ACQUIRING THE MIND OF CHRIST — 20160626

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christ_iconAs I suggested in the last issue of this article, to acquire the mind of Christ we must first grow in our understanding of how He prayed. I then suggested that Jesus saw God as ABBA – a Father, however, Who is in heaven.

In addition to calling God ABBA, Jesus added the pronoun “OUR” to ABBA. This clearly indicates that Jesus saw God as not only His own ABBA but the ABBA of all humankind. So Jesus taught us that God, like our human fathers, is the source of our life. In fact, God has chosen to infuse His Life into us through the means of our earthly fathers.

St. Cyprian of Carthage, a third century bishop wrote, “My dear friends, the Lord’s Prayer contains many great mysteries of our faith. In these few words there is great spiritual strength, for this summary of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions.”

In Jesus’ prayer he then adds this: hallowed be thy name. I suspect millions of Christians say this prayer every day and probably don’t even realize what hallowed means. We say the prayer by rote. The word hallowed has several meanings: honored as holy; and greatly revered and respected. In this first petition, we ask that God’s name be sanctified. Objectively speaking, God’s name is already holy, but the prayer is asking that God make his name holy to all people through His works and deeds.

This immediately raises this question: To which name is Jesus referring? Yahweh, which means I AM, or ABBA, which means Father. As a Jewish man, He would probably not have uttered the name Yahweh, even though it does appear in Genesis. It was and is a Jewish practice to only name God by circumlocution, speaking His attributes. So, probably, Jesus

Encouraging His followers, and therefore us, to think of God truly as Father, someone from our earthly experience, with whom we can have a relationship. The English word God and Hebrew Yahweh truly seem to make God much more abstract – not someone we can actually have a loving relationship with. Through this prayer Jesus encourages us to think of God not as an abstract deity but, rather, as someone with whom we can have a loving relationship – of someone Who also loves us and will do all in His power to help us grow and keep us safe.

I hope this will encourage you to begin thinking of this pray in a different way.

GAINING A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OUR FAITH– 20160626

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transfigurationLet me continue this article by sharing some thoughts about the Church’s understanding of Who Christ Is. Put simply, the Church confesses about Christ that He is the Son of God become human, become man, without ceasing to be God. By stating this I know that one of the immediate questions must be: Who is God. I shall wait, however, to address that question after I share more about the Church’s idea of Who Christ is.

The history of Christology is the history of the attempt to preserve this basic confession, namely that Jesus is the God-Man. Perhaps the first problem was to square the attribution of some kind of divinity to Christ with the monotheism of the Hebrew religion in the bosom of which Christianity was formed. I think I have already shared that thought with my readers.

In the first century or so, Christians came to realize that what distinguished them from other Jews was their belief that the promised Messiah, the Christ, had come. For the early Christians Jesus was the person for whom the Jewish People were waiting. For the early Christians the messianic age had dawned. But this messiah manifested his power on the cross. He was no political champion of Israel’s hopes. Rather, what he achieved was something much deeper: it was the overthrow of death and all the ways in which death has corrupted human life, and the life of the world as a whole. This was never within the scope of the expectations that the Jewish people had of their messiah. Already one can see a revision of what divine power looks like – not coercion, but love – which further entails that the anointed one of the Jews, the Messiah, was the fulfillment of the hopes of all humanity: ‘a light for revelation to the nations, and the glory of your people Israel’, in the words of Symeon, who carried the child Jesus in his arms when he was presented in the temple (Luke 2:32). Ideas about the real meaning of divinity – of who or what God is – subverted the normal expectations of both Jews and Gentiles: love and faithfulness revealed the nature of God, not power and dominion. In other words, Jesus did not meet Jewish expectations of what the Messiah would do and what He would be like. The Expected Messiah was to free the Jewish people from the domination and subjugation that was imposed on them by Rome.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160626

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Ladder of Divine AccentThe 22nd Step on the Ladder of St. John Climacus, is VAINGLORY. St. John writes:

Like the sun which shines on all alike, vainglory beams on every occupation. What I mean is this. I fast, and turn vainglorious. I stop fasting so that I will draw no attention to myself, and I become vainglorious over my prudence. I dress well or badly, and am vainglorious in either case. I talk or hold my peace and each time I am defeated. No matter how I shed this prickly thing, a spike remains to stand up against me.

Although John agrees with the view of Gregory the Great, who considers vainglory and pride to be the same sin, he treats them separately in the Ladder since he regards them as two different stages of the same passion: Vainglory, fully grown, can give birth to pride, which is the beginning and the end of all evil.

Vainglory, being the beginning of pride, is a spiritual sin. As such, it easily works its way into the very fabric of spiritual life. Christians are apt to make pious excuses to justify this passion and to fool themselves into thinking they are acting in the name of God rather than for vainglory. St. John writes:

Dread vainglory urges us to pretend that we have some virtue which does not belong to us. It encourages us with the text: “Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good deeds.”

Furthermore, we seek to disguise our sins in order that people will think us righteous, but our excuse is that we must not scandalize our brethren. John writes:

Do not conceal your sin because of the idea that you must not scandalize your neighbor. Of course this injunction must not be adhered to blindly. It will depend on the nature of one’s sinfulness.

The notion of Christians being scandalized by the sins of others is very irksome. To be scandalized is in fact nothing more than a euphemism for being judgmental. Why should anyone be scandalized by the sins of their fellow Christians? Do we so easily forget that we too are sinners?

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20160626

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Holy Eucharist IconIn the sacrifice that we communally offer, we give ourselves over to God because, knowing God, we cannot but love Him, and loving Him, we cannot but strive toward Him and toward unity with Him. But sins encumber us and so we likewise seek forgiveness and reconciliation with our God. It was revealed to us by God Himself, by the Person of Jesus, that the offering of our lives to God is the only way that we can quench our thirst for God. In our sacrifice, we seek the One for whom we cannot cease to seek, for “God created us for Himself, and our hearts will not rest until they rest in Him.

In saying all of this, it is important to understand that all of us might not be aware of this thirst for God. But, if we, when we come and pray the Liturgy together, think about this, we will find that to some degree and in some measure we begin to see that we do have a thirst for God and that our prayer helps quench this thirst.

How would I describe this thirst? This thirst is our desire to find a true meaning and purpose of our lives. Life here on earth, with all its challenges, can be quite upsetting. We desire to know why we are here and why we have to go through all the things that we do in life. I truly believe that if you listen closely to the words of the prayers that we offer and become deeply aware of the actions (rituals) that we engage in, you will come to see that the Liturgy does give us many clues with regard to the meaning and purpose of life.

Why do I say this? Because in conjunction with our prayers and actions, we are always reminded how Jesus lived. The more we become attuned to truly realize WHO Jesus is and HOW He lived, the more and more we will come to understand the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Again, this requires that we join ourselves with Jesus in offering ourselves to our Heavenly Father, ABBA, in thanksgiving for His love and His many gifts, one of them being life itself. The Liturgy has the power to help us transform our lives and have the courage and strength to embrace the Jesus WAY OF LIVING.

Again, this requires that we are not mere observers of the Liturgy but whole-hearted participants. It requires us to not just unconsciously go through the prayers and actions but to attune ourselves to what is being prayed and done. You are encouraged to make the prayers your own.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160626

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I have been presenting some ideas about Divine Inspiration and Scripture. I’ve shared the thoughts about God’s personal involvement in the creation of the writings of the Old Testament (OT). The Church was born into a world that believed in the divine origin of the sacred books of the OT. This, of course, had a great influence on how the early Church, since it was composed mainly of Jewish followers of Jesus, came to look at the writings that eventually became the substance of the New Testament (NT).

Biblical scholars believe, however, that there are a few indications in the NT that a similar divine origin should be attributed to specifically Christian books. John’s book, Revelation, seems to explicitly refer to its origin as being from God. In second Peter, the author equates the epistles of Paul that are known to him with “the other Scriptures”, that is, the Jewish sacred books. Finally, in first Timothy there occurs the following remark: “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain,’ and “the laborer is worthy of his wages.” The first citation is taken directly from Deuteronomy, while the second is identical to words in Luke’s Gospel. This may indicate that the author of first Timothy considers Luke, or a version of the Gospel of Luke, to be Scripture in as true a sense as the books of the OT. On the other hand, it may be that after citing Deuteronomy with the formula “the Scripture says,” the author of first Timothy then adds loosely, and without including it in Scripture, a well-known proverb that has the same meaning as the scriptural citation. This appears all the more probable when you find that in Luke (10:7) Jesus seems to think of the saying as a familiar proverb.

Conscious of the divine origin of the books of Scripture was a constant element in all Christian tradition after the completion of the NT. It should be noted, however, that the Church took some time before she recognized which books should be included in the NT. This consciousness manifested itself in the attempt by early church writers to develop a terminology that would adequately express the role of God in producing the sacred books. Frequently, the words of Scripture were referred to as the words of God or of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, God’s action with regard to the production of the inspired books was referred to as God’s speaking or saying the words of Scripture.

A Father’s Day Prayer

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We ask You, Almighty God,
to bless all the fathers and
men of our Parish Family
on this Father’s Day. Grant
them the strength to unconditionally love and
forgive others and the courage to honestly deal
with life’s challenges. Make them icons of
steadfastness in Your service, showing their
children how to love others as You love them.
We beg You, O Heavenly Father, to shower
Your blessings upon the living fathers and men
of our Parish. Bless them with happiness,
health and length of days.
We also ask You to grant a blessed repose to
our deceased fathers and place them in a place
where there is no pain, sorrow or mourning.
As we ask Your blessings upon the men of
our Parish, we also ask You, O Heavenly Father,
to bless us and help us all to become persons
who are truly sensitive to the needs of others.
We know that You have called us to be like Your
Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore help us to be
persons who give life to others by the way we
respect and treat them. AMEN.
Eternal Memory! Вічная пам’ять!
Many Years! Mnohaya Lita!

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for this Weekend — 20160619

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deisisOur assigned readings this weekend are again taken from Paul’s Letter to the Romans and St. Matthew’s Gospel. Paul has this very important comment: If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

What is interesting in this quote is that Paul says if you believe in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead, then you will be saved. This phrase, I believe, tells us that our belief in this fundamental story of our faith must be absolute and complete. It must be something that we accept without doubt and without reservation.

When what we believe is also in our heart as well as our head, then it is complete. The things of the heart are also things that we love and cherish.

Accepting the Lord’s Resurrection from the dead also means that we accept the fact that human life is immortal. Why? Because Christ is the revelation that God has given us about human life.

The miracle story that Matthew’s Gospel relates is about Christ casting out the demons that were possessing two men. It is interesting that the entire town was not pleased with the miracle and asked Jesus to leave. Why? Because of several reasons, I believe. First, they were not very concerned with the men who were possessed. If there was true love of neighbor, they would have rejoiced that the men were cured. Second, the pigs were the basis of their economy. Even though the demons went into the herd of swine of their own volition, the town blamed Jesus. Even though the herd belonged to the possessed swine herders the entire town was upset? Why? Perhaps it was because the people didn’t want to accept change. The entire town was possessed by an ungrateful spirit!

This is how I put these two stories together. The only reason people might refrain from completely professing the truth about the Lord’s resurrection is that they are possessed by a spirit of doubt. Further, they aren’t able to believe the Lord’s resurrection from the dead declares the truth that human life is immortal. The spirit of fear about death keeps them from fully embracing this truth. If we truly believe in our hearts the truth about human immortality, why do we allow ourselves to fear death?

Belief in Christ as the revelation of the Father about human life, can cast out the demons that make us fear death and doubt the revelation of God through Jesus. If we don’t fear death, life becomes truly wonderful. What do you think?

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20160619

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Holy Eucharist IconBy bringing the humble human gifts of bread and wine – our earthly food and drink – and placing them on the altar, we perform, often without thinking of it, that most ancient, primordial rite that from the first day of human history constituted the core of every religion: we offer a sacrifice to God. “Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock: (Genesis 4: 2-4)

A thousand books have been written on sacrificial offerings, and produce the most varied explanations. All have their own points of view, endeavoring to elucidate the essence of the sacrifice, some finding it in fear, some in joy, some in lower and some in higher causes. And whatever may be the value of all these explanations, it remains indubitable that wherever and whenever man turns to God, he necessarily senses the need to offer him the most precious things that he has, what is most vital for life, as a gift and sacrifice. From the time of Cain and Abel, the blood of sacrifices has daily covered the earth and the smoke of burnt offerings has unceasingly risen to heaven.

Our refined sensibilities are horrified by these blood sacrifices, by these primitive religions. In our horror, however, do we not forget and lose something very basic, very primary, without which in essence there is no religion? For in its ultimate depths religion is nothing other than thirst for God. The psalmist wrote: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. It seems that perhaps primitive people knew this thirst better, they sensed it more deeply.

To want God means above all to know with one’s whole being that HE IS, that outside of Him there is only darkness, emptiness and meaninglessness, for in him and only in him is the cause, the meaning, the goal and the joy of all existence. This means to love him with our whole heart, our whole mind and our whole being. This means, finally, to feel and to recognize our separation from him and, therefore, our deep desire to be once again united with him. This thirst for God fuels our earthly journey.

Where there is this thirst for God, this yearning for genuine life, there necessarily is sacrifice. In our Liturgy we join with Jesus in offering our very lives back to God in Thanksgiving for the gift of life.

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160619

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St. Cyril of Alexandria

St. Cyril of Alexandria

I have been sharing the ideas of both Athanasius and Cyril about Jesus. They saw Him as Perfect God and Perfect Man and the Council of Chalcedon affirmed their understanding.

If Athanasius and Cyril, by defending the divinity of Christ and the unity of His being, provided Christian spirituality with its essential basis, their names and their messages remained somewhat controversial even after their death. One of the major reasons for the bitter theological debates that followed was that zealous followers of the two great masters tended to freeze their doctrines into verbal formulas. These were accepted literally and out of the context provided by the spiritual experience of the catholic (i.e., universal) tradition and the theology of the masters themselves. The struggle of Athanasius cen-tered on the Nicaean creed and, in particular, the Greek term homoousios (translated as consubstantial), used in that creed to affirm the common divine “essence” of the Father and the Son. But the same term was used by Sabellians (Sabellianism in the Eastern Church or Patripassianism in the Western Church) who interpreted “consubstantiality” as incompatible with the Trinitarian revelation of God. For Sabellians, to say that the Father and the Son are of “one essence” meant that God was not three persons, but a unique essence with only three aspects or “modes” of manifestation. Thus the Nicaean and Athanasian formulation of the Christian experience – true as it was in its opposition to Arianism (an influential heresy denying the divinity of Christ, originating with the Alexandrian priest Arius ( circa 250 – circa 336). Arianism maintained that the Son of God was created by the Father and was therefore neither coeternal with the Father, nor consubstantial) – needed further terminological and conceptual elaboration. This elaboration was provided by the Cappadocian Fathers with their doctrine of the three divine Hypostases, or really distinct persons. It did not truly imply any disavowal of Athanasius but a more sophisticated use of Greek philosophical terms. Paradoxically, the Cappadocians, who were better versed than Athanasius in ancient Greek thought, were more successful than he was in showing the incompatibility between biblical trinitarianism and Greek philosophical categories. But they did so by using Greek vocabulary as a tool, changing its meaning and making it into a manageable instrument of Christian witness.

The process of our faith has been truly guided by God’s Spirit.

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160619

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image269Two New Testament (NT) texts have become classic descriptions of God’s involvement in the production of the Old Testament (OT). Paul’s second letter to Timothy and Peter’s second letter. In 2 Timothy (3:14), Paul urges Timothy to remain steadfast in the doctrine he has learned, having confidence both because of the person from whom he learned it and because of the grounding in Scripture he had from childhood. Paul states: “Every Scripture is divinely inspired and useful for instruction.” Here Scripture is translated by the Greek word graphe; that it denotes the OT is clear from the fact that the reference is to the books that Timothy has known from his Jewish childhood. Paul’s letters were, at the time, not considered scripture and the Gospels were yet to be written.

The Greek word for “divinely inspired” is theopneustos, which can mean “breathed by God.” Scripture is then something that has been breathed by God – in other words, the very breath of God himself. The expression, therefore, clearly denotes the divine origin of Scripture; it bypasses consideration of any human causality that may have been at the origin of Scripture and concentrates upon a familiar OT theme, namely that the breath or spirit of Yahweh is an expression for the forceful action of God.

If 2 Timothy (3:16), in attributing the origin of Scripture to God, bypasses any human factor that may have been involved, the same cannot be said of the second text, namely 2 Peter 1:21. The readers of 2 Peter are assured that the doctrine of the coming of the Lord is not a myth; for the Lord’s majesty has already been seen momentarily at the transfiguration, an event that gives greater strength and credibility to the prophecy of Scripture. Peter states this: “No prophecy of Scripture can be understood by merely human power and outside the salvation community, for it was not the will of man that brought prophecy in former times; rather being impelled by the Holy Spirit, men though they were, spoke under the agency of God”.

Again, it must be understood that both Peter and Paul were not referring to their own writings but to those of the Jewish OT. Our ideas, however, about the divine inspiration of the NT are derived from the ideas that the early Church had about the OT. The OT tells us about the covenant that the Jewish people had with Yahweh. The NT tells us about the NEW COVENANT.