Learning Our Faith from the Fathers of the Church — 20140817

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I would preface my sharing of Maximus’ thoughts on man this week by repeating a paragraph that I used to end last week’s installment. This is how last week ended.

As Maximus stated, the natural participation of man in God is not a static givenness; it is a challenge, and man is called to grow in divine life. Divine life is a gift, but also a task which is to be accomplished by a free human effort. This polarity between the gift and the task is often expressed in terms of the distinction between image and likeness

In Greek, the term homoiosis, which used for the word likeness in Genesis, suggests the idea of dynamic progress (assimilation) and implies   human freedom. To use an expression of Gregory Palamas: Adam, before the Fall, possessed the ancient dignity of freedom. Thus there is no opposition between freedom and grace in the Byzantine tradition: the presence in man of divine qualities, of a gracewhich is part of his nature and which makes him fully man, neither destroys his freedom, nor limits the necessity for him to become fully himself by his own effort; rather, it   secures that cooperation, or synergy, between the divine will and human choice which makes possible the progress from glory to glory and the assimilation of man to the divine dignity for which he was created.

So what is being said? God’s grace or help us part of our very nature. This makes sense when we believe that life is an actual sharing in God’s own Divine Life and that we are not separate from our Creator, even though we are individualized expressions of His life (This is also how we can say there are Three Persons in God and yet one God. Each Person in the Godhead is unique and distinct and yet they form but one Godhead).

Since God created us with free will, He also established a process by which we make progress toward union with Him. God created human life in such a way that it presents all of the challenges needed for us to grow – challenges which are unique for us – and these challenges continue until we freely embrace our destiny of becoming more united with God.

I know this sounds very complicated! I think that it is always important to assert that God calls us to union with Him but He doesn’t force this union on us. Rather, He keeps calling us and allowing life to provide a vast number of opportunities to learn that it is in our best interest to embrace the effort of growing in His image and likeness.

The understanding of man as an open being, naturally possessing in himself a divine spark and dynamically oriented toward further progress in God, has direct implications for the theory of knowledge and particularly for the theory of the knowledge of God. The Byzantine idea of man is much more open and respectful of man’s dignity as truly a Temple of God.

God doesn’t force us to love Him!  

Called To Holiness — 20140817

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When I went back and read last week’s installment of this article, I discovered that that I repeatedly used the phrase I truly believe. This reminded me that being called to holiness also means being called to faith and belief in Jesus Christ Who is God’s revelation to us about human life and how to live it.

I have often asked myself: Why did God become a human being in the Person of Jesus Christ? It is now very obvious to me that God became incarnate because humans didn’t seem to get God’s message about human life through the prophets He sent. I say this because of what Jesus taught. Obviously the   Chosen People didn’t get the message about how to live that God sent through the prophets. I guess they were so busy being chosen that they didn’t realize that God’s message was all about how to treat all other   human beings, regardless of how they treat you.

In many ways many modern Christians have followed on the path that the chosen took. They have forgotten that God’s revelation to humankind is all about how we treat one another. Wars spawned by religious beliefs have been going on almost since the advent of civilized society, and probably even before that. Humans find it hard to change the way they think!

As I see it, the problem is: How do we maintain this sense of unconditional love for all others when some others want to kill us for our beliefs or make us second class citizens. That is the dilemma we have to try and solve while being called to holiness.

It is obvious, from the narratives we have about the life of Jesus, that His approach was to remain silent! He didn’t fight back or try to rebut   the false accusations made against Him. I know that this may be difficult for many to accept and yet this seems to be what God was attempting to teach us through Jesus’ life. We have documents proving that this was Jesus’ response to the false accusations and hatred directed toward Him. Since God could have found a million of other ways to convey to us His idea about how we should live, He did it the way He did.

So being called to holiness means that we must consider the life of Jesus and then decide how we will live. Will we make an attempt to live as Jesus lived? Will we reject His way and just trust in our society’s response to life? The decision, of course, is ours.

The only consolation in this, as I see it, is that God will never stop loving us and that He will continue to let life provide us with the opportunities we need to accomplish this personal transformation. We, of course, can make life much more painful than it needs to be by our personal resistance to personal transformation.

Getting to Know Something About Our Greek Catholic Faith — 20140817

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The Rus’ state reached its zenith at the end of the 10th century and the first half of the 11th century. On the east lay the Volga Bulgars and the Patzinaks, who were decisively vanquished in 1036, some 48 years after Volodymyr the Great had all the citizens of his kingdom baptized.

Poland expanded under Boleslaw, taking territory from the Germans, the Magyars and Rus. In 1019 Boleslaw took the Cherven cities of Galicia. After his death in 1025, this area was retaken by Rus.

St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

The Byzantines took the Crimea in 1016. In 1018 they destroyed Bulgaria, which had developed a rich Eastern Christian culture.

The Rus cities of Polotsk and Novgorod developed a degree of autonomy at this time. Novgorod was given its own charter after its prince, Yaroslav, moved his capital to Kiev in 1036. The city gained ecclesiastical autonomy.

For some time the Papacy had been suffering a decline in its temporal power. But around 1000 the Church recovered and began enjoying a new prosperity and prestige. At this time the relations between the Eastern and Western Churches also deteriorated. The Church in Rus and the Slavic lands was associated with the Eastern branch of the Church. The Great Schism of 1054 greatly influenced the history of the Greek faith in these territories.

Volodymyr strengthened his ties with Byzantium through his personal acceptance of the new faith and his marriage to the Emperor’s sister, Anna.

When Volodymyr died in 1015, civil war broke out. Svyatopolk battled Yaroslav of Novgorod. In the confusion, Poles took Kiev in 1018. In the following year, Yaroslav succeeded in taking the capital. Defeated by Mstyslav, Yaroslav retreated to his base at Novgorod. Seven years later he conquered the Cherven cities to the west. Polotsk went its own way.

For a dozen years, Rus was divided between Yaroslav and Mstyslav. But when Mstyslav died in 1036, Yaroslav became master of the realm. He then re-united Rus and settled in Kiev, setting the stage for a new era in the history of Rus.

Yaroslav’s state could not become fully Christian and Slavic. The canonization of Borys and Hlib round 1020 prepared the ground for a native Christian culture. Slavic translations of Greek texts were imported from Bulgaria, which Byzantium had destroyed as a state in 1018. The Church Slavonic language and alphabet, developed by SS Cyril and Methodius, was adopted.

Christianity grew in this milieu and attached the Christians in this area to the Greek expression of the faith which allowed for the influence of Slavic culture on the services of the church. This highlights the fact that the Byzantine faith is not expressed in an identical manner in all the countries where it exists.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20140817

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During the past several weeks I have been sharing various thoughts about Eastern Christian spirituality, an idea and term which, I realize, is not, necessarily, easily understood. It is truly my firmest conviction that the spirituality of no two people can or needs to be the same. Spirituality, like our relationship with God, is unique and individual.

The Fathers of the Church have suggested, however, that there are various elements to any true spirituality. The first element, as I shared with you, must be liturgical. What do I mean in saying this? True spirituality has to include worship of God, expressed preeminently through the Divine Liturgy and a true understanding that our communion with God is only truly achieved by a deep and lasting communion with our fellowmen. I also truly believe that if we understand what transpires during the Divine Liturgy we know that communion with others is essential to an understanding of this earthly life, which has been given to us by God in order to learn how to be spiritual, human beings – children of God.

In many ways I find our modern society so interesting. There is a great emphasis placed on physical well-being. So much of our society is focused on healthy eating and exercise. The deep impression that this leaves, I believe, is that the most important thing about us humans is our physical bodies. Decreased church attendance (Other than those mega-churches that present truly spectacular entertainment), highlights that much of modern humankind gives very little thought to their spiritual nature. In saying this I do not intend to say that the people who don’t go to church are not truly nice and loving people. What I am trying to say is that modern society seems to distract people from thinking about the spiritual dimension of life. Our society has so many things that can easily distract us from spirituality. It seems to be a natural tendency, especially when things are going well in life, to forget about the fact that there is more to life than just this earthly existence. When we only live for today, we, in effect, deny that there are an eternal number of tomorrows.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20140817

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In the last installment of this article, I began sharing thoughts about what Liturgy is. The word liturgy means the work of the people and was borrowed from the political language of Greek cities. It originally had no special religious significance. The Greek translators of the Bible endowed it with implications which, if we want to understand the Liturgy, need to be taken into consideration.

First, we need to confine ourselves to etymology, without over-emphasizing the historical significance of the word. The word signifies a people and an activity. This fact opens horizons to us that we must never lose sight of when we consider the liturgy of Christians.

The people necessarily implies and means an organized community, a human group whose unity is forged by a common destiny, a group conscious of its unity, tending always to strengthen this unity by institutions and laws, by stocking its collective memory with myths. In the last installment I stressed the fact that the Divine Liturgy not only requires the presence of a community (i.e., at least two or three) but also forms the community. Whether based on strict historical fact or not, men cling to communities because of their meaning and it is these myths which, in the liturgy, take on form and life for the present-day community.

A common destiny, a social organization, a collective memory; these elements are all-important for the celebration of the liturgy.

It must be recognized that there is no liturgy that is not the act of an organized group of people – a community. The Divine Liturgy is, possibly, the most serious action that it is possible for humans to do, a set of actions in which human companionship reaches a profundity not found elsewhere. It is one of the few means by which a community can reach union, that is, the   intimacy of exchange, that transparency which brings an end to “I” and “You” and leaves only a truly unanimous “We.”

There is no real and authentic human activity which does not find expression in gesture. We ought to be ashamed to state such a truism, but everywhere we have arrived at such a degree of abstraction, wrongly sheltering under the name of spirituality, that the time is not long past when the liturgy was, and perhaps in some places still is, regarded with contempt merely because it could not be conceived without rites, that is without gestures, as stylized and impoverished as it is possible to imagine them.

It is easy, unfortunately, for ritual to become an end onto itself. And yet ritual, gestures and words, which have lost their meaning, are fruitless. One of the reasons I have initiated our Liturgical Scavenger Hunt is to help focus our attentions on the gestures and words we use in order to give real meaning to them.

August 10, 2014

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Mustard-Seed-Faith-by-CRII assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed
….
Nothing would be impossible for you.

 

 

As we complete the ninth week after Pentecost and also celebrate, as a community, the Transfiguration of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, we hear a most poignant message from God in our Scripture readings. The first portion of this message is contained in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (3:9-17). The second portion is from Matthew’s Gospel (14:22-34). The message in Paul’s letter is conveyed by this simple, and yet powerful, question: Are you not aware that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? This is a question which, I believe, we must ask ourselves at some point in time if we desire to grow spiritually and increase our understanding of who we are in God’s creation.

The message in Matthew’s Gospel is conveyed in these words of Jesus: I assure you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed…. Nothing would be impossible for you. These words give us hope that we can come to know that we are temples of God’s Spirit. These words also give us an insight into how we can come to know we are God’s temples. It is all a matter of faith! It is all a matter of daring to believe what we hear in the Scriptures and not be afraid to embrace this truth.

It seems that oft times we humans fear to really believe that God is within us because we become so focused on our own weaknesses. It is often hard for us to conceive the truth in the revelation that God has made to us through the Person of Jesus, namely that the life we experience is a sharing in God’s own life. This fear to believe this truth comes, I believe, from some of the negative statements we have heard about our sinful nature and some of the experiences we have had that highlight humankind’s ability for cruelty, selfishness, hatred and niggardliness.

Because of the behavioral aberrations we often discover in ourselves and others we sometimes fear to believe that we are God’s temples. These aberrations are quite often due to the fact that we do not conceive of ourselves as God’s temples. The truth of the matter is that once a person begins to truly see him/herself in the way that Paul saw himself and others, life changes and it is no longer possible to be anything other than a child of God. It takes faith! Faith in who we are in God’s kingdom.

Dare to embrace this truth!

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20140810

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As I shared in the last issue of this article, one of primary foundations of Eastern Spirituality is Hesychasm. When we speak of Hesychasm, however, we must be careful to assign to each element its right proportions, and first to Hesychasm itself. Hesychasm in the Eastern Church may be compared with the great Spanish school of mystics in the Western Church of the   sixteenth century. In both cases we find a remarkable endeavor to simplify and systematize the spiritual ways, to make them more practical and accessible. For example, Gregory Palamas, Nicetas Stethatos and Symeon the New Theologian neither surpass or supersede saints Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa – the Fathers and most authorized interpreters, not only of Eastern Christian thought but of Eastern piety as well. And beyond the contemplative mystics, beyond the Fathers themselves, the simple and pure Gospel remains central.

There is decidedly a scriptural element to Eastern Spirituality. The Word of God present in the holy and divinely inspired Scriptures remains the foundation of the whole of Eastern spirituality. In Eastern Churches the Book of the Gospels always lies on the middle of the Holy Table (altar) and while no mark of worship is paid to the reserved Eucharistic elements (This is where the Eastern and Western Churches differ greatly. We do not worship the Holy Communion reserved for the sick but, rather, see   the power of the Eucharist in the eating of it during our worship – the Eucharist is not meant to be an object of worship but rather the spiritual food that helps and sustains our spirit) each priest approaching the Holy Table kisses the Gospel first (The Gospel book is kissed several times during the Liturgy and is even considered to be a sacrament by the Eastern Church). The Holy Scripture is the very substance of the dogmas and liturgies of the Eastern Church and, through them, impregnates the piety of Eastern Christians. We believe that the Scripture is God’s revelation on how to truly be a human person.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20140810

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After sharing with you that Thanksgiving (Eucharistia) and Commemoration (Anamnesis) are an essential part of the Liturgy, it dawned on me that, perhaps, I should answer this fundamental question: What is the Liturgy? While the question is easy enough to ask, it is not as easily understood since we have to make certain human presuppositions. For before we can truly understand what the Liturgy is, we must first understand what being is and what man really is. We must explore the mystery of man as a social being, forming a community with other men. In our modern world there is a particular bias towards individualism. Our lack of what is called the social sense of civic spirit can prevent us even from beginning to understand the liturgy. There is a balance between the Person and society, which is a mystery. It will exist and continue to exist only if the individual and society are both referred to him who gives them their meaning, to God in all his transcendence. And this reference, expressed and experienced, is the liturgy in the widest meaning of the word.

Liturgy can only be understood in the context of a community. It is not something that exists without a community.

Mystical Supper

Mystical Supper

Liturgy belongs, then, to the inmost nature of human society: that is why it makes use of human means of expression and contact – gestures, natural at the outset, then ritualized, are the normal means by which men express and effect their mutual cohesion and their relationship with God. Here again we have a rediscovery of the irreplaceable value of primitive manifestations of the human spirit through the body. We can feel something of it easily enough in the case of poetry, music, sculpture – art, in short. Why then should it be absent from human relationships in our humdrum daily existence or, at the other end of the scale, in their highest form which is the adherence of the community to God in worship? It is possible that we shall be led to perceive not only the high spiritual value of our bodies and the wonderful mission of our controlled  feelings but also the great riches of meaning, of expression, of the true import in those human manifestations to which men devote themselves together body and soul – of which games are the commonest form and liturgy the loftiest.

To simply state this, liturgy then becomes an artistic, ritualistic, symbolic drama that we enact together to come to a deeper understanding of our relationship with God and with one another. The liturgy draws us together into community and expresses, in so many different ways, our relationship with one another through the actions of our God by sharing His life with all of us. We are joined together by the one life-force that permeates the entire universe. This we experience in liturgy!

Called To Holiness — 20140810

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In last week’s Bulletin I suggested that each of us, if we truly desire salvation, must ask ourselves several questions. The first set of questions I presented dealt with the actual process of becoming holy – being called to holiness. The second set of questions dealt with why I am the unique person that I am.

I would like to go back to the first set of questions. The first question I formulated was: What does it mean to be called to holiness?

I have come to understand that God’s call to me to become holy is really a call to be the person that He created me to be! I truly believe that He created me to complete His Kingdom right now! I am who I am because He (1) knows that where I am and who I am right now is absolutely perfect to help me to become all that I can be, and (2) knows that who I am and where I am also helps others become all that they are created to be. In saying this I am not attempting to aggrandize my position. I believe this same thing to be true of each and every other human being. We are where we are and who we are so that all things may work to bring us into ever closer union with God (You may have to think about this for a while in order to   garner all the meaning I am attempting to put into this).

I truly believe that God’s His creation. I say this because I also believe that He is sharing His own life with His creation, bring everything into existence and sustaining the existence of everything. He does this by sharing His life with His creation which, I truly believe, is accomplished by loving His creation (This is the message I get when I read the Fathers of the Eastern Church).

allsaintsSo a real part of being called to holiness is becoming aware of how much our Creator-Father loves us. I truly believe that the Eastern Church believes that if we come to understand our relationship with God, we will strive to be the very best that we can be. We don’t have to be frightened into being good. I know that it is my desire to bring glory, honor and praise to my heavenly Father because of the fact that I know He loves me. I don’t have to be threatened with the punishment of hell in order to strive to be my very best.

I believe that the spirituality of the Eastern Church is founded on this approach to life and constantly calls us, through our worship, to take this approach to life. Can I really hate my neighbor or be unjust to him/her if I see my life, and therefore their lives, in this manner? I think not! If God so deeply loves me, He also love all others with the same intensity. Therefore the only true response I can make is to love my neighbor as myself.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20140810

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Gospel-of-Mark-GraphicAny strictly chronological presentation of the books within the New Testament (NT) would, after any real consideration of Paul’s letter to the Romans, take us to Mark’s Gospel, the first and oldest of the written Gospels.

Around the year 70, an early Christian put the story of Jesus into written form for the first time. Though the location is uncertain, the best guess is a Christ-community near the northern border of Galilee in the Jewish homeland. We call the document Mark though it is not certain that somebody named Mark wrote it. The gospel does not name the author; he did not write The Gospel According to mark at the top of the first page. So also the authors of Matthew, Luke and John do not name themselves. Names were assigned only in the second century when the existence of several gospels required a way of distinguishing among them. Perhaps somebody named Mark wrote the earliest gospel, and perhaps not. It really doesn’t matter; its value doesn’t depend upon who wrote it. But we will call him and his gospel Mark.

Mark is the first narrative Gospel. Even if, as seems likely, a major part of Jesus’ teachings was   committed to writing in the 50s or early 60s in the hypothetical document “Q”, that is a collection of teaching and sayings of Jesus, not a narrative.

Mark is also the shortest gospel. It has sixteen chapters, compared to Matthew’s twenty-eight, Luke’s twenty-four, and John’s twenty-one. In percentages based on the number of words in each, Mark is about 60 percent as long as Matthew, 57 percent as long as Luke, and 72 percent as long as John.

Mark’s importance is greater than its relative brevity might suggest. It is the fountainhead of the other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke. Both authors not only had a copy of Mark when they wrote, but also used Mark’s threefold narrative pattern:

PART ONE
Galilee, where most of Jesus’ public activity happens

PART TWO
Journey from Galilee to Jerusalem for Passover

PART THREE
Jerusalem and Jesus’ final week, including confrontation with authorities, execution, and the discovery of the empty tomb

 In Mark, and in Matthew and Luke, all of this fits into one year, though the authors do not say so explicitly. But only one Passover and one journey to Jerusalem are mentioned. Only in John’s gospel does Jesus go to Jerusalem several times, including more than one Passover. His time frame for Jesus’ public activity is thus three or four years