The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20160522

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Holy Eucharist IconThe history of the eucharistic service, the Divine Liturgy, can be divided into several periods.

Initial Period:

The Lord’s Supper is separated from the agape and the Word service becomes permanently joined to it. This emerges in the Middle of the 2nd Century. It consisted of Readings, Preaching, Common Prayers, Kiss of Peace, Transfer of Gifts, Prayer over the gifts (Anaphora), Communion (fraction), and Dismissal.

Second Period:

This is the period of Church Orders, when written formularies, that is actual texts, first appear. All of them differ, showing that there was no one “apostolic liturgy” from which they were derived. Yet all of them follow the same basic outline first seen in Justin’s Apology, as found in the initial period.

Third Period:

After the peace of Constantine in 313, when the Liturgy became a public ceremonial of a church that was freed from civil restraints and fast becoming an important social force, liturgical development quickened. It is in this period that we first hear of the rite of Byzantium. Indeed, this rite can be said to characterize this stage of liturgical history. It is the rite of the new capital of Constantine, which was founded in 315. It inaugurates the new era of Constantinian or Imperial Christendom.

This is the period of unification of rites. New forms of worship evolved, and standardization began taking place. The particular form of worship in local churches were replaced by standardized forms in particular patriarchates. The forms of worship we find now is not a synthesis of all the various forms from the early Church but, rather, the result of a selective evolution of the forms unique to a particular group of Churches within a geographic area. The development of the Liturgy in each patriarchate was heavily influenced by the monastic communities that also developed.

Fourth Period:

In this period liturgical families continued to evolve. They were already formed as particular Churches and so the development was within a particular, established “RITUAL”.

In the East, while there was an attempt at uniformity, it never took on the same rigidity as was found in the West. Each ethnic group that embraced the ritual of Byzantium put its on mark on the ritual.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160522

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Ladder of Divine AccentAs I shared with you, my readers, the 19th Step on John’s Ladder is difficult to truly understand in many ways. No one, not even the saints, can live without sleep. But if we truly love prayer (especially when we know that work and other obligations will be devouring a good deal of our time), we can spend a little less time in bed so that we can spend a little more time at prayer. The more the flesh is disciplined and subjected to the will of the spirit, the easier this becomes. That’s John’s advice.

However, tiredness or lack of sleep can affect out prayer. It is surely better to get a reasonable amount of sleep and spend less time praying, but with an alert and focused mind, than to deprive ourselves of sleep only to stand there trying to pray while half awake. While this is true, we must consider whether it is tiredness or despondency that is interfering with out prayer. But whatever the case, a more acute perception of God’s presence is the remedy for that problem. St. John writes: “The man who considers with sensitivity of heart that he is standing before God will be an immovable pillar in prayer.”

What do we consider important enough to stay awake and alert for? It is easy to become enthralled by a late-night movie on the television that forces us to stay awake till the end, even though we make have wanted sleep. I could have chosen more important things than a movie over sleep. Perhaps the same is true for prayer.

Why is it that the spirit, which is strong, is overpowered by the flesh, which is weak? It is because we are not sensitive to the presence of God. We give the flesh what it wants and starve the spirit of what it needs. If only we could sense and perceive His presence every morning, every night, every day.

We must desire to gain God’s presence!

Congratulation Father Wayne On the 50th Anniversary of Your Ordination to the Priesthood.

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fatherwayneFather Wayne J. Ruchgy, Phd, has always relied on God’s trusted timing and sense of humor in finding his path in life.  Born and raised in Wayne, Michigan, the only son of Joseph and Ann Ruchgy, Fr. Wayne received a degree in Philosophy from the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington Ohio in 1962.  That timing and sense of humor showed itself soon after graduation, when by chance the opportunity came to enter St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Seminary, taking Fr. Wayne on a path different than his Roman Catholic upbringing.  From the Catholic University of America he earned his License in Sacred Theology in 1966 and was ordained a priest that same year.  His first assignment brought him home to Detroit at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, where he served as assistant pastor for four years.  In 1970 God’s timing was again present, leading Fr. Wayne to begin a second career path, becoming a teacher, Guidance Counselor, and eventually a Psychologist for the Detroit Public Schools and the Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency.  In addition to earning a Master’s Degree in Guidance and Counseling, in 2004 he received his second Master’s Degree, and then a Doctorate, in Clinical Psychology from the University of Detroit – Mercy.  He chose to specialize his skills helping special needs students.  Until recently, Father Wayne maintained a Clinical Psychology practice that provided therapy to people without insurance.  These educational achievements coincided with his concurrent pastoral leadership of St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Dearborn Michigan, which he assumed in 1977 and holds to this day. This dual career has revealed to Fr. Wayne the compatible and supportive, not adversarial or contradictory, connection between Faith and Psychology, and he counts this insight as one of the great blessings granted him across both vocations.  Father Wayne has served as a Consultor for the Eparchy since 1993, and was honored to act as Protosyncellus, retiring in 2016 after twenty-three years

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for this Weekend — 20160515

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When the Most High descended and confused tongues, He scattered the people;
but when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all men to unity.
Therefore, with one voice, let us praise the Most Holy Spirit.

PentecostOn this glorious feast of Pentecost, our Church uses John’s Gospel to present an important quote of Jesus: “I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he shall possess the light of life.”

The “light of life” is truly presented in the story of Acts that is our Epistle today. It says:

“Staying in Jerusalem at the time were … Jews of every nation…. They were much confused because each one heard these men speaking his own language…. They asked in utter amazement, “Are not all of these men … Galileans? How is it that each of us hears them in his native tongue?”

Indeed the revelation made on Pentecost is that all people are part of the same human family. The apostles were understood by all. Nothing should separate us from our fellowmen, neither language, culture, religion or race. God’s Spirit calls us to accept one another as brother or sister – as a sibling.

Like any family, we must, if we wish to be followers of Jesus and children of God, overlook how others treat us. Our response to others must always be unjudgemental, unconditional love. We are called to develop this ability to unconditional love precisely because we are children of God.

What is important for each of us to learn is how to live in this manner and be true followers of Jesus. This is life’s challenge! God revealed to us through Jesus that this is how humans are meant to live. Christians are called to imitate Jesus and interact with others in the same way that Jesus did. He, Jesus, is the ultimate example of how we should think and live.

The reason why God become Incarnate in the Person of Jesus was to give us a concrete example of how humans should live in order to benefit from this earthly existence. We are here to learn how to be truly human, God’s children. As Eastern Christians we embrace the idea that life’s journey is to grow in our likeness of Jesus, our brother and the only-begotten of our Heavenly Father.
How do you choose to live?

GAINING A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OUR FAITH — 20160515

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image379Byzantine spirituality is intensely communal. It is deeply rooted in Byzantine thought that an individual is not saved as an individual but as a member of the Body of Christ, the Church. Incorporation into the Church brings not only salvation but also the responsibilities of membership.

Communal life with Christ is extended and expressed first and foremost in the Holy Mysteries (sacraments) by which Christ gathers his community around himself and imparts life. Thus, membership in the Church is an existential need, like air to breathe and water to drink. The union-with others (communion) is absolutely essential for us to achieve the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Related to the communal nature of Byzantine spirituality is its emphasis on the communion of saints. The cult of the saints truly enjoys greater prominence and expression in our Byzantine spirituality than in Western spirituality. The role of Mary, Mother of God, the one around whom the Church gathered for the first Pentecost, is decidedly much more prominent in the spirituality of the Byzantine Church. It should be noted that in Byzantine Spirituality Mary is only referred to as the Mother of God. That is her greatest honor. In iconography she is never drawn alone. She is always drawn with Jesus.

It is said that Slav Byzantine piety is founded on two pillars: the psalter and the lives of the saints. Every liturgical service we have, even the Divine Liturgy, contains parts of the Psalms (e.g., Prokimenon and Alleluia verses). The use of the Psalms for worship connects us very closely to our Jewish heritage. They are the hymns of the Chosen People of God, which now also includes us who follow Jesus.

For the Byzantines the Church is a long line of people from the first human being to the last one, all        following the New Man, Jesus Christ. Those coming after us in the future are no less a part of our life and Church than those of us here present.

It is a general rule of thumb in our Slav-Byzantine spirituality, that we come to truly gain a deeper insight into our faith through our worship. Worship is the primary teacher of faith. Being attentive, for example, to the prayers and actions of the Divine Liturgy, can bring us to a deeper understanding and appreciation of what we believe.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160515

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Ladder of Divine AccentStep 19 of the Spiritual Ladder is, I believe, more difficult to understand. St. John places this step under the category of spiritual passions. This may seem curious to many. We do not tend to think of sleep as a spiritual thing. But just as too much food affects the condition of the soul, so too does too much sleep. Likewise, when a passion comes into conflict with our spiritual life, distinctions between physical and spiritual are irrelevant. Body and soul together: that is the principle of asceticism (the practice of a spiritual life). That is the only way spiritual life can be possible. Ever tried going to church without taking your body with you? And this is precisely why the desire for too much sleep is a spiritual passion.

John was not talking about physical tiredness; he was not talking about what the body needs (and the need of each person is different). He was talking about priorities. He said that when it comes to things we consider important, when we know we have to be somewhere at a certain time, we make sure we get up in time to do so. But many people do not apply the same urgency to prayer and worship. This is why the subject of sleep is treated in connection with prayer and participation in church services.

John describes how laziness can cut into our spiritual life in a way we can all understand even today: Wait until the first hymns are over…. then it will be time enough to go to church. And that was before the invention of snooze buttons.

The saints live for prayer and worship. If they could, they would not sleep at all in order to keep praying. Indeed, this is the purpose of vigils.

It is all a matter of what we choose to be a priority in our life. Do we choose to make worship of God a true priority? This step calls us to make prayer a priority.

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20160515

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Holy Eucharist IconAll Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christians believe that during the Divine Liturgy the bread and wine     offered are turned into the Body and Blood of Christ. Western Catholics also believe this, albeit this miracle is expressed in a different manner. The Western Church explains this miracle by the word transubstantiation and explains what happens by saying that the very substance of the bread and wine are changed but that the accidents, (i.e., appearances and qualities) of the bread and wine remain the same. So, although the gifts still look and taste like bread and wine, they are really Christ’s body and blood.

Our Church uses, instead of the word transubstantiation, the Greek word metousiosis. This word conveys the meaning that the inner reality of the bread and wine are changed. The East does not use the words substance and accidents because it feels that these terms rob the mystery of what actually happens when we pray to the Father, remember the words of the Son and invoke the power of the Holy Spirit.

This difference really highlights an essential difference between the East and the West. The Church of the East, in all instances, attempts to retain the mystical aspect of our faith and does not even attempt to describe what happens to the gifts. We believe that God, in some miraculous and also very mysterious manner, changes the gifts we bring, making His Son truly present with us.

This approach, I believe, highlights something important. God’s INCARNATION, that is His becoming a human, truly changed the meaning of human life and revealed that human life is, in some essential and wondrous way, connected to God Himself. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity – Jesus Christ – has a glorified human body which is a part of God. Think about that. What does it mean to you that our human nature is intimately connected to God? When you think about this you realize how very different Christian and Orthodox Christianity is from other religions, even some modern-day Christian religions (Remember, not all Western Christian religions believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Some don’t even have an Eucharist). So what do you believe about the Holy Eucharist? I believe that this is important to think about!

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160515

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Athanasius the Great

Athanasius the Great

I would first offer a few more thoughts from our Father Athanasius of Alexandria. In the last bulletin I ended this article by sharing with my readers that the divine identity of Jesus, equal to the Father, was not a matter of abstract or purely theological truth. It indicated the condition of mortal humanity – which could neither save itself nor be saved by another creature – and the true nature of God, who himself performed the salvation of the world rather than act indirectly through created intermediaries or through an all-powerful but mechanic fiat or simple decree.  For Athanasius, salvation is a restoration of direct fellowship and communion between God and man, because anything less than such a fellowship would imply a limitation of divine love. Hence his famous definition of salvation as deification (theosis), which became a standard of Greek patristic thought.

The affirmation of Christ’s divinity in Nicaean and Athanasian categories inevitably raised the question concerning the historical Jesus as man. The issue involved long debates, schisms and the search for appropriate definitions at Councils – Nicaea (325), 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).

For Cyril, Christ was the Emmanuel. Before Cyril had engaged himself in bitter theological debates with Nestorius (428-431), 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. This was also the central inspiration of Athanasius in his early and famous treatise On the Incarnation of the Word, wherein he truly maintained, as he did in his polemics against Arius: that only God can save.

Both Athanasius and Cyril profoundly impacted and shaped the Church’s ideas of Who Jesus Christ IS

ACQUIRING THE MIND OF CHRIST — 20160515

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christ_iconBeing human means being created in the image of God. While being created in God’s image means being rational and free, that is not all it means. Being created in God’s image means having an affinity with God, not a natural affinity but one granted by God and by which we can know Him and have some kind of communion with Him. Put more exactly, being in the image of God means being able to pray.

One of the aspects of the language of images is that images are not just likenesses or pictures, but derived from an original. An   image of God is derived from God, it manifests Him as a kind of theophany. The purpose of an image is to enable others to recognize the original and to draw them to the original. If one understands image in this sense, then the whole of John’s Gospel is concerned with the image: the Son imaging forth the Father, so that Christ can say to Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

If we are truly made in God’s image which is manifested in the Person of Jesus Christ, then we are called to put on the mind of Christ. We must realize that being made in the image of Jesus and called to grow in His likeness, we are called to become like Him in mind, heart and soul. It means growing in our awareness of the meaning and purpose of life.

It seems to be obvious that the meaning and purpose of God’s creation is to bear witness to His profound glory and wisdom. This would suggest that the only way that we can grow in His likeness is to make every attempt to adopt Jesus’ way of thinking about creation. To do this, we must make every attempt to “put on the MIND of CHRIST.”

So the questions that result from this are: How do I acquire the mind of Christ? What do I have to do in order to achieve this goal?

There are several steps. First, we must discover the mind of Christ and come to an understanding of what He thought about God’s creation. Second, we must assess how we think about creation and see how close we are to how Jesus thought about it. And then we must challenge ourselves to start thinking about God’s creation in the way that Jesus did. This, of course, means engaging in a constant assessment of how well we are imitating the attitudes of Jesus Christ.

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20160515

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1507060_848314515197967_2751624803318588973_nA true characteristic of our Church is that it is TRADITIONAL in a true sense of the word. By tradition we do not mean an unreasoned imitation of what our parents and past generations did! Tradition is not a body of legends which the naïve blindly accept without question! These are only popular notions that many have about tradition.

To Eastern Christians, Tradition, Scripture and spiritual authority are all interrelated subjects.  We boldly assert that to understand the place of the Bible in the Church one has to first have a clear view of Christian Tradition. This is not because Scripture and Tradition are two very separate but equal sources of spiritual authority that as to be synthesized. It is, in fact, because they are inseparably related.

Tradition, as is true with many other Christian terms, holds different meanings for an Eastern Christian than it does for the average believer in the West. There is a truly distinctively Christian sense to Tradition. Our Church embraces the more Ancient Eastern Christian understanding of Tradition.

It must be noted that Divine Tradition is not the same as customs. Apostolic Tradition truly cannot be equated with “passed down customs or teachings”, though it can and does make use of these. Divine Tradition searches for ways to express the message of the Gospel in ways that we mortals can receive. Tradition gives birth to true customs, but they are not one and the same. While customs can be the vehicle that the Spirit uses to bear witness to Christ, they are not Tradition itself. This difference is very important. Some of our customs are not Divine Tradition and we must come to distinguish what is actual Tradition and what are just customs that have been added by our ethnic heritage.

Many people find it difficult to separate what are customs from Sacred Tradition. This Tradition, which has been handed down from the Apostles and the early Christian Church, is much different from the customs that every Eastern Church has developed. Our customs are Slavic and Ukrainian and, in the United States, also those of our early immigrants. They have been developed for various reasons over the years. They are not Sacred Tradition which is not man-made and is not confined to history. I will continue to try and explain what Tradition IS.