The people who flocked around Jesus were hungering for a better life. They were restless, not satisfied with their present life. Among them were tax collectors who were actually collaborating with the occupying Roman army. There were prostitutes, thieves, and any number of unsavory characters, as well as the sick, the lame, and the blind. In fact, Jesus’ enemies derided Him as a friend of sinners. The main group of people who did not respond to Jesus were the self-righteous, who were satisfied with themselves and their way of life. These people felt they had earned their place with God; they felt no need for what Jesus had to offer. They stood in judgment of others, but they could not look at themselves. Many of these hungry, restless, lonely outcasts became disciples of Jesus. Continue reading
Patriarch Joseph Slipyj, of blessed memory, wrote: The Liturgical cycle of the Church is very rich. It guides us through the whole year, continuously placing before our eyes the of the life, passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the grandeur of the Divine Motherhood and powerful intercession of the most Holy Virgin Mary, and the lives of holy men and women who, by their heroic lives, give us further insight into how to live life. The Patriarch further wrote: The seasons of fast help us to exercise more self-control and better prepare us for a sacramental encounter with Christ.
It is evident that our Church Year resembles a great spiritual book that teaches us in a practical manner how to praise, love and serve God and thus save our souls. It speaks to us of the great love and mercy of God towards us. It predisposes us to prayer, sacrifice and penance.
The Liturgical Year is indeed important for our spiritual development for several reasons. First, it reminds us that Christ is living and still active in our world and lives. For us the festivals or holy days of the Year are not meant to be simply commemorations of past historical events. They are, rather, opportunities for us to participate in these life-giving events. Since there is truly no time in the spiritual dimension of the universe, all of the events that we celebrate are taking place right now. The people involved in the events we celebrate are not dead persons but, rather, people we know to be alive in God’s Kingdom – the next dimension of life.
The Church Year, then, is a reminder to us that Christ is still actively working in our world and that we become His extension into history and time.
The Church Year also presents the Good News in practice and helps us to see how we should live right now in order to make God’s Kingdom real.
It is important to note that our Church Year, which begins at a different time than that of the Western Church, also has its own calendar of saints and feast days. Some holy days fall on the same dates. Others do not. We have our own unique calendar of saints. We also have our own unique lectionary, the book of appointed readings for each day of the year. We have our own Typicon, the book of prescribed ways and times for conducting feasts and their particular services.
These differences in liturgical practice, as you can well appreciate, greatly influence the spirituality and practices of our Church. While there are parishes in our Church that employ typical Western liturgical practices (e.g., Stations of the Cross) these services are not traditionally a part of our liturgical practice because they express a different spirituality.
Authenticity is the goal!
In the last issue of the article I introduced the notion of the interpretation of the Liturgy. I also raised this question in an indirect manner in last week’s sermon. What is our religion all about, especially that communal ritual that we call the Divine Liturgy. I suspect that most people don’t really think about its meaning or spend time attempting to interpret what it is all about. I also suspect that most people have very unique ideas about what the Liturgy is all about. I must confess that I too hadn’t given much thought to an interpretation of the Liturgy until I began sharing with you all the ideas of the Fathers of the Church.
I think where any real interpretation must begin is with answering the question: Why did God become a human being? In studying the writings of Dionysius. He said: God, in his love for man, took on him our human nature, sin only excepted, so that we might be united to his divine nature. Dionysius felt that man’s mind is enlightened, his soul freed from impure passions and his union with God brought to its fullest extent possible in and during the Divine Liturgy. Of course this requires the person celebrating the Liturgy to be fully focused on the celebration and doing all in his power to be a full participant. Union with God is not forced upon us. It is only offered. In order to achieve this union, we must do everything we can to allow the offered union to take place. This can be achieved by our full participation in the Liturgy. Think about it! In the Liturgy we can we receive what has been called Holy Communion. What is Holy Communion? It is union with the One Who alone is holy, God.
We know that we are incapable of actually apprehending this union with God. It is communicated to us by means of symbols. What greater symbol can there be than the Holy Communion of which we partake – the transformed bread and wine! While the symbols – that which we can see – still remain bread and wine, our faith tells us that what we partake of is really the Body and Blood of Christ, Who is God and man. We can only believe this!
The Divine Liturgy is the visible ritual that tells us that our faith can bring us into union with our God. It also tells us quite clearly another truth, namely that God’s own life is within us. Human life is a sharing in Divine Life.
This is, of course, a mystery. There is truly no real way that we can understand this without faith. While the West would find philosophical words to tell us how bread and wine can become the Body and Blood of Christ, these words cannot, in any real way, diminish the mystery which is Holy Communion. You are encouraged to believe, when you receive Communion, that you are united to God in/with others.
Mystical Supper
I have, in this article, emphasized the fact that our Eastern Spirituality, because of our theology and liturgical practice, must be different than Western Spirituality. I have also emphasized, in saying this, that one is not necessarily better than the other but that they are very much different. I have also tried to emphasize that our spirituality must be in concert with our liturgical practice. I do not feel that we can maintain a Western Spirituality and worship in an Eastern fashion. If we try this, our spirituality will only suffer. There must be harmony in the way that we worship and our spirituality.
The last major feast we celebrated, the Exultation of the Holy Cross, immediately comes to mind. Consider how we celebrate it. We present the cross enveloped in flowers and we make profound prostrations before the Cross while singing that we bow to the Cross and, within the same breath, praise Christ’s holy resurrection. We do not dwell on the Cross by itself but, rather, see it in the context of the Resurrection.
Further, the very fact that we make profound prostrations makes a difference. We engage our entire bodies in the praise of God. Praise is not just something that we mentally do. From past experience I know that many modern Christians find the profound prostrations as folksy and not something that educated people do. This actions seems just too primitive to some modern Christians and to make our religious practice so bodily seems not to fit with sophisticated, religious thinking.
Likewise, the manner in which we think about the Cross is so different. It is not that Christ suffered for our sins but, rather, that His suffering has revealed to us how we must live, knowing that suffering and pain are a natural part of human life. The Cross is much more an example, to us, of how we might achieve resurrection, that is eternal life, than it is a symbol of how God takes away our sins. Indeed the Cross is our salvation because it shows us how to live – how to live in the manner that God revealed to us. This is why the Cross is our salvation. It teaches us how to live.
A different emphasis! A different idea about the basic elements of our faith!
Again I am at a loss for words! I truly can’t find adequate words to express my deep thanks to all those who remembered my birthday last week. I would especially offer a word of sincerest thanks to our Parish Council members who pulled off an absolutely wonderful surprise dinner at my favorite restaurant. I would thank all those who took time out of their lives to come and be with me on Sunday night. Thank you so very much! I would also like to thank all for the gifts I received. I shall truly enjoy them and think of all of you at the same time. You are a wonderful parish family – my family – and I am proud being a part of it.
If a man wishes to come after me,
he must deny his very self,
take up his cross,
and follow in my steps
On this weekend after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, both of our readings – the Epistle from the letter of Paul to the Galatians and the Gospel from Mark’s narrative – succinctly present the doctrine of the Cross. Both readings stress what the implications of Christ’s cross are for those who are His followers.
Paul tells us simply that he believed that he was crucified with Christ andthat his life was not his own because Christ was living in him. Paul clearly saw the importance of embracing the Jesus Way of Living. He understood that Jesus was God’s revelation to humankind with regard to how this earthly life must be lived in order to obtain eternal life. Paul realized that Jesus revealed the meaning of human life. We humans are here to learn how to truly be spiritual, human beings.
Mark’s Gospel makes this message even clearer. Mark shares these words of Jesus: if a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and follow in my steps. In other words, to follow Jesus means to embrace the challenges of life as He did and not allow the difficulties of life to diminish our faith and hope in God or our ability to love. His life, and His reactions to the challenges of His life, clearly show us this truth.
Indeed the Cross clearly manifests how Jesus Christ denied Himself and embraced the life given to Him – He freely embraced the Cross because it was His way to reveal to others that what He taught about life was and is what God desired mankind to understand about life.
It is so easy to misinterpret the events of life. Obviously none of us desire to suffer or be disappointed. Life presents each of us disappointments, failures and sufferings. Most humans tend to focus on these forgetting that life also presents certain moments of happiness, times of success and genuine feelings of love. Life needs both in order to help us learn the lessons that life is supposed to teach us.
We need to remember God’s words to Paul: My grace or help is sufficient for you to endure all the things of life and to grow because of them. Only place your hope and trust in Me.
Hope and trust in a loving God Who will be with you through all the events of life is critical for spiritual growth. To follow Christ meansto see the value in all the experiences of life, whatever they may be.
Mystical Supper
The meaning of what is done in the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, is conveyed to the worshipper in the first place by the prayers which are said. This is one reason why I invented the Liturgical Scavenger Hunt. It is critical that we understand the words that we use in our communal prayer and truly make them our own words. But an understanding of the ritual we use can grow up alongside the prayers we use. As I have shared, a symbolic interpretation of the Liturgy was given as early as the third century. The first full-scale interpretation of the Liturgy in Constantinople was provided by Maximus the Confessor, one of the Eastern Fathers that all of my readers should know since I have included, over the past months, many of his thoughts in the articles of this Bulletin. His writings are from the first half of the seventh century. Prior to him, however, Dionysius the Areopagite gave an interpretation of the Liturgy. The writings of Dionysius, who was one of Paul’s converts in Athens, are generally held to belong to the late fifth or early sixty centuries and come from somewhere in Northern Syria. Their real author is unknown. It is possible that they come from a background not unfavorable to monophysitism, since they are first quoted in the works of the monophysite Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (512-18). (Monophysitism was condemned as a heresy. It maintained that Christ only had a divine nature and that He did not have a human nature. Chalcedon declared that Christ is fully God and man).
The Chalcedonians seem first to have heard these interpretations of the Liturgy in the course of theological conversations with Severian bishops in 532. Prior to that their attribution to Dionysius was generally assumed to be authentic. These writings, because of this attribution, carried considerable authority. Maximus made use of them and so did the last of the Byzantine liturgical commentators, Symeon of Thessalonike in the fifteenth century.
Dionysius’ interpretation of the Eucharist must be set in the context of his whole presentation of Christianity. He drew upon the Alexandrian theological tradition and on the philosophy of the Neoplatonists. The goal of the Christian life is union with God, whom Dionysius refers to as the One. He is the spiritual reality from whom all other spiritual realities have come and to whom they must return. Dionysius is not afraid to speak of man’s deification. But because of his disobedience man finds himself separated from God, separated from his fellows, and a prey to internal disruption. He is incapable by himself of rising above the passions which tear him apart and the material world which holds him down and prevents him from finding his lost immortality in union with God.
A truly vibrant Christian community is one wherein the majority of the members desire to grow spiritually. Many are the questions that they raise, such as: Is there any point to my life? Is this all there is? How do I get closer to God? Whoever has asked these or similar questions has really been asking “How do I spiritually grow and become the person God intended when He created me?” Questions like these are the starting point for any real spiritual growth and development. Yet many people feel that the word spiritual is too lofty or removed from their everyday experience. They think that spirituality deals with something beyond them, with something reserved for a chosen few.
The Gospels tell us that Jesus invited ordinary people to follow him. Like people today, they were filled with questions about the meaning of their lives and about how they related to God. People today still are struggling with these same questions. Jesus still invites them to follow him and learn from him how to answer their own questions. John reports this in his gospel (John 1:35-39):
The next day John the Baptizer was here again with two of his disciples. As he watched Jesus walk by, he said, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard what he said, and followed Jesus. When Jesus turned around and noticed them following him, he asked them, “What are you looking for?”
If people are to grow spiritually, they must be in touch with the fundamental realities of their lives, with where they are going, and with where they really want to go. Frequent critical reflection is the key to being in touch with the direction of our lives. It prevents us from taking things for granted.
We need not only to look at the crises in our lives, but also on a regular basis to stop and look at the small, ordinary, routine events of life. This reflection puts us in touch with our hungers and, if done with faith, opens us to the offer that God makes in Jesus Christ. God’s offer is not a solution to human problems but a commitment to be with us as we work through them.
So to grow spiritually, people need to recognize their deepest hungers. Psychologists tell us that all our psychological hungers or desires can be reduced to four: the desire to love and be loved, the desire to know, the desire to grow, and the desire to live forever. These four desires ultimately can be satisfied only by God. But people do not always recognize and acknowledge that the deepest reality of life is God and that these desires are really a sign of their hunger for God. We, as human beings, like to think that we can find answers to life’s questions on our own – that we don’t need help and are self-sufficient. Oh Contraire!
The last issue of this article ended with some thoughts on the ending of Mark’s Gospel. The oddness of Mark’s last verse should not distract from the central affirmation of the story, spoken by the angel to the women. The angel begins with the obvious: You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. Then the proclamation: He has been raised; he is not here.
Thus Mark’s story, in spite of its puzzling ending, unambiguously proclaims the central conviction of Jesus’ followers in the post-Easter period. Jesus was not just a figure of the past, but is a figure of the present. You won’t find him in a tomb, won’t find him in the land of the dead; imperial execution and a rich man’s tomb couldn’t hold him, couldn’t stop him. God has raised and vindicated him – he lives and is Lord. This conviction, the foundation of early Christianity and the New Testament, is expressed with great economy in Mark’s Easter story. It’s all there. The tomb is empty! Jesus is still loose in the world!
It is also important that we consider the historical context in which Mark’s Gospel was written. Dating Mark’s Gospel around 70 CE puts it during a momentous time for Jews and early Christians, the majority of whom were Jewish. It was especially calamitous in the Jewish homeland. In the year 66, a revolt against Roman rule broke out. The Jewish revolutionaries were initially successful. They took control of Jerusalem, deposed the high priest appointed by Rome, and installed one of their own. War immediately followed. Rome sent several legions to crush the revolt. After four years, in the year 70, the legions reconquered Jerusalem and destroyed both the city and the temple. It was perhaps the most devastating event in ancient Jewish history, rivaled only by the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple some six centuries earlier.
The destruction of the temple was unimaginable for first-century Jews. Herod the Great (ruler of the Jewish homeland from 37 to 4 BCE) and his successors had turned the temple into a magnificent combination of courtyards and buildings that had features of a fortress. Its walls were high (over 300 feet at one point) and massive (some stones were 40 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 7 feet high and weighed 200 tons). It seemed like an impregnable fortress. Moreover, according to temple theology it was the dwelling place on earth of the God of Israel. God had promised to dwell in it forever. Only there were sacrifices offered to God. Surely nothing could destroy it. In 70 the unimaginable happened. The temple was destroyed. One can only imagine what went through the minds of people. The temple of the God that freed them from Egypt, was destroyed. Unthinkable!