Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Our Faith — 20161106

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St. Cyril of Alexandria

St. Cyril of Alexandria

Like Cyril, the central inspiration for Athanasius can be expressed in this phrase taken from Paul’s writing: God, who “alone has immortality” is the only Savior from corruption and death. In his polemics against Arius, Athanasius clearly states: only God can save. Similarly, Cyril, engaged in controversy, once proclaimed quite naturally, paraphrasing Isaiah 63:9, that “it is not an elder, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself who saved us, not by an alien death or by the mediation of an ordinary man, but by His very own blood.” If you recall the heresy of Arius and even Nestorius, you can tell that he is directly addressing them.

This recognition of God as the agent of salvation is shown also in the repeated use of the title “Emmanuel” (“which in translation means “God with us”) for Christ, particularly in Cyril’s famous twelve anathemas contained in his third letter to Nestorius. Like Athanasius before him, Cyril could not conceive of the divine love manifested in the incarnation to be really perfect unless it as an act of self-giving of God. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). This implied the personal presence of God in the human reality of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christological trend that originated in Antioch with Theodore of Mopsuestia and was most only preached by Nestorius was based on the fear that the humanity of Jesus would be totally ignored by the proponents of “deification.” This is why the controversy against Nestorius, undertaken by Cyril with such energy and consistency, was centered on the two most human moments in the Gospel story of Jesus: his birth from Mary and his death on the cross. Although Cyril always recognized that both these moments belong to divine economy in the flesh – that is, that the eternal God by nature could neither be born in history nor die – he considered that the salvation of the world would not have occurred unless it was personally the Son of God who was born of the Virgin, and also personally suffered on the cross “according to the flesh.”

As you will recall, the heresies of both Arius and Nestorius challenged who we believe Jesus to be, namely fully God and fully man. They found it difficult to comprehend how God could have achieved this and, therefore, saw Jesus as either more God than man or more man than God. We believe Jesus to be fully God and fully Man.

Reflections on the Scripture Readings for this Weekend — 20161030

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pentacostAs we complete the 24th week after Pentecost, our assigned readings are again from Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus and Luke’s version of the curing of the Gerasene demoniac. It should be noted that this story about casting out demons appears in all three synoptic Gospels, albeit in slightly different forms.

Paul’s words to the Ephesians represent his understanding of the impact of the Incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus. God’s incarnation has united all humans into one family and, through the Person of Jesus, we all have “access in one Spirit to the Father.” This is one of the essential insights of Christianity. All humans, because God assumed human nature, are united in Christ. God’s action was intended to break “down the barrier of hostility that kept” people apart.

It is interesting that the story of the cure of the possessed man presents a picture of how “demons” or “evil spirits” kept the man separated from others and how the entire population of the territory didn’t want things changed. It is also interesting to note that the possessed man wore no clothes and lived among the tombs – among the dead – and not in a house. He was truly an uncivilized person, his nudity and living among the dead present him as truly not human.

Prejudice and bigotry separate us from others and make us uncivilized. We become the living dead when we do not embrace the idea that all human beings are united because of God’s life-force which brings and keeps all humans in existence. Prejudice and bigotry are spawn by a truly “evil spirit” – a spirit which separates us as humans and keeps us from truly seeing the truth about God’s creation.

Prejudice and bigotry flow from insecurity and arrogance. A bigot needs to inflate his/her own feelings of self-worth by attempting to depreciate the value and worth of others.

Through Christ, God has called us to unconditionally love and accept all others. Why? Because they, like us, are living temples of God’s own Spirit, even if they don’t recognize it. We respect others and accept others because of what we believe about humankind, namely that God has made all humans in His image and has infused into all humans the potential to grow in His likeness. It doesn’t matter whether others recognize this reality. We recognize this reality if we truly believe in Jesus Christ, Who is God Himself incarnate as a human.

What message do these readings have for you?

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20161030

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20161030I have decided that I would, in this article about understanding the New Testament (NT), temporarily retreat from the more formal and technical explanation of our sacred writings that I have been doing and offer a more global understanding of them. We call these writings the “Word of God”. The Word of God expressed in the form of Holy Scripture and traditional creedal formulas possess an inherent power by which it communicates divine grace and truth. I would now like to emphasize the importance of this power of the Word as the means by which saving events of the past become actualized in the present moment within the life and experience of the Church. I do this mainly because in the article on the Divine Liturgy I have stressed the active remembering in which we should engage ourselves in order to make our worship real. For this actualizing power to become operative, however, it must be perceived and comprehended on the level of both mind and heart. Like sacramental grace, the operation of the divine Word depends upon a “synergism” or “co-operation” between divine initiative and human receptivity. This act of receptivity is essentially one of perception, know in patristic tradition as THEORIA, something that I briefly mentioned before, if you will recall. Theoria is a spiritual vision or contemplation of the divine presence and the divine economy, revealed within the framework of salvation history.

From the perspective of the Eastern Church, the interpretation of the Word of God is grounded in this “theoretic perception” of the saving power of the Word. One of the most pressing needs within the Church today is to recover the patristic vision of the dynamic quality of the Word as the instrument of God’s self-disclosure and self-communication.

The relationship between Word and Sacrament in Eastern Christianity, is one of essential unity, grounded in silence. “In the beginning God speaks out of silence to create heaven and earth by the power of His Word. Divine speech has a dynamic, creative quality that may be termed “sacramental,” in that it accomplishes what it signifies. Through His “word-reality”, Yahweh determines the growth and destiny of His chosen people while uniting Himself to them in a covenant of love.

We must see that God has, from the beginning of creation, spoken His Word to gradually bring humankind to a deeper understanding of His intent when He created all things.

Acquiring the Mind of Christ — 20161030

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christ_iconIn order to acquire the mind of Christ, one of the first things we must do is to enter into the very heart of the Eastern Christian faith, the Divine Liturgy. It is in the Liturgy where we meet the Lord and learn to abide and live with Him. Not only this. It is through the Liturgy that one finds and works out one’s salvation. In the liturgical life of our Church, we find the Mind of the Church, which is the Mind of Christ. Through regular participation in the cycle of feasts throughout the year, we absorb and acquire this Mind and make it our own, enabling us to learn how not only to think, but also how to understand the world, God, ourselves and each other. We must never see the Liturgy and the liturgical life of the Church as something extra. It is through the grace that we receive at each Liturgy that we are enabled to enter eternity, and are empowered to escape corruption, sin and death, because what we are offered and receive is nothing other that the Life of God Himself.

This requires that we see the Liturgy as our true opportunity to encounter our living God by “actively remembering” that He came into our world to model, through the Person of Jesus, how we must live. It is important that we don’t try to find ways to object to the vision of Christ about how to live.

He clearly showed us, through His life and death, that we must UNCONDITIONALLY learn how to love and forgive all others, regardless of how they live, regardless of how they act, regardless of what threat they present even to our actual existence. Jesus showed us, by the way that He endured His crucifixion and death, that it is important how we come to live, think and behave. We cannot let the ignorance and hatred of others change or resolve to be like Jesus. He is the model God has given us about how humans should live if they desire to enter into the fullness of life. This means not judging others and, absolutely, not allowing their behavior to steer us away from the model of how humans should live, namely Jesus Christ. We are called to strive to live like Him, with His attitudes of mind and heart and with His way of responding to the challenges of life. If we allow the hatred of others to change our commitment to a life “LIKE JESUS”, then we have failed to hear the message of God about why He became a human in the Person of Jesus. Think about this and become determined!

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Our Faith — 20161030

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Athanasius the Great

Athanasius the Great

In the previous issue of this article, I truly began sharing the role of Christ as Savior as seen in the East. Our Eastern Church has, of course, seen this slightly different than the Church in the West. One is not right and the other wrong. The difference allows us to brace a way that responds to our individual spirits. Rather than being closed, our Christian faith is truly open to quite different approaches to the same goal, salvation.

Since the beginning of the Church, the Fathers have had different ideas, and opinions about our faith. Both have agreed that God came as a real human person to serve as a model of how we might accomplish the purpose of life, that is our personal transformation into truly spiritual-human beings created in the likeness of Jesus Christ, who is God Himself incarnate.

For Athanasius, salvation is an establishment of fellowship and communion between God and us, humankind. Why? Because anything less that such a fellowship would imply a limitation of divine love. Hence his famous definition of salvation as “Theosis” or “deification” which became a standard of Greek patristic thought.

The affirmation of Christ’s divinity in Nicaean and Athanasian categories inevitably raised the questions concerning the historical Jesus as man. The issue involved long debates, schisms and a search for appropriate definitions at councils – Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680) and Nicaea II (787). The result was a commitment to a single Christological dogma in the East and in the West, although differences remained in the spiritual vision of the reality of the “life in Christ.” At the center of these debates stood the figure and the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), who should not be unfamiliar to anyone reading my Bulletins.

Before Cyril of Alexandria had engaged himself in bitter theological debates with Nestorius (428-31), the basic inspiration of his understanding of the Christian mystery appeared in his serene and noncontroversial exegetical writings, particularly his interpretation of the Gospel of John and his commentaries on other New Testament writings. Here Cyril’s main concern was not to provide his readers with a rational scheme of the incarnation but to express its kerygmatic meaning: God, who “alone has immortality”, is the only Savior from corruption and death.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20161030

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Ladder of Divine AccentDISCERNMENT is the 26th Step on St. John’s LADDER of Divine ascent. It clearly reminds us that whenever we judge, criticize or accuse others we show that we have no discernment. We may think of someone as a bad person, but we do not consider that if we had been through the same things that he went through, we might be infinitely worse. We are known not only by our works, but also by our efforts and intentions; not only by our achievements and successes, but also by our lot in life. Certainly those who struggle the most against the passions, even if they fail miserably, will receive an ever greater reward than those whose virtues come to them with ease.

While it may seem to be a straight-forward thing to discern between good and bad, it is not always so easy. We need the gift of discernment.

The final stage of discernment is to be able to perceive God’s will for each of us. Of course God’s will is made plain to us in the commandments, but the question of how each person can exercise these commandments is not always such a simple matter, nor is it clear how each Christian can commit his life to God. People often find themselves faced with certain dilemmas, such as having to work on Sundays or having a job in which the work may contradict a person’s religious beliefs.

St. John simply tells us that we should always question whether what we do is in accordance with God’s will. The first step to discerning whether something is in accordance with God’s will is our own conscience: Let your God-directed conscience be your aim and rule in everything, St. John says.

I would quickly point out that St. John’s says we should let our “God-directed” conscience be our guide. I shall offer a few words about such a conscience in the next issue.

Do you know what an informed conscience is?

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20161030

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bulletinoctober23rdIn Eastern Christian spirituality, as expressed by the Greek Fathers, the human being as a person is of decisive importance. This does not mean that Christian spirituality is individualistic. The human person is always seen in a social context. It is the person together with neighbors who is the subject of Christian spirituality. This also means that both anthropology and ecclesiology, that is the understanding of the human person and the understanding of the church respectively, are interrelated.

The human being as a person is also always understood as being created in the image of God. The image charac-ter of a person’s being and the image purpose of a person’s existence constitute the characteristics of Christian spirituality. Therefore, the human being as person and God as the co-personal counterpart are seen as the decisive factors in this spirituality. What Martin Buber, from a Jewish point of view, called “the I-Thou relationship” is thus relevant also for Christian thought. The human being as image of the divine reality is never understood merely as a reflecting mirror, but as an individual subject, challenged in freedom by God and responding in action and worshipful recognition – or sinful revolt – to that challenge.

The basis of this Eastern Christian spirituality was laid in the early church. Its authoritative writers and spiritual fathers developed its anthropology into a concise foundation for their reflections on spiritual development. In this context the two concepts of image and person are crucial. The human person is basically understood as a being who is the bearer of an “iconological” purpose in relation to God within the created order, and who is, at the same time, a person, that is, a being who is able to develop a self, which is neither just an individual within a species nor a disloyal resistance center within a given order. The concepts of image and person, as a matter of fact, belong together. Divine life is understood as personal. God is divinity in three persons – and thus the human being, as bearing the image of God, is necessarily a person.

As you can see, our dogmas have a direct impact on our understanding of ourselves and God and the purpose of creation. We must begin to see ourselves as the image of God – the living icons of God incarnate, Jesus.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20161030

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The call to holiness is a call to participation in God. The Bible offers a sufficient number of passages about human participation in God for it to be taken as an important image of human salvation. But perhaps it does not speak about it as much as our Eastern Christian faith.

Two biblical texts are important: 2 Peter 1:4 and Psalm 82:6 which Jesus cites in John 10:34-36a:

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:4)

“I said, ‘You are ‘gods’” (Ps 82:6)

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’?” If He called them ‘gods.’ to whom the word of God came – and the Scripture cannot be broken – what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? (Jn 10:”34-36a)

This all speaks to the meaning and purpose of earthly life. We are here to accomplish one thing: To become like Jesus through personal transformation!

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20161030

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Although not a major feast in our Church, we do observe, on the Saturday before Willow Sunday, the raising_of_lazarus_by_logicon1. Why was it that after three and a half centuries of Christianity this miracle – the raising of Lazarus – should suddenly take on the public and ritualized form of a feast? Why should its observance just as suddenly be taken up throughout the East? At this point recognizing a distinct Eastern Church’s conception of all the feasts becomes crucial to understanding their function. For example, an Arian probably would not have denied that Lazarus was raised from the dead when Christ said, “Lazarus, come forth”. What he would have denied was that Christ performed this miracle on the basis of his own true and eternal divinity. As a specifically Eastern Church feast, then, the Raising of Lazarus represents more than Christ’s power over death: it is a manifestation of the divine and human natures which make salvation from death possible. John Chrysostom’s homilies on the Raising of Lazarus (c. 390) show this was how the feast was understood during the period of its widespread adoption. In these homilies John spoke of the miracle in terms of Christ’s revealing first his human nature, then his divine nature. He also referred repeatedly to the relation and equality of the Son to the Father, eventually even addressing a rhetorical question to “the heretic.” Chrysostom’s exegesis of the Raising of Lazarus was almost exclusively concerned with the Eastern Church’s conception of the nature of Christ vis-à-vis the Arian conception. Thus we see already that the Feast of the Raising of Lazarus involved much more than Jerusalem’s topography. Further conclusions can be drawn about the Cyrillian Feasts as a group.

Palm/Willow Sunday was also first recorded by Etheria between 381 and 384. It was localized at Jerusalem during the mid-fourth century and, like the Feast of the Raising of Lazarus, it spread throughout the Eastern Empire during the last two decades of that century. The feast commemorates Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem, an event which would culminate in the salvation of mankind. It marks the first day of Holy Week which, as it was observed in Jerusalem, was a long and elaborate program that topographically and chronologically reproduced the last events in Christ’s life, death and resurrection according to Scripture and Tradition. It took on the form of a series of feasts, each day being marked by special religious ceremonies, Scriptural readings and processions to parts of the city and countryside.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20161030

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Mystical Supper

Mystical Supper

As we enter into the core of our worship, the Anaphora, we are exhorted by the priest to “Lift up our hearts” and we are called upon to respond: “We have lifted them up to the Lord”.

It is critical, if we are to become truly engaged in our communal worship, that we actually listen to this and other exhortations and attempt to follow them. What does it mean to lift up your heart? It means that we attempt to forget about all other things and actually focus our attention on being in the presence of God. I realize that this is not always easy. One thing that can help is to actually say to yourself and God: “O Master, I desire to lift up my heart to you, help me in my effort”:

Again, this means that we take very serious this communal action that we have voluntarily chosen to make a part of our lives. We recognize that what we do together is to worship our God by “actively remembering” what He revealed to us through Jesus, the Christ.

I cannot encourage you enough to try to enter more fully into the Liturgy. You will not be sorry. When you do, something happens to you, there is a deep sense of peace. Of course the Liturgy itself prepares us for this when it has us pray: “Let us…now set aside all earthly cares.”

Our attitude going into worship is key. We know that it never lasts, usually, more than an hour and a half. If we voluntarily give ourselves to this time, telling ourselves that we will think about nothing other than what we are praying and doing, we will be prepared to enter into this “active remembering” of God’s actions in history.

After we have lifted up our hearts, the priest encourages us to give thanks to God. Our response to this exhortation is an important prayer which truly calls us to one of the major beliefs of our Church, namely that God is a Triune Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This declaration is a direct statement of our belief that Father, Son and Spirit are “One in substance and undivided.”

When we say this prayer, it is truly critical that we understand what we are saying and believe what we are saying. We are professing belief in a God Who is Three-In-One. This is a true statement of faith. Only Christians believe that God is Three-In-One. We are monotheists who see the oneness of God in the unity that exists between three Persons with one nature.