October 5, 2014

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I will dwell with them and walk among them.

I will be their God and they shall be my people

allsaintsThe readings appointed for this weekend are powerful in that together they succinctly tell us how we must live in order to be truly the temples of our Living God. Hopefully the primary goal all of us are striving to achieve is to be the temples of God’s Spirit. The primary purpose of the Church is to help us achieve this goal.

What is interesting, when you reflect upon today’s reading from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and the assigned passage from Luke’s Gospel, is that Paul clearly understood that Jesus taught His followers that the promise Yahweh, the God of Israel, made to the Chosen People is the same promise God makes to all humans IF they live a life of love for others, including those they consider their enemies. How you treat others reveals your awareness that God’s life is within you. When and if you hate those who hate you, you deny God’s presence within you! When you act in a God-like manner, you prove that you understand that God is within you and that Jesus is God’s revelation of how humans were created to act.

Unfortunately when you look around our world today it seems very obvious that a good portion of humanity doesn’t see themselves as temples of God’s Spirit.

We have been called, through our Initiation into the Church, to be witnesses to this truth revealed by Jesus and professed by Paul. Paul clearly exhorts us to purify ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit and, in the fear of God, strive to live like Jesus lived – to live like children of God.

In order to live like children of God, we must not yoke ourselves in a mismatch with unbelievers. It is critical that we are not mislead by or embrace the way of living of those who do not believe in God and only live for the things of this world. In many instances this will mean that we must not embrace some of the extant values of our modern society. Regardless of how others live, even those we may count as friends, we must attempt to live like Jesus lived!

You will rightly be called sons and daughters of the Most High,
since He Himself is good to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Getting to Know Something About Our Greek Catholic Faith — 20141005

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It must be remembered that our Ukrainian Greek- Catholic Church did not exist as a separate Church until the Union of Brest of 1595/1596. Its roots, as I have shared in previous issues, go back to the very beginning of Christianity in the medieval state of Rus.

In the 9th century two Byzantine Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, began missionary work in Great Moravia and Pannonia and introduced the Byzantine approach to Christianity to people in Great Moravia and Pannonia. To facilitate the spread of Christianity among Slavic people who did not speak Greek, they devised the Glagolitic or Cyrillic alphabet, a hybrid Greek alphabet, to provide a written language for the people in the region. The language they derived came to be known was Old Church Slavonic and based on their interpretation of the dialects they heard spoken. The Byzantine-Greek form of Christianity was then adopted by Prince Vladimir I of Kiev in 988.

At the time of the Great Schism (1054) the Rusyn (Ruthenian) Church took sides and stayed in union with the Byzantine Church which then become known as the Orthodox Church.

Following the Mongol   annihilation of Kiev in 1240, Metropolitan Maximos of Kiev moved to the town of Vladimir in 1299. By 1326 Metropolitan Peter of Kiev had left Vladimir to settle in Moscow and by 1328 the title of Metropolitan of Kiev became Metropolitan of Moscow. The first properly Russian Church Council of the Hundred Chapters (‘Stoglav’) in 1448 codified the separate legal tradition of the Ruthenian Church, as differentiated from the Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1453 there was the formal separation of the Church of Rus’ into two separate churches, the Ruthenian (Kievan) Church and Metropoliae and the Russian-Muscovite Church. The Kievan Church still remained in union with the Church of Constantinople until later in history.

This situation continued for some time and in the intervening years what is now Western and Central Ukraine came under the rule of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish king Sigismund III Vasa was heavily influenced by the ideals of the Counter Reformation and wanted   to increase the Catholic presence in Ukraine. The Counter Reformation was initiated by the Roman Church after Martin Luther’s break with the Roman Church.

Meanwhile the clergy of the Ruthenian lands were ruled from Constantinople and much of the population was loyal to Orthodoxy rather than to the Polish Catholic monarch. The Byzantine approach to the Christian faith was deeply rooted in the lands which are now Ukraine and the surrounding area. The faith of the people was formed and nurtured by Byzantine Christianity.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20141005

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It was not until the fourteenth century that the Byzantine Liturgy reached the full term of its development and a process of consolidation was under way. Local variations in practice continued to exist in the world of Byzantine Christianity. But the widespread influence of the Diataxis of Philotheos helped to establish a basic uniformity in the celebration of the Liturgy in all the churches of the Byzantine commonwealth.

Philotheos was a monk of Mount Athos who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 1354. Two rival Typika, or sets of rules for celebrating the services of the Church, were in use in the city. The traditional Typikon of the Great Church was that which originated in the ninth century in the monastery of St. John of Stoudios. But by the twelfth century the Typikon of the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem was gradually gaining ground, not least because it gave more detailed instructions for the celebration of the services.

While still on the Holy Mountain, Philotheos drew up two Diataxeis, one regulating the priest’s and deacon’s part in Matins, Vespers and the Liturgy, and one giving detailed directions for the     celebration of the Liturgy. It established the text of the rites as well as the ceremonial to be observed. Its widespread use brought a uniform order into the Liturgy, particularly in the performance of the prothesis (i.e., proskomedia or the rite for preparing the gifts), which had the   largest number of variations It was introduced into the Great Church when Philotheos became Patriarch and quickly spread to the Slav as well as the Greek Churches. Its rubrics (i.e., guidelines for performing the ritual) were incorporated into the first printed service books in the sixteenth century.

ChurchesBy the fourteenth century the cross-in-square planned church was still widely found, but now alongside other designs. The Greek cross shape returned, and basilican-style churches were built too. Each part of the Byzantine world evolved its own characteristic variants of the basic themes, and a good many churches of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries have survived to enable us to study the setting in which the Liturgy was, and continues to be, celebrated. Many still have some or all of their decoration. The domed nave and the three apses at the east end continued to be normal.

It should be noted that the Liturgy is best performed in a building that is structured to enhance and support the ritual rather than a building that is shaped without regard for the ritual. The Byzantine ritual was highly developed. Everything was in harmony – building and ritual!

Called To Holiness — 20141005

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So the call to holiness – to be a vibrant and true Christian – begins with a certain hunger for God. To come to know their deepest need – to find God – people have to slow down. They have to be alone. They need to go inside. They need solitude, even if it is only for a short time each day. Our lives are pushed and pulled into thousands of activities. We need a resting place where there is no pressure, or we will never come in contact with the deeper side of life or with our basic hunger. It is in this silence and openness that we begin to discover both our hunger and God as the answer to our deepest yearnings.

Most people at some time or other do stop and reflect on their lives, but usually they do not do it     regularly on a daily basis. They resist setting aside time, not because they do not know their need and God’s offer, but because they find it hard to break habits that keep them busy and distracted.

Most people have developed habits that keep them from stopping, being alone, and going inside. They   involve themselves in work, making money, doing errands, keeping house, and making sure that all their waking hours are filled with sound. Consider how many of us constantly have the radio or television playing? How many of us are constantly on their cell phones. Look around you. Very few people can just sit and be quiet and allow themselves to experience life. All these activities go at such a frantic pace that they find it impossible to break the chain with which these activities bind them.

Dependencies on things such as TV, radio, alcohol and other drugs, sex, and work inside for an honest look at oneself. It is my own opinion that we fill our time with activities and sounds so that we don’t have to encounter ourselves. It seems we are almost afraid to encounter the person we are.

People may also resist because of fear. There often is a hidden fear, never quite fully expressed or clear, of what they will discover if they begin to touch their deepest longings and face the rock-bottom questions about the direction and meaning of their lives. They fear that they may find nothing there, or that they will not like what they discover about themselves and will have to change something.

Not living up to our potential is the price we have to pay for not living a reflective life and simply taking things for granted. When we live this way, we may have a sense that life is meaningless and without a purpose.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20141005

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Gospel-of-Mark-GraphicAs I suggested in the last issue, it is critical that we consider the context in which the Gospel of Mark was written. One of the evident themes in Mark’s Gospel is the Second Coming of Christ. For Mark and the early Christian community the return of Christ was imminent. Was the imminent return of Christ a post-Easter development or something that goes back to Jesus Himself?
This issue is complex. It is clear from Paul’s letters that he and his communities thought the second coming could be near. But was that because Jesus said so or at least taught that God would dramatically intervene in an unmistakable way in the very near future? Or was it because of their conviction that in Jesus something dramatically new and decisive had happened and that its culmination must therefore be close at hand? Is imminent eschatology an extension of what Jesus taught? Or is it the product of early Christian testimony, enthusiasm, desire and conviction.
To return to the historical context of Mark’s gospel, it is both easy and plausible to imagine that events around 70 CE generated an intensified expectation among Jews and Christian Jews that the end might indeed be near. God would soon intervene dramatically. Mark was a wartime gospel – a war between the empire that ruled his world and the people from whom Jesus came and who had been given the promises of God. Maybe this was the end that would make all things new.
Consider for just a moment how many times during the past 50 or 60 years we have hear people within our society declare that the “End” of human life on earth is near. Almost always, when there is serious struggle and anxiety in our world, people believe the end of the world is at hand. This has been a characteristic of Christianity. Partly it really expresses our hope that God might take charge of human life and make it different.
As you read Mark, keep in mind that it is the first gospel – the first extended telling of the story of Jesus put into writing. Seek to read it without what you have heard about Jesus shaping what you hear. Imagine that this is the way the story of Jesus was told in a Christ-community around the year 70. What Matthew and Luke add to Mark some decades later is not wrong. Nor is John’s very different telling of the story of Jesus wrong. Rather, in each case, we hear different authors and communities telling the story. Mark is the first.
I have always highlighted the differences that we find in the Gospel stories. I do this to reinforce the idea that the Gospels should not be taken literally and merely imparting historical information. The Gospels are meant to bring us to a real belief in Christ as God incarnate.

Learning Our Faith from the Fathers of the Church — 20141005

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As I stated in the last issue of this article, the election of the Virgin Mary is the culminating point of Israel’s progress toward reconciliation with God and God’s final response to this progress with the beginning of new life that comes with the Incarnation of the Word, Jesus. It is Mary’s unconditional response to God’s will that is critical in our understanding of her as the New Eve. She consent allows for the possibility of a humanity that realizes that the Creator totally understands the challenges of human life and renews His promise to be with humans through all the phases of earthly existence. Through the advent of into the world of an incarnate God, the true meaning and purpose of this earthly life is revealed.

Byzantine homiletic and hymnographical texts often praise the Virgin as fully prepared, cleansed, and sanctified. But these texts are to be understood in the context of the doctrine of original sin which prevailed in the East: the inheritance from Adam is mortality, not guilt. There was never any doubt among Byzantine theologians that Mary was indeed a mortal being. The real preoccupation of Western theologians to find in Byzantium ancient authorities for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary has often used these passages out of context. Indeed Sophronius of Jerusalem praises Mary: Many saints appeared before you, but non was as filled with grace as you….No one has been purified in advance as you have been…. Andrew of Crete, another of the great Eastern Church Fathers is even more specific, preaching on the Feast of Mary’s Nativity: When the Mother of Him Who is beauty itself is born, [human] nature recovers in her person its ancient privileges, and is fashioned according to a perfect model, truly worthy of God….In a word, the transfiguration of our nature begins today…. This theme, which appears in the liturgical hymns of the Feast of September 8, is further developed by Nicholas Cabasilas in the 14th century: Earth she is, because she is from earth; but she is a new earth, since she derives in no way from her ancestors and has not inherited the old leaven. She is … a new dough and has originated a new race.

Quotations can easily be multiplied, and they give clear indications that the Mariological piety of the Byzantines would probably have led them to accept the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary as it was defined in 1854, if only they had shared the Western doctrine of original sin.

Again, our liturgical practice reflects our Byzantine theology. There is a difference between the East and the West. One approach, however, does not negate the other or suggest the other is untrue!

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20141005

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I have been stressing in this article that we must, if we are to spiritually grow, know the worship practices of our Church and the theology that supports these practices. I have stressed that we must reassess our understanding of the Catholic faith as it is held in our Greek Catholic Church. It is not the same as the Roman Catholic Church. Both are equally Catholic! They are different. I say this because our theology and liturgical practices are different.

For example what does our Church mean when she asks God to forgive our sins and our transgressions which are either voluntary and involuntary. I suspect that few have ever given these words a second thought. In our Liturgy we say that we: prostrate ourselves before Your [God’s] mercy for our sins and for our transgressions. And in another prayer we ask God to: forgive us every voluntary and involuntary offense. We must ask: What are voluntary and involuntary offenses? The prayer does not say sins! We must also ask: What is the difference between sins and transgressions?

Some may argue that it is all just a matter of semantics. I really don’t think this is true! For example, in the Western world a distinction has been made between venial and mortal sin. I am sure that everyone reading this article will admit that they see sin in this fashion. And yet, these categories do not exist in the Eastern Church according to our theology. Sin is sin!

The Greek word for sin, amartia, means to miss the mark. As Christians, the mark or target for which we aim is a Christ-like life, one lived to the best of our ability in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ. When we miss this mark, when we fail to hit this mark, we sin. Murder is a sin. Pride and envy are sins. Stealing a car or a candy bar is a sin. While refusing to attend the Liturgy is a sin, it is also a sin to attend the Liturgy with hatred for others in our hearts.

Missing the mark is missing the mark. If we aim at the bullseye and miss, it makes no difference if it is by an inch or a yard. In both cases, we have failed to achieve that for which we strive. Hopefully these words will challenge my readers to think.

Sunday 28, 2014

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As your fellow worker, I beg you not to receive the grace of God in vain!
Now is the acceptable time!
Now is the day of salvation!

Christ and the Holy Apostles
As we complete this sixteenth week after Pentecost, our Church, through the assigned readings, issues, on behalf of Jesus Christ, a call to all of us to become His followers – Christ’s disciples. Believe it or not, you and I have been called to discipleship in this present day. The 64 million dollar question is: What does it mean to be a disciple?

A simple, easy definition of a Christian disciple is a person who accepts and assists in the spreading of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Discipleship is the process by which people grow in the Lord Jesus Christ and are equipped by the Holy Spirit, who resides in our hearts, to overcome the pressures and trials of this present life and become more and more Christ-like. This process requires us to respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to examine their thoughts, words and actions and compare them with those of Jesus as we know them to be through the Gospels.

As you might guess, this description raises just as many questions as it gives answers. For example: How does a person grow in the Lord Jesus? What is the Good News that I am to share with others? What does it mean to become more Christ-like?

I’m sure that at first thought this call to discipleship might truly seem overwhelming and even scary to many who read this. I suspect that one of the immediate responses is: I don’t believe I have been called to the religious life, that is to be a nun, brother or priest!

The fact of the matter is that all who are Initiated into the Church are called to be disciples of Jesus. That is precisely what it means to be a member of the Church.

So, how can you truly become a disciple? There are steps you can take! The first step is to become serious about your relationship with God, putting it above all other things in your life. If you have already done this, then you are already on the road to becoming a disciple.

The second step is to engage in a real and serious assessment of your attitudes and behaviors and see how they match up with those that you know Jesus modeled.

The third step is to plan on ways that you can bring your attitudes and behaviors into conformity with those of Jesus. This will take resolve and the elimination of any fear of personal change!

Learning Our Faith from the Fathers of the Church — 20140928

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In presenting the ideas of the Eastern Fathers of the Church, I am attempting to emphasize the fact that the spirituality of our Eastern Church is different from that of the Western Church. It is a long and noble tradition and our union with the Western Church has not changed our spirituality and understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
For example, as early as Justin and Irenaeus, Christian tradition, especially as we hold it, established a parallel between Genesis 2 and the Lucan account of the Annunciation, and the contrast between two virgins, Eve and Mary, to symbolize two possible uses of created freedom by man: in the first, a surrender to the devil’s offer of false deification, in the send, humble acceptance of the will of God.
Although it was superseded after the Council of Ephesus by the veneration of Mary as Mother of God, the concept of the New Eve who, on behalf of all fallen humanity, was able to accept the coming of the new “dispensation,” is present in the patristic tradition throughout the Byzantine period. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Proclus, frequently used this idea in his homilies. The Virgin Mary is viewed as the goal of the Old Testament history, which began with the children of Eve. Our Father Palams writes:

Among the children of Adam, God chose the admirable Seth, and so the election, which had in view, by divine foreknowledge, her who would become the Mother of God, had its origin in the children of Adam themselves, filled up in the successive generations, descended as far as the King and Prophet David…. When it came to the time when the election should find its fulfillment, Joachim and Anna, of the house and country of David, were chosen by God….It was to them that God now promised and gave the child who would be the Mother of God.

The election of the Virgin Mary is, therefore, the culminating point of Israel’s progress toward reconciliation with God, but God’s final response to this progress and the beginning of new life comes with the Incarnation of the Word. Salvation needed a new root, writes Palamas in the same homily, for no one, except God, is without sin; no one can give life; no one can remit sins. This new root is God the Word (Jesus) made flesh; the Virgin Mary is His temple.
It should be noted that we call Mary by no other name than Mother of God. This, the Eastern Church professes, is the greatest title that can be afforded her and, if we address her by any other title, we lessen her significance in salvation history.
So what is revealed by this Eastern approach to our understanding of Mary, the Mother of God, is that she brought us a new way of thinking about our relationship with God and changing our natural, human way of responding to Him!

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20140928

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In the last issue of this article, I began sharing with you the context in which the Gospel of Mark was written. The year was 70 CE. The war, with its climax in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, was central to the historical context of Mark. This is especially apparent in Mark 13 (you are encouraged to look this up) sometimes called the little apocalypse to distinguish it from the big apocalypse of Revelation (the last book of the New Testament [NT] which was     written by John the beloved) An apocalypse is the revelation of the end which is sometimes accompanied with a list of signs of what will happen near the end. Gospel-of-Mark-Graphic

Mark 13 begins with followers of Jesus marveling at the magnificence of the temple and its huge stones. Then Jesus warns them that it will all be cast down. The rest of the chapter speaks of what will soon happen: wars and rumors of wars, suffering and persecution, the desolating sacrilege in the temple (almost certainly referring to the legions offering sacrifices to Caesar in the temple after its conquest in 70), and then after a few more events, the coming of the Son of Man in clouds with great power and glory, language commonly and naturally understood to refer to the second coming of Jesus. It will happen soon, Mark says: This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

Thus the gospel of Mark is marked by imminent eschatology, to use a scholarly phrase. Eschatology is about the end – not the end of the created world, but the end of this age. Imminent eschatology means the end is near. It appears in Mark not only in chapter 13, but also earlier in 9:1: Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power. The coming of the kingdom of God with power and the coming of the Son of Man with power seem to refer to the same thing.

Mark and his community expected the second coming of Jesus soon. So did Paul and many others in first-century Christianity. The   language they use suggests that they expected it to involve a dramatic divine intervention. God would do this, soon. Obviously, they were wrong – it didn’t happen. There is vigorous scholarly disagreement about whether this expectation goes back to Jesus himself and his message about the kingdom of God or whether this conviction emerged after Easter within early Christian communities. To relate this to Mark’s story of Jesus, as the earliest gospel, does Mark’s imminent eschatology accurately report that Jesus expected God to intervene in a dramatic way in the near future? Or is it (and other NT expressions of it) the product of a process that began after Jesus’ historical life? Is imminent eschatology a post-Easter development?