fr. Georges Florovsky who, employing some of the remarkable liturgical hymns that illuminate our celebration of Pascha, describes the one meaningful “breakthrough" - our liberation from death - in the following manner:

Amidst the darkness of pale death shines the unquenchable light of Life, the Life Divine. This destroys Hell and destroys mortality. “Thou didst descend into the tomb, O Immortal, Thou didst destroy the power of death” (kontakion). In this sense Hell has been simply abolished, “and there is not one dead in the grave.” For “he received earth, and yet met heaven.” Death is overcome by Life. “When Thou didst descend into death, O Life Eternal, then Thou didst slay Hell by the flash of Thy Divinity” (Vespers of Great and Holy Friday).