Reflections on the Scripture Readings for this Weekend — 20170409

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The Great Lent and Holy Week are two separate fasts and two separate celebrations. The Great Lent actually ends on Friday of the fifth week. The following day, Lazarus Saturday, begins the Great and Holy Week. This special week begins by the Church recalling that the Lord raised Lazarus from the dead. By this act, the Church confirms her true belief in the universal resurrection of all from the dead. This act also prefigures the Lord’s own resurrection that we will celebrate on the Great Day – Pascha – Easter.

After we recall this event, we celebrate Willow or Palm Sunday, the Lord’s voluntary entrance into Jerusalem to His death.

The Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Passion Week are called the “the days of the Bridegroom” because the Church focuses our thoughts on Christ as her Bridegroom, Who bears the marks of His suffering and yet prepares a marriage Feast for us in God’s Kingdom.

Of course Holy Thursday remembers that the Lord promised to be with His Church always and made this truly possible by transforming bread and wine into His own Body and Blood. He established this miraculous way to be with His followers.

Great and Good Friday, of course, is the day upon which we remember His voluntary and noble death. On this day we sit vigil at His grave in thanksgiving for His great love.

Great and Holy Saturday is truly a day of hope and waiting. Although we know the end of the story, nevertheless we await to hear again the words which stir our hearts and minds as we celebrate the fact that God has rescued us from Death.

Passion Week ends on Saturday since PASCHA is a day unto itself and marks a new beginning for the followers of Christ – the true beginning of God’s Kingdom on earth. This new beginning is marked by an eight-day week. The first new week, which runs from Pascha to Thomas Sunday, is considered by the Church to be one week – Bright Week. Each day is marked by the use of one of the Eight Tones that are the proper prayers that we use during Ordinary Time.

Our Church presents all that Christ did for us in a most magnificent fashion. Let us truly enter into this Week with faith.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20170409

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As we enter into this Great and Holy Week, I believe that the Call to Holiness is a call to truly reflect upon the events in Christ’s life as real and true revelations about how we must live if we truly wish to be children of our Heavenly Father. I truly believe that if we sincerely enter into the observance of Great and Holy Week, we will discover that God has, out of love for us, given us a guide for living this human, earthly life. That guide is His Son, Jesus. The events that we remember are meant to help us find the true meaning and purpose of life. They are not just abstract, historical events that have no meaning. They truly reflect in some way, I believe, how we must live if we desire to grow in our union with our God.

Jesus, as truly man, embraced the challenges of His life as real opportunities to grow in His trust of our Heavenly Father. The events of the last days of His life truly challenged Him to trust in the Father and to accept life as it was presented to Him. There were opportunities in the last days of His life, to escape the challenges that He and others foresaw. The fact that He was repeatedly challenged by the leaders of Judaism, told Him that they were upset with His actions and interpretations of their religion. So He was quite aware that they might try something to silence Him. In fact the Gospels tell us that His disciples tried to keep Him from going to Jerusalem.

Much like the prophets before Him, He realized that He had to present the truth as He knew it to be. Like the prophets before Him, He realized that to run away in fear of what might happen to Him, would be tantamount to telling people that what He taught was not true. Prophets before Him were killed for speaking the truth, albeit not in quite as horrendous manner. Besides being God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus was also truly a prophet.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20170409

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On this Willow Weekend, we use the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The Liturgy of St. Basil the Great remains a part of the Great Lent or Fast. The Tropar for this feast has us pray:

O Christ God, You confirmed the resurrection of all before the time of Your Passion by raising Lazarus from the dead: therefore we, like the children of Israel, carry the symbols of victory and cry out to You the Conqueror of death: Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

The Church reminds us that the Lord’s actions before His death and then His glorious resurrection after His burial, remind us that He, by His loving actions, has revealed to us that life is truly eternal and immortal and that bodily death is only the means that God has created to help us make a transition from this present life to the next stage of our eternal life. Jesus revealed this by raising Lazarus from the dead. He confirmed this fact by His own resurrection.

Our God, through these actions of His Son, desired to reveal to us the true meaning and purpose of this earthly life. There is a reason why we are here. Our lives are not just some sort of accident! Indeed we are given this earthly life to spiritually grow and to increase our awareness of the true nature of the life that we have been given. Human life is non-other-than a sharing in God’s own Divine Life. In fact, God’s life-force vivifies all of creation. His life-force calls all things into existence and maintains them in existence. This is what we are called to believe.

Some may find this hard to believe and resist committing themselves to this belief. While I realize that it cannot be empirically proven, it is a belief that gives a certain sense to this life. It also brings a deep sense to the worship (i.e., the Divine Liturgy) that we offer to the Father together with Jesus.

The Divine Liturgy confirms two very important things: (1) that our incarnate God, in the Person of Jesus, IS WITH US when we recall what He did on the night before He died; and (2) human life is a participation in God’s own life. The symbols of life, namely bread and wine which are representative of life, are CHANGED and TRANSFORMED into the very life of Jesus Himself. This is meant to be more than just symbolic. In truth, as we humbly receive the Body and Blood of Christ – Christ Himself – into our lives, we are transformed and radically changed – we become true children of God. Let us enter into this Great and Holy Week with this firm belief in our union with our God.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20170409

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It is my hope that as we enter into this Great and Holy week, that you, my readers, will join with me in thinking about the meaning of what we recall. It is important, I believe, that we don’t just participate in the services of this week without understanding their implication for our lives. We are called not to remember some past events but, rather, to understand what these events mean for our present life. When this week is over, it should not be that we just go back to our normal life. Life should change in some way each time we celebrate these events.

We are called to understand that when the world rejected its Savior, when He died on the Cross, normal life came to an end and it is no longer possible. For there were normal men and women who shouted “Crucify Him!” Who spat at Him and nailed Him to the Cross! And they hated and killed Him precisely because He was troubling their normal life. It was indeed a perfectly normal world which preferred darkness and death to light and life. Jesus’ death caused the irrevocable condemnation of what is considered a normal world or a normal life. His death indeed revealed the true and abnormal nature of human life as it was and is without the Light of God’s revelation, Jesus. The way that Jesus lived and died is God’s revelation to humankind about the meaning and purpose of this earthly life.

The Pascha of Jesus signifies to those who believe in Him, an end to a world that is only guided by human wisdom – a world without faith.

The word Pascha means Passover or passage. The Feast of Passover was and is for the Jews the annual commemoration of their whole history as salvation – a passage from the slavery of Egypt to freedom from exile into the Promised Land. It is also the anticipation of the ultimate passage — into the Kingdom of God.

Christ, we believe is the fulfillment of Pascha. He performed the ultimate passage: from death into life, from this normal world into a new world, into the new time of the Kingdom. He opened the possibility of this passage to us.

Living in this world we can already be not of this world, we can be free from slavery to death and sin and partakers of the world to come.

But for this to happen, we must perform our own passage, we must put on Christ, condemning the old Adam in us. And thus Pascha is not an annual commemoration of a past event. It is this Event itself that must lead us to a new way of living, inspiring us to desire a deeper union with our God by a transformed life.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20170409

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In the last issue I shared that Mark used the word straightway numerous times. In the passion narrative of the Gospel, however, Mark uses the word sparsely and ironically. Judas arrives to betray Jesus straightway and approaches his with a kiss straightway. After he as denied Jesus three times, Peter hears the second cockcrows straightway. The high priest calls the council to condemn Jesus straightway. If one recalls Mark’s earlier use of the word, the irony here seems heavy. At the same time, by using it Mark is signaling a larger irony by which, in spite of all appearances, God’s plan is going straight.

Another key word translated literally in the Gospel is ecstasy. If one analyzes the elements of this word, one sees that it is made up of two parts ek, which means out in Greek and stasis, which is related to the Greek word for stand. Thus to experience ecstasy means to stand outside oneself, to be outside one’s normal state of being. Mark uses one form of this word when he wants to indicate that someone is out of his mind. When Jesus cures the paralytic, for example, Mark first describes his cure as a kind of resurrection, saying that the man rose up, picked up his mat straightway and went away in the sight of everyone. He then says, “they were all out of their minds and glorified God saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this’. A similar use occurs in Chapter 3 when Mark says that those close to Jesus thought that Jesus was out of his mind.

Mark uses a different form of the same word to indicate moments when something Jesus does or says causes people to experience an abnormal state of awareness and joy. He uses both forms of the word to describe the scene in which Jesus raises up the daughter of Jarius. When Jesus arrives, people are already lamenting her death. Then, Marks tells us, “He said to her, ‘Talitha koum’, which means Little girl, rise up.” Then Mark describes the reaction of those witnessing this event: “the girl, a child of twelve, rose up straightway and walked around. At that, they were out of their minds with ecstasy.

At the end of the Gospel, when three women come to Jesus’ tomb to anoint him, they discover that his body is not there, and a young man in white tells them: “He has been raised.” Mark then describes their response as one of “trembling and ecstasy”. Mark has prepared his readers for this response by the earlier episodes.

More to come!

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20170409

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The Arians fundamentally err, Athanasius asserts, in limiting their thinking and speaking about God to what seems possible from a human perspective. Athanasius concedes that if the Scripture were describing a human man or relationship, the Arians would be correct. “Now if they are discussing a man, then they may argue about his word and his son on the human level. But if they are talking of God, man’s creator, they must not think of him on the human level.”

This, Athanasius contends, is the Arian’s fundamental mistake. Human procreation does take place in time and space. Human fathers are both older and separate from their children. Begetting does involve division and separation. Not so, however, with God. The Arians have forgotten who the subject of the discussion actually is: “The character of the parent determines the character of the offspring. Man is begotten in time and begets in time; he comes into being from non-existence.” The same is true of human speech: “his word ceases and does not remain. A human word is a combination of syllables, and has no independent life or activity; it merely signifies the speaker’s meaning, and just issues and passes away and disappears, since it had no existence at all before it was uttered; therefore a man’s word has no independent life and activity; in short it is not a man.

The Arians are guilty of a serious category error. They have applied human categories to God in an inappropriate and illogical fashion. “God,” Athanasius insists, “is not like man.” Rather, “he is ‘he who exists’ and exists forever.” Furthermore, “his Word is ‘that which exists,’ and exists eternally with the Father, as radiance from a light. But God’s word is not merely ‘emitted,’ as one might say, nor is it just an articulate noise; nor is ‘the Son of God’ just a synonym for ‘the command of God,’ but he is the perfect offspring of the perfect.” God’s divine Word [Jesus, the Christ] is, indeed, utterly unique.

We see that Athanasius argues quite forcefully again Arius’ teachings and truly asserts that Jesus, although begotten by the Father, is eternal with the Father.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20170409

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As we enter into this Great and Holy Week, I would bring to an end my thoughts on St. John’s Ladder of Divine Assent. His ending step on the Ladder is love. While Christ told us that by imitating God’s love, mercy and forgiveness we will “be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect”, we are speaking in human language that cannot adequately convey the exact truth about God, who is beyond human understanding and all human speech. For God is infinitely perfect and no matter how perfect we become, we will never enter into the essence of God. We will never become anywhere near as perfect as He is. This is why St. John describes dispassion as an uncompleted perfection of the perfect.

This applies even to the last step of the Ladder. If God is infinite, and if “God is love,” then love Is infinite, which means we will never reach the end of it. Even in the eternal life to come, we shall be forever increasing in love, forever plunging the infinite depths of God. Thus St. John describes love as the progress of eternity. He writes:

Love has no boundary, and both in the present and in the future age we will never cease to progress in it, as we add light to light.

Each step of the Ladder can be understood as a progression in divine love, and with each step we come a little closer to the Trinity. Love is not only the final step of the Ladder, but every step of our divine ascent into the Kingdom of heaven.

Thus the Ladder concludes with the voice of God, who is love, inviting us to grow ever closer to Him, truly exhorting us to climb ever higher on the Ladder of Divine Love.

We have a wonderful opportunity during this Great and Holy Week to consider St. John’s Ladder and ask Almighty God to help us progress in our love of Him through our love of all of our neighbors. All this is for our salvation.

ВЕЛИКОДНЄ ПАСТИРСЬКЕ ПОСЛАННЯ УКРАЇНСЬКИХ КАТОЛИЦЬКИХ ЄРАРХІВ У США

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ВЕЛИКОДНЄ ПАСТИРСЬКЕ ПОСЛАННЯ УКРАЇНСЬКИХ КАТОЛИЦЬКИХ ЄРАРХІВ У США

ДО СВЯЩЕНИКІВ, ЄРОМОНАХІВ ТА БРАТІВ, СЕСТЕР МОНАХИНЬ, СЕМІНАРИСТІВ ТА ДОРОГИХ ВІРНИХ

Христос Воскрес! Воістину Воскрес!

Ми радісно співаємо: “Христос воскрес із мертвих смертю смерть подолав і тим, що в гробах, життя дарував”. Наше урочисте проголошення сповнює нас надією!

Усвідомте з благоговінням значення слів сказаних ангелом жінкам-мироносицям, які прийшли до гробу раннього великоднього ранку, щоб намастити пахощами тіло Ісуса: “Чому шукаєте живого між мертвими? Його нема тут: він воскрес” (Лк.24, 5-6). Любов – це перемога. Смерть – це не кінець. Кінець – це життя, Його життя і наше життя через Нього і в Ньому. Наше існування має повноту краси, тайни, благословення більшу за ту, про яку найбільші мрійники не насмілювалися мріяти. Христос, наш Господь, Воскрес!

Воскреслий Христос сказав двом апостолам на дорозі до Емаусу, щоб мали відвагу і запевнив, що Ісус Христос переміг світ. Ми не повинні боятися долати перешкоди в пошуку життя за Доброю Новиною. Ми покликані бути життєдавцями. Ми покликані жити як великодні люди – люди надії. Надія закликає нас підніматися над собою, долати свої особисті перепони і йти далі з вірою в Воскреслого Христа! Христове воскресіння віддзеркалюється в нашому житті, коли ми відважно працюємо над нашим спасінням і задля спасіння інших, бо ми прагнемо, щоб усі були з Богом. Мир Воскреслого Христа буде з усіма нами.

Воскреслий Христос сказав жінкам-мироносицям передати апостолам, щоб зібралися в Галілеї, де Він зустріне їх (Мт. 28,10). Воскреслий Христос є з нами, коли ми збираємося в наших церквах на молитву, прославу і подяку Богові, і де отримуємо благословення: “Мир вам!” (Йо. 20, 19).

Ми, Єрархи Української Католицької Церкви в США, молимося, щоб ви раділи святом, сповненому надією і радістю благословенному Великодню. Нехай перемога нашого Господа над гріхом і смертю, Його обіцянка миру і життя вічного буде з усіма вами! Знайте, що мир прийде до всіх через Воскреслого Христа. Зростайте в вашій любові до Воскреслого Христа і в вашому відданому служінню Йому.

Нехай Бог дарує вам радість і втіху, багато здоров’я і впевненість у новому житті в Ньому, бо ми спільно проголошуємо – Христос Воскрес!

+Високопреосвященний Стефан Сорока (автор)
Митрополит Української Католицької Церкви у США
Архиєпископ Філадельфійський для Укpаїнців

+Преосвященний Павло Хомницький, ЧСВВ
Єпископ Стемфордської єпархії

+Преосвященний Богдан Данило
Єпископ Пармської єпархії святого Йосафата

+Преосвященний Іван Бура
Єпископ-Помічник Філадельфійський

Всечесніший отець Ричард Янович
Апостольський Адміністратор, Чіказької єпархії святого Миколая

Великдень, 2017

EASTER PASTORAL OF THE UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY OF THE U.S.A.

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EASTER PASTORAL OF THE UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY
OF THE U.S.A.
TO OUR CLERGY, HIEROMONKS AND BROTHERS, RELIGIOUS SISTERS, SEMINARIANSAND BELOVED FAITHFUL

 Xpuctoc Bockpec!   Christ is Risen!

We joyfully sing, “Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and to those in the tombs giving life”.  Our joyful proclamation fills us with hope!

Grasp in awe the significance of the words spoken by the angel to the myrrh-bearing women who went to the tomb early on Easter morning to anoint Jesus’ body: “Why look for the living among the dead?  You won’t find Him here. He is Risen!” (Lk 24:5-6).  Love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life, His life and our lives through Him, in Him.  Our existence has depths of beauty, mystery, and blessings more than the wildest visionary had ever dared to dream.  Christ our Lord has Risen!

The Risen Christ told the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to have courage assuring them that Jesus Christ had overcome the world.  We should not be afraid of surpassing our barriers of seeking and living the Good News.  We are called to be life-giving.  We are called to live as Easter people – people of hope.  Hope calls us to go beyond ourselves, to go broke with our personalities as followers and believers in the Risen Christ!  Christ’s resurrection is mirrored in our life when we courageously work for our salvation and for the salvation of others because we desire everyone to be with God.  The peace of the Risen Christ will be with us.

The Risen Christ instructed the myrrh-bearing women to tell his apostles to gather at Galilee where He will see them (Mt 28:10).  The Risen Christ is with us as we gather in our churches to give praise, glory and thanksgiving to God, and where we receive the blessing, “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:19).

We, your hierarchs of our Ukrainian Catholic Church in USA, pray that you may enjoy a holy, hope-filled, joyful and blessed Easter.  May our Lord’s victory over sin and death, and His promise of peace and eternal life be yours!  May you know the peace extended to all by the Risen Christ.  May you grow in your love for the Risen Christ and your zealous service of Him.

God grant you much joy and contentment, abundance of good health, and the assurance of new life in Him as we together proclaim that Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen!       Indeed He is Risen!

 

+Stefan Soroka  (author)
Archbishop of Philadelphia for Ukrainians
Metropolitan of Ukrainian Catholics in the United States

+Paul Chomnycky, OSBM
Eparch of Stamford

+ Bohdan J. Danylo
Eparch of St. Josaphat in Parma

+John Bura
Auxiliary Bishop of Philadelphia

Very Rev. Richard Janowicz, Apostolic Administrator
St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy in Chicago

Easter 2017

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20170402

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Mystical Supper

The priestly prayer that follows the Holy, Holy, Holy of the Anaphora of St. Basil the Great, is typically heard only in part by the faithful because it is so long. I would encourage all to take some time and read the entire prayer. It is a magnificent statement of our beliefs about God and His actions in our world.

The prayer begins by declaring to God that we are making our prayer – our worship – together with the blessed powers, namely the angels. We declare there is “no measure to the majesty of Your great holiness.” The prayer then goes on to state the entire history of salvation, beginning with the creation of humankind when God “formed man by tasking dust from the death and, stamping Your own image on him, O God, had placed him in a paradise of delights.”

So, the prayer indicates that God, after He had created inanimate things (i.e., the earth and all other things), used that very creation to form man by infusing it with His breath. This indicates that all things are joined in a miraculous manner. This supports the more recent ideas that scientists have hypostasized about the universe and all living things.

Basil then offers this prayer to God:

You did not utterly turn away from Your creature whom You had made, O gracious Lord. You did not forget the work of Your hands but devised for him a salvation through regeneration coming from Your Christ Himself.

The regeneration that comes from Christ that St. Basil mentions is, of course, achieved when we cooperate with God and strive to become more like Jesus – when we truly embrace personal transformation. Theosis, this spiritual process of becoming a spiritual person like Jesus, is what the journey of life is all about. We are here on this earth to “learn” how to be truly spiritual as well as material beings – to learn how to be a child of God, a person like Jesus.

St. Basil then, later in the prayer, asserts something that is important, namely that

On the third day He rose again, having established the way to the resurrection of all flesh from the dead because it was not possible that the Author of Life Himself should be the victim of corruption.

This is a clear declaration of our faith that Jesus is truly God Himself Who became incarnate as a human for the sake of revealing to us how to live this earthly life and come to a deeper union with Him. The purpose of human life is to come to a deeper union with our Creator-God. Do you understand this to be the purpose of your life?