The Cross: 'To Refresh Our Souls and Encourage Us'

 

Dear Parish Faithful and Friends in Christ,

“Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy Holy Resurrection, we glorify.”

This hymn – together with the accompanying rite of venerating the Cross – replaces the usual Trisagion hymn during the Divine Liturgy on the Third Sunday of Great Lent. According to The Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, the full title of this mid-lenten commemoration is “The Sunday of the Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross.” Notice, that though our concentration is on the Cross of our Lord, the hymn culminates with the Resurrection.  This is in full agreement with the Gospel passages in which Christ reveals to His disciples that He is bound for Jerusalem and death on the Cross and that He will rise on the third day. (MK. 8:31; 9:31; 10:34)

 

In a wonderful commentary, The Synaxarion sets before our spiritual sight the meaning of this particular commemoration and its timing: 

The precious and Life-Giving Cross is now placed before us to refresh our souls and encourage us who may be filled with a sense of bitterness, resentment, and depression.  The Cross reminds us of the Passion of our Lord, and by presenting to us His example, it encourages us to follow Him in struggle and sacrifice, being refreshed, assured and comforted. [p. 78]

Hopefully, the first three weeks of the Fast – even if we have truly “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” [Galatians 5:24] – have not led us to experience “bitterness, resentment and depression!”  However, we could be suffering from precisely those spiritual wounds for other reasons and diverse circumstances in our lives, both external and internal.  My own pastoral experience tells me that this is probably – if not assuredly – the case.  And there is no better time than Great Lent to acknowledge this.  Such acknowledgment could lead to genuine healing if pursued in a patient and humble manner.

How, then, can we be healed?  Perhaps the Sunday of the Cross reveals our basic starting point.  The Cross of our Lord, placed before our vision, can release us from our bondage to these passions when we realize that Christ transformed this instrument of pain, suffering and death into an “emblem of victory.”  Christ has absorbed and taken our sins upon Himself, nailing them to the Cross. In the process, “He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in Him" -- or, in some variations, “in it,” meaning the Cross [Colossians 2:15].  These “principalities and powers” continue to harass us to this day, but if we are “in Christ,” then we can actualize His victory over them and reveal their actual powerlessness.  Our lenten journey is leading us to the foot of the Cross and to the empty and life-giving tomb, and the Third Sunday of Great Lent anticipates our final goal so as to encourage us.  Again, from The Synaxarion:

As they who walk on a long and hard way are bowed down by fatigue find great relief and strengthening under the cool shade of a leafy tree, so do we find comfort, refreshment, and rejuvenation under the Life-Giving Cross, which our Holy Fathers 'planted' on this Sunday.  Thus, we are fortified and enabled to continue our Lenten journey with a light way, rested and encouraged. [p. 79]

Certainly none of the above is meant to deflect our attention away from the “scandal of the Cross” by poeticizing this scandal away in pious rhetoric.  We must never lose sight of the sufferings of our Lord on the Cross, and the “price” He paid to release us from bondage to sin and death.  The world in its indifference will never come to understand the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice.  So as not to lose sight of the utter horror of crucifixion as a form of capital punishment, I would like to include a passage from Martin Hengel’s book Crucifixion:

Crucifixion satisfied the primitive lust for revenge and the sadistic cruelty of individual rulers and of the masses.  It was usually associated with other forms of torture, including at least flogging.  At relatively small expense and to great public effect the criminal could be tortured to death for days in an unspeakable way.  Crucifixion is thus a specific expression of the inhumanity dormant within men which these days is expressed, for example, in the call for the death penalty, for popular justice and for harsher treatment of criminals, as an expression of retribution.  It is a manifestation of trans-subjective evil, a form of execution which manifests the demonic character of human cruelty and bestiality. [p. 87]

So much for the “noble simplicity and greatness” of the ancient world!  But there is “nothing new under the sun,” and fallen human nature is just as cruel and evil today.  Again, Christ absorbed all of that human cruelty and bestiality on the Cross.  This was a scandal, for the Son of God died the death of a slave on the Cross [Philippians 2:8].  Now, as a “new creation” in Christ, we must of course manifest our freedom from precisely that dark and demonic abyss into which human beings can plunge, and manifest the transfiguration of our human “energy” into the virtues that are so wonderfully revealed in the lives of the saints.  This was the prayer of the Apostle Paul when the light of the crucified and risen Lord began to shine in a world of darkness: 

May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us [or you] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. [Colossians 1:14]

The Church understands and will put before our gaze the sufferings of the Lord during Holy Week.  But it is also from within the Church that we come to know the victory of Christ achieved through His death on the Cross and fully revealed in His Resurrection.  Thus the marvelous paradox of venerating a “Life-Giving Cross!”  The rhetoric of the Church’s language is thereby not empty but revelatory of a mystery that has been accomplished in our midst.  The Synaxarion concludes its section on “The Sunday of the Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross” with the following prayer, a fitting way, I hope, to conclude this meditation: 

O Christ our God, through the power of the Holy Cross, deliver us from the influence of our crafty enemy and count us worthy to pass with courage through the course of the forty days and to venerate Thy divine Passion and Thy Life-Giving Resurrection.  Be merciful to us, for Thou alone art good and full of love for mankind.  Amen.

St Basil's Liturgy: Deserving our Deepest Attention and Overwhelming Awe

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

During the five Sundays of Great Lent we turn to the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great for our Eucharistic celebration on the Lord's Day.  This Liturgy is used another five times during the year, two more of which are during Holy Week - Thursday and Saturday.  (The other three times are the Feasts of Nativity and Theophany, and then on St. Basil's day of commemoration, January 1).   This Liturgy is known for its long(er) prayers, some of which may challenge our capacity to stand still in concentration and prayerful attention.  But what prayers!  They strike me personally as being unrivaled in our entire Tradition for their beauty of expression and the depth of their theological/spiritual content.  Even though we are hearing them in translation, that beauty and depth remain intact and shine through quite well.

Now St. Basil did not sit down and "compose" the entire Liturgy "from scratch," to use that expression.  The basic structure of the Liturgy was already an essential element of the Church's living liturgical Tradition.  However, there is every reason to believe that he is responsible for the magnificent Anaphora prayers.  These prayers reflect St. Basil's intense preoccupation with the Church's Trinitarian faith - that we worship the One God as the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Son and the Holy Spirit being consubstantial with the Father as to their divine nature, and thus co-enthroned and co-glorified  with the Father from all eternity. (St. Basil wrote a separate magnificent treatise On the Holy Spirit, demonstrating the divinity of the Holy Spirit through his knowledge of the Scriptures and the Church's liturgical Tradition).

That belief in the Holy Trinity, though present "in the beginning" of the Church's proclamation of the Gospel, was under attack during the turbulent fourth century, with the Arian heresy and its various offshoots stirring up seemingly interminable debate and dissension. St. Basil was one of the premier exponents of the Church's faith that the one God is the Holy Trinity; and he helped establish the classical terminology of the Church in expressing that Faith:  God is one in "essence" (Gk. ousia), yet three distinct "Persons" (Gk. hypostaseis).  That terminology remains intact to this day.  The opening Anaphora Prayer, "O Existing One, Master, Lord  God, Father almighty and adorable! ..." is steeped in praise and glorification of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and thus deserves our deepest attention and sense of overwhelming awe as we stand in the presence of the Holy Trinity and as we join the angelic powers in "singing, shouting, and proclaiming: Holy!  Holy!  Holy!  Lord of Sabaoth! ..."

In profound relationship to the prayers of the Liturgy revealing the Church's belief in the Holy Trinity, we find St. Basil's unrivaled expression of the divine "economy" (Gk. oikonomia) throughout. This refers to God's providential dispensation/design toward His creation - culminating in the salvation of the world - in and through the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If I were asked to present to an interested inquirer the most compelling and succinct expression  of the divine economy as taught and proclaimed by the Orthodox Church, I would definitely refer this person to the long Anaphora Prayer of St. Basil's Liturgy beginning where the Thrice-holy left off:

"With these blessed powers, O Master who lovest mankind ..."  

After praising God "for the magnificence of Thy holiness,"  we begin to prayerfully recall - and thus make present - the full extent of His providential dispensation toward the world:

"When Thou didst create man by taking dust from the earth, and didst honor him with Thine own image, O God ..."  

This long remembrance takes us through what we refer to as the "Fall," through the promises of the prophets — "foretelling to us the salvation which was to come ..."  — all the way through to the Lord's Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and even Second Coming:

"Ascending into heaven, He sat down at the right hand of Thy majesty on high, and He will come to render to every man according to his works ..."

 Further recalling, and thus actualizing "the night in which He gave Himself up for the life of the world," this entire process will culminate with the Epiklesis, or Invocation of the Holy Spirit "to bless, to hallow and to show" that the bread and wine of our offering will "become" the Body and Blood of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.  We will then receive the Holy Gifts "for the remission of sins and unto life everlasting."

Today, the Orthodox faithful are blessed in that the prayers of St. Basil's Liturgy are read aloud so that the entire gathered assembly of believers may actually "hear" the prayers that reveal the Lord God's Trinitarian nature and the divine economy together with the consecration of the Holy Gifts.  In the past that may have not been so, and even today it is not so in all Orthodox churches.  So we thank God for our own liturgical revival which has so enlivened our contemporary worship experience with full parish participation in the Church at prayer and praise.

However, and admittedly, there is one prayer that is usually read while the choir is singing (at least that is what we do here in our parish); and that is a final prayer near the very end of the Liturgy that the priest will say while facing the Table of Preparation and the remaining Holy Communion that will eventually be consumed by the priest, and while the choir is singing "Blessed be the name of the Lord, henceforth and forevermore" three times:

The mystery of Thy dispensation, O Christ our God, has been accomplished and perfected as far as it was  in our power;
for we have had the memorial of Thy death; we have seen the type of Thy Resurrection; we have been filled with Thine
unending life; we have enjoyed Thine inexhaustible food; which in the world to come be well-pleased to vouchsafe to us
all, through the grace of Thine eternal Father, and Thine holy and good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto
ages of ages.  Amen.

This summation of the meaning, purpose and experience of the Liturgy is an "awesome" claim that perhaps may strike us in its awesomeness  even more effectively if we break the prayer down into its component parts:

• We have had the memorial of the Lord's death;
• We have seen the type of the Lord's  Resurrection;
• We have been filled with the Lord's unending life;
• We have enjoyed the Lord's inexhaustible food;
• We ask to continue in this partaking in the world to come;
• All this through the grace of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!

That is quite a Sunday morning experience which we so blandly describe as "going to church!"  Clearly the remainder of the day is all downhill - no matter what we do!  When we begin the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great we know that we have a long road ahead of us.  That will require some patience, concentration, and a willingness to "stay with it" through to its dismissal.  If we are able to do that, then the "rewards" are inestimable.  It will also test our deepest desires about what is "the one thing needful" in our lives and what is the treasure of our hearts.  Yet, the Sundays of Great Lent are a unique opportunity to further our movement towards the Lord as we move through Great Lent and our lives toward the gladsome light of the Kingdom of God.

Resistance to False Gods

Dear Parish Faithful,

I continue to read David Bentley Hart, the brilliant Orthodox theologian/philosopher who has a "way with words" and yet simultaneously offers a trenchant critique of contemporary culture and an impassioned defense of the Christian revelation.  One of his most well-known essays is "Christ and Nothing (No Other God)" from his book of collected essays, In the Aftermath - Provocations and Laments. 

I am lifting a passage out of this article because it refers to the "Lenten privations" and the "Christian asceticism" that we embrace; but places these in the larger context of  a "refusal of secularization" that we must be vigilant about because it can lead us astray toward false gods.  His writing takes a good deal of careful reading and concentration, even in such a short passage as the following.  But the richness of his thought and the insights there on display are indeed "provocative" as Hart "laments" the moral morass and stagnation of the post-Christian world:

To have no god but the God of Christ, after all, means today that we must endure the Lenten privations of what is most certainly a dark age, and strive to resist the bland solace, inane charms, brute viciousness, and dazed passivity of post-Christian culture - all of which are so tempting precisely because they enjoin us to believe in and adore ourselves.  

It means also to remain aloof from many of the moral languages of our time, which are - even at their most sentimental, tender, and tolerant - usually as decadent and egoistic as the currently most fashionable vices.  

It means in short self-abnegation, contrarianism, a willingness not only to welcome but to condemn, and a refusal of secularization as resolute as the refusal of the ancient Christians to burn incense to the genius of the emperor.  

This is not an especially grim prescription, I should add:  Christian asceticism is not, after all, a cruel disfigurement of the will, contaminated by world-weariness or malice towards creation; it is a different kind of detachment, the cultivation of the pure heart and a pure eye, which allows one to receive the world and rejoice in it, not as a possession of the will or an occasion for the exercise of power, but as the good gift of God. It is, so to speak, a kind of Marian waiting upon the Word of God and its fruitfulness.  

Paradoxical as it may seem to modern temperaments, Christians asceticism is the practice of love, what Maximus the Confessor calls learning to see the logos of each thing within the Logos of God and it leads more properly to a grateful reverence ...

Take your time to "unpack" that paragraph and think upon these things!

Almsgiving and Lent

Dear Parish Faithful,

When we enter Great Lent, we may understandably concentrate on renewing our prayer life and then on putting some real effort into fasting according to the discipline of the Church. This is "meet and right" and expected of all Orthodox Christians.  However, we always want to make sure that we embrace the three basic practices that Christ assumes His disciples will follow, which are almsgiving/charity, prayer and fasting.  In fact, in MATT. 6 where Christ makes this teaching explicit, almsgiving is mentioned before prayer and fasting (MATT. 6:2-4)  With this in mind, I offer the following  observations together with a parish project that we will take on over the next few weeks:

To me, personally, there is nothing in the world right now that is more poignant, heart-breaking and horrific than the massive suffering of children in Syria.  Four years of brutal and bitter civil war has resulted in the death of over 100,000 children.  That is a staggering and depressing figure.  One would have to have a stone-cold or frankly "dead" heart not to be moved to tears when watching the brief images of this  innocent suffering on nightly news reports.  Homelessness; the lack of basic food and water and hospital supplies combined with unsanitary conditions; and the fear of further attack has led to appalling conditions that have robbed children of their childhoods and the security of home and family. I am not even sure how many orphans have been created over the last four years.  I think we can make our own modest contribution  as a Christian community to help alleviate these appalling conditions.

With our comfortable life-styles and sources of income there is no reason that we cannot raise a minimum of $2,000 during this Great Lent that we could then send to the IOCC for care and distribution.  IOCC is an outstanding Orthodox charitable institution that has far-reaching projects on a world-wide basis.  (Please click on the link below to trace this and read more about IOCC at your convenience). They are obviously quite engaged in Syria.  As you may recall a passage that I sent out before Lent began by Vassilios Papavasiliou; the money that we save on food and entertainment during Great Lent could be donated to those in need so that we expand our Lenten efforts beyond our immediate concerns - pious and well-meaning that they may be.

We will have a basket by the Cross this Sunday to begin collecting everyone's donation.

Fr. Steven

http://www.iocc.org/aboutiocc_mission.aspx

Being Guarded 'In The Fast'

Dear Parish Faithful,

Today is the Wednesday of the Second Week of Great Lent.  The appointed hymnography for the day gives us a great deal to reflect and meditate upon:

Stretched out and slain upon the Cross, O Christ, You have slain the serpent, our enemy, the source of evil.
You have restored to life those who were killed by his bite.  Therefore I entreat You, O Savior:  give life to my deadened soul, for to You I turn in prayer and fasting!
(Matins - Sessional Hymn after the Second Reading from the Psalter)

As we pass through the solemn time of abstinence, let us blow the trumpet and loudly cry:  Through the Fast, life has blossomed in the world, and the death that comes from self-indulgence is destroyed.  By the power of Your Cross, O Christ the Word, guard Your servants in the Fast!
(Matins - Sessional Hymn after the Third Reading from the Psalter)

According to our weekly liturgical cycle, every Wednesday is dedicated to the commemoration of the "life-giving Cross" (which is why Wednesdays are fast days throughout the year).  This, of course, continues throughout Great Lent, but perhaps with an even greater focus because our Lenten journey will ultimately place us at the foot of the Cross.  The "serpent, our enemy, the source of evil" is finally defeated upon the Cross, fulfilling the protoevangelion (first proclamation of the Gospel) rather enigmatically announced in Genesis, when God solemnly curses the serpent with these words:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heal."  (GEN. 3:15)  

The "seed" of the serpent/Satan are his spiritual offspring who continue to bring evil into the  world.  The "seed" of the woman is that messianic line which culminates in the Savior. The serpent will "bruise" his heel - the suffering on the Cross - while the woman's offspring will "bruise" (the word can actually mean "crush") the serpent when, through the Cross and Resurrection, Christ destroys any real power of Satan ("You have slain the serpent"). This is the cosmic battle between Good and Evil that takes place upon the Cross and the victory belongs to "Christ the Word!"  We read the Book of Genesis during Great Lent, and we also read the Epistle to the Hebrews at the Saturday and Sunday liturgies.  The fulfillment of the protoevangelion is powerfully expressed in chapter two of that epistle:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.  (HEB. 2:14)

We enter into the victory of Christ over the Evil One through our Baptism into Christ; and we renew that victory with our annual commemoration of the Paschal mystery.  And yet, that annual commemoration/actualization only has meaning if our own lives are centered upon Christ through "prayer and fasting."  Overcoming "self-indulgence" is a key component of Great Lent, without which we remain subjected to the passions and the "death" that is the only outcome of serving the passions of self-indulgence.  So we "guard" ourselves from such a horrible fate "in the Fast!"