Desire – Page 2 – St John’s Adult Education

Great Lent And The Mystery of the Cross & Resurrection – Short Reflection

By Archimandrite Zacharias from his book ’At The Doors of Holy Lent’

Great Lent is a taste of death in the Name of God, for the sake of our reconciliation with Him, for the sake of His commandment. The little death that that beast, our ego, endures through fasting, through voluntarily bearing shame in the mystery of confession, by shedding streams of wretched tears for our dire poverty and inability to render mighty love unto the Lord; this death places us on the path of Him Who said: ‘I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.’(Rev 1:17-18). This begets in the heart the faith that, ‘If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.’ (Rom 6:8-9). Then on the night of the Resurrection, we sing with boldness the hymn: ‘Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee and today I rise again with Thy rising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee: do Thou Thyself glorify me, O Saviour, in thy kingdom.’ Our minor taste of death leavens in the heart and, upon hearing the good news of the Resurrection of Christ, it becomes an explosion of joy, initiating us into the mystery of His descent into hell and ascension above the Heavens.

The Church is preoccupied with only one matter: the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. Saint Paul was consumed by the desire to set forth before his disciples the image of Jesus Christ, ‘and Him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). In other words, his concern was to impart to them the knowledge of the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, knowing that whosoever walks the way of the Cross will also enter into the presence of the Risen Lord. The Church institutes as a commandment that we should go through this period with spiritual tension for the renewal of our life. She travails to see her children assimilated through obedience into the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.

Putting All of the Fifth Week of Lent Together – Father Thomas Hopko

At the end of the fifth week of Great Lent, and very particularly on the fifth Sunday, the Orthodox Church has all of its members and faithful Christians contemplating a very beloved and well-known person in Christian history for ancient Christians, and that is a woman named Mary of Egypt. On the matins of the Thursday of the fifth week, there is a penitential canon of St. Andrew of Crete that is read. That particular service, which is a long type of penitential vigil, is often called in Orthodox popular piety “the vigil of Mary of Egypt.” It’s kind of an identification with Mary. In Slavonic, it’s called Marii bodrstvovaniye, the standing with Mary in penance before God. Indeed, in that canon, with all the penitential verses, there are verses that ask Mary of Egypt to intercede for us, to pray for us, as part of the penitential canon. St. Andrew of Crete, the author, is also asked, but particularly Mary of Egypt.

On this Sunday, it’s again kind of a paradox in Orthodox worship, because the focus is now all on Christ. You have that great celebration of the Theotokos with the Akathist on Saturday, and then you enter into the Lord’s Day, and you hear the gospel about Christ going up to Jerusalem and entering into his glory through his suffering. Then even on that Sunday also in the epistle reading, we’ll hear again about how Christ enters into the holy of holies in heaven, not of creation, the sanctuary of God, securing for us an eternal redemption, and that he’s led to offer his blood on the cross through the eternal Holy Spirit where he offers himself without blemish to God and we are encouraged to purify our consciences from dead works in order to serve the living God.

So we are focusing on Christ, but then, with that, you have this whole Sunday when on the one hand you have these marvelous hymns about the resurrection and the victory of Christ on that Sunday, and then you hear even more about this Mary of Egypt. And it’s a kind of a juxtaposition. It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit and God Almighty wants us to keep these two things together. As we focus on Christ and his victory and go up with him to Jerusalem, then we know that this is for everyone and that it is for the worst of sinners. Nobody is excluded, and you can never forget that when you think of Mary of Egypt.

Who was this Mary? It’s interesting that on that Thursday matins with that canon the entire Life of Mary of Egypt is read in church.

…Orthodox Christians in this ancient tradition are called to contemplate that Mary, to remember her. And what’s the point? What’s the point? Oh, there are probably so many, and maybe the points are different for every single person who hears that story, but there’s two points that are for sure. One is that, no matter how sinful we are, the Lord God Almighty forgives us. The other point is that repentance is not just an emotion. It’s not just some kind of magical act. When we repent, we have to purge out of ourselves all of the garbage and filth and slime that’s in us. We have to go through a purgation process before we can be illumined and deified. All that is evil in us has to go: it’s got to be scrubbed away; it’s got to be cut out by the word of God that’s a two-edged sword that cuts the bones and marrows, the sinews, as it says in [the] letter to the Hebrews, the heart of people.

Penance is a work. It is a work. It’s made possible by faith and grace, but it is the result of faith and grace. We know God, we believe in him, we accept his grace, and then that grace purifies us, but it’s not automatic. I can’t resist saying—maybe I shouldn’t on the radio—about how one of my friends would say, “We believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth; and the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit. We don’t believe in the Magician, the Mechanic, and the Fairy Godmother.” God is not a fairy godmother. He’s not a magician. He’s not a mechanic. There has to be a synergia between us and God. We have to accept that grace that cleanses us, that heals us, that power, and it’s got to happen, and it takes time. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes perseverance to the end. How often Jesus said, “Those who persevere to the end will be saved.” He says, “In hypomone, in patient endurance you will win your life,” and that repentance is a process; it’s not a momentary act.

Yes, Mary had her conversion experience. Yes, she knew the grace and the love of God at that moment, at that Holy Sepulcher. Yes, she knew that she was saved when she was allowed to enter and to venerate the tomb of Christ and receive the precious gifts of his broken body and spilled blood for the forgiveness of her sins, for the healing of her soul and her body and her passions and emotions and for the attaining of everlasting life. Yeah, that moment took place, and there are many such moments often in people’s lives. But then there is the result of that moment: the ongoing life in conformity to that moment. That’s what we see also in Mary of Egypt.

When I was the dean of St. Vladimir’s and the pastor of the chapel, and of course I was there for 30-some years, I always loved that fifth week of Lent. We had a practice at the seminary chapel that was, for me, at least, incredibly significant and marvelous. This is what it was: We would have those penitential services: the Presanctified on Wednesday with all those prostrations and those 24 additional penitential hymns—“O Lord, before I perish utterly, before I perish to the end, do thou save me, O Lord.” We would sing that canon of Andrew with Mary and keep that vigil on that Thursday. Honestly, we cut it down a bit. We were not monks and monastics there; we had our schedule to live, but we did it. We did it, yes. And then we sang the entire Akathist Hymn the next day, with all that marvelous celebration and veneration of the Theotokos with everything we could possibly think of put into our mouth to celebration the incarnation of the Son of God through her.

And when we sang that Akathist Hymn, we had a quite large icon of the Theotokos, Mother of God, with the Child, and we had it set in the middle of the church, and it was surrounded by flowers. It was decorated by beautiful flowers, and we would stand in front of that icon of the Theotokos, Mary, Mother of God. The deacons would be incensing and the whole church would be singing this marvelous Akathistos Hymn with all those wonderful words. Then we would celebration the Incarnation and Mary on that Saturday in the morning.

And then, on Saturday evening when we would come for the vespers and the matins and the Divine Liturgy of the fifth Sunday of Lent, in that same frame of flowers, on that same stand, the same analoy, in the middle of our same church, would be another icon: an icon of another Mary. Because we would remove the icon of the Theotokos and Child, and in that very same frame of flowers, on that very same stand, in the middle of our very same chapel, we would see Mary of Egypt. What a contrast that was! What an amazing thing it was, that on Saturday we’re glorifying and venerating the incarnation of the Son of God through the All-pure Virgin, of whom is more holy? The most holiest of mere human beings, Christ’s mother, Mary, holding in her arms the Holy One of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world. Holiness! Holiness like you cannot imagine! was in that icon in those flowers and in those songs.

And then in the same building, on the same stand, in the same flowers—was Mary of Egypt. And our icon showed her emaciated, sun-burnt, her hair frizzly white, and her face totally beautiful, and even similar to the face of the Theotokos in the iconography. Totally beautiful. And we knew that a nymphomaniac, sexually addicted harlot and even-worse-than-a-harlot human enters the same radiance and the same glory as the Mother of Christ and of all believers. Like Mary, she herself became more honorable than cherubim, more glorious than seraphim, because in Christ everyone who’s saved has that particular glory. We all are enthroned with Christ over all the angels—the twelve apostles sit on twelve thrones, judging the angels, it says in Scripture. We really are deified and enter into the glory of God. That is why Christ was born of a Virgin, and that’s why we venerate his mother so magnificently.

But on this day we know that the worst, the lowliest, the filthiest, the most addicted, the most impassioned, the most possessed, by faith and grace through that same Christ, by the intercessions of his mother and all the saints, can enter into that same glory. And Mary of Egypt tells us that. She shows us that. And then she begins herself to intercede for us poor sinners. Maybe some of us listening are sex-addicted ourselves and nymphos and whatever, controlled and on computers, looking at porno and whatever—but there’s hope for us. There’s hope for us. Mary of Egypt proves there’s hope for us.

But it’s not magic, it’s not mechanical; God is not a fairy godmother. There must be faith, grace accepted and lived out, and that purgation that leads to illumination that leads to glorification, leads to deification—can be ours. If it can be Mary of Egypt’s, then it can be ours. And how wonderful it was to go to church on Saturday of the fifth week and stand in front of that flower-decorated icon of the Theotokos and Child, and to come back again that same night and the next day and to see, in that same place, Mary of Egypt.

Why is the Great Canon done in its entirety in the 5th week of Lent

Remember to check out the Great Canon Resource Page as you prepare

By Fr. Sergei V. Bulgakov

At Matins on this day the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read in its entirety once a year, which was read in four parts on the first four days of the first week, and the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read after the Sessional Hymn (Kathisma). According to this feature of the Thursday Matins it is called either the St. Andrew of Crete or the St. Mary of Egypt Thursday.

In the Canon are collected and stated, all the exhortations to fasting and repentance, and the Holy Church repeats it now in its fullness to inspire us new strength for the successful end to Lent. “Since”, it is said in the Synaxarion, “the Holy Forty Day Lent is drawing near the end so that men should not become lazy, or more carelessly disposed to the spiritual efforts, or give up their abstinence altogether,” that this Great Canon is offered. It is “so long, and so well-composed, as to be sufficient to soften even the hardest soul, and to rouse it to resumption of the good, if only it is sung with a contrite heart and proper attention”. And the Church Typikon (Ustav) orders the Great Canon to be read and chanted slowly and “with a contrite heart and voice, making three prostrations at each Troparion”.

For the same purpose of abstinence and strength, and attention to repentance is the reading of the Life of the Venerable Mary of Egypt. According to an explanation of the same Synaxarion, the Life of the Venerable Mary also “manifests infinite compunction and gives much encouragement to the fallen and sinners”, representing itself to us as a paradigm of true repentance, and an example of the unutterable mercy of God. It serves as the continuation of the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete and a transition to the order of the following Sunday. Reading the Canon of St. Andrew and Mary of Egypt on the Thursday of the Fifth Week was established from the time of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

Kontakion in Plagal of the Second Tone

My soul, my soul, arise. Why are you sleeping? The end is approaching, and you will be confounded. Awake, therefore, that you may be spared by Christ God, Who is everywhere present and fills all things.

St. Symeon the New Theologian – His Lessons on Humility & Joyful Sorrow

This 11th century saint shed many tears in his life, and wrote much about the ’not of this world’ paradox of joyous tears. Below are a few of his quotes on humility and joyful sorrow. A common theme to many of these quotes is his experience of his own spiritual poverty in his journey to the wealth of what lies beyond in the mercy and grace of our Triune God. As Father Thomas Hopko would remind us “genuine humility means to see reality as it actually is in God”. You may also find this talk from our own Archbishop Alexander about the life of St. Symeon very interesting as he raises an awareness of his unique contributions to our faith.

“When the faithful man, who always pays strict attention to the commandments of God, performs all that the divine commandments enjoin and directs his mind toward their sublimity, that is, to a conduct and purity that are above reproach, he will discover his own limitations. He will find that he is weak and lacks the power to attain to the height of the commandments, indeed that he is very poor, that is, unworthy to receive God and give Him thanks and glory, since he has as yet failed to attain any good of his own. One who thus reasons with himself in the perception of his soul will indeed mourn with that sorrow which is truly most blessed, which will receive comfort and make the soul meek (cf. Matt. 5:5).”

He also writes:

“Let us long with all our soul for the things God commands us to embrace, spiritual poverty, which is humility; constant mourning by night and by day, from which there wells forth the joy of the soul and the hourly consolation for those who love God. By this means all who strive in truth succeed in attaining meekness. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and seek it at all times will obtain the kingdom of God, which ‘surpasses all human understanding’ (Phil. 4:7). Further, one becomes merciful, pure in heart, full of peace, a peacemaker, courageous in the face of trials (cf. Matt. 5:3-11). All this is the result of mourning day by day. It is also brought to pass that we will hate evil; it kindles in the soul that divine zeal which does not allow it to be ever at ease or to incline to evil deeds with evil men, but fills it with courage and strength to endure to the end against adversities.”

Elsewhere he writes:

“The first effect of mourning in God is humility; but later it brings unspeakable joy and gladness. And around humility in God grows the hope of salvation. For the more a man feels with his whole soul that he is the most sinful of men, the more strongly hope and humility grow and blossom in his heart, and fill him with the conviction that, through humility, he will surely gain salvation.”

He also writes:

“Mourning has a twofold action: like water tears extinguish all the fire of the passions and wash the soul clean of their foulness; and, again, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, it is like fire bringing life, warming and inflaming the heart, and inciting it to love and desire God.”

Elsewhere he again writes:

“Where there is humility there is also the enlightenment of the Spirit. And where there is the enlightenment of the Spirit there is also the outpouring of the light of God, there is God in the wisdom and knowledge of His mysteries. Where these mysteries are to be found, there is the kingdom of heaven and the experience of the kingdom and the hidden treasures of the knowledge of God, which include the manifestation of the poverty of spirit. Where poverty of spirit is perceived, there also is the sorrow that is full of joy. There are the ever-flowing tears that purify the soul that love these things and cause it to be completely filled with light.”

Also:

“O tears, which flow from divine enlightenment and open heaven itself and assure me of divine consolation! Again and many times over I utter the same words out of delight and longing. Where there is abundance of tears, brethren, accompanied by true knowledge, there also shines the divine light. Where the light shines, there also all good gifts are bestowed and the seal of the Holy Spirit, from whom spring all the fruits of life, is implanted in the heart. Here also the fruit of gentleness is borne for Christ, as well as ‘peace, mercy, compassion, kindness, goodness, faith and self-control’ (Gal. 5:22-23). It is the source of the virtue of loving one’s enemies and praying for them (Matt. 5:44), of rejoicing in trials, of glorying in tribulations (Rom. 5:3), of looking on the faults of others as if they are one’s own and lamenting them, and of laying down one’s life for the brethren with eagerness even unto death.”

“Lord I Believe ; Help My Unbelief”- Homily for 4th Sunday of Lent

Father Phillip LeMasters

Sometimes we stand before God with more doubt than belief, with more despair than hope. Sometimes our worries and fears increase; the joy of life slips away and we feel rotten. Maybe it’s our health, the problems of our loved ones, stress about a busy schedule, or other matters at home, at work, or with our friends. We are sometimes simply at the end of our rope.

If you feel that way today or ever have in your life, you can begin to sympathize with the father of the demon-possessed young man in today’s gospel reading. Since childhood, his son had had life-threatening seizures and convulsions. With the broken heart of a parent who has little hope for his child’s healing, the man cries out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” Christ’s disciples had lacked the spiritual strength to cast out the demon, but the Lord Himself healed him. We can only imagine how grateful the man and his son were for this blessing.

And imagine how embarrassed the disciples were. The Lord had referred to them as part of a “faithless generation” and asked how long he would have to put with them. He told them that demons like this “can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting,” spiritual exercises designed to strengthen our faith and to purify our souls. Not only were the disciples unable to cast out the demon, they could not even understand the Savior’s prediction of His own death and resurrection. At this point in the journey, they were not great models of faithfulness.

In fact, the best example of faithfulness in this story is the unnamed father. He wants help for his child, and he tells the truth about himself. His faith was imperfect; he had doubts; his hopes for his son’s healing had been crushed many times before. He said to Christ, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us.” In other words, he wasn’t entirely sure if the Lord could heal his son. All that he could do was to cry out with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

And in doing so, he showed that he had the spiritual clarity that the disciples lacked, for he knew the weakness of his faith. Still, with every ounce of his being He called to the Lord for mercy. He received it and the young man was set free.

If we have taken Lent seriously at all this year, we will have become at least a bit like this honest father when our struggles with spiritual disciplines have shown us our weakness. When we pray, we often welcome distractions; and it’s so easy not to pray at all. When we set out to fast from food or something else to which we have become too attached, we often become angry and frustrated. When we try to forgive and be reconciled with others, memories of past wrongs and fears about the future often overcome our good intentions. We wrestle with our passions just a bit, and they get the better of us. We so easily do, think, and say things that aren’t holy at all. We put so much else before loving God and our neighbors. Lent is good at breaking down our illusions of holiness, at giving us a clearer picture of our spiritual state. And often we don’t like what we see.

If that’s where you are today, take heart, for Jesus Christ came to show mercy upon people like the father in our gospel lesson. That man knew his weakness, he did not try to hide it, and he honestly threw himself on the mercy of the Lord. He made no excuses; he did not justify himself; he did not complain. He did not hide his doubt and frustration before God. He did not wallow in wounded pride, obsess about his imperfections, or worry about what someone else would think of him. Instead, he simply acknowledged the truth about his situation and called upon Christ with every ounce of his being for help with a problem that had broken his heart.

We don’t know how religious this man appeared to anyone else. Perhaps his fasting had been his many years of selfless struggle to care for his son; perhaps his prayers had always been focused on the boy’s healing. But we do know that this man, in humility and honesty, received the mercy of Jesus Christ when he called to Him.

With whatever level of spiritual clarity we possess, with whatever amount of faith in our souls, with whatever doubts, fears, weaknesses, and sins that beset us, let us all follow his example of opening the wounds of our hearts and lives to the Lord. Jesus Christ heard this man’s prayer; He brought new life to his son. And He will do the same for us, when we fall before Him in honest repentance, knowing that our only hope is in the great mercy that He has always shown to sinners like you and me whose faith leaves a lot to be desired.

If we need a reminder of the importance of taking Confession this Lent, this gospel passage should help us. Christ did not reject a father who was brutally honest about his imperfect faith, but instead responded to his confession with abundant grace, healing, and love. He will do the same for each of us who stand before His icon with the humble plea for forgiveness, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” There is no better way to prepare to follow our Savior to the agony of the cross and the joy of the empty tomb.

Finding ‘God With Us’

I love this short article. It’s powerful in waking us up to what Archbishop Kallistos Ware describes as being ’conscious of our dependance on God’. It’s also helpful in relating our cross to His as we venerate the Cross this week. It’s helpful for me to remain clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it as we now now enter the home stretch of our Lenten journey together.

God With Us – By Father Stephen Freeman

Popular New Age thought postulates that everyone has a “god within.” It’s a pleasant way of saying that we’re all special while making “god” to be rather banal. But there is a clear teaching of classical Christianity regarding Christ-within-us, and it is essential to the Orthodox way of life.

We should not understand our relationship with God to be an “external” matter, as if we were one individual and God another. Our union with God, birthed in us at Holy Baptism, is far more profound.

“He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” (1Co 6:17)

God does not “help” us in the manner of encouraging us or simply arranging for things to work out. Rather, He is in us, working in union with our work. The mystery of ascesis (the practice of prayer, fasting, self-denial, etc.) only makes true sense in this context. Those who look at Orthodoxy from the outside often accuse us of practicing “works-righteousness,” meaning that we believe we can earn favor with God by doing good works. This is utterly false. God’s good favor is His gift and cannot be earned.

However, the Orthodox life is similar to the life of Christ Himself.

“Truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. (Joh 5:19)

and

“Truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. (Joh 14:12)

The “works” that a Christian does, are properly done in union with Christ, such that the works are not those of an individual, but of our common life with and in Christ. When we fast, it is Christ who fasts in us. When we pray, it is Christ who prays in us. When we give alms it is Christ who gives alms in us.

And we should understand that Christ-in-us longs to fast. Christ-in-us longs to pray. Christ-in-us longs to show mercy. The disciplines of the Church are not a prescription for behaving ourselves or a map of moral perfection. Rather, the commandments of Christ (as manifest in the life of the Church) are themselves a description, an icon of Christ Himself.

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” (Joh 14:2)

Dumitru Staniloae notes:

At the beginning Christ is, so to speak, buried in the commandments and in us, in the measure in which we are committed to them, by His power which is in us. By this collaboration we gain the virtues as living traits; they reflect the image of the Lord, and Christ is raised even brighter from under these veils. (Orthodox Spirituality)

This way of “union” is the very heart of Orthodox faith and practice. Sadly, much of Christianity has created an “extrinsic” view of our relationship with God and the path of salvation. In this, God is seen as exterior to our life, our relationship with Him being analogous to the individualized contractual relationships of modern culture. As such the Christian relationship with God is reduced to psychology and morality.

It is reduced to psychology in that the concern is shifted to God’s “attitude” towards us. The psychologized atonement concerns itself with God’s wrath. It is reduced to morality in that our behavior is no more than our private efforts to conform to an external set of rules and norms. We are considered “good” or “bad” based on our performance, but without regard to the nature of that performance. St. Paul says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Only our lives-lived-in-union-with-Christ have the nature of true salvation, true humanity. This is the proper meaning of being “saved by grace.”

…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for Hisgood pleasure. (Phi 2:13)

and

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. (1Jo 4:4)

and

To them, God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Col 1:27)

There is a second part of this mystery (Christ in us) that presses its importance upon us. This is the suffering of Christ within us. Fr. Staniloae writes:

Jesus takes part in all our sufferings, making them easier. He helps us with our struggle against temptations and sin; He strives with us in our quest for virtues: He uncovers our true nature from under the leaves of sin. St. Maximus comments: Until the end of the world He always suffers with us, secretly, because of His goodness according to [and in proportion to] the suffering found in each one.

The Cross recapitulates the suffering and sin of humanity, but it extends throughout the life and experience of all people. It is the foundation of Christ’s statement: “Inasmuch as you did it [did it not] unto the least of these my brethren, you did it [did it not] unto me.

The hypostatic union of the person of Christ extends into the life of every person. There is something of a perichoresis or coinherence in our daily relationship with Christ.

And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. (1Co 12:26)

This must be given the strongest possible reading. If any one of us suffers, Christ suffers. There is no specific human suffering to which Christ is alien.

It is the moment-by-moment pressing into this commonality (koinonia) that is the foundation of Christian existence. It is the point of Baptism (buried with Him). It is the point of the Eucharist (“whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him”). It is the point of every action and thought.

It is the life of grace.

Hopko on the Cross of Christ

This is the article I read partially this morning in class. I had posted it to the wrong website. I think it’s powerful in exploring the fullness of the Cross and its paradox that continually asks us to face what is ‘not of this world’.

An excerpt from a commencement address at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in 2007, given by Fr. Thomas Hopko. It is deeply worthy of conversation.

…I can tell you that being loved by God, and loving Him in return, is the greatest joy given to creatures, and that without it there is no real and lasting happiness for humanity.

And I can also tell you, alas, that such loving is always a violent, brutal and bloody affair.

The God who is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, who gives us his divine life and peace and joy forever, is first of all the Divine Lover who wounds His beloved, and then hides from her, hoping to be sought and found. He is the Father who chastens and disciplines His children. He is the Vinekeeper who cuts and prunes His vines so that they bear much fruit. He is the Jeweler who burns His gold in His divine fire so that it would be purged of all impurities. And He is the Potter who continually smashes and refashions and re-bakes His muddy clay so that it can be the earthen vessel that He wants it to be, capable of bearing His own transcendent grace and power and glory and peace.

…I learned that all of these terrible teachings of the Holy Scriptures and the saints are real and true. And so I became convinced that God’s Gospel in His Son Jesus is really and truly God’s final act on earth. It is the act in which God’s Word is now not simply inscribed in letters on pages of parchment, but is personally incarnate as a human being in his own human body and blood. And so I became convinced of the truth of all truths: that the ultimate revelation of God as Love and the ultimate revelation of humanity’s love for God, are to be found in the bloody corpse of a dead Jew, hanging on a cross between two criminals, outside the walls of Jerusalem, executed at the hands of Gentiles, by the instigation of his own people’s leaders, in the most painful, cursed, shameful and wretched death that a human being — and especially a Jew – can possibly die.

So to the measure that we are honest and faithful, and try to keep God’s commandments, and repent for our failures and sins, we come to know, and to know ever more clearly and deeply as time goes by, what we have learned here at St. Vladimir’s. We come to know by experience that the Word of God (ho logos tou theou) is always and necessarily the word of the Cross (ho logos tou stavrou). And — in language befitting a commencement ceremony at an Orthodox graduate school of theology — we come to see that true theologia is always stavrologia. And real orthodoxia is always paradoxia. And that there is no theosis without kenosis.

Theology is stavrology and Orthodoxy is paradoxy: the almighty God reveals Himself as an infinitely humble, totally self-emptying and absolutely ruthless and relentless lover of sinners. And men and women made in His image and likeness must be the same. Thus we come to see that as there is no resurrection without crucifixion, there is also no sanctification without suffering, no glorification without humiliation; no deification without degradation; and no life without death. We learn, in a word, the truth of the early Christian hymn recorded in Holy Scripture:

If we have died with him, we shall also live with him;
if we endure with him, we shall also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself. (2Tim 2.11-13)

According to the Gospel, therefore, those who wish to be wise are constrained to be fools. Those who would be great become small. Those who would be first put themselves last. Those who rule, serve as slaves. Those who would be rich make themselves poor. Those who want to be strong become weak. And those who long to find and fulfill themselves as persons deny and empty themselves for the sake of the Gospel. And, finally, and most important of all, those who want really to live have really to die. They voluntarily die, in truth and in love, to everyone and everything that is not God and of God.

And so, once again, if we have learned anything at all in our theological education, spiritual formation and pastoral service, we have learned to beware, and to be wary, of all contentment, consolation and comfort before our co-crucifixion in love with Christ. We have learned that though we can know about God through formal theological education, we can only come to know God by taking up our daily crosses with patient endurance in love with Jesus. And we can only do this by faith and grace through the Holy Spirit’s abiding power.

How to Say Yes to God: Homily for the Feast of the Annunciation

By Father Phillip LeMasters

Today we celebrate the very best example of how to live faithfully as a human being before God with the feast of the Annunciation. When the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the Theotokos, she freely accepted this extraordinary calling when she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” When she offered herself to become the Living Temple of God, she played a crucial role in how the Savior would “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” In opening her life without reservation to Christ, she made it possible for Him to “share in flesh and blood” and participate in our humanity so “that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”

By conventional human standards, this teenage girl had no power or prominence at all. No one in first-century Palestine would have been inclined to look to her as having a role in delivering them from anything. But through her courage in accepting a calling that would impact every dimension of her life in ways that she could not possibly have fully understood, the Theotokos became a fierce warrior against evil because she broke the cycle of disobedience that went back to the rebellion of our first parents. They chose satisfying their own self-centered desires over obeying the Lord and becoming more like Him in holiness. She chose, instead, to say “yes” without reservation to the point of sharing her own flesh and blood with the Son of God, and of loving and serving Him throughout His earthly life, even as He hung on the Cross. She is the New Eve through whom the Second Adam became one of us for our salvation.

In order for the Savior to be fully divine and fully human, He had to be born of a woman. In order for Him to be the Great High Priest Who offered Himself fully on the Cross to conquer the power of death, the Messiah “had to be made like His brethren in every respect.” The Theotokos’ offering of herself in free obedience made it possible for Him to do that. Here we encounter the great mystery of divine-human cooperation or synergy, for God always respects our freedom as unique persons in responding to His will. God did not choose the Virgin Mary randomly, but prepared for her across the generations of the Hebrew people, culminating in the aged, barren couple of Joachim and Anna. Like Abraham and Sarah before them, they did not conceive simply by their own youthful physical abilities, but after painful decades of childlessness due to the miraculous blessing of the Lord. John the Baptist was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth in the same way.

These elderly parents of newborns bear witness that something very different from birth into a world dominated by the fear of death has arrived. Now a new age of the fulfillment of God’s promises has dawned. It is fulfilled through a young girl’s amazing obedience, as the Savior becomes an unborn Child in her womb. She conceived and gave birth without passion, without a husband, and in a way that preserved her virginity. In the Theotokos’ astounding offering of herself to the Lord, the brokenness and corruption of our humanity is unwound and undone. This New Eve does not choose the satisfaction of her own desires over obedience to God, but opens every dimension of her being to share in His life. Through her, the New Adam is born Who heals all the corruption of the first.

Remember, however, that neither our Savior nor the Theotokos is a conventional hero. Instead of destroying His enemies through brute force, the Lord submitted to the ultimate humiliation of crucifixion, death, burial in a tomb, and descent to Hades in order to deliver us from captivity to fear of the grave and to bring us into the joy of eternal life. He does not inflict suffering upon others, but takes it upon Himself purely for our sake. The Theotokos was a young virgin, unmarried and of no particular importance in her society. Her unwed pregnancy was scandalous and certainly not a path to a conventional life. Eventually, she saw her Son and God condemned as a blasphemer and a traitor, and then nailed to the Cross. Her purity and blessedness were surely hidden from the world and known only to those who had the eyes to see her Son as the Savior, not in spite of His Passion, but because of it.

We must use the spiritual disciplines of Lent to become more like the Theotokos in her complete obedience and receptivity to the Lord. The Archangel announced her unique calling to which she said “yes.” Through her, the Son of God united Himself with humanity. Our calling, then, is to become like her in hearing and responding to God’s calling as we unite ourselves personally with Him.

If we believe the good news of this feast, then we may shut off no part of our lives from communion with Christ in holiness. His becoming the God-Man calls us to follow the example of the Theotokos in receiving Him in a fashion that transforms every dimension of our life into a sign of His salvation. That is a tall order that we probably cannot image we would ever fulfill. We likely cannot even begin to understand how that could be possible for people like us who are gravely weakened by our sins and the slaves of our self-centered desires.

By this point in Lent, we may have a clearer sense of how hard it is to open our lives to Christ through prayer, fasting, generosity, forgiveness, and repentance. We undertake these practices so poorly and feebly, often gaining a stronger sense of our weakness than of peace, blessedness, and joy. If we have embraced the season with integrity so far, Lent will have opened our eyes a bit to the true state of our souls; and if we are honest, there is much there that we do not like to see. Though that may seem like bad news, it is actually exactly what we need. For if we are to grow in personal union with the Lord, we have to get over any self-righteous illusions that would drown out the message we need to hear. If we are to learn to say “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” we must do so as the particular people we truly are. If we try to relate to God with some kind of imaginary holiness or religiosity, we will do more harm than good to our souls. We may be able to fool ourselves, but we can never fool God.

Through the Theotokos’s response to the message of the Archangel, the Savior became one of us, uniting divinity and humanity in His own Person. By His grace, He calls and enables each of us to find the healing of our souls by sharing in His blessed life. As the Lenten journey continues with all its struggles, we have the opportunity to gain the spiritual strength to receive Him more fully as we grow into the unique persons He created us to be in His image and likeness. Let us look to the Theotokos as our hero, our great example, of what happens when a humble, obedient person says “yes” to God from the depths of her soul. There is no way other than becoming more like her to open ourselves to the victory over the fear of death that her Son accomplished through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day.

Surrender Ourselves To God’s Grace – Archimandrite Aimilianos

In our class Sunday we discussed distractions and how difficult it can be to remain focused during these longer, more intense services we experience during Lent. I thought this article was full of wisdom and pragmatic guidance that might be useful to us as we approach the mid-point of the Fast which occurs next Wednesday. The focus of the article is on the Divine Liturgy. It’s an excerpt from the outstanding book ’The Way of the Spirit’ by Archimandrite Aimilianos. It’s a useful next step as we get in touch with our sense of exile that he described in this earlier article . It’s also a good followup to the article we read about ’finding our true selves in Christ’.

Chapter 2 – On The State That Jesus Confers

My beloved children, how marvelous was today’s Gospel lesson! It’s one we’ve heard many times and experience continuously, especially during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. As we journey through the desert of life, it is only natural that our thirst should draw us to the Liturgy, because the Divine Liturgy is a sumptuous table set in the open air, such as that which the Lord has spread before us today.

What did we hear in the Gospel? Jesus gathered the people together. Why? Because the Apostles told Him they have nothing to eat (cf. Mk 6.36; Mt 14.15). Thousands of people, who had come from every town to see Jesus (Mk 6.33), would have gone hungry, and so the Lord had them sit down in groups on the ground (Mk 6.40), in order to satisfy their souls. They had gone forth into the wilderness to see Jesus, and He gathered them all together (cf. Mk 6.35; Mt 14.15).

The Divine Liturgy, my beloved, is precisely this going forth; it is a movement from one place to another, which we enact continuously. It is also a sitting down in the open in order to eat. It is, first of all, a kind of exodus. But from where? The people mentioned in the Gospel went forth from their towns and villages (Mk 6.33; Mt 14.13), but we come forth from ourselves, as well as from the places in which we live. We leave one kind of place, and come to another, which is different from the one we left. And who among us, upon entering a church, does not sense that there is something special here? Who does not know that to come here means to leave all else behind? And this can be seen by the fact that, if an inappropriate thought enters our mind while we’re here, we immediately want to dismiss it. And even if we’re unable to, we recognize it as something foreign, something that has intruded into the space of our soul, something that has slipped past our guard and entered into us.

We enter the church, then, when we go forth from ourselves in power, in substance, and in truth, leaving behind all our sins, our inclinations, and our aspirations. To enter the church means to leave outside all those things that make up our life in the world. That which exists is God (cf. Ex 3.14), but that which is ours, and which alone belongs to us, is our sin, our self will, and our desire. Apart from God, the self is something non-existent, even though it is, and remains, the creation of His hands, the breath of His first blessing (cf. Gen 2.7).

When we enter the church, we leave behind, not simply the things we see, but even the things for which we hope, because the latter in particular occupy a central place in our lives. Even though the things we hope for are not currently in our hands, we live as if they already were, feeling them intensely, as if we could run our fingers through them, lay hold of them, and possess them. In general, the intensity of our feelings about such things assumes the character of an actual experience, and we must leave that behind, along with all that we see. 2

And what we “see” is everything we encounter in the course of the day: things seen by the eyes of the body as well as those of the soul—which are much more perceptive. The things we “see” are all the things we experience, which stir us up, unsettle us, occupy our minds, give us pleasure, and lift our spirits. When our eyes fall upon them, they elevate us, but only to a place within the visible world: never beyond it.

In leaving behind everything we see, we come forth from that which constitutes our place of exile. This is the new exodus undertaken by the children of God every time they assemble and unite themselves to Christ in the sacred space of the church.

Having left everything behind, where do we find ourselves? In the open air, as befits people close to God (Wis 16.9; cf. Lk 21.31). 3

Why do I say in the open air? Because, looking around the church, we feel that we’re standing in heaven, and heaven cannot be considered a closed space. 4 And this is why Christ chose the desert as a place for prayer: precisely because its endless expanses and tremendous openness symbolize heaven itself. The desert, moreover, stands in contrast to the world: it contains no worldly pleasure, it gives you no earthly delight, and it offers you no fleshly repose. Heaven is something like that.

It follows, then, that no one can live in the desert if he’s still seeking to satisfy his own desires, if he is still anxious to realize his own hopes. You ask God to satisfy your desires, and, when He doesn’t, you think He’s turning a deaf ear. You ask God to realize your hopes, and to your dismay they remain elusive. You ask God to deepen your religious feelings, only to discover that He keeps Himself at a distance. Why? Because in reality those things are only about you, and not God, and thus they constitute the closed space in which you are confined; they are the place out of which God wants to lead you. Now, however, we find ourselves in the open air like that crowd of thousands, people close to God, close to the Lord. As for me, I’m blind, but I’m here too. I’m paralyzed, but nevertheless I’m here. I have no wings, I’m confined to the earth, but I’m here too, close to God.

What does it mean to be close to God? Think for a moment: can you be close to an icon and not be moved to venerate it? Can you be close to a fire and not be warmed? Can you be close to the light and not be illumined? Of course not. How, then, can you be close to God and not become godlike? How can you stretch out on God’s open spaces and not be raised up to the heights of His grandeur?

It follows, then, that after our exit from the world, we find ourselves close to God. We do not, however, find ourselves before the face of God (cf. Ex 33.11). Why? Because, for the most part, the eyes of our soul and body (which are both earthly) do not see God: they only seek Him. In the darkness broken by the brazen lamps, we seek Him, but we do not see Him. And that is the tragedy of human existence: we see everything except that which truly exists. All creation, which had a beginning and which will come to an end, falls under our gaze, which means we see things that, in reality, have no independent existence. 5 The tragic figure of man does not see that which alone truly exists: the One Who Is (cf. Ex 3.14), and Who is always with us.

That is what it means to be close to God. And when we enter into the open spaces of the church, we immediately experience a particular feeling, a feeling which confirms for us that here, in this place, our Helper is at hand. He is invisible, but you feel Him, as if He were rushing toward you, as if you could hear the sound of His breathing. He is your Helper, the One Who can deliver you, Who can redeem you, Who alone can satisfy your insatiable soul, which is forever being gnawed by hunger. You are close to God, and God is invisibly present. But, you may ask, where is He? Who can see Him?

If you wish to see God, my beloved children, there’s only one thing to do: go to church filled with longing to see His face, filled with divine and heavenly desire to be able, somehow, to feel the presence of your Helper and Defender. When you do this, your soul will experience an initially strange feeling: it is God touching your heart. And what will the heart do in response? Will it laugh and rejoice? No. It will be filled with a blessed, godly grief, and begin to weep and lament. In the presence of the Lord, you’ll feel your heart—which is like a useless sack—filling to the brim with the sense of its own emptiness and thereby overflowing with tears. And these tears will be its secret cry, saying:

“Where are You, Lord? Have mercy on me.” “Where are You, Lord?” That is the heart’s first cry. But it immediately realizes that it’s not able to see God, and that, if it did, it would lose its life (cf. Ex 33.20). Correcting its mistake, it continues: “Grant me Your mercy, You are my mercy, Yours is mercy, I am Yours, and You alone can have mercy upon me; You alone can bring me up from the pit of tribulation, from the depths of Your absence and my absence—Your absence from me, and mine from Your own spiritual life.”

When the soul begins to cry—and it cries to God, my beloved, very easily indeed, because God, in a sense, is the soul’s only surviving relative, and what could be more natural than that it should seek Him, and that it should cry when it realizes that it cannot see Him? When you allow your soul to cry, when you reject everything that cuts off the flow of your tears, then you’ll have a feeling of much greater intimacy with God. You’ll understand that now someone else governs your life. You’ll sense that now someone else has grasped the tiller, someone else has taken hold of the wheel (indeed of your own hands) and is now directly guiding you Himself. You become someone guided by the grace of God.

We are guided by God’s grace, to which you can surrender yourself in all confidence. Indeed, it is impossible for you to do the slightest thing without it. Consider the glory of the stars, the magnificence of the heavens, and the wonders of the earth: none of these can give you anything at all. The only thing that can fashion a new heart within you (cf. Ezek 11.19), rendering the old one utterly useless, is the power of God’s grace.

The Annunciation & Our Conciliar Salvation

By Father Stephen Freeman

I consider it both a strange mystery and a settled matter of the faith that God prefers not to do things alone. Repeatedly, He acts in a manner that involves the actions of others when, it would seem, He could have acted alone.

Why would God reveal His Word to the world through the agency of men? Why would He bother to use writing? Why not simply communicate directly with people? Why speak to Moses in a burning bush? Why did the Incarnation involve Mary? Could He not have simply become man, whole, complete, adult, in a single moment?

Such questions could be multiplied ad infinitum. But at every turn, what we know of God involves others as well. We may rightly conclude that such a means of acting pleases Him.

This Friday is the Feast of the Annunciation when the Church celebrates the Incarnation of Christ at word of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. An Orthodox hymn on the feast says:

The manner of His emptying cannot be known;
the manner of His conception is beyond speech.
An Angel ministers at the miracle; a virginal womb receives the Son;
the Holy Spirit is sent down; the Father on high is well pleased,
and according to their common counsel, a reconciliation is brought to pass
in which and through which we are saved.

“According to their common counsel” is a rich phrase describing this conciliar action of God.

At the same time that this conciliar mode of action seems obvious to Orthodoxy, it is frequently denied or diminished by others. There is a fear in some Christian quarters that were we to admit that God shared His action with any other, our salvation would be a matter of our own works and not the sovereign act of God. It is feared that a conciliar mode of action shares the glory of God with mere mortals.

It is true. This understanding shares the glory of God with mere mortals. But, interestingly, St. Paul says that man is the “image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7). Apparently, we were brought into existence in order to have such a share.

The failure to understand this and the effort to re-invent the Christian story with diminished roles for angels and saints, or Christians themselves, comes very close to setting forth a different gospel altogether.

The Word became flesh of the Virgin Mary. The flesh of the Virgin is also the flesh that is nailed to the Cross (when her soul was itself mysteriously pierced). The flesh which we eat in the Eucharist is also the flesh of the Virgin – for there is no flesh of God that is not the flesh of the Virgin.

And it does no good to protest that the Word merely “took flesh” of the Virgin. For Adam cried out concerning Eve, “This is truly bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And St. Paul noted concerning the wife of a man that a man should love her, “For no one ever yet hated his own flesh.”

I puzzle at how Christians who understand that it is wrong for a woman to say, “It’s my body and I can do with it what I want,” when she is carrying a child, can at the same time treat the Mother of God as though she had merely lent her womb to God for a period of time.

God’s conciliar action in our salvation is so thoroughly established that it involves our will, our soul, our flesh and bones. He includes bread and wine in our salvation so that the fruit of this garden might become the fruit of life. Everything around you is for your salvation and has its share.

This is not only true in the Incarnation, but continues to be true for every saving effort in our lives. We cannot save ourselves, of course, for that, too, would be denying the conciliar action of God.

There is a saying among the fathers, “If anyone falls, he falls alone, but no one can be saved alone.” But I think we cannot even say that we fall alone – for the one who falls is equally bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Christ does not distance Himself from the one who falls, but unites Himself with him so completely that He endures the consequence of our fall, entering death and hell to bring us back alive.

The Church is nothing other than the conciliar salvation of God, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh – His body. We are being saved together whether we will admit it or not. Those who study and quote the Bible are themselves handling documents that were written, copied and preserved by others. It is a conciliar document.

The Orthodox way of life urges us to embrace the fullness of our conciliar being. In sacraments and saints in worship and wonder we live within the cloud of witnesses and share the common struggle.

For this reason let us unite our song with Gabriel’s,
crying aloud to the Virgin:
“Rejoice, O Lady full of grace, the Lord is with you!
From you is our salvation, Christ our God,
Who, by assuming our nature, has led us back to Himself.
Humbly pray to Him for the salvation of our souls!”