Acquiring the Mind of Christ — 20161113

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christ_iconThe Church’s liturgy and a life of personal prayer prepare us to live in God’s presence, to endure God’s presence, and to love God’s presence. This is of paramount importance if we are to acquire the mind of Christ. We must make this preparation in this world, otherwise, in the world to come, there will be no more time for us to make the appropriate adjustment to that which “eye hath not seen, nor hear heard, neither have entered into the hearty of man (I Corinthians 2:9).

We may not ever find the perfect prayer that a few in a generation will reach. However, the Liturgy is perfect hypostatic prayer. Elder Zacharias of Essex tells us that the energy of this prayer upholds the universe. We need not despair of our lack of perfection in prayer, but rather hasten to enter into the Church’s perfect hypostatic prayer, which saves us and the world. Our work as Eastern Christians is liturgical: serving and living the Liturgy, and through this, bringing the world into the Church. We can never underestimate the power of the Liturgy and its ability to transform and inform the heart. Our primary tool for evangelism to those inside and outside the Church is serving the Liturgy and the services of the Church. It is this which constitutes the sanctification of the world and grants us an opportunity to participate in the holiness of God Himself. Therefore, we must always remember that the Church and its Liturgy are the Kingdom, the world to come, present in our midst today. St. Nicholas Cabasilas says: “What is the kingdom if not this Holy Bread and this Holy Cup.” We must beware of supposing that heaven is something that only is in the future. One author has stated: “We Eastern Christians are not waiting for the end of history and the end of time, but through living in Christ we are running to meet the end of history and thus already living the life expected after the Second Coming.

In simple words, we are living in the Kingdom of God RIGHT NOW. We are not waiting for as time to come but are doing all in our power to make His Kingdom real RIGHT NOW. One of the falsehoods that has crept into Christianity is that God’s Kingdom is something in the future. It must be, in our minds, something that is real right now. So it is important how we treat others, not in the future, but RIGHT NOW. Do you live this way?

Reflections on the Scripture Readings for this Weekend — 20161106

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raising_of_jairuss_daughterOn this 25th weekend after Pentecost, we hear thoughts from St. Paul about the “Unity of the Mystical Body” of Christ, the Church, and stories about the curing of a twelve-year hemorrhage victim and the raising of the dead, twelve year old daughter of a chief of the synagogue, . This combination of readings is truly rather interesting!

Paul stresses, in his letter to the Ephesians, that what God Himself accomplished by His incarnation as Jesus, was the revelation of the unity of all humankind, both those living and dead. Since God’s life-force animates all living beings and brings them and sustains them in existence, there is, must be, a natural union among all living beings. It is for humankind to recognize this and live in harmony with this reality. This requires that humans grow in their awareness of this truth and do everything in their power to live in accord with this reality. This requires humans to change the way they think and behave.

It is not by accident that the woman had a hemorrhage for 12 years and that the young girl was 12 years old. The number 12 in Jewish numerology or Kabbalah signifies wholeness, totality and completion of God’s purpose. That is why Jesus picked 12 apostles and why 12 years were assigned to both the woman and the young girl.

So as we apply this to today’s readings, we see that they tell us that it is God’s purpose to bring humanity to unity. It is our responsibility, as followers of Jesus, to work to bring unity among all people. While this may never happen in our lifetime, it is our mission to attempt to bring unity. This is done by our not spreading disunity among people. This is accomplished by how we live. We make sure that we promote equality and respect for all others. Typically this requires a change of the way that we think and, perhaps, even how we act and live.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20161106

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Ladder of Divine AccentThe 26th Step of John’s Ladder deals with the idea of DISCERNMENT. One of the component of discernment is, of course, perceiving the will of God. In order to do this it is critical that we work to develop an “informed conscience.”

According to Catholic teaching and doctrine, a good conscience can be revealed through natural law (informed) or through the teachings of Jesus Christ. A conscience should be educated in God’s word and obtained through the practices of Jesus.

Saint John Paul II described a correct conscience as one that involves a judgment that is in accordance with objective truth. An erroneous conscience, however, involves a judgment that is purely subjective and thought to be true when it is not.

Catholic teaching encourages people to live as disciples of Christ, without ignoring concerns for human dignity, such as poverty and racism. A well-formed conscience can help guide a person to make the right moral and ethical choices in life. Catholic teaching says that individuals have a duty to examine their conscience and consult with others to keep their conscience in check and informed. Making good choices keeps a Christian’s virtue and integrity intact. The development of an informed conscience is ultimately the obligation of all Christians.

Note that St. John uses the term God-directed conscience. Even our conscience may not be in accordance with God’s will, and so the conscience must be purified if it is to be a true guide for our spiritual life: Those who wish to discover the will of God must begin by mortifying their own will.

Given that very few of us can really rely on conscience alone to perceive the will of God, what other options are left to us? We should turn humbly and in confidence to the Fathers of the Church – Tradition – and we should accept their counsel.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20161106

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Mystical Supper

Mystical Supper

While the entire congregation is professing belief in God as Trinity, the priest begins a prayer which continues our profession of faith. He prays:

It is proper and just to sing hymns to You, to bless You, to praise You, to thank You, to worship You in every place of Your kingdom. FOR You are God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing yet ever the same, You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit. You brought us forth from nonexistence into being and raise us up again when we have fallen and left nothing undone until You brought us to heaven and bestowed upon us Your future kingdom. For all this we give thanks to You and to Your only-begotten Son and to Your Holy Spirit – for all that we know and that we do not know, the manifest and the hidden benefits bestowed upon us.

As you can tell, the priestly prayer twice professes belief in God as Three-In-One and enumerates His qualities which profess Him to be a being that is far-beyond any other possible being in the universe. It also professes our belief that He created us and all things out of nothing, a very important idea. It also professes the belief that He has done, and is doing, everything in His power to bring us to His Kingdom which is in a different dimension of existence. It also again reiterates our “thankfulness” for all that He has done for us. Thankfulness is truly the theme of our worship. Our communal prayer calls us to think about why we are thankful and for what are we thankful. We are not just thankful for the “good” and “pleasurable” things which we receive in life. We are thankful for life as it is presented to us, with all of its struggles, challenges and pleasures. We are not just thankful for the things that we find enjoyable!

This is one of the real challenges that we face. We must be thankful for all of the events and experiences of life. I cannot stress this enough. We must remember that, like love and forgiveness, our thankfulness must also be unconditional and without reservations. It is only then that our thankfulness is genuine and real.

The problem is that we only have one communal service a week – the Divine Liturgy. If we had Vespers and Matins, which don’t have the theme of “thankfulness” for their focus, people could come to a different service and worship. Sometimes, I know, it is hard to be thankful for life, especially when it is presenting significant challenges and struggles to us.

 

 

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20161106

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bulletinoctober23rdAbsolutely central to the way in which the Fathers understand the nature of humanity is the notion that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. This is drawn from Genesis of the Old Testament. This thought is central not only to the Fathers’ understanding of human nature, but also to their theology as a whole. While the foundation of this doctrine of the image is found in Genesis, the rest of the Old Testament little is made of this idea. There is no mention of the doctrine of the image until the Wisdom literature, where we read that God ‘made humankind an image of his own self’, or eternity, and that God ‘made them according to his image’. Wisdom itself is said to be ‘an image of his goodness.”

In the New Testament we are told that man is ‘the image and glory of God’, but it is Christ, too, who is said to be the image of God. Language of the image is used of our relationship to Christ: we are to be ‘conformed to the image of his Son’. Paul says that “we all, reflecting with unveiled face the glory of the Lord, are being changed into the same image from glory to glory.” He also speaks of our being “clothed with the new man who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him”.

The notion that humankind was created according to the image of God found an enormous resonance in the hearts and minds of the Fathers. There are probably several reasons for this.

First of all, the importance of the doctrine of creation. We are what we are, because God created us. He created us out of nothing; everything that we are is from God. Then, as many of the Fathers remark, there seems to be something special about the creation of humankind; for the rest of creation, God simply said, let something happen – ‘Let there be light’ – but in the case of hu-mankind, God seems to consider his creation by saying: ‘Let us make hu-mankind’. And then humankind came into existence. There seems some spe-cial act of deliberation about the crea-tion of humankind. Not only that, the human is made ‘according to God’s image and according to His like-ness.’

It is critical, I believe, that we think about the fact that we believe that God has made us in His image and given us the potential to grow in His likeness.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20161106.

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In the last issue I quoted the passage that we find in one of Peter’s letters which is the foundation for our idea of Theosis, the Eastern Church’s true spirituality. That passage accentuates one of the leading motifs in the Eastern Church’s understanding of salvation, namely release from the corruption and mortality caused by the evil desires of the world. Eastern theology does not focus so much on guilt as on mortality as the main problem of humanity. In addition, in the East, the concept of sin is viewed as something human beings do and chose for themselves rather than something “hereditary” as a result of the first human beings’ sin in the distant past. (Hopefully this does not come as a surprise to anyone who has consistently read my Bulletin). Cyril comments on the passage from St. Peter’s letter and notes that we are all called to participate in divinity, not just a few “saints.” That’s the true purpose and meaning of this earthly existence. Although Christ alone is God by nature, all people are called to become God “by participation.” In such participation we become likenesses of Christ.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20161106

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palm sunday Palm/Willow Sunday largely owes its place as one of the Twelve Great Feasts to its disposition as the first day of Holy Week. Certainly other events of Holy Week – such as Holy Thursday, commemorating the institution of the eucharist – could have been a better claim to theological importance. In the form in which it was generally adopted, Palm Sunday seems to have served as an abbreviation of the succession of events of the Passion which culminated in the next Great Feast: the Crucifixion. In this way the feast of Palm Sunday reinforced the Eastern Church’s conception of redemption and therefore opposed Arianism. Accordingly, when Cyril addressed “that Arian madness” again and again in his homily on Palm Sunday, the feast which was being celebrated seems to have served more as a vehicle for his theological observations than as a theological argument in its own right.

The evolution of the Ascension as an independent feast is somewhat less clear, though its theological implications are more pointed. It marks Christ’s ascension into heaven forty days after the Resurrection as recorded in Acts (1:1-11). The Feast of the Ascension was originally attached to the Core Group, at first being observed as an adjunct to the Resurrection as suggested by the Gospel of Luke, the Epistle of Barnabus, and other sources. Later it came to be celebrated on Pentecost, still on a dependent basis as an aspect of the primary feast of the day it was kept.

The first mention of a festal observance forty days after the Resurrection was again made by Etheria in Jerusalem during Cyril’s episcopate. Unfortunately she did not mention the purpose of this particular observance. She did, however, mention an observance of the Ascension on Pentecost, fifty days after Easter. The Ascension was more or less widespread by 430, but still not celebrated everywhere. The interesting questions are why was it only made an independent feast at that particular time, and why at Jerusalem? Further, if its observance was fairly general by 430, why were some churches still resisting this practice? The evidence suggests that at the time of Etheria’s visit, the observance of the Ascension was evolving from an aspect of Pentecost into a major feast in its own right. That a period of transition would have been necessary is completely understandable: old traditions, especially religious traditions, die hard, and the Ascension had been attached to Pentecost for centuries.

Hopefully this is interesting to you, my readers.

Acquiring the Mind of Christ — 20161106

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christ_iconOur task is to acquire the Mind of Christ so that we might become more like Him. God has presented Himself, we believe, as a human being in the person of Jesus as the model of what human beings should be like and act like in order to fulfill their meaning and purpose. We acquire the Mind of Christ not just by trying to imitate Christ but by participating with God’s grace to change our hearts and minds. Once our thinking begins to change, we begin to live in a different manner.

One of the ways that God has given us to achieve this as Christians is the Divine Liturgy. While our personal interior prayer life must be strong, it finds its real benefit when joined to dedicated regular attendance at the Liturgy since it inspires in us a very important feeling, namely THANKFULNESS. If we are thankful for the gift of life, we will do everything in our power to fulfill the meaning and purpose of our life. And, of course, the meaning and purpose of our life is to spiritually grow so that we might be more closely united to our God.

We will never have time for the Church and the things of God unless we make time, prioritizing our life so as to put God first. If we say that we love God, that means that we pray. There are two sides of the life of prayer which are inseparably bound: there is personal and communal prayer. Each supports the other. We can enter more thoroughly into communal prayer if we have integrated personal prayer into our lives and, likewise, communal prayer can truly help our personal prayer. We need both if we are to make progress, for they both nourish each other, respectively strengthening and reinforcing each other.

Today is the day of salvation. Each moment given to us is a moment that we can live in the presence of God. It is time to awake from the slumber of the world and to put on Christ, beseeching Him to grant us a continual renewal of our repentance and of our life in the Church.

Our Church, although for some out-dated because of its ritual, is truly a gift to help us encounter our living God. Humans since the beginning of time have used rituals to help them come into contact with God. Ritual for the sake of ritual, however, can become very off-putting. Intelligent and reasonable ritual, however, has the power to allow us to actively enter into the dimension which is beyond – to engage in actively remembering our God with us.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20161106

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20161030One can truly say that the WORD OF GOD has sacramental power. We believe that as the Old Covenant drew to a close, in order to make possible a new and deeper relationship of love between God and man, the Spirit of prophecy withdrew from Israel. This prompted rabbis to explain the ensuing silence as a sign of divine wrath and consequent judgment. Ignatius, with the whole of Christendom, interprets this crucial moment in Israel’s history as a preclude to the “fullness of time,” when God will once again “speak out of silence” to utter the promise of a new creation through the person and teaching of His incarnate Word. This is Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35 – c. 108), is

also known as Ignatius Theophorus (Ιγνάτιος ὁ Θεοφόρος, “the God-bearing”), Ignatius Nurono (“The fire-bearer”) was an Apostolic Father, student of the Apostle John, and the third bishop of Antioch. En route to Rome, where according to Christian tradition he met his martyrdom, he wrote a series of letters which have been preserved as an example of very early Christian theology.

This new and final creative act the apostle calls a “mysterion,” a “sacrament” hidden in God from before all time, but now revealed and accomplished in the person of the divine Logos, the crucified and risen Son of God. The purpose of this sacramental act, like the original work of creation, is to call mankind “from nothingness into being,” from a non-being of man’s own making into a radically new existence bestowed by grace, from fragmentation and hostility into reconciliation and unity, an eternal participation in the very life of God. To accomplish this “sacrament,” which is nothing less than the divine economy of universal salvation, the divine Word summons and introduces humanity into a new order of reality, the eternal life of the Kingdom. There He brings His saving work to fulfillment by submitting Himself, with all of creation, to God the Father.

This, I know, is rather dense thought. We don’t normally tend to look at the New Testament in this way. Just as the Old Testament formed the foundation for the Old Covenant – the agreement between God and man – so the New Testament, which God, though His Spirit inspired certain men to write – is the foundation for the New Covenant between God and man. Just as the Ten Commandments showed men how to live, so the Gospels show us how to live in accord with the very Spirit of God.