Called To Holiness — 20140615

It is truly my hope that my readers are finding this article thought-provoking. As you know, it is the wish of our Patriarch and Synod of Bishops that each Ukrainian Greek-Catholic parish in the world become engaged in thinking about and engaging in those activities that will make the parish a vibrant Christian community, that is a place where people can truly encounter our living God. I have already shared with you the six different areas that our Synod of Bishops identified that must be a part of the thinking of any vibrant parish. In a summarized form these include:
(1) making the Scriptures a real part of our lives;
(2) engaging in authentic worship and prayer;
(3) being leaders in sharing the Gospel;
(4) serving others;
(5) fostering unity; and
(6) embracing a missionary spirit.
As I have been sharing with you, I believe that in order to accomplish this goal, all of us must first come to an understanding that we are called to holiness. This, I know, may be frightening to some since it is hard to think of ourselves as called to be saints. The fact of the matter is that we have all been called to be saints, that is people who truly understand that it is important to have God at the center of our lives and to learn the lessons that life presents to us.

Once we realize that all of us have been called to holiness, I think that we must wrestle with what it means first be a church and then a parish. I wonder, if you were asked, how you would respond to this basic question: What does it mean when we say that we are a church!

One of the first, simple answers to this question is: A church is a community of believers and, in our case, a community of people who believe that God became man, in the Person of Jesus Christ, in order to teach us how to live as human beings so that we might learn the lessons that life has been designed to teach us, preparing us for the next stage of existence after human death.

So, to be a church means to be a believer, that is someone who accepts as true many things which cannot be proven (e.g., Holy Communion is the Real Body and Blood of Christ; Jesus is God Himself incarnate; human life is somehow a sharing in God’s own life). To be a    believer is, perhaps, the first great struggle since we modern people want to have proof or data that what we are asked to believe is true.    

Happy Father’s Day – 2014

      On this Father’s Day we ask Almighty God  to bless our fathers and all men of our parish, and grant them the strength necessary to love openly and the courage to honestly confront life’s challenges and uncertainties. We ask God to make all men true icons of His generosity and unconditional love.

We beg our Loving God, to shower His blessings upon all of our living fathers. May they be blessed with health, happiness, good humor, loving children and length of days.

We also ask our Merciful God to grant a blessed repose to all of our deceased fathers and place them in a place of light where there is no pain, sorrow or mourning. May all of our deceased fathers rest in peace.

As we ask God’s blessings upon our fathers and the men of our parish this day, we also ask God to bless us and give us the will to be loving and attentive people who honor our living fathers by being sensitive to their needs and by remembering our deceased fathers by praying for their repose.

Many Years!   Mnohaya Lita!

Eternal Memory!   Вічная пам’ять!

 

Pentecost: Sunday June 8, 2014

When the Most High descended and confused tongues, He scattered the people; but when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all men to unity. Therefore with one voice, let us praise the Most Holy Spirit.

Kondak

PentecostThe Jewish people celebrate three great feasts annually: the feast of Passover, the feast of Pentecost and the feast of Tabernacles. The feast of Pentecost takes its name from the fiftieth day after Passover and also from the fiftieth day from the beginning of the harvest. Pentecost is actually the Greek word for fiftieth day. While originally Pentecost was a feast of harvest and thanksgiving, it later became connected to the anniversary of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the Jewish people were led out of captivity in Egypt by Moses. There is a great    affinity between these two events: escape from Egypt and slavery and the freedom that comes from a covenant with God. Their covenant with God was expressed by their acceptance of the Ten Commandments. The price of freedom was adherence to the way of living that is expressed in these rules.

There is also an intrinsic connection in our Christian faith between the promise of resurrection, revealed by the resurrection of Jesus, and a promise to live in accord with the Jesus way of living, summed up so wonderfully in the Great Commandment that has two parts:

 You shall love the Lord your God with your whole, soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself.   

Jesus declared that the Law and all the prophets can be summarized by this one basic rule of living. True freedom comes from living in accord with this one, basic rule.

The Kondak we use today says, in essence, that this way of living will bring unity to all men. It is the key to our understanding of human life.

Unfortunately as we look around at our world today, we see that we have not achieved this unity which God had hoped to achieve by coming into the world. Of course He knew that His revelation would not be heeded by all since He also gave to mankind the sacred gift of free will. It is essential that we who say we believe that God revealed to us how to live, make every effort to live in accord with this God-given rule. Our goal must be that we, who believe, live in accord with this rule of living regardless of how other people live.    Authenticity!

Learning Our Faith from the Church Fathers — 20140608

In the last issue of this article I introduced the fact that the translators of the Old Testament into Greek actually slightly changed the phrase found in Genesis about man being made in our image, after our likeness to the phrase as we now know it: made in our image and likeness. They used the two Greek words coupled together: eikon and homoiosis. At that time, under the influence of Plato the Greek Philosopher and his disciples, eikon could mean participation in a sensible mode whereas homoiosis referred to the spiritual resemblance toward which man must strive.

Several authors – not only those who used a Semitic language but also certain Greeks – did not take  this nuance into account and did not distinguish between image and likeness: Athanasius of  Alexandria, Didymus, the Cappadocians, pseudo-Macarius, and others (I always find it funny how God manages to work. I do believe that although they did not   understand totally the nuance of what they were suggesting by using these words, they advanced our understanding of what God did when He created us).

Irenaeus made systemic use of this distinction. For him the couplet image-likeness corresponded to the Pauline couplet fleshy man-spiritual man; it was therefore the Holy Spirit who for him established the likeness to God. Origen, followed by one strand of the Eastern tradition, utilized the dynamic character of the image. The image is but incipient deification: its goal is to become as like God as possible. This ascension from image to likeness will be completed in the glory of the risen body and in conformity with Christ’s prayer in unity.

According to Origen’s interpretation, man received the dignity of God’s image at his first creation – it seems that on this connection others speak of baptism – but man must acquire the perfection of this likeness for himself by his own diligence in the imitation of God (Christ). The image is like a seed: the soul conceives by this seed of the Word and the conceived Word is formed in it in conformity with the virtues of Christ.

Again we see the struggle that the Fathers had in coming to the fullness of this idea of the meaning and purpose of life and the ideas of: Theosis and man’s creation in the image and likeness of God.

Progress in the spiritual life develops from practice to theory – that is human understanding of the basic idea of life’s purpose flows from the experiences that they have in trying to comprehend what the meaning and purpose of life really is.

What do you think is the meaning and purpose of life?

Called To Holiness — 20140608

I continue to think about the fact that a spiritual community truly become vibrant when the majority of its members truly understand that they have been called to holiness and do everything in their power to support one another in this pursuit. As I continue to reflect on this, it dawns on me that one of the things we can truly do to support one another in this effort is to (1) do all in our power to engage in authentic prayer when we come to church and (2) make sure that we develop a true sensitivity to the needs of those in our spiritual community who are on life’s journey with us. Think about this. It is by the grace of God that we have all come together in the spiritual community in which we now pray. We have to believe that God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, knows that somehow we can help each other achieve the holiness that we desire.

How do we personally contribute to the authenticity of our communal prayer? Much of it, I believe, is probably invisible because it means coming to our communal worship with certain dispositions. You will recall the Liturgy tells us to come to the Liturgy with faith, reverence and the fear of God. It also means that during the Divine Liturgy each of us attempts to lay aside all of our earthly cares and be fully and truly present to the communal prayer. It also means that we become fully aware of the help (grace) that Christ gives us, the love that the Father gives us and, of course, the communion which the Holy Spirit offers to us.  You might observe that all of these things are invisible to others. Whether we believe it or not, people see in the way we participate and conduct ourselves in Church whether we are fully engaged and have come to our communal worship with these very critical dispositions and thoughts.  For example, if you truly believe that the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are actively helping you to make your prayer authentic in community, you will act differently and present yourself differently to the community and the community will be enhanced and blessed by it.

While there are times in our communal worship for enjoyment, there are also many times when our worship must be focused and serious. We must think about what we are doing. What we do together is truly most sacred and mysterious and we are in the presence of God.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20140608

As I expressed in the last issue of this article, Theophan believed that when a person neglects his desire for God and his own salvation, he is filled with anxiety and trouble about many things. Luke first expressed this idea in his Gospel (10:41).

The nuances and the   distinctive features of these troubles about many things depend upon the kind of emptiness which is formed in the soul. The emptiness of the mind – what has been forgotten about the One who is everything – gives birth to a concern for excessive knowledge. The second thing Theophan identifies is the emptiness of the will – which has deprived itself of the One who is everything – produces numerous desires: striving to possess many things or even all things, so that everything could be in one’s own power and according to one’s own will. This is the love of worldly possessions.

This describes our present society. It is also something that even good people have to constantly squelch in their own lives. The world is very seductive. It is easy to think that if we have all the things we want life will be better. This, of course, always proves to be untrue.

The third thing that Theopan identifies is called the emptiness of the heart – which has deprived itself of real delight in the One who is everything – generates a thirst for many and various false pleasures: the search for those things in which one hopes to find sensory pleasure, both inwardly and utwardly. So, a sinner persists incessantly in his troubles and anxieties, and in his search for excessive knowledge, many material possessions, and diverse pleasures. He is always delighting in outward things, constantly acquiring possessions, scrutinizing things and testing them. He whirls around in this circular process for his entire life.

Anyone can verify the truth of Theophan’s ideas by just putting the movements of his soul under his own observance for just a single day.

Learning About the Practices of Our Religion — 20140608

Included in our Divine Liturgy, during that part that we call the Anaphora, the living and the dead are mentioned. This is to signify that the entire community of believers – living and dead – celebrate the Divine Liturgy together. In the early Church the names of the living and the dead were written on diptychs (i.e., a pair of hinged writing tablets that had a waxed inter-surface that could be written on with a stylus). When they were not in use they were folded together and kept with the sacred vessels.

It is important when we celebrate the Divine Liturgy that each of us remembers the living and deceased people we know and love. This is yet another way that we personalize our worship. The way that I lead our worship is that I stop and ask you to call to mind the memories of your deceased relatives and friends and to mention, in the quiet of your hearts, the names of your relative and friends that you want to include in your prayer. I believe that it is essential that we stop and do this. If you have to, write the names down and bring a small piece of paper with you to the Divine Liturgy so that you can include this ancient practice in your worship.

The commemoration of the dead is first attested by Cyril of Jerusalem, and so spread widely in the East. That of the   living was soon added. In some churches they were read out before the Anaphora began, but there is no reason to think that at Constantinople they were read elsewhere than in the course of the intercession within the Anaphora. The names in both sets of diptychs were ranged in hierarchical order, the clergy first, then the laity. I personally don’t believe that is necessary. I personally arrange the names in the order of those that I consider closest to me – immediate family first, then friends and others. The contents of the diptychs had become by the early fifth century a matter of great popular interest, and the inclusion or    exclusion of a particular name could arouse fierce passions among the congregation. You will recall that the exclusion of the Patriarch of Rome’s name in Hagia Sophia before the Great Schism only added fuel to the fire. At the beginning of the fifth century the diptychs were chiefly of interest as showing with which churches or individuals any given church was in communion.

Although fallen into disuse in many of our Eastern Churches, I believe that it is a very critical practice for each of us to make an attempt to remember, during the Divine Liturgy, both the living and dead that play a part in our lives. It also reinforces the idea that our worship is not something we do alone

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20140608

The next letter of St. Paul’s that we must consider when we are looking at a chronologically accurate New Testament (NT) is his letter to the Philippians. This letter is the most consistently affectionate of all of his letters. Philippi was the capital of ancient Macedonia. According to ACTS, the community of Philippi was the first city in Europe in which Paul founded a Christ-community after leaving Asia Minor in the late 40s. His relationship with this community seems to have been very uncomplicated. The tone of the letter is not only affectionate but also filled with gratitude. This letter contains some very important and extraordinary passages. I would encourage you to pick us a NT and read it. It is only four chapters long.

The community of Philippi dates from around 50 CE, when Paul, apparently in the company of Luke, visited the city on his second missionary journey. On his third journey he again visited the city.

Philippi had a proud history. It was founded by Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, and was the scene of the defeat of Mark Antony by Octavian in 42 BCE. After this event it became a Roman colony, and its citizens were granted the right of Roman citizenship. Their esteem for this privilege is reflected in Luke’s account of Paul’s treatment in Philippi. We have to remember that Paul was also a Roman citizen and Luke, his companion, wrote the account in Acts about his visit to Philippi.

Describing himself in this letter as a prisoner facing a possibly unfavorable outcome to his trial, Paul three times warns the Philippians against the enemies of their faith.

In the letter Paul expresses his deep affection for the Philippians and thanks them warmly for the donation they sent him. He exhorts them to be faithful to their vocation, and to maintain their present unity of belief, mentioning only one instance of disharmony. He ponders the favorable effect his imprisonment has had on the spread of the Gospel and points to the disinterested sacrifice of Christ as the transcendent formative rule for every Christian action. He proposes his own complete abnegation for the sake of Christ as the example to be followed against the false teaching of the Judaizers.

Again we see reference to Judaizers. They were converts to the Jesus movement who stressed the necessity of pagans first becoming Jews in order to follow Jesus. They, like most of the other Apostles, felt that Jesus really taught a reformed Judaism and, since most of the early Christians still followed all of the Jewish practices and even worshiped in the Synagogue each week, they felt that this was the right interpretation of what Jesus taught. As we know, Paul eventually convinces all that Jesus taught a new way of religious practice and living.

Getting to Know Something About Our Greek Catholic Faith — 20140608

The Apostles and first Christians retained from the Old Testament the feasts of Passover (Easter) as well as the feast of Pentecost (Pentecost – the same name is used). Why? Because of the similarity in the ideas that essentially brought about the establishment of these feasts. Further, in Christian history there was an additional effort to replace all Jewish and Pagan feasts with Christian feasts.

The events of the first Christian Pentecost are recounted in ACTS (2:1-41). It is important to note that ACTS indicates that the tongues of fire, that is the coming of the Holy Spirit, came down upon the entire community, consisting of about 120 persons which included the Mother of God, the Apostles and the other disciples. The explanation of the phrase in verse 4, “to speak in foreign tongues”, is disputed. Elsewhere in ACTS “to speak in tongues,” refers to glossolalia, the language of ecstatic prayer, which is intelligible only to those to whom the Spirit has given the gift of interpretation. It is likely that this is the original sensed of verse 4. But at some stage in the tradition, perhaps at the stage of final redaction, the tongues motif was connected by insertion of the word foreign with another and quite distinct theme: salvation made known to the people of the earth. In connection with tongues, this theme recalls, perhaps with conscious intention, both the confusion of tongues that according to Genesis chapter 11 divided mankind into distinct and hostile people, and the rabbinic legend of the preaching of the Law of Sinai to the nations. On the supposition that these allusions are    consciously intended, the Pentecostal event is present as the restoration of mankind’s unity, the reverse of Babel, and as a new Sinai in which the law of the Spirit takes the place of the Mosaic Law.

In the specifically Lucan perspective,  Pentecost inaugurates a new era in salvation   history, defined at its temporal extremes respectively by Jesus’ already accomplished enthronement as Lord and His still future coming as Judge. Concern over an imminent Parousia (i.e., second coming of Christ), gives way to concentration on the Church’s inner life and apostolic mission. As the Lucan Gospel is conceived in terms of movement from Galilee to Jerusalem, so the dynamic of the early Church’s life and growth, as portrayed in ACTS is conceived in terms of movement from Jerusalem to the rest of the known world. It is the glorified Christ who governs this movement through the Spirit bestowed on the feast of Pentecost and highlights that God has infused His Spirit into mankind. It is only for mankind to believe!

June 1, 2014

holy fathers iconThis weekend, since it falls within the octave of the Feast of the Ascension, we not only celebrate this great feast but also remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, the Council of   Nicaea, held in 325 CE. This Council is, perhaps, the most important of all the Councils of the Church since it truly began the process of defining the Christian religion in all of its fullness.

I believe that it is fitting that we celebrate these two events together since Nicaea asserts our belief that Jesus, the Christ, is truly God and truly man and his last act on earth, His Ascension, clearly shows us that the journey of human life is meant to be an ascension to the Heavenly Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We would not have this understanding of the meaning and purpose of life if it were not for our belief in the divinity of Jesus and our belief that, after His resurrection from the dead, He ascended into heaven where He is preparing a place for us. Think about the image of His ascension.

For all this to make any sense, however, Jesus had to be experienced as being alive – His followers actually saw Him after His death and burial. Then they had to sense His leaving and understand His words of going before them into the next life.

It is interesting that, even though His followers had these experiences, it took hundreds of years for the Church to find the real words to express the fact that Jesus IS God. The reason why this was such a struggle, I believe, is that they had to find words to express the fact that the One God they worshiped somehow is composed of three individual persons in one nature, that is in One Godhead. It was the ideas of Greek philosophy that allowed them to find the words to truly express this belief. Those words were formulated at the First Council of Nicaea. The followers of Jesus knew, since they heard Jesus talk about one God, that they had to find words to express the oneness of the Godhead and yet allow for the plurality of the Persons of the Godhead. They did not, and realized that they could not, return to a form of polytheism – the belief that there are many gods and that they are all separate.

It is my hope that all of my readers come to sense the truly radical breakthrough in human thought that the Christian mystery of the Trinity has brought to humankind.