Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160529

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St. Cyril of Alexandria

St. Cyril of Alexandria

I have been sharing the thoughts of St. Cyril on Christ as the Emmanuel. The whole spiritual experience reflected in Cyril’s Christology implies two central   intuitions: (1) God, in the search for incomplete humanity, does not stop halfway, but goes where   humanity is – in death itself; (2) It is not an ideal, perfect humanity that the Son of God assumes, but that humanity which bears all the consequences of sin, particularly mortality and corruptibility. Except for sin itself – a personal act of rebellion against God to which Christ, being God, remained totally foreign – he assumed all the limitations of incomplete man, including suffering and death.

During the bitter Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, the Christology of Cyril was challenged from two sides. First, the school of Theodore of Mopsuestia, eventually condemned in the person of Nestorius, who was the archbishop of Constantinople, not only reflected a legitimate concern for the full and free humanity of Christ but also attempted to rationalize the mystery (How could the eternal Son “be born”? How could the passionless God “suffer and die”?). It accepted as absolute the Greek Platonic philosophical category of divine changelessness (atrepsia), which excluded such realistic affirmations as a divine birth in time or the death of the Son of God on Golgotha.

Second, the Cyrillian view of Jesus Christ was also challenged by those who interpreted it in an Apollinarian sense. Again on the basis of Platonism, Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, saw Jesus as God with a human body but without a human soul: why, indeed, was there a need in him for another spiritual center besides the divine Logos? But then was he truly a man, since he was lacking a distinctively human spiritual identity? Even more sophisticated than Apollinarianism, the teaching of Julian of Halicarnassus claimed that, since death came through sin, the sinless humanity of Jesus could not in any way be affected by corruptibility and mortality. The consequence was that the humanity of Jesus was incorruptible and perfect humanity, in the sense of not being fully like our fallen nature, and that therefore his death was not like our death.

Hopefully you, my readers, can see how difficult a task it was to come to some true understanding of Who Jesus IS. Dealing with the profound mystery of God’s INCARNATION, is not simple. It truly takes faith!

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160529

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Ladder of Divine AccentThe 20th Step on John’s Ladder (don’t despair we only have 10 more steps to go) is ALERTNESS. From the passion of sleep (Step 19) we move on to its positive counterpart: the virtue of ALERTNESS. It is a virtue because it is a state of being in which we are always prepared to meet our Maker. (As I always say, I have my bags packed and only wait for my ticket to be punched). We hear this wonderful line during Great and Holy Week: Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching.

If the purpose of alertness, or vigilance, is always to be prepared to meet the Lord and not to waste the time we have been given for repentance, then prayer or spiritual study, especially reading of the Scriptures, should be the activities that fill those waking hours otherwise wasted on sleep. But the reality is that the majority do not waste too much time sleeping, but on the contrary, don’t get enough of it.

This brings us back to the issue of priorities. Do we see it as a necessity to wake up on a Saturday or Sunday morning, when we, perhaps, do not need to go to work, in order to go to church or say our prayers? Of course, we should be careful not to push ourselves too far. We all get tired. We all need rest. But the truly fundamental spiritual question remains: Why do we not have that same sense of urgency and alertness when it comes to our spiritual life? We feel there is no practical consequence to skipping Morning Prayer or not going to church. There is no penalty. We are not going to lose our job or be reprimanded. So there is no sense of “I have to” about such things.

We must remember that God always gives us opportunities to return His love but He never insists, because He wants our response to be free!

IN GRATITUDE

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I would indeed offer my sincerest thanks to all those who truly honored me by their presence last week at the celebration of my 50th Anniversary of Ordination to the Priesthood. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me that you were here. I would also like to thank the Parish Council for all  its efforts in putting together this event. I cannot thank you enough.

As I reflect on the honor that you have shown me, I realize that I am only the second pastor of St. Michael’s Parish and that I have been with you almost 44 years of your 64 years as a parish. I thank you for embracing my priesthood and would tell you that I am eternally grateful for having been allowed to be a part of your lives.  Please know that you have been an influence on my life and I pray that, in some way, I have been a positive influence in your lives. May God bless all of you for your many kindnesses.

Many Thanks!

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for this Weekend — 20160522

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To You, O Lord, Author of all creation, the universe offers the God-bearing martyrs as the first-fruit of nature.
Through their prayers and the intercession of the Mother of God preserve Your Church, Your dwelling-place, in perfect peace, O Most Merciful One

allsaintssundayThis weekend we remember ALL SAINTS, that is all those who have faithfully followed Christ. They are an example for us. They have proved that it is possible to live like Jesus lived.

In the Gospel appointed we hear these words of our Savior: “If anyone publically

Acknowledge me as his friend, I will openly acknowledge him as my friend before my Father in heaven. But if anyone publically denies me, I will openly deny him before my Father in heaven.” What an absolutely clear message.

Paul writes these words in his letter to the Hebrews which we hear today: “Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up; and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us”. Another very clear message.

So what do we make of this. We definitely have examples in our Christian history of how people embraced the Jesus way of living and found true fulfillment. To witness to Jesus before others – to acknowledge Him as a friend – doesn’t mean to preach about Him but, rather, to live like Him. We have multiple examples in our society of peoples preaching about Jesus but we don’t necessarily have a lot of people living like Jesus.

How do we know if we are living like Jesus? By the way that we talk about ALL others or how we treat ALL others. Some people think they are living like Jesus when they choose to talk about and treat their friends in a loving manner. Their love, however, is not genuine since it is very obvious that their love is conditional – it is truly conditioned by their friendship.

Love is genuine when it is unconditional – that is when it is freely given without any regard to how the other person responds. One of the biggest problems in our society is that people seem to place conditions on their love, respect and treatment of others. This is not the way of Christ.

It is also not the way God responds to us!

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160522

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St. Cyril of Alexandria

St. Cyril of Alexandria

In the last issue of this article, I began sharing with my readers the thoughts of St. Cyril of Alexandria about Christ, Who is the Emmanuel. He once proclaimed, paraphrasing Isaiah, 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.”

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 was an act of self-giving by God. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. 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 mot openly 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”.

Hopefully you, my readers, will sense how the Church has, from the very beginning, struggled to discovered how to correctly understand Who Jesus IS and what He actually did on earth. Many great, dedicated minds spent years finding the exact words to share with us Who Jesus IS. If only modern Christians would put as much energy into coming to a true understanding of who Jesus is, I’m sure that our world would be quite different.

To be a Christian means to ponder on what we believe and Who God and Jesus are. It means trying to make our beliefs real to us. If we don’t ever struggle with our beliefs, we will never come to a real understanding of them.

Think about this.

GAINING A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OUR FAITH — 20160522

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transfigurationIn Byzantine spirituality the emphasis on the communal does not, in any way, mean that the individual is lost in the crowd. The purpose of an individual’s life is to achieve the aim declared in St. Peter’s second letter: “To become partakers of the divine nature.” This idea of an individual’s “partaking of the divine nature” approaches blasphemy in some circles in Western Christianity. It was the basis for terrible controversies in the Middle Ages between St. Symeon of Thessalonica and an Italian monk, Barlaam of Calabria. Known as the hesychast controversy, it was especially critical because it centered on a fundamental difference in the understanding of communion with God through prayer, especially mystical or contemplative prayer.

Closely related to the idea of partaking in the divine nature is the consequence: being divinized, or become divine. There is a maxim often repeated by the ancient Fathers of the Church: God became human so that humanity could become divine! This process is called theosis in Greek and is a hallmark of Byzantine spirituality. The Byzantines agree that it is not possible for humans to know or share the divine essence, but they can receive the uncreated energy or truly divine grace of God. This grace divinizes them. The process can be compared to an iron being heated in a forge until it glows like the fire itself and obtains some of the properties of fire. This idea of partaking in the uncreated energy of God is for the most part foreign to Western Christianity. In the Byzantine tradition it is a key dimension of its spirituality.

We must always remember that becoming like God and partaking in His energy truly means becoming like God’s manifestation, Jesus, and being one with His energy. Theosis does not mean becoming like God in His very essence. Since, however, God joined Himself to human nature, it truly means becoming like Jesus.

While God provides all that is necessary for human salvation and perfection, the human person must accept and apply these gifts. Theosis is a cooperative process. We must recall that Jesus, the man, cooperated with God and did everything in His power to live like God inspired Him to live. Jesus, as man, cooperated with God. I know that this is difficult to really understand. That is truly why faith is needed. These are things we believe

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20160522

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Truly in essence, this call to holiness is really a call to spirituality. Spirituality refers to the practices and beliefs that individuals or groups hold with regard to their relationship to God – or the Divine, if that word is safer for you. It was not always so: in days of yore the word “spirituality” had an objective meaning that had little to do with the warm-fuzzy that tends to pass for spiritual life in today’s market. In the fifth century we first encounter the Latin word spiritualitas, which referred to the quality of life imparted by the Holy Spirit to all who believe in Christ. There was an increased reflection upon the role of the Holy Spirit in our sanctification, and it began to be taught that the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Old Testament (OT – Isaiah 11:2-3) were specifically given to believers at baptism/ chrismation, as were the gifts of the Spirit mentioned by St. Paul (1 Corinthians 12). Spirituality was an area of theological speculation.

During the Middle Ages the word “spirituality” was used in a variety of ways, but with a narrowing of application from broader theology to “spiritual life” or “spiritual exercises,” so that by the twelfth century, “spiritual life” came to be seen as identical with interior religion and the devotional practices that fostered it. Later on, Christian writers began to use terms such as “ascetical theology” or “ascetic life.” The Greek word askesis means to be in training, and asceticism meant something very active.

The word “spirituality” was formerly used in a specifically Christian sense, but today it is applied to all kinds of religious feelings and practices that are the opposite of Christian teaching. Think about how many times people will tell you that they are into spirituality but not religion. Practitioners of witchcraft like to talk about their spirituality, as if they were doing the same kind of thing that the desert fathers were doing; after all, it is all spirituality. The word has become devalued so much that there are authors who write on “spirituality and sex and cooking.”

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160522

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the_four_evangelistsI have found, when trying to help people come to a deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture, that the most difficult idea a person has to deal with is Biblical Inspiration. What confuses most people is that there are various religions that say their sacred books are inspired by God. It is obvious, however, that what this means varies greatly. So what is our understanding of Biblical Inspiration.

Artists, philosophers and even scientists speak of inspiration, which is the urge to create a work of beauty (artists), a constructive new outlook on reality (philosophers) or a real solution to a problem (scientists). How to explain this inspiration?

First of all, inspiration is related to a certain sensitivity which exists in a society at a given time. This sensitivity inspires gifted individuals in that society. These persons in turn heighten that sensitivity in their fellow citizens. For example, we would never have produced our Jazz music, which has captured the whole world, without our Black communities that are so sensitive to music and rhythm.

It was more or less by this same process of mutual influence Hebrew literature came into being. We see in the Hebrew people a highly developed sensitivity for God’s presence in their lives. From these pious Hebrew communities we see arise prophets, preachers, writers, who offered their (first spoken) reflections on that shared experience of God’s presence with His people. In turn these prophets, preachers and writers heightened that religious sensitivity in their people.

There is a similarity between this Hebrew spiritual literature and all art. Both are inspired. But Hebrew literature is more than just that. It is inspired (breathed upon) in a very special way by Almighty God. This does not mean that God dictated His message as a businessman dictates a letter to a secretary. God takes the author as he is and leaves him free to choose his own way of communication. Isaiah was a great poet and composed beautiful poems to convey his message. Ezekiel was not well-versed in letters and his language is rather poor. Some authors chose existing folktales and even fables to bring out their point. Inspiration is guidance.

Since our Christian literature grew out of the Hebrew tradition, we first think about how the Hebrew understood this inspiration.

ACQUIRING THE MIND OF CHRIST — 20160522

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christ_iconAcquiring the “mind of Christ” doesn’t happen through osmosis. It requires first that we have a sincere desire to “put on Christ” and then the willingness to actually work at changing and transforming ourselves into humans who make every attempt to think and act like Jesus, the Christ.

While regular attendance at the Divine Liturgy is a real beginning and an absolutely essential part of this process, mere attendance is insufficient to accomplish transformation. It requires us to continuously look at how we think and behave and to establish a plan that will help us accomplish this transformation.

One of the biggest problems I think most people encounter is that they don’t necessarily feel or realize that they need to find ways to accomplish personal transformation. I’m sure that if your reading this article you are already making an attempt to be a “good” person and not break any Commandments. And so you probably think that, since you are not a great sinner, you’ve already accomplished the task of personal transformation in the sense of how Jesus talked about it.

We must remember that Jesus did not only teach “bad” people or “great” sinners. He spoke to the regular people of His day – people who probably regularly engaged in religious practices and attempted to live in accord to the dictates of their religion.

The problem is, and was, that one can keep all the commandments and rules of religion and still not accomplish “putting on Christ.” To “put on Christ” means to live in accord with the “spirit” of His teaching and not the letter of the law. The letter of the law does not call us to unconditional love of others! The letter of the

law does not necessarily call us to be non-judgmental or concerned about others. The letter of the law does not equate love of God with love of neighbor. The letter of the law does not suggest that we are truly called to be our brothers’ keeper.

The “mind of Christ” calls us to live in accord with the Spirit of God and not only the letter of the law. For most of us this requires some personal change and some personal transformation.

Remember, in God’s mind which is manifested in Jesus, union with Him – salvation – is achieved by how we treat others. To unconditionally love others, of course, we must first love ourselves.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20160522

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patcathIn the last issue of this article I introduced the idea of TRADITION. The big question that must be answered is: What is SACRED TRADITION? As I shared, Tradition is not CUSTOMS.

Before introducing a definition for TRADITION, I would like to share what it is not. It is not unbiblical, nor is it the same as customs. It is not man-made, nor is it a body of teaching distinct from the Scriptures.

The basic meaning of TRADITION is revealed within the Church, for, in its essence, TRADITION is the living experience and witness of the Spirit among God’s people. Two things are necessary for TRADITION to be truly TRADITION: (1) the true presence and leadership of the Holy Spirit, and (2) the Body of Christ, that is the CHURCH – the vessel of the Spirit. TRADITION is ultimately a continuity of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church; it is the presence of God in the Church giving it guidance and illumination.

This view demands our attentiveness to the Spirit’s voice within the shared consensus and agreement of brethren who have gone before us. This is why it is so very important to take into consideration what the Fathers and Mothers of the Church thought and believed. To ignore their testimony would be to ignore the ministry of the Holy Spirit in their midst. TRADITION can be heard by anyone in whom Christ’s Spirit abides, but a person with such a sensitivity would desire to identify with the Spirit’s working among others as well. The spiritual man or woman is not an isolated individual, for the Body of Christ (Church) is not one member but many. Only as we recognize that our union with Christ also means a recognition of our union with His members can we be complete and true Christians. To borrow Paul’s phrase to the Corinthians on this point, we cannot say to the Spirit-led Christians of the past “I have no need of you.” To do so would be to forfeit much of the spiritual blessing and wisdom the Spirit would have us enjoy.

This is why our Church, together with the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and a few other Christian Churches, say that the Scriptures cannot be the only rule to guide us. TRADITION, which shares how the CHURCH has, over the centuries, understood the Scriptures is very important. Our Church looks to the Fathers as one source to truly understand Scriptures.