CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20160515

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theotokosI realize that this article seems to have lost some of its focus. This is, I believe, a result of my attempts to find the right words to articulate exactly what I think the “call to holiness” really means. I’m beginning to truly realize that there are very many different aspects to this “call”.

The call God is giving us is a call to   become an authentic human being, that is a human being who is growing in the likeness of Christ, who is the archetype of what God intended when He created      humans. As you might guess, God had an idea of what humans could be like in order for them to understand their meaning and purpose in creation Humans are probably the only beings that God has created that have been given the ability to develop an understanding of their meaning and purpose. Why? Because we have been created in His image and given the ability to grow in His likeness manifested in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus, the Christ.

So, to be a true human being means to be a human who voluntarily chooses to do everything in his/her power to become more like Christ. This means putting on the mind of Christ and making His attitudes our attitudes His behaviors, our behaviors. One of the immediate questions that comes to mind is the question about attitudes. It must be remembered that attitudes govern human behavior. For example, if we find that we judge others because of their beliefs, race or behavior, we will must naturally not make any real effort to love them unconditionally and not judge them. Nevertheless the attitude of Jesus is that we must not judge others and unconditionally love them. So, when we find that we are judging others, we know that we are not putting on the mind of Jesus.

I realize that this is not necessarily easy to do. We as humans easily slip into judging others because of our own personal values and ideas about life. This is why Jesus, like John the Baptizer, kept saying to      people: “Change your hearts and mind because the Kingdom of God is at hand.” These are real words!

 

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament — 20160515

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the_four_evangelistsAccording to the gospels, Jesus, during the first part of His ministry, was engaged in three main types of activity. First, he was engaged in making a broad appeal to the public. His aim was to make people aware of the presence of God as an urgent reality and to invite their appropriate response.

Second, He set himself to minister to human needs by healing the sick in body and mind and by awakening faith in those who had lost hope. He sought to lead people into a new life under the inspiration of a true and real personal attachment to himself. By going about doing good, he gave   concrete form to his message of salvation.

And third, while his outward vocation took the form of a teacher of religion and morals, his whole outlook and approach differentiated him from rabbinic Judaism. He challenged the people to rethink their ideas and hopes. For this he was branded a blasphemer. He also censured his peers and contemporaries for truly casting aside God’s warnings. Thus, in his mission, controversy was forced upon him.

In the faith of the Church the Passion of Christ was not the end but the goal and crown of his earthly activity. When all the evidence is considered, it is clear that Jesus expected and even announced his    suffering and death. This evidence shows that Jesus had found the answer to the necessity of his suffering and death in scripture, especially in Isaiah 53, the Son of the Suffering Servant of the Lord.

Further, his suffering and death on the cross was necessary in order for Him to rise from the dead and, reveal to humankind that life is immortal.

Because the disciples did not experience his death and resurrection as events in history but, rather, as belonging to the last age, Christ’s rising from the dead is presented, in reality, as a resurrection of glory rather than as a return to earthly life. Whereas the crucifixion is clearly a historical event, a happening in time, the resurrection is an event beyond time (beyond death) and belongs to another order or age. In this sense it is not historical, in the same way that the crucifixion is. It belongs to the age to come and is thus eschatological. Christ’s resurrection is real but it belongs to another order.

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for this Weekend — 20150508

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fathers1On the weekend between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, our Church remembers the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council which took place in 325 CE, the Council of Nicaea. This first Council of the entire Christian Church began the process of finding words to express some of our most fundamental beliefs: How do we describe Who Jesus IS and How do we describe Who God IS.

This Council also began the process of formulating a statement of our beliefs, that is the Nicene Creed.   Until this time the Church did not have an adequate theology and vocabulary to express its beliefs. The Fathers of the Council drew upon Greek Philosophy to find the right words to first express the universal Church’s orthodox belief about Jesus, the Christ.

Interestingly enough, the Gospel assigned for this weekend is taken from John’s seventeenth chapter wherein he expresses the “completion” of Jesus’ work and shares Jesus’ final prayer for His disciples. The early Church added this statement to John’s Gospel: “Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.” This phrase, I believe, offers us a much different concept of eternal life than is   typically accepted by many Christians.

Interestingly, our Epistle reading provides us with the final thoughts of Paul to the Church he helped establish at Ephesus. This passage in Acts deserves, I believe, our reflection. Paul says: “I commend you now to the Lord, and to that gracious word of His which can enlarge you, and give you a share among all who are consecrated to Him”. Again we hear of the power of the word of God, namely Jesus, to change our lives and to help us discover the meaning and purpose of life. This strengthens the words that John attributes to Jesus: “I entrusted to them the message you entrusted to me, and they received it. They have known that in truth I came from you, they have believed it was you who sent me.”

If we truly believe that Jesus is not only truly God but also truly man, we will accept the fact that God, through Him, shared with us how to live this earthly life. When we embrace the Way of Jesus and attempt to grow in His likeness, we will discover the meaning and purpose of our lives.  While we cannot accomplish this on our own, we have been assured by God that He will help us if we desire to imitate Christ.

The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20150508

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Ladder of Divine AccentThe 19th step on John’s Ladder is rather interesting. It is SLEEP, PRAYER and CHURCH. Sleep is a     natural state. It is also an image of death and a respite of the senses. Sleep is one, but like desire it has many sources. That is to say, it comes from nature, from food, from demons, or perhaps in some degree even from prolonged fasting by which the flesh is moved to long for repose.

One of the principles of Christian life is to imitate, as far as earthly possible, the angles, the bodiless powers”. In fact during our Liturgy we sing the Cherubic Hymn which says: “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn of the Seraphim.”  What this means is to overcome, as far as possible, the limitations of the flesh. The angels do not eat or sleep. They forever and without ceasing praise and worship God. Therefore we are call to strive to imitate them. God, however, does not expect us to be able to be totally like them our human nature and our world does not allow us to totally be like them. We can, however, become somewhat like them by making an effort to more frequently think about God and to offer Him praise and worship. We can also make sure that we don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on the tasks on our personal maintenance. Eating should be enjoyable and we should make it a time to personally relate to others in our lives. But we must be moderate in the amount of time that we spend eating and even sleeping. The amount of time that we spend sleeping is suggested by modern medicine. They usually suggest at least eight hours a night OR the amount that allows us to be physically reenergized.

Again, all things in moderation. We do know that we can always increase our awareness of God

GAINING A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OUR FAITH — 20150508

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St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

St. Sophia’s Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Kiev, Ukraine

To gain a deeper understanding of our Greek-Catholic faith, we must first attempt to determine what it considers to be its most basic beliefs. I believe that these basic beliefs are made manifest in its spirituality. I would preface my thoughts by reminding my readers that our Church is an unique Slavic adaptation of the Byzantine Church and is noticeably different from that of the Mediterranean Byzantines around Greece, Syria and Lebanon. Nonetheless, one common thread that runs through Byzantine spirituality is its Trinitarian focus. In other words, it begins with the human experience of Jesus who reveals the Father and sends the Spirit. By contrast, Roman Catholic spirituality tends to being with the notion of one God and from there proceeds to the Trinity.

Byzantine Trinitarian spirituality is reflected in its anthropology and in its worship. Unlike the West, which speaks of a “natural state” as a morally neutral one alongside supernatural and unnatural states for human beings, we Slavic Byzantines admit only two human conditions. What Byzantines refer to as the natural human state is actually equivalent to what the West means by the “supernatural”. That is, for us, human nature is truly human only inasmuch as it is in communion with God by the indwelling of the Spirit. The other possibility for the human person is to be in an unnatural state, that is, our  communion with God. This Trinitarian principle is absolutely fundamental to the Slavic Byzantine understanding of human existence and human expression, including prayer and worship. Salvation is viewed primarily as participation and communion with God through the Word by the Spirit. And so a majority of Byzantine theologians prefer to speak of the human person as a trichotomy of body, soul and spirit (or mind) rather than the body-soul dichotomy of the West. This image better serves to facilitate an understanding of the human person’s participation in God through the Trinity.

St. Athanasius points out that the Son and the Spirit are inseparable in the work of salvation. He points to the Annunciation as the working model for salvation because the Spirit and the Son entered Mary together

ACQUIRING THE MIND OF CHRIST — 20150508

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christ_icon“All you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” This is the prayer that is sung at the initiation of a person into the Greek Catholic faith. It reveals the goal of a person’s initiation into this faith, namely to put on the ‘mind’ of Christ. The big question is: How does a person put on the ‘mind’ of Christ?

Absolutely central to the way in which the Fathers understand the nature of humanity is the notion that human beings are created in the ‘image’ of God and called to use the earthly journey to grow in his ‘likeness’. This doctrine is central not only to the Fathers’ understanding of human nature, but also to their theology as a whole. However, we must first understand that Jesus, the Christ, is God’s image and that we are called to grow in his likeness. Jesus is   God’s self-manifestation which has been made known to us through His incarnation. Jesus, we believe, is God made man in the second Person of the Holy Trinity through the power of the third Person, the Holy Spirit.

To be human is to be made in the image of Jesus and, being in his image, means that we must recognize our relationship to Him. To be human means learning to be human in the likeness of the archetype of humanity, who is Jesus.

Humankind is created according to an image – the Word of God – that we only truly know through the incarnation. It is only through the Incarnation that we can truly understand what it is to be human. What we know from our experience of being human is what it is to be with a limited likeness to Jesus. For the Word of God, in becoming man, became what we are meant to eventually become. To be human is to have a nature with certain capacities and faculties that are never properly realized in our present state of being.  We have only a glimpse of these faculties in Christ. So Jesus is the human that we are called to become through a life of personal growth and transformation. This personal growth comes from “putting on Christ” – from acquiring the “mind of Christ”.

Being in the image of God means having an affinity with God which is granted to us through His grace. We grow in His likeness when we attempt to cooperate with life and begin to think like Christ. We tend to act in accord with the way we think!

Understanding Our Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church — 20150508

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Picture1Although I am sure that all of my readers already know that our Church embraces the theology, liturgy and traditions of Christianity originally established by the Church that developed in the Byzantine Empire, it, like all other Eastern Churches, has over the years developed its own particular customs and traditions.

For example, we have our own particular common chant. While the melodies may be similar to those of other Slavic churches, they are unique to us. Further, we have a number of customs and traditions around the celebration of major feasts which may be unique to our Church.

During the first years of our Church’s presence in this country (USA), it embraced, because it was Catholic instead of Orthodox, to imitate many of the Western Catholic pietistic and religious practices. For example, Stations of the Cross became very common even though they were never a part of Eastern Christianity. Also, such things as May Marian Crownings and Benedictions became very popular. There was even a time when our parishes were without iconastases, which is a very important feature of our Byzantine Eastern Christianity.

During the Second Vatican Council, the Western Catholic Church stressed the importance that Eastern Catholic Churches should make sure that they embraced those traditions and practices which were the original inheritance of our Church. That is why many of the practices that were prevalent some 50 years ago, are no longer practiced. It is not a matter of being right or wrong but being more authentic to the spirituality of our Church.

What many people do not understand is that because our spirituality and theology are truly different from that of the Western Catholic world, our practices and “ways of doing things” must be different from the Western Church.

To be Catholic does not mean that we have to embrace the theology and spirituality of the Western Church.  To be Catholic means that we are in “communion with” the Western Church. It does not mean that we embrace its spirituality or its traditions or, even, its ways of expressing the Catholic Faith. We are as Catholic as the Roman Catholic Church, albeit different.

I know that this may be difficult for some to understand. It is what makes us a Chur

Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20150508

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Athanasius the Great

Athanasius the Great

According to all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus, on the way to Caesarea Philippi, a few days before the end of His messianic ministry in Jerusalem, asked His disciples a question about their belief concerning His personal identity: “Who do you say that I am?” The answer came from Peter, declaring that Jesus was “the Messiah,”, or “the Son of the living God”. Various theological schools have given different interpretations to Peter’s answer, but all agree that the entire meaning of the Christian experience depended upon it. Indeed, whatever Jesus said, whatever He did, was in virtue of His messianic  ministry; whatever he experienced on the cross, whatever was the concrete reality of His resurrection – depended for its ultimate significance on His personal identity. This significance would be radically different whether He were Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, or an angel, or a passionless theophany, or a creature adopted by God, or one of the many created “intellects” who did not submit to fallenness, or whether, by meeting him, one met Yahweh Himself, so that Orthodox Jews would fall to the ground hearing His name pronounced.

In a sense, all the doctrinal debates of Christian history can be reduced to a debate on Christ’s identity. In the period between apostolic times and the high Middle Ages, various Christological positions were brilliantly expressed and passionately defended. However, if one envisages the fate of the historic catholic or orthodox Christian tradition, no Christological stand was as decisive, in terms of the nature of spirituality, as that of two eminent bishops of Alexandria in Egypt: Athanasius and Cyril.

The achievement of Athanasius (d. 373) is relatively well known. He led the struggle for the faith of        Nicaea which firmly proclaimed the divinity of Christ. Almost single handedly, he secured a Nicaean        triumph. But this victory was not only doctrinal, but also spiritual. The message of Athanasius was that only God Himself could properly be seen and adored as Savior. Thus, the divine identity of Jesus, equal to the Father, was not a matter of abstract or purely theological truth, but it indicated the condition of “mortal” humanity – which could neither save itself nor be saved by another creature.

I shall continue the argument of Athanasius in the next issue. It is critical, I believe, that we understand it.

 

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20150508

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The call to holiness is a call to transform loneliness, which is a word that expresses the pain of being alone, to solitude, which is the word that expresses the glory of being alone with God. Here is how a Christian turns loneliness into solitude.

Each morning let the first words you say be, “Jesus is with me. I claim His presence.” In the middle of the morning, stop wherever you are and whatever you are doing, close your eyes for a moment and say, “Jesus is with me. I claim His presence.” Then at noon repeat it and sometime during the afternoon when your energies are depleted, repeat it again. Finally, the last thing you do before falling asleep, look up at the darkness and say, “Jesus is with me. I claim His presence.”

Practice the presence of God by placing yourself deliberately before God every day in your prayers, by praying the Jesus Prayer many times during the day, by wakefulness and inner attention to each word you pray, and by shutting the doors of the senses to be alone with God for a few minutes each day. For it is by practicing the presence that the presence becomes real.

Another thing that can help you practice God’s presence is to dwell, when you stop for a few        moments in God’s presence, on God’s power and peace. Think about the spiritual strength of Christ flowing into you. This practice is, in effect, the closing of the cell door to your body, the door to your lips to words, and the interior door to spirits. Like a person in a telephone booth with the door open, we are bombarded daily by the many conflicting voices of the crowd. What we need is to close the door on the crowd daily and listen to the voice of God Who is trying so hard to speak to us. In the beginning it takes patience since we are not used to hear God speaking to us. Once we become accustomed to placing ourselves in the presence of God and bringing quiet to our minds and spirits, we will begin to experience God speaking to us. It takes time. The important thing is not to become discouraged

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20150508

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Holy Eucharist IconI have tried in this article to exhort my readers to do everything in their power to become engaged in an “intelligent” worship of our God. For our worship to be intelligent, we must be mindful of the prayers that we say, intend the prayers to be an expression of our own thoughts and intentions, and become fully engaged in the ritual in which we participate. This means that we have a sense of what the actions of the Liturgy mean and then, cognizant of their meaning and desire to make them represent before God what we truly intend.

Less this sound too ephemeral, let me try to express it in a much more mundane fashion. The main   actions of the Liturgy are intended to have us join with Christ in offering our lives to the Father in thanksgiving for the gift of life.  We must think about the bread and wine, since they are the symbols of life, as representing us. We must, together with Jesus, offer these gifts to the Father, offer our lives to the Father.

The gifts, however, that represent life are only made possible when we are in “union with” others. Remember that many grains of wheat and many grapes must be crushed together to form bread and wine. We cannot make bread out of one single grain head of wheat or wine out of one grape. Many grain heads of wheat and many grapes must be ground together in order to make bread and wine. Therefore, the bread and wine that we use at the Liturgy only becomes a true symbol of life when we are in “union” with one another. This, I believe, is truly a very important concept. We must make every effort to be in “harmony” and “love” with the others who worship with us. In fact during the Liturgy we pray: “Let us truly love one another so that with one mind we may profess.” When we are not in harmony with those we worship with, we cannot truly profess believe in God Who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Again, I share this not because I think we are not in union with those with whom we pray, but, rather, to   remind us to think about it when we pray the Liturgy. When we think about this, our worship takes on a whole new dimension. We are called to truly pray for one another. In have this intention, we truly become Church.

The Divine Liturgy is not a personal devotion. It is communal prayer and we must think about it in this way.