The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20170326

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The second Prayer of the Faithful is likewise different in St. Basil’s Liturgy. The words from this prayer are, in my estimation, truly powerful. Two very different phrases are significant: “O God, Who have been pleased in Your mercy and compassion to visit our lowliness” and “grant to our lips confident power of speech so that we may call down the grace of Your Holy Spirit upon the gifts that are about to be offered to You”.

First, the fact that God became incarnate for the sake of our salvation is clearly stressed. Second, that God has, through Jesus, given us the ability to call down the Holy Spirit on our gifts if we truly believe. And last, it is through God’s Spirit – His power – that the gifts are transformed and that Christ is truly in our presence. This clearly speaks to how God operates in time. God the Creator has an idea, His Wisdom and Word makes that idea real – names that idea – and then His Energy – His Spirit – brings the spoken word into existence. It is each of the Persons of the Trinity, by their loving cooperation, that bring and sustain all things in existence.

While the beginning dialogue between the celebrant and the faithful at the beginning of the Anaphora is the same as that in the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, the first priestly prayer is different. I shared some ideas from this prayer in a previous issue.

One interesting point in both Liturgies is the fact that neither John nor Basil, when indicating that God is praised by angels, lists nine choirs. Sacred Tradition lists nine choirs in groups of three:

Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones;

Dominations, Principalities, Powers;

Virtues, Archangels and Angels.

 

 

 

 

In the versions we use, John only lists four categories of angels and Basil eight. Neither Father mentions Virtues. I shall, in a subsequent issue of the Bulletin, list each of the Choirs and a brief description of the function and role of each choir.

In both Liturgies, we exclaim that what we do, when we celebrate the Liturgy, we do together with the angels of heaven. We declare that we celebrate “with these blessed powers” and cry out with them declaring God to be “holy, indeed most holy.”

The holiness of God is the most difficult of all God’s attributes to explain, partly because it is one of His essential attributes that is not shared, inherently, by man. We are created in God’s image, and we can share many of His attributes, to a much lesser extent. I shall address God’s holiness and the choirs of angels in the future.

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20170326

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In the last issue I began sharing with my readers Athanasius’ response to the contentions of Arius whose beliefs, eventually, were branded as a heretical. I also started sharing Athanasius’ idea about the relationship between the Father and the son and answering the question of what the Son partakes in his relationship with the Father. Athanasius professes that since this partaking or sharing takes place only between the Father and the Son, it must be a sharing of “the substance of the Father,” as difficult as this may be to conceive or understand. Any other kind of sharing or partaking would be external and also, by definition outside of the filial relationship of the Son to the Father. The Son, Athanasius argues, needs no other intermediary to communicate the Father to Him. The unique status he possesses as Son in itself entails an immediate, timeless, eternal sharing, partaking and communion of identical substance.

Indeed, Athanasius believes, the eternal reality of God as Father demands that his Son also be eternally in relationship with him, a relationship predicated on the common substance and relationship shared. If this were not eternal and substantial, the reality of God as Father would be an imperfect one, one requiring further addition, that of the Son in time. As Athanasius puts it, “To beget in time is characteristic of man: for man’s nature is incomplete; God’s offspring is eternal, for his nature is always perfect.”

While I know that this is a difficult idea to understand, hopefully my readers are following the arguments of Athanasius against Arius to understand our Christian idea about God and about Jesus. An eternal Father, in short, demands an eternal Son. Was, Athanasius asks, God ever without his Word? How could he be? “Was he, who is light, without radiance?…God is, eternally; then since the Father always is, his brightness exists eternally.”

As I read the arguments of the Fathers about Jesus, I realize that the belief in Jesus as God Incarnate demands, requires that God be Three-In-One and not just one Person. What an amazing truth!

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20170326

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The last element of the last step on the Ladder of Divine Ascent is LOVE. St. Paul states that of the three virtues – faith, hope and love – love is the greatest (1 Corinthians 13:13). As I have shared, John clearly states that prayer is the greatest activity of the spiritual life because it is, by definition, a relationship with God. Love is the same relationship to an even greater and more intimate degree. This is why John states that love is greater than prayer.

But we are told not only that love is the greatest virtue of all, but that “God IS love (1 John 4:8). Why is this so? Because God is Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three Persons in an eternal relationship of love, oneness and unity. Love is relational and ever-lasting. Its fulfillment is a perfect harmony and un-ion of persons. Thus the only one who truly is love by nature, who is love in His very essence, is God the Trinity.

The claim that “God is love” is unique to Christianity. Other monotheists believe that one God means one person – and there can be no true love without more than one person. Polytheists be-lieve there are many distinct divine natures – and there can be no true love without a union of persons. God can be love only if He is Trinity, and therefore only Trinitarians can truly profess that “God is love.” This is truly something that should be thought about. The concept of God as Triune – that is three persons in one God – expresses the fact that God is truly love for it is love that brings the three

Persons into the unity of One God.

Again, think about this concept. The Fathers of the Church were able to fathom the mystery of God as Three-In-One mainly because they believed that Jesus was truly God as well as truly man. This concept of God as Three Persons being bonded by love is critical in our true understanding of God. Then, when you add to this that Jesus is also man, it binds us to God.

Reflections on the Scripture Readings for this Weekend — 20170319

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On this third weekend of the Great Fast, we humbly “bow before the Cross of Christ” and we praise His Holy Resurrection. As we venerate the Holy Cross this weekend are readings are taken from Paul’s letter to the Hebrews and Mark’s Gospel.

In the reading from Hebrews Paul presents Jesus as the “compassionate” High Priest – the One called by God to lead God’s People in true worship. Paul writes:

Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus let us hold fast to our profession of faith. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor and to find help in time of need.

Indeed the Cross is a true symbol of God’s great love for us and His desire to help us understand that the various challenges of life are only meant to bring us to the fullness of life – to bring us to a deep and real trust in Him. Jesus exemplified this true and deep trust in the Father in the way He embraced the challenges given to Him.

This is why the Church has paired the Gospel writing from Mark with Paul’s letter to the Hebrews. Mark shares this exhortation of Jesus:

If a person wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross and follow in my steps. Whoever would preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will preserve it.

The various challenges of life are truly not punishments but opportunities to place our hope and trust in God. Jesus showed us this. Spiritual growth comes when we can embrace the challenges of life as He did. Life presents unique challenges to each of us. When we are determined to embrace these challenges and learn from them, we are transformed – we spiritually grow.

This is why the Cross of Christ is the true symbol of the fullness of life and why we decorate the Cross with symbols of life. When we use life’s challenges to transform the way that we think and behave, we become more like Jesus – we actualize more of our potential to be like God.

This, of course, is the meaning and purpose of this human experience. Earthly life is given to us, out to love, so that we might voluntarily transform ourselves into spiritual-human beings – into persons who are more like Jesus. Let us truly embrace life as Jesus did!

 

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20170319

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I have been presenting Arius’ ideas about Jesus and his relationship to God and, of course, Athanasius’ response to Arius. Arius seemed to picture the Father and Son as bottles or decanters that are filled by each other’s contents. In a similar fashion a prophet of God experienced this type of participation when filled with the Spirit. In this way Arius hoped to preserve the uniqueness of God while simultaneously elevating the “Son” to divine status, by participation rather than nature. For instance, when Jesus gently rebukes Philip for not recognizing “that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10), Arius understood this participation or to be similar to that which other human beings have at times experienced, though Jesus experienced it to a much great extent or degree.

Athanasius would have none of this. Participation simply does not do justice to the biblical testimony concerning Christ, nor does it provide humanity with the savior it needs to be redeemed from sin. Athanasius wrote this:

I in the Father and the Father in me” does not mean (as the Arians suppose) that they are decanted into each other, being each filled from the other, as in the case of empty vessels, so that the Son fills the Father’s emptiness, and the Father the Son’s, each of them separately not being full and perfect. For the Father is full and perfect, and the Son is “the fullness of the godhead (Colossians 2:9). Again, God is not in the Son in the same way as he comes into the saints and thus strengthens them.

So the challenge that the Fathers of the Church faced and which someone like Arius attempted to deal with, was how Jesus could be fully God and, at the same time, fully man. This mystery is impossible for humans to comprehend. The natural tendency for humans is to believe either Jesus’ divine nature was predominant or his human nature was predominant. The true belief of the Church is, however, that Jesus is truly God and, simultaneously, truly man.

The great question that the Church had to solve was: What, then, does the Son partake in his relationship with the Father? Fathers of the Church like Athanasius and Cyril struggled to find the right words and ideas to answer this question.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20170319

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As I have suggested in considering Mark’s Gospel, we must understand the Old Testament (OT) background that informed Mark’s thinking and the thinking of the Early Church. God’s Wisdom, as we can discern from the reading of Genesis, was there from the beginning and created the world and all that is in it. God’s Wisdom is imagined as a maternal figure, that is life-giving, nurturing and healing, restorative and transfiguring. When Mark wanted to communicate the significance of Jesus, it was quite natural for him to present Jesus as God’s Wisdom made flesh.

A grasp of Mark’s overriding reference to Scripture (OT) should keep the reader from regarding his Gospel as an eyewitness account or as any conventional form of biography or history. It must also be remembered that at the time Mark was writing his gospel, there was still the belief by many of the Apostles that Jesus came to renew/reform Judaism. We hear in the gospels that Jesus told His apostles to go and preach to the people of Israel.

What Mark gives us is far richer. In keeping with the Jewish practices of his time, Mark interprets Jesus in the light of the Hebrew Bible. He uses Scripture as an interpretive framework. At the same time, he shows Jesus reinterpreting the OT. Out of this two-way exchange, Mark offers us a Wisdom book.

Like other Wisdom books, Mark’s Gospel derives its meaning from the Hebrew Bible. It takes place, for the most part, in the everyday settings of sea and synagogue, home and table. Its central figure, Jesus, offers wisdom in parables, riddles and short pithy sayings called aphorisms. At the same time, Mark shows Jesus to be not only a teacher of Wisdom but Wisdom itself. Jesus calls his followers to what can be called an unconventional wisdom, a way of living (and a way of dying) that he himself exemplifies.

In more modern terms, Mark’s work is truly and really theological. As such, its is purposefully put together. An attentive reader cannot fail to notice Mark’s craft: the repetition of certain significant words and the shaping of the narrative into symbolic events and meaningful patterns. There is a theological focus to his overall design. It must be remembered that the intent of all of the evangelists was to bring people to believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, Redeemer and Lord. Jesus is God’s Promise to mankind made real. God’s revelation about how to live as human beings.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20170319

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As I suggested in the last issue of this article, faith calls us to lead an authentic life, that is a life which is lived in accord with our beliefs. So, the big question we must always ask ourselves is: What do I really believe?

What do we believe? We are called to believe that God came into our world Himself in the Person of Jesus in order to show us how to live this earthly life and, therefore, acquire the fullness of life. Jesus taught us how to live. He taught us that in order to be true children of God we must learn how to unconditionally love and forgive others. To accomplish this we must not judge others and treat others as we want to be treated. Embedded in this approach to life is also love of our enemies.

Over the years I have found that perhaps the greatest obstacle people encounter to bringing about complete personal change and growing in the likeness of Jesus is this command to love our enemies. Still buried deeply in the psyche of humanity is a desire to hate our enemies and to respond to violence with violence. The desire to “crush” and “destroy” those we see as enemies seems to overwhelm any real spiritual growth. I think that the one action of Jesus that most modern people do not fully embrace is His forgiveness of those who murdered Him. This is also the reason why humans have constantly looked upon Jesus as more God than human – why people find it difficult to accept the fact that Jesus, as a full human being, forgave those who crucified Him. To many this seems to be impossible for any human being since we humans seem to refuse to forgive others who do much less to us. This tells me that humankind still does not understand that this earthly existence is given to us to help us transform/change the way that we think and behave. Ask yourself: What is the purpose of my life?

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20170319

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Mystical Supper

In the last issue, I began singling out the prayers that are different in the Liturgy of St. Basil. I covered the antiphons that are a part of the Liturgy of the Word (Psalm 103 and the Beatitudes). Further, like the weeks of the period of preparation for the Great Fast and all holy days, there are special “Tropars and Kondaks” for each week of the Great Fast. These prayers are always closely connected with the special theme of a season or the feast being celebrated.

The next prayers in the Liturgy that are different are the two Prayers of the Faithful. I would draw your attention to these two prayers. The first prayer states that God has revealed to us “this great mystery of salvation.” To me this mystery is the meaning and purpose of human life and how we humans can come to a deeper understanding of it.

The prayer continues and suggests that somehow an understanding of this mystery is closely connected to what we do as a Christian community around God’s “holy altar” – or as we say in the Eastern Church, before His “holy throne.” The prayer then goes on to ask God to “prepare us for this mystery” which is connected with offering God the “sacrifice of praise.”

I have found that it truly helps us to understand what we do in our worship if we understand that the “sacrifice of praise” that we are called to offer is to join with Jesus in offering our lives back to God in thanksgiving for the gift of life itself. Can there be any greater praise given to God than an act of offering ourselves back to Him for the gift of life? I offer myself back to God by deciding and desiring to live my human life in the manner in which God intended when He created me. Jesus demonstrated this in the way that He lived and died.

The prayer concludes by asking God that our offering of our very lives may “be acceptable” to Him. We know this to be true since in doing this we are modeling our lives after the one, true human being, Jesus.

Again, all this means that we pay particular attention to the prayers that we offer as a community and that we mean the prayers that we say and hear, making them our own prayers. This is one reason why our liturgical tradition is so dialogic in nature. The back-and-forth praying of priest and people calls us to make the prayers we offer our own.

Because there is repetition in our style of prayer as a community, we must always guard against just going through the act of praying and focus our attention on meaning the prayers that we say together.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20170319

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As I begin to bring to an end this article on the Ladder of Divine Ascent that was written by our Father among the Saints, John Climacus, I think over all of the previous 29 steps. If you recall all of these steps, you realize that they, if they are climbed, lead to this 30th Step which deals with the virtues of faith, hope and love. The reason faith lies at the summit of the Ladder is, as I suggested, that it both shapes our relationship with God and, at the same time, is the fruit of that relationship.

If faith is the substance of things hoped for, then it stands to reason that faith and hope go hand in hand. Some think of hope as wishful thinking or optimism, but not as a virtue. One may hope the weather will be good tomorrow just as one may stubbornly believe it will be. But as with faith, so too hope is the foundation and the fruit of our relationship with God. Our faith is one of hope in the Resurrection, in God’s mercy, in the promise of His eternal Kingdom and of union with the Holy Trinity. This is, as St. John suggests, the source of divine love. He writes this about hope:

Hope is the power behind love. Hope is what causes us to look forward to the reward of love. Hope is an abundance of hidden treasures. It is the abundant assurance of the riches in store for us. It is the doorway of love. It lifts despair and is the image of what is not yet present. When hope fails, so does love. Struggles are bound by it, labors depend on it and mercy lies all around it.

We place our hope in God because we believe that He loves us so much that He spared nothing in order to demonstrate His great love for us.

Those who continue to grow in dispassion ever increase in hope, for Theosis does not have an end. The more we attain the likeness of God, the more we realize we have yet further to go, and so the greater the desire, the expectation, the hope that we will progress deeper into the infinite holiness of God.