The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20170226

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As you already probably know, this is the last weekend until Willow Sunday that we will be using the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The Church calls us to use the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great during the Great Fast. This Liturgy is known for its longer prayers which are unrivaled in our entire Tradition for their beauty of expression and the depth of their theological/spiritual content. Even though we are hearing them in translation, that beauty and depth remain intact and shine through.

Saint Basil did not sit down and “compose” the entire Liturgy “from scratch.” The basic structure of the Liturgy was already an essential element of the Church’s Tradition. There is every reason to believe, however, that he is responsible for the magnificent Anaphora prayers.

These prayers reflect Saint Basil’s intense preoccupation with the Church’s Trinitarian faith – that we worship the One God as the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Son and the Holy Spirit being consubstantial with the Father as to their divine nature, and thus co-enthroned and co-glorified with the Father from all eternity. That belief, though present “in the beginning” of the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel, was under attack during the turbulent fourth century with the Arian heresy and its various offshoots stirring up seemingly interminable debate and dissension. Saint Basil was one of the premier exponents of the Church’s faith that the one God is the Holy Trinity. He helped establish the classical terminology of the Church in expressing that Faith: God is one in essence (ousia in Greek), yet three Distinct Divine Persons (in Greek hypostaseis). This very terminology still remains intact to this day.

The opening Anaphora Prayer expresses this belief. The celebrant prays:

“O Master, You are Lord, God the Father, almighty, adorable. It is truly proper and just and befitting the greatness of our holiness to praise You, to sing to You, to bless You, to worship You, to give You thanks, to glorify You, the only true God and to offer to You with a contrite heart and a humble spirit this, our bloodless sacrifice.”

The prayer continues with expressing all of our beliefs about God. Although this portion of the beginning pray of the Anaphora is typically said silently by the celebrant, you are encouraged to read the prayer. It is a profound expression of what our Church believes about God.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20170226

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In the last issue I began to consider the issue of why the Pharisees seems to be vilified in the New Testament (NT). Modern Judaism and Christianity may have developed along clearly different paths, but readers of the Gospels need to understand that Jesus and His disciples, as well as the evangelists Mark, Matthew, and John (Luke was Gentile), saw themselves as faithful Jews. Matthew’s diatribes against “the scribes and the Pharisees” and John’s scornful use of “the Jews” must be understood in the context of their own times, not that of Jesus.

The way each Gospel expresses its attitude toward Jews and Judaism is one criterion for dating it. John’s denunciation of “the Jews” is one reason for placing his Gospel at the end of the century. Luke’s way of distancing Christianity from Judaism (especially in Acts) suggests that he is not writing in its earliest moments. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew, on the other hand, are clearly composed in the context of a deep regard for Judaism itself. So, while all the Gospels are steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, Mark and Matthew especially present Jesus in the light of them.

It is helpful to know that in the first century all Jewish thought about God was centered in Scripture. Jews believed that the Bible contained all of God’s revelation but that no one person or one faith community could grasp all of that revelation at any single time. It was a pious habit of mind to seek to understand every new and significant person, teaching and event in Judaism through the lens of Scripture. At the same time, it was a religious task to consider how these new persons, teachings, and events brought to the surface new depths in Scripture hitherto unseen. It was, in fact, considered important for each new generation to reopen the Scriptures and search for new meanings in the light of its own time. The new meanings that surfaced were not considered replacements of older interpretations but enrichments of them.

It is important to realize that the older branches of Christianity have this very same approach to the Scriptures. The Church believes that, guided by the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures are continuously revealing truth that can be applied to modern times. Christians reading the NT today will miss much of its meaning and most of its richness if they are unfamiliar with the references to the OT that form its framework and substructure.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20170226

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As I shared in the laws issue of this particular article, the Great Fast can be a time of great spiritual growth if it is embraced in an intelligent, prayerful and voluntary manner. I shared with you some traditional ways to approach its observance.

Again, one way does not fit all. I think that there are many other ways to observe the Great Fast. I have been mulling over a number of ways in my own mind. Here are some thoughts.

  • Don’t be a slave to your cell phone. Turn it off and let people leave voice-mail messages and, whatever you do, don’t answer it when you are with others.
  • Turn off your radio or television for certain time periods. Cut down the noise in your life – Give up your favorite television or radio program.
  • Integrate a special time for prayer into your schedule if you don’t already have one. You can always just increase your time at prayer.
  • Integrate a silent period of reading into your life – it doesn’t have to be just spiritual reading.
  • Go to bed earlier than you usually do if you are a late-night person – that is get more sleep (its healthy too).
  • Send cards or letter to those you have not been in touch with for a while or who are shut-in.
  • Phone persons you know are alone and perhaps could be made happier if you contacted them.
  • Integrate acts of kindness into your life.
  • Give something up and save the money you would spend and donate it to a good cause.
  • Integrate going to Lenten Services into your schedule.
  • Read a few paragraphs of the New Testament each day or use the parish calendar to read passages from the New Testament each day
  • Do something that will make your life a little more peaceful.
  • Spend some time thinking about your life and assessing what you can do to become more like Jesus.
  • Spend some time creating a personal journal.

Again it is not so important what you do as that you do something to observe the Great Fast. AND, of course, don’t do something because you feel obliged to do it or that if you do something God will love you more. Remember, God cannot love us anymore than He already does. All we can do is to become aware of how much He truly loves us. Our efforts during the Great Fast should lead us to a deeper awareness of God’s love otherwise it is not doing what it is really meant to accomplish. The Great Fast is all about spiritually growth.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20170226

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The “call to holiness” is a call from God to make His Kingdom real in the here and now. If we listen closely to the Good News that Jesus taught – change your hearts and minds for the Kingdom of God is at hand – it is obvious that He was not suggest-ing that God’s Kingdom only exists in the hereafter. We are called, as was He, to make God’s Kingdom real RIGHT NOW right where we are at, RIGHT NOW.

Some may ask how this is possible. Each of us lives in a small portion of God’s creation. We are called to make every effort to transform that portion given to us by the way we live and interact with others. It really matters not if we accomplish the transformation of our portion of the Kingdom. It only matters that this is our intention. Further, we never know how we impact the lives of others. That we leave up to God. We are called only to make every attempt to be Christ, the anointed one, to the portion of our world. (An aside: truly we can only “change” ourselves). We are called to continue the work of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be “church” – that is a group of followers of Jesus who have the intention to make God’s Kingdom real here and now – to be the force that attempts to make God’s love real. This does not mean, however, that we beat our brothers and sisters over the head with our message. It means that we model for others a way of living that is in the likeness of Jesus. It truly means accepting all others as they are and not having the attitude that we are right and they are wrong. It means being authentic in the way that we live.

If we listen to the Gospels, we find that Jesus tried to convince others not to be pharisaical or hypocritical in the way that they lived their faith. He embrace all, even those who were rejected by His society as less worthy. We need to think about this.

Reflections on the Scripture Readings for this Weekend — 20170219

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On this next to last weekend before the beginning of the Great Fast, we hear St. Paul exhort us to not scandalize our fellowmen and Luke share with us a picture of what is called the Last Judgment. I would focus, in my comments, on Luke’s Gospel.

This particular chapter in Luke’s Gospel, in its present form, has been produced by ecclesiastical expansions of the sayings of Jesus. The usual designation of the passage as “the Last Judgment” is somewhat misleading; it is an imaginative scene in which is set the core of the more teaching of Jesus. It has no parallel in the other Gospels. The scene is the parousia, and “all nations” mean all mankind. But the process is addressed to the disciples; the standards on which they will be judged are set forth. That faith is not mentioned should lead to no theological conclusions; it is clear that for Matthew as for other New Testament writers, faith in Jesus is the first movement of man toward God. The point of this scene is that faith is not the whole movement; that it should transform the disciple.

Christ did not leave with his disciples a doctrine of individual salvation but a new commandment that they must love one another. To this Jesus added, “By this shall all know that you are my disciples if you love one another”. Love, thus is the foundation, the very life of the Church which is, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, “unity of faith and love.”

So this Gospel passage is not really about God, in the Person of Jesus, judging those at the end of time but, rather, a presentation of the basic core message of Jesus. To be His disciple, we must attempt to develop unconditional love for all others, regardless of their response to us. This is a very important point. During this lifetime we must learn how to be authentic humans, imitating Jesus, and not allowing the behavior of others determine the way that we freely choose to live. The Christian way of living is one of true, personal transformation.

We use the teachings of Jesus to determine and govern our behaviors and attitudes. We do not depend upon our society to determine how we will live but, rather, we commit ourselves to living like Jesus did and to grow in our likeness of God as expressed in the human person of Jesus.

We are called to embrace and hold sacred the values about life that Jesus expressed through the way He treated other people. We no longer embrace the idea of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

To be a true Christian means to be “confident” that the way we choose to live is the right way. The right way to live is the way that God intended us humans to live in order to spiritually grow. What is better, to be accepted by God or by your fellowmen? I guess that I would rather be accepted by God than by other humans.

PRE-GREAT FAST / HOLY TRADITION — 20170219

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PRE-GREAT FAST
On this fourth week-end of our preparation for the Great Fast, we hear clearly spelled out what Jesus meant by “love of neighbor.” While cast within the context of the “Last Judgment,” what the Gospel is truly telling us that METANOIA really requires that we are fully aware of how God intends us to live as human beings in order to be His children. We cannot really change our attitudes and behaviors – change our hearts and minds – if we are not aware of what that requires. It requires that we learn how to treat others.

HOLY TRADITION
Those who desire to observe the Great Fast in accordance with Holy Tradition, this weekend marks the beginning of our abstinence from meat. That is why it is called Meat Fare. This should not be undertaken, however, if one is older or engaged in strenuous work. We must always be sensible about our faith.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Our Faith — 20170219

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Although the mother of Jesus was seen, within the mystery of human salvation, as the representative of humanity in need of salvation, she was the closest to the Savior and the worthiest receptacle of the new life.

In the medieval West, the Augustinian understanding of original sin as inherited guilt made it inevitable that Mary be approached in terms of an “immaculate conception,” as the object of a special grace of God that made her in advance worthy of divine motherhood. The East did not follow that trend, because the consequences of the sin of Adam were seen as inherited mortality rather than as guilt, so that there was no need to see Mary in isolation from the common lot of humanity. However, there developed in the East the tradition of her eschatological glorification after death. Anticipating the general resurrection, her Son made her, as His mother, inseparable from his own risen body, above the angelic powers themselves.

Christ and the Holy Spirit

The Synthesis of Maximus the Confessor

The place of Maximus the Confessor (580-662), in the history of Christian doctrine is primarily associated with his defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy against Monotheletism (the belief that Christ had only one divine-human “will”). Indeed, for Maximus, real humanity is dynamic, creative and endowed with a proper “energy”: this was, indeed, the case with the humanity of Christ who, being a man, possessed a human will distinct from the divine. This human will of Christ was restored in conformity with the original and eternal purpose of God in his design of humanity. In monotheletism, the humanity of Christ, although accessible to “contemplation”, did not possess any “movement” or energy proper to itself, and the Chalcedonian definition, which affirmed that “the characteristic property of each nature of Christ was preserved” in the hypostatic union, had lost its meaning. The merit of Maximus was, therefore, in having decisively counteracted a “monophysitic” trend which interpreted “deification” as an absorption of humanity into divinity. For Maximus, deification was to be seen not as a denial but as a reaffirmation and restoration of created humanity in its proper and God-established integrity.

Chalcedon asserted that Jesus was fully God and fully Man in every and all respects.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20170219

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The “call” to holiness is a call from God to pursue an active program of spiritual development. It is the call that Jesus gave us when He said: “You shall be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Dose this mean that God expects us to be perfect now during this life? It is regrettable that the words of Jesus, “You shall be perfect,” were mistranslated by some as “You must be perfect”. The Greek verb eseste, used in the original Greek, is a verb in the future tense. It is a promise which says very clearly that perfection is to be granted in the future by grace. It is an ongoing process of continued growth in the life of Christ of which perfection is the goal. In the English translation it is incorrectly translated in the present tense and in the imperative implying that we are expected to reach perfection now. It is not you must be prefect but you shall be perfect.

Perfection in this life according to Eastern theology and spirituality is not the state of “I have arrived. I have made it. I am saved.” Rather, it is the state of “I am on the way. I am moving. I am on a journey. I am growing.” Man’s life is never complete even in the Kingdom of God. We shall always be “on the way.” Our very perfection is always to grow more perfect, more like unto Christ. And this is a never-ending process.

St. Gregory of Nyssa used the word epectasis which means a “stretching out,” a striving to exceeds one’s capacity. It is based on Paul’s statement: “I strain ahead for what is still to come”. The Holy Spirit plants a power in us that expands our capacity and makes us capable of possessing God in an unending process of great and greater growth, both in this life as well as in the life to come. St. Gregory described true perfection as “never to stop growing toward what is better and never to place a limit on perfection.” God, in creating us, saw that the process and growing, without limits, was something good and allows us to freely return His love.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20170219

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After the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, Judaism itself might have disappeared had it not been for the Pharisees. The Pharisees’ reputation in the New Testament (NT) as rigid legalists is ill-deserved, according to some modern NT scholars. They were, in fact, a devout lay group who had developed a flexible and creative approach to the interpretation of Scripture and had also fostered ways of bringing the prayers of the Temple into Jewish homes. When the Temple was lost, they provided the foundations for a continuing and vital Judaism. As the ancestors of modern rabbinic Judaism, they deserve the respect of modern Christians.

Why, then, are the Pharisees vilified in the NT? The answer does not lie in the time of Jesus. Indeed, many of the teachings of Jesus are so close to those of the Pharisees that some scholars have proposed that he is shown arguing with them because he was a member of their school. Judaism before the fall of the Temple was tolerant of many different forms of expression, and historical studies suggest that Christianity did not begin as a consciously separate religion, but a new formulation of the ancient Jewish faith. After the Temple fell, however, Judaism regrouped and the Pharisaic leaders became less tolerant of diversity within their ranks. In that new atmosphere, Jewish followers of Jesus were regarded with suspicion and put out of the synagogues. The Christian-Jewish community responded with anger. In the context of the post-seventies, the Pharisees appeared hostile to Jesus, and it is that hostility (and their own anger) that the evangelists retroactively projected into their accounts of Jesus’ time. As I have so very many times attempted to share with my readers, there is no real indication from the teachings of Jesus that He intended to found a new religion. I know that this flies in the face of many Christians who want to believe that He did. Indeed Jesus wanted to reform Judaism, that is quite clear. But so did other Jewish groups at His time (the Essenes being one group. They were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests. Some claim that Jesus actually studied with them).

The events of history set the stage for Christianity to become a religion!

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20170219

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In the last issue I began sharing thoughts on the 29th Step on John’s Ladder of spiritual growth. That step is DISPASSION.

Dispassion could perhaps be considered synonymous with another important word in Eastern theology and spirituality: deification or Theosis, which means to attain the likeness of God, or, as countless Church Fathers have put it, “to become god by grace,” that we “may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Advanced spirituality can be complicated. One cannot delve into advanced spirituality without getting deep into advanced theology, and the subject of dispassion and theosis is a case in point. Theosis is so important to Eastern spirituality and theology. We must examine what it means to “become god by grace.”

The Eastern Church’s doctrine of theosis is rooted in the Scriptures: “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High” (Psalm 81:6). But what does it mean for human beings to be gods? There is only one God, and He is God because He is eternal and uncreated. All other things were created by God from nothing, which means that everything created is wholly contingent. So what does it mean for us who are “but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27) to “become” God?

It certainly does not mean that we evolve into the Deity – we cannot be what God is by nature (above being, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-holy and all-loving) – nor does it involved absorption into the Divine Being and a loss of our own, unique personhood. Rather, it means to acquire the “likeness of God,” which man was given the potential of achieving (Genesis 1:26) through synergy (the cooperation of the human will with divine grace.

Hopefully my readers are getting a clearer idea of what Theosis is since I deal with it several times.