The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20160320

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Ladder of Divine AccentThe fifteenth step on John’s Ladder deals with LUST and CHASTITY. St. John defines Chastity as

… a supernatural denial of what one is by nature, so that a mortal and corruptible body is competing in a truly marvelous way with incorporeal spirits. A chaste man is someone who has driven out bodily love by means of divine love, who has used heavenly fire to quench the first of the flesh.

 Chastity, as we saw earlier, should not be thought of in purely sexual terms – or merely as a virtue opposed to sexual depravity. It has a deeper meaning. We pray in the Mystery of Marriage that the newlyweds live in “chastity.” So, a more accurate definition of Chastity must be “whole-mindedness.” It is ultimately harmony between body and soul, between the flesh and the spirit – a state of mind in which the two do not war with each other, but work together as one. John writes that chastity is a name         common to all virtues saying: “The chaste man is not someone with a body undefiled but rather a person whose members are in complete subjection to the soul.

Chastity must not be understood in terms of celibacy, but in terms of control over one’s sexual impulses. Within marriage, sex is blessed. It is not only for procreation – it is also an expression of love.

So perhaps the most important idea on this rung of John’s Ladder is that in a chaste person there is a       harmony between their spiritual and physical lives. This means that a person enjoys those things that will bring their closer to God and to a real understanding of themselves and rejects those things that can distract them from becoming more like Jesus.

If we are in touch with God’s Spirit within us, then leading a balanced life become possible for we only do those things that lead us to union with God.

WILLOW BRANCHES

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jesusbridegroomBecause no palm or olive trees grew in the land of Ukraine, it is our tradition to bless willow branches, a tree that is the first to blossom in the spring. It is our tradition to place the blessed branches in our home to remind us of what God has revealed to us through the Person of Jesus. Some even plant a blessed branch in their gardens. They should be burned when they are no longer kept.

CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20160320

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As we enter the Great and Holy Week, the call to true holiness would have us truly reflect on the mystery of the events we celebrate. We believe that these are not just events which happened in the past but, rather, are events that are transpiring right now. This all become very real to us when we consider that God’s Spirit – Who is the Giver of Life – dwells within us. This means that God, as He dwells in each   person, is, right now, being persecuted, unjustly accused and killed by hateful and non-believing persons. We recall what   Jesus told us: “Whatever you do to the least of your brothers you do to me.” So right now the horror of Good Friday is still being repeated. God, in His human form, is still being crucified because of the greed, prejudice and hatred people have for one another. This, therefore, calls for a response from us. We must be the ones who choose to stand at the foot of the cross together with Mary and John and others who truly believe that what God taught us through the Person of Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The call to holiness is a call to become truly immersed in the mystery of God’s revelation to us through Jesus. We must ask ourselves, what do the events of Great and Holy Week teach us about how we should and must live in order to have a deeper union with God and the fullness of life. Of course, we must desire to have a deeper union with God. The desire for such a union only comes if we understand the true meaning and purpose of life. Why are we here on earth? Why have we been given life? What is the purpose for this human life that I have? Is it all just an accident? Is there any meaning and purpose? When you reflect on the events of Great and Holy Week and, if you believe that God choose to voluntarily come into the world to suffer, die and rise from the dead, we must ask: Why did He choose to do this? The call to holiness is a call to find answers to these profound questions!

The Divine Liturgy and Our Worship of God — 20160320

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annuncia01I would slightly digress in this article on the Divine Liturgy as we enter into the Great and Holy Week for a special reason. This year we also celebrate the feast of the Annunciation on Great and Good Friday. The Annunciation, as I am sure everyone knows, celebrates God’s great act of becoming incarnate – of becoming a human being. It is the feast that truly marks the beginning of God’s revelation to us about the real meaning and purpose of life. Unlike the Western Church, our Eastern Church does not transfer the feast to another day but, rather, combines the feast with Great and Good Friday. I believe the symbolism of celebrating these two events in salvation history together is very powerful. God became human so that He might reveal to us something very important about human life, namely that it is immortal. He also endured death as a human in order to dispel the greatest fear that most humans have, namely the fear of death. Death has no dominion over humankind. The last time this happened was in 2005. It seems to happen every 75-100 years.

Our Greek-Catholic Church, as well as other Eastern Catholic Churches, see no conflict in celebrating these two very important events together. Some question how you can serve a “joyous” feast with a feast of the greatest “sorrow.” It is all about celebrating life. Life is a unique combination of joy and sorrow. Life is given to us in order to learn how to handle joy and sorrow. What I believe is manifested by our tradition of celebrating the two feasts together is twofold: (1) God’s great love for humankind, and (2) the power given to humans to face the challenges of life with nobility and courage. Both Jesus and Mary demonstrate that the most challenging things of life can be dealt with if only we have faith and trust in God. Therefore I think that the celebration of these two events in the life of Christ together is meaningful and wondrous.

Our celebration will include the Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom and the Burial Service. Typically the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated on Great and Good Friday but, since the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated, we combine the Vespers of Good Friday with the Liturgy of the Annunciation. Hopefully this unique celebration will provoke great reflection from all.

Making the Great and Holy Week Real — 20160320

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Crucifixion-1In order to make the Great and Holy Week real, one must at least make an effort to think about the events that we relive. We must ask, What do the events in the life of Jesus tell me about life and about my relationship to God. If we truly desire to benefits from this Great and Holy Week, then we must attempt to make these events important to us.

One thing can help us make Holy Week more real is to believe that God intended to reveal to us something about life that is important if we are to actualize our potential to become more like Jesus Christ, which of course is the meaning and purpose of this life. If you can’t make it to the church services, at least take a little time out each day to reflect upon the entire life of Jesus. Each Gospel has an account of the last days of Jesus. Pick up a New Testament and read a little each day so that the events will be fresh in your mind.

Remember, only you can make it truly a Holy Week – a week wherein we feel more connected to our God. A true involvement in Holy Week makes Easter a truly joyous event.

EASTER PASTORAL OF THE UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY OF THE U.S.A.

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EASTER PASTORAL OF THE UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY OF THE U.S.A. TO OUR CLERGY, HIEROMONKS AND BROTHERS, RELIGIOUS SISTERS, SEMINARIANS AND BELOVED FAITHFUL

Christ is Risen!                 Indeed He is Risen!

holy-cross-justice-icon-of-the-resurrection“Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary of Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.” John 20:16-20

Today, we share a joy, a joy of wonder, a joy that comes from within, because Christ is Risen! Today, we share the same joy of the disciples to whom Mary Magdalene had brought the Good News that Jesus Christ is risen, and she has seen Him.

This joy of resurrection starts from a personal encounter with risen Christ. What does it take for Mary Magdalene’s tears to give way to Easter joy?  Nothing less than meeting the risen Christ.  Meeting the risen Savior Himself! Even this is not so straightforward. Jesus appears to her, but Mary doesn’t recognize Him.  But then, Jesus calls her name, Mary.  She turns, and now when she looks; her world is transformed. Before her is no gardener, but the resurrected Christ, alive and free from death.  Around her is no tomb of lifeless rock, but the living Savior who calls her out of darkness and into a marvelous light.  After encountering the risen Jesus Mary Magdalene obeys the Lord’s command to tell the news of the resurrection to the disciples.

The same joy is experienced by the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This personal encounter with the risen Lord gives them courage and strength to run back to the disciples and tell them what happened on the way and how they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

On Easter morning what we celebrate is that Christ has overcome sin and evil and death.  There is forgiveness and hope and new life even from the very rock bottom of suffering and despair.  And so, the Easter gospel is not only about life from death, but also about this encounter Mary has with the resurrected Christ.  Jesus is raised, but then He also meets us.  And not merely as a dazzling figure we do not recognize, Jesus meets us – calls our name, opens our eyes, and invites us to see.

At the Resurrection Matins we sing: “Let us rise at early dawn and bring to our Master a hymn instead of myrrh, and we shall see Christ the Sun of righteousness Who enlightens the life of all.” (Resurrection Matins, Ode 5).

The risen Christ wants us to experience the joy of encountering Him and living for Christ and not for self—the joy of being liberated from the sins which trap us in self-centeredness and discover the blessing of Christ’s self-giving love. No matter what may be happening in our lives, we can still experience spiritual joy through the love of God and living the way God made us to live, which is for self-giving love.

The Easter gospel is not just about new life, but new life that comes to us.  Not just Christ raised from the dead, but the risen Christ meeting us and calling our names.  Easter is an encounter, a call and a summons.  Go and tell what you have seen and heard.  Christ is alive, and more than that He has sought us out and called us by name.  Whatever our doubts and our fears, whatever our failures and betrayals, whatever the wounds we try to protect – today is а new day.  We are all to become witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus. We are called to bring that ‘ray’ of the light of the Resurrection into the various human situations: into those happy ones, rendering them more beautiful, and into those sorrowful situations, bringing serenity and hope.”

In this Year of Mercy, Pope Francis encourages us “to experience the opening of our hearts to those living on the outermost fringes of society” and to “keep alive the desire to know how to welcome the numerous signs of the tenderness which God offers to the whole world and, above all, to those who suffer, who are alone and abandoned, without hope of being pardoned or feeling the Father’s love” (Misericordiae Vultus, Pope Francis).

We know how the poor need help. We know how the sick need healing, how the oppressed need justice, how the grieving need comfort. We know how the spiritual life needs exercise, with daily prayer, meditation, study, and the companionship of kindred, seeking souls. Being people of the resurrection, graced with this knowledge, it is our calling to talk to people on the road and announce the Good News of the risen Christ to them. During this period of contemplating Christ’s mercy, we are reminded that Jesus not only preached mercy, but He put into action works of mercy as He assisted the poor, consoled the lonely and outcast, relieved suffering and affliction and taught the ignorant. No one person can give what they do not have, thus each one of us must know Christ personally.  We need to know Him personally so that we can go out and proclaim Him to every person we encounter.

Today is our time of joy and renewed evangelical spirit to proclaim the Good News of the risen Christ to others. Our parish communities should become places to encounter the living Christ!   This is what Christ is inviting us to do! This is the day that Lord has made, let us exalt and rejoice in it. This is the calling to each of us, so we may bring this joy of encountering, the risen Christ to others. Will we be able to share this personal encounter with the risen Christ with our families, our friends, and people we encounter in our daily lives? Let us experience this Easter morning joy and let us radiate this joy in our lives. Let the Mercy of Christ shine in our lives and deeds!

Our fervent prayer is that our Resurrected and Living Lord may bestow his peace and grace upon you and your loved ones, upon all our brothers and sisters scattered throughout the world!

Christ is Risen!       Indeed He is Risen!

+Stefan Soroka
Archbishop of Philadelphia for Ukrainians
Metropolitan of Ukrainian Catholics in the United States

+Richard Seminack
Eparch of St. Nicholas in Chicago

+Paul Chomnycky, OSBM
Eparch of Stamford

+ Bohdan J. Danylo (author)
Eparch of St. Josaphat in Parma

+John Bura
Auxiliary Bishop of Philadelphia

Easter 2016

Reflections on the Scriptural Readings for this Weekend — 20160313

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Kowalchyk-St_Mary_St_ZossimaBoth readings appointed for this fifth and final weekend before the Great and Holy Week, remind us of the sacrifice that Jesus, God incarnate, made in order for us to understand the meaning and purpose of life. We again read from Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, which speaks of the sacrifice of Jesus. After asserting that Christ is the new High Priest, he writes:

“how much more will the blood of Christ, who though the eternal spirit, offered himself up unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God”.

We are reminded that the up-and-coming Great Week reminds us that Jesus showed us how to worship God by offering Him our lives in the same way that Jesus did, that is with nobility and courage.

Our Gospel reading shares with us Jesus’ third teaching, according to Mark, of His Passion and Resurrection. Mark depicts Jesus as describing to His disciples what He anticipated was going to happen to Him in Jerusalem. It also includes, however, the ambition of James and John. The conclusion of Jesus’ remarks is notable. He says:

“Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest. Whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all”.

 What a truly significant teaching! The Jesus WAY of living is to be of service to others, thinking about others before thinking about self.

This story also highlights the fact that, despite all that the disciples had observed during their time with Jesus, they seemed to have missed the point of His teaching. This is included in the Gospel, I believe, to remind us that it is not sufficient to just hear the teachings of Jesus! It is imperative that after we hear His teachings we attempt to understand them in terms of how they impact our lives. They are not meant to be just nice words without any real meaning.

This story reminds us that followers of Jesus are not people who are concerned just about future rewards but, rather, about making God’s Kingdom real right now.

Jesus clearly states that being of service to others IS the way that God’s Kingdom is made real. As service to others is the hallmark of Jesus’ life, it must also be of ours.

So, if we truly want to be followers of Jesus we cannot think about being first but, rather, about serving others. This is not always easy to do. We humans tend to be self-centered and prone to put ourselves first before others. Why? Because we feel we might otherwise be cheated.

Making the Great Fast Real — 20160313

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During this coming week, why not choose to freely do at least one

RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS

It can be whatever you want it to be as long as it is “random” and a “kindness.” Again, it is not the how much you do but, rather, how you do it. If what you do causes the person to want to return the favor to you, simply say “Pass It Forward”. It can simply be saying something nice to a complete stranger. This will cause you to see others as brothers and/or sisters.

CALLED TO HOLINESS– 20160313

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theotokosAs I think further about this call to holiness that I believe we have been given by God, I recall these words of Paul to the Ephesians when he wrote that only Jesus can truly revolutionize our minds ‘in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.” The call to holiness, I believe, is a call to revolutionize our minds – our attitudes and various ways of thinking. Why? Because the way that we think drives behaviors.

But I know that Jesus does not bulldoze His way into our minds, clearing out piles of feelings here and destroying structures built on foundations of false ideas there. His way is far more sensitive and respectful of the uniqueness and fragility of each human being. His way is far more constructive and far-sighted. His way of revolutionizing our minds is by revolutionizing one by one each event in our memories as well as all the contents of the other functions of our minds.

Our memories retain for us our experiences; they are the points of convergence for our thoughts, decisions and feelings. It is in our memories that many of our present-day feelings have their roots, that many of the thoughts that now rule our minds have their origins; that the decisions of the past continue to live and affect the present. Each of our experiences has been carefully recorded by our brains and is available for replay, consciously or unconsciously, at any time. Indeed our entire past is stored within us and greatly affects our present-day lives, whether we want it to or not. Sound psychological research has proven this fact.

All we need to do, then, to understand our need to allow Christ to enter our lives is to remember some of the times in which we have been hurt, confused, mistreated, overdisciplined, maligned, physically abused, underdisciplined, unloved, ignored or the   victim of other people’s sins. Similarly, we can also remember some of the times we have sinned against others and stop to see how those sins have distorted our personalities.                

Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the New Testament– 20160313

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the_four_evangelistsThere is another theory I would like to share with my readers about the Synoptic Problem (I won’t define this at this point since I’m sure that, if you have been reading this article, you will understand of what I write). This theory actually bears the name of a particular author, L. Vaganay. He promoted the idea that the oral tradition that served as the foundation of the written narratives were found in two different sources that were put into writing as small collections of words and/or incidents. In Gospel form these became Aram M, not identical with canonical Matthew. Another early collection consisting of saying and discourses, he names “S”. It was also written down in Aram and it, together with another oral tradition, were translated into Greek. The earliest canonical Gospel, Mark, used as its sources “Mg” (the Greek translation of Aram M) and the oral tradition of Peter’s preaching, but not “S”. Canonical Matthew used as sources Mark, “Mg”, and “Sg” which was the Greek translation of “S” plus elements of Peter’s preaching. Vaganay also speculates that Luke used as sources Mark, “Mg”, “Sg” and elements of oral tradition. Vaganay introduced “S” into the solution of the problem because he felt that Aram M translated into Greek was insufficient to explain all the Synoptic tradition. He claims that this source has nothing in common with “Q”.

The criticisms leveled at Vaganay’s theory have stressed that his system is very complex. In his desire to reject the Two-Document Hypothesis he has reconstructed a similar theory substituting “S” for “Q”. There are about 60 passages that scholars commonly allocate to “Q”; over 40 of them are in “S” – therefore, is there an actual distinction between “S” and “Q”? He presents us with no good reason why Mark should have been written.

There is one last theory I would like to share with my readers. It is called the   Multiple Documentation as the Basis for the Whole Gospel Complex. This theory consists mainly in supposing that a rather mixed combination of documents serve as the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. It is considered by some as a middle course because it does not insist on the simplistic approach of the Oral-Tradition Theory nor on the rigid approach of the theory of literary interrelationships. In its original form, the words and deeds of Jesus were not supposed to have been collected in one book but, rather, contained in diverse documents that circulated among the various Christian Communities. (More to follow)