Saturday Before Thomas

After those things Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judah, and he remained there with them and baptized. Now John was baptizing in Ainon close to Salim, for there was much water there; and people came and were baptized. For John had not yet been put into prison. Now there occurred a discussion concerning purification between some of John’s disciples and a Judean. And they came to John and said to him: ‘Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, he to whom you have borne witness, see, he is baptizing and all come to him.’ John answered and said: ‘A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from Heaven. You yourselves bear witness to me that I said that I am not the Christ but that I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the Bridegroom. The friend, then, of the Bridegroom, he who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy on account of the voice of the Bridegroom. That joy of mine has been fulfilled, then. He must increase but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all men. He who is from the earth is from the earth and speaks from the earth. He who comes from above is above all men. And what he saw and heard, to that he bears witness and no one receives his witness. He who receives his witness has put his seal to this, that God is true.’

(John 3, 22–33)

We would like to take this Gospel for the Liturgy of Saturday of Bright Week as our starting point to share a few reflections for the Easter season. First of all, we would like to remark on the Holy Spirit. In the life of the Orthodox layman, it is the Holy Spirit who ‘gives’ from Heaven the charism of ministry to the body of the Church. It is not something we arrogate to ourselves. We see that St John the Baptist—than whom there is no one greater born of woman; he who, if you are willing to receive it, is Elias who is to come again—is careful not to arrogate to himself the title of Messiah or Christ. By divine calling he is the ‘friend of the Bridegroom’ but in his own eyes nothing more. He rejoices to hear the voice of Christ and is content with this joy: he himself must decrease while the Christ must increase. Similarly, properly speaking, the priesthood is not a profession the way ‘doctor’ or ‘lawyer’ or ‘engineer’ is a profession that by ourselves we can choose to adopt; the priesthood is a calling given from God to the layman to minister to his body, the Church. This calling is given from the Holy Spirit, as St Paul remarks in one of his epistles when he discusses the charisms and the charismatic ministries. And just as St John did not arrogate to himself more than God gave him, it behoves him who is called to a ministry to be careful not to arrogate to himself more than he has been given. Moreover, just as the Messiahship of Jesus Christ was validated by St John the Baptist, who saw the Spirit descending and remaining on him, so a calling to ministry to the body is validated by the Bishops of the Church—after all there are no ‘charismatic priests’ in the Orthodox Church; you have to be ordained by a Bishop, who has to be willing on his own judgement to ordain you.

The next point we would like to make concerns the interest of the followers of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) in Mount Athos and the Jesus Prayer. We made a post on the matter here. We then received a number of comments which we haven’t posted. The authors took us to task for not taking Arnold seriously. Arnold was the person who wrote to us asking about a supposed tradition on Mount Athos that would have the name of God non-different from himself—hence, compatible with ‘Hare Krishna’ and hence making Mount Athos a place where Arnold would be well received and feel at home with his practice of ‘Hare Krishna’. Here is what one ‘John Moschus’ had to say:

Dear Orthodox Monk,

Your dismissal of the interesting phrase used by the seeker Arnold, namely, “the name of God non-different from himself” as nothing but Hinduism is a little too pat. I think Arnold’s query deserves a little more reflection or intellectual effort than merely a quick googling of the phrase, associating it with Hare Krishna or some other form of Hinduism, and then dismissing it as not Orthodox. That’s actually not quite fair. For in fact, the idea of the name of God being not different from God himself is not unknown in the Orthodox tradition. In Orthodoxy it is known by the name of “onomatodoxy”, and as a doctrinal movement surfaced most recently in the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 20th century, where it was known as “Imiaslavie”. With the publication of a book in 1907, called “In the Caucasus Mountains” by a much revered Russian schemamonk and hermit, Ilarion, where he spoke of his own experiences with the Jesus Prayer, and his conviction that the name of Jesus was not different from God Himself and could work miracles, the Imiaslavie movement became very popular with Russian monks on Mount Athos. A great controversy ensued with both proponents, such as the great saint, John of Kronstadt, and opponents, such as Archbishop Anthony Krapovitsky, in hot disagreement. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church eventually declared Imiaslavie a heresy not unlike pantheism. Unfortunately, a full discussion of whether the name of Jesus is non different from God itself or whether it is really a form of pantheism (invoking the dreaded term “pantheism” is an easy refuge for anyone unwilling or afraid to look closely at the implications of any doctrine that draws close to “non-dualism”) was cut short by the October Revolution in Russia, but not before the pre-Marxist government sent a gunboat and two transport ships with troops to remove the offending monks by force. The great Pavel Florensky, Orthodox priest and mathematical genius, was a proponent of Imiaslavie. Florensky insisted that some mathematical functions, such as transfinite numbers, can be understood properly only in the context of the Imiaslavie philosophy, in which the name of God is not different from God himself. I can’t claim to understand this insight. Nevertheless, my point is only to say that to dismiss as nothing but Hinduism the idea that the name of God is not different from God is not quite fair, and that there may be much more that can—and should--be said about it in an Orthodox Christian context, especially as the concept has drawn a seeker to look more closely at Orthodoxy.

Sincerely,

J. Moschus

We should also point out that someone linked to our post on the ISKCON website with a tongue-in-cheek title something like ‘Looks like Arnold won’t get to be a monk on Mount Athos!’

We have been reluctant to get into the issue of Imiaslavie because we think that it is a red herring. We were given links in other comments to articles in Wikipedia on the Imiaslavie movement. Of course Wikipedia has the status of ‘Father of the Church’ if not ‘Father of the whole universe of human discourse’, but let us leave that aside for the moment. We went through all of this stuff, as much as we could stomach.

First of all, Mr Moschus, it seems to us that you are being disingenuous. You are, it seems to us, taking St John Kronstadt out of context. Remember this is the Saint who was treated as an incarnation of God by some Russian sectarians and who suffered great anguish over that (see above about ministries in the church and not arrogating more to yourself than is given). We saw what seemed to us to be the quotation in context that you were basing yourself on, and there is a gross distortion of the meaning if you think that St John of Kronstadt was preaching that the name of God is non-different from himself.

Next, the adjudication of the orthodoxy or not of Imiaslavie by the Russian Synod may or may not have been interrupted by the Revolution of 1917. In Orthodoxy, however, that is not necessarily an important issue. If you’re wrong in Orthodoxy, you’re wrong. Orthodoxy is not a legalistic religion that needs a formal legalistic determination of error to discard a wrong belief. If you don’t believe that, go to Mount Athos and inquire of the Abbots there, or anyone else there for that matter, about Imiaslavie. According to our own information there are no practitioners today of Imiaslavie on Mount Athos, or if there are they are under deep cover.

If someone is interested in a historical treatment of Imiaslavie, with we believe some reference to Ilarion (if it’s the same Ilarion), he might look at Nicholas Fennel’s The Russians on Athos.

Next, with regard to Pavel Florensky and his transfinite numbers only being understood in the context of Imiaslavie. This is silly. The mathematical layman finds it hard to understand that there is a variety of ‘infinities’ in mathematics, not all of which are equivalent (commensurable). For example there are an infinite number of integers and an infinite number of real numbers. But there are more real numbers than integers: when you put the integers and the real numbers into a correspondence, there are always real numbers left over. That’s just the way mathematics is. It’s the same way, only more so, with transfinite numbers. It’s like saying that a square has two dimensions and a cube has three—that there are more dimensions in a cube than in a square. It has nothing to do with Imiaslavie or the nature of God but with the nature of mathematics. In this regard it should be pointed out that Florensky was influenced by the theories of Bulgakov concerning ‘Sophia’, which have never been received by the Church. This is not stuff you learn from the Fathers of the Church. Mr. Moschus, if transfinite numbers can only be understood in the context of Imiaslavie, then in what context can 4-dimensional Minkowski Space-Time (the mathematical formalism of the Special and General Theories of Relativity) be understood, not to mention infinite-dimensional Hilbert Space, the formalism used in Quantum Mechanics?

Let us look at the real issue. The real issue is the nature of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In the Burning Bush, in the Septuagint Translation used in the Church, when Moses asks, ‘Who shall I say has sent me?’ God replies, ‘say that “I am that which I am” has sent you [our free translation from memory]’. The Judeo-Christian (and even Islamic) tradition has always considered God to be transcendent to his creation: he is not the same in essence or substance as his creation.

In the 14^th Century, the presence of God in his creation and the problem of the mystical knowledge of God was analyzed in the context of a defence of the Jesus Prayer by St Gregory Palamas, an Athonite monk and saint. St Gregory took that presence of God in creation as having to do with the presence of the ‘uncreated energies or actions’ of God in his creation. But the ‘uncreated energies’ of God were never considered by St Gregory Palamas to be the substance or essence of God, but the activities of the uncreated essence of God. In other words, in the Orthodox Church, grace is considered to be uncreated. However, grace is considered to suffuse or permeate or transfigure that which is graced, not to be of the same substance as that which is graced. Similarly the mystical knowledge of God that the Hesychast experiences is attributed by St Gregory not to knowledge of the essence of God—in Orthodoxy that is not possible either in this life or the next life—but to the presence of the uncreated energies of God in the created spirit or nous of man, and in the case of saints, even in the body.

This is the significance of the statement in the Gospel reading that he who is from above is above all men[1]. What the Church has always understood by this is that the Word of God—he who is in the presence of the Father, he through whom all things were made, he who is God—came down from Heaven and was incarnated by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. Jesus is the Word of God become man. The Orthodox Church has always held that the Person of Jesus Christ is the Word of God and that the Word of God when it became man took on a complete human nature, so that Jesus Christ is one person (the Word of God) in two natures—a human and a divine nature, the one completely human and the other completely divine. As St John Damscene points out in the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, the Son or Word is equal to the Father except for the relationship of being begotten from the Father and the Spirit is equal to the Father except for the relationship of proceeding from the Father.

These statements presuppose that ‘I am that I am’ who spoke to Moses in the Burning Bush is different from his creation. As St Maximos the Confessor remarks in the Ambigua, we cannot even predicate ‘existence’ of God, because God is beyond all creation and ‘existence’ is a predicate that properly belongs only to what is created, not to the Creator. Hence, according to St Maximos, God is beyond existence. This is a radical transcendence. This is completely contrary to the notion that the name of God is non-different from himself. Moreover, so that what is implied in this latter statement can be understood, on the ISKCON site, there is reference to a physical place, in India we believe, where the place itself—the stones, the trees, the grass, the whatever—is considered to be non-different from Krishna. Hence in worshipping or glorifying (not just venerating) the stones, the trees, the grass, the whatever in that place, one is worshipping or glorifying Krishna; one is worshipping or glorifying God—and, Mr Moschus suggests, the same God who spoke to Moses in the Burning Bush. But, Mr. Moschus, no one in the history of Judaism or Christianity has ever suggested that the Burning Bush is non-different from God himself. The contrary.

We can now understand the Gospel passage a little better. The transcendent God has sent St John the Baptist to bear witness to the Messiah. The Jew of the time took this to be a man who would restore the Kingdom to Israel, as is clear just before the Ascension in the Acts of the Apostles. St John bears witness. He must now decrease, having heard the voice of the Bridegroom, of the Messiah, of the Christ, while the Messiah must increase. And St John goes on that he himself is from the earth and speaks from the earth whereas the Christ, Jesus to whom he has born witness, is from above. This being ‘from above’ the Church understands to refer to the fact that Jesus is the Word of God of the same substance with the Father, the Word of God who has descended from heaven to save us, his lost sheep, who are from the earth—the creatures of God. The transcendent God in his infinite mercy has taken the form of a slave—of a created being—in order to save that created being, man. This is God’s love. May his grace be upon us.

Χριστός ανέστη!

---

[1] or, perhaps, ‘all things’; the text is ambiguous on the referent

Sunday of the Abstention from Meat

The gospel reading for today:

Therefore, when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all his holy angels with him, then he will sit upon his throne of glory. And all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them from each other just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right: ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I hungered and you gave me to eat; I thirsted and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger and you gathered me; naked and you clothed me; I was ill and you covered me; in prison and you came to me.’ Then the just will answer him, saying: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and we fed you, or thirsting and we gave you to drink? When did we see you a stranger and we gathered you, or naked and we clothed you? When did we see you ill or in prison and we came to you? And, answering, the King will say to them: ‘Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you [pl.] did so to one of these brothers of mine, the least, you did so to me.’ Then he will also say to those on the left: ‘Go from me you cursed ones to the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you did not give me to eat; I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink; I was a stranger and you did not gather me; naked and you did not clothe me; ill and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer him, saying: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or naked or ill or in prison and we did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them saying: ‘Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do so to one of these least, neither did you do so to me.’ And they will go into eternal Hell, but the just into eternal life.

(Matthew 25, 31 – 46)

This gospel reading has some of the deepest thoughts of the whole Gospel. For the Gospel is not merely a matter of words but of spiritual meanings conveyed into our hearts. The Gospel renders spiritually present to us that of which it speaks. Here it speaks of the Last Judgement, rendering it present to us (as in a glass darkly). The reading begins with the Second Coming. Christ will come in his glory with his holy angels and will sit upon his throne of glory. No longer is it a matter of the Suffering Servant who is crucified, of the Suffering Servant who is not comely to look upon, but of the King of Kings coming in glory with his holy angels. And his glory is the effulgence of his divinity. We are confronted in this gospel passage with that reality, the reality of the divinity of Christ as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Then a scene is portrayed of cosmic proportions: all the nations will be gathered before the King sitting on his throne of glory. These are all the souls who have ever lived and died. This is the resurrection of the dead. We will be present then.

Then the King will separate the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. We will be there.

Notice that those even on the left will acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. It is a truism that the light of the Divinity, apart from the fact that it can present itself either as the Dove or as a consuming fire according to the intention of God, presents itself differently to those who are of Christ and those who are not. Those who are of Christ rejoice to see Christ’s face; those who are not, tremble—but they know who he is.

Then the King of Kings will call those on his right to enter his Kingdom.

What criterion does the King of Kings provide for placing someone on his right and someone on his left? Mercy. Those who show mercy to their neighbour will be saved; those who do not will be damned.

There are a number of things that Christ does not say here. He does not say to the saved, ‘You said many prayers; you fasted; and so on.’ He says, ‘You showed mercy to my brethren, the least of them, and therefore you showed mercy to me.’ As the Lord said to the teacher of the Law in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, ‘Go and do likewise.’ Or as the Beatitudes say, ‘Blessed are those who show mercy, for they shall be shown mercy.’

The primary goal of Lent is repentance, and our primary goal is love so that we are able to show mercy. This is important to understand both for the Orthodox monastic and for the Orthodox layman. Our ascetical practices, including our Lenten ascetical practices, must be tools to help us to repent; they must lead us to love both for God and for our fellow man as we keep the Commandments.

It is in this general context that one should look at the meaning of the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

A good Lent to all!

–Orthodox Monk

The Tax Collector and the Pharisee – Love and Authoritarianism 6

Let us see if we can give a definitive analysis of the American Christian Right Wing and move on. It seems to us that the basic spiritual problem behind all the very odd manifestations of Christianity in the American Christian Right Wing is self-righteousness.

The people on the American Christian Right Wing believe that they can interpret the truth by themselves. This belief that they can interpret the truth by themselves leads to self-righteousness.

This self-righteousness leads these people to raise themselves up higher than the Church. From the Orthodox point of view, people with the views of the American Christian Right Wing are not members of the Body of Christ. They lack integration into the Church. They are not properly joined to the Lord. Their lack of integration into the Church reinforces the disturbances in these peoples’ understanding of the truth that arise from their self-righteous reliance on their own reasoning.

The belief of these persons that they can interpret the truth by themselves leads, as we said, to self-righteousness. From this self-righteousness flows their ability both to mix political positions with the Gospel, as if those political positions were part of the Gospel, and to distort the meaning of the Gospel in order to bring it into line with these persons’ political positions and taste for violence. The lack of a proper integration into the Church leads these people to disregard the wisdom of the Church about what the Gospel means as they put forward their own views or the views of a sectarian author.

These peoples’ lack of integration into the Church also leads to disturbances in their spiritual relationship to Jesus Christ, even and especially despite a born-again turning to Jesus. (However, we understand that an actual spiritual ‘born again’ experience among these people is rather rarer than one might believe.) This is especially true when these people are also involved in Pentecostalism, especially of the ‘Third Wave’ or ‘Latter Rain’ variety. Lacking spiritual integration into the Church these people lack the corporate discernment of spirits of the Orthodox Church that would to protect them from spiritual delusion.

The lack of a proper integration into the Church, and hence the lack of a proper relationship to Christ and the lack of a proper corporate discernment of spirits, causes these people to be susceptible to spiritual temptations connected to pride. There are a variety of temptations that one can succumb to that are related to pride. One is self-righteousness. Another is the acceptance of false doctrine. Another is fanaticism. (One can easily see that the spiritual temptations of pride that arise from the lack of a proper integration into the Church, and the consequences of these peoples’ self-righteous reliance on themselves in the interpretation of the Gospel, mutually reinforce each other.) Once the demon of pride has found its home in the soul, it brings into the soul the demon of anger. From there it is easy for the person to pass on to vindictiveness and hatred and violence. And when these people get involved in Pentecostalism without the spiritual discernment of the Church, they are exposed to spiritual delusion and deception on a grand scale.

It might be useful to repeat here the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee:

Two men went up to the Temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Having stood towards himself, the Pharisee prayed these things: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of Mankind, swindlers, unjust men, adulterers—or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of 10% on everything that I own.’ And having stood far off, the tax collector did not even want to lift his eyes to Heaven but beat his breast saying: ‘God, have mercy on me a sinner.’ I say to you, the latter went down justified to his house rather than the former. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be raised up. (Luke 10 – 15.)

Note that the Gospel states that the Pharisee ‘stood towards himself’. This phrase is clear in the Greek but hard to render in English. Although the Pharisee was a least superficially and externally devout, he did not turn to God in prayer; he turned towards—depended on—himself.

Let us add to the Pharisee’s boast: ‘I am not like the rest of Mankind, committers of abortion, homosexuals, believers in Islam, drug users and spongers off the Government dole. I pay my own way, collect guns to protect the American Way of Life and help organize my local Tea Party Movement.’ Perhaps the point we are trying to make is now clear.

The Lord said that the leaven of the Pharisee was hypocrisy.

Let us who are Orthodox Christians say with the tax collector: ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner.’

May all have a blessed Lent!

–Orthodox Monk

Commentary on the Our Father

Here is a little commentary on the Our Father.

TEXT:

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς,

Our Father, you who are in the Heavens,

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·

May your name be sanctified;

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

May your Kingdom come;

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

May what you will come to pass, as in the Heavens so upon the earth.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·

Give us today our daily bread;

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,

And forgive us our debts,

ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·

As we also forgive our debtors;

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

And do not lead us into temptation,

ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

But deliver us from the Evil One.

COMMENTARY:

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς,

Our Father, you who are in the Heavens,

Unusually in the history of religion, the fundamental Christian prayer begins in the plural. One possible explanation is that the text that we have is actually a liturgical text. Such a liturgical text would necessarily be in the plural because it would be part of the practice of group worship. That this might be so is witnessed by the liturgical doxology which follows the prayer. And indeed the Our Father is prayed corporately in the Divine Liturgy.

However, there is no tradition in the Orthodox Church that the Our Father is merely a liturgical prayer; rather the Fathers consider the prayer the fundamental prayer of Christians, a prayer taught by God.

And, indeed, it seems to us that the Our Father contains the Gospel in a nutshell.

Hence, we must take the plural as conveying something deeper than merely an original liturgical setting of the Our Father.

The basic message we take from the plural is that we are not saved as isolated individuals but as members of the Church. The Church is so fundamental a concept in Christianity that it behoves us to pray for all members of the Church even when we are praying just for ourselves.

Next, is the appellation of God, ‘Father’. We are able to call God ‘Father’ because we are baptized. As we have learned, in baptism we have received the Holy Spirit and it has taken up its abode in our nous, our created spirit, restoring in us the image of God. This restored image of God is not a mere resemblance but so close and intimate that we are able to address God as our Father.

This is not metaphor: in Baptism we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. But as we have learned, with baptism we have not acquired the fullness of adoption as sons and daughters of God, the fullness of the ‘in the likeness’. Rather, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit we struggle in our personal ascetical endeavour to realize our calling.

We can see, however, that it as members of the Church that we engage in this personal ascetical struggle.

Not only is this a matter of social solidarity—say, going to Church on Sundays—but a matter of participation in the mysterial or sacramental life of the Church: we engage in our personal ascetical effort to pass from the ‘in the image’ of the baptized Orthodox Christian to the ‘in the likeness’ of the sanctified Orthodox Christian by participating in the mysteries or sacraments of the Orthodox Church according to the rules and norms (typika) of the Church. We do not cut our own road, being smarter than the Fathers who wrote the rules under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That is foolish. That is not consistent with our praying the Our Father.

Another way to put this is that through entry into the Orthodox Church in baptism having been adopted as sons and daughters of God, we must struggle to become sons and daughters of God in fullness: with the assistance of Grace we must struggle to become sons and daughters of God in the sense that Jesus taught: be ye therefore perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. We must come to be sons and daughters of God who share in the love of God perfectly and who give that love of God perfectly to their neighbours and especially to their brothers and sisters.

‘Neighbour’ includes those who are not in the Church; ‘brother and sister’ refers to those in the Church.

Part of giving that love perfectly to our brothers and sisters is to pray ‘Our Father…’

The next part of this petition is ‘you who are in the Heavens’. It might be more exact to translate the beginning of the prayer ‘Our Father in the Heavens’.

Why would ‘you who are in the Heavens’ have been added by the Word of God made flesh to the Prayer he taught?

To which father are we praying? To our earthly father? To a political leader? To ‘Il Duce’? To a guru?

We are praying to ‘Our Father in the Heavens’, him who made Heaven, him who made the earth; him who made each of us, fashioning each of us in the womb when we were conceived. This it is to whom we are praying.

To invoke something in prayer is to render it present to us charismatically; it is to commune with it. Hence, when we pray ‘Our Father, you who are in the Heavens’ we are invoking the God of Gods, the Lord of Hosts, Him Who Is; we are rendering that God charismatically present in our hearts and minds; we are communing with him.

But if this is so, then immediately after we cannot turn to the Devil and the works of the Devil. That is to say, by invoking God in this way, we are purifying ourselves. We turn away from the profane to the holy, from sin and evil to justice and the good. We are sanctifying ourselves.

Our God is a holy God; our God is a jealous God. Before him there are no other gods. Hence, praying this way we develop an attitude of deep reverence for our Father, him who is in the Heavens.

When we are spiritually infants we might have a childish boldness before our Father in the Heavens, but when we mature, we must develop a profound reverence for the holiness of God, for Our Father, him who is in the Heavens.

This is the ‘idea of the holy’.

St Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews makes the observation that we have not been to the Mountain of Sinai when God descended and even a wild animal that approached the Mountain was to be stoned—stoned because that was the one sure way to put the animal to death without touching it—, and what was seen was so frightful that Moses himself said: ‘I am frightened and trembling.’ Instead, St Paul says, we have been called to myriads of angels and to the festival and assembly of the first-born who have been registered in the Heavens. Even though this is true, however, St Paul would not obliterate the notion that God is holy in the traditional Jewish sense conveyed by his description of the scene on Mt Sinai.

‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’ The reverence we have for God must include the fear of him: not the slavish fear a demon or sinner might have that knows that it or he is going to suffer eternal punishment, but the fear that is engendered by holiness: we have tasted the holiness of the Lord and know that he is holy, the Fear of Isaac.

Here is what Psalm 118, 120 says:

Nail my flesh with your fear[1]; on account of your judgements I have feared.

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·

May your name be sanctified;

When we speak of something’s name, we are speaking of what conveys that thing’s true inner essence.

There is no sense in this epoch that a name is merely a convention pointing to an object in a language game the rules of which have been arbitrarily set. Such an analysis of ‘God-language’ has nothing to do with Christianity.

No, when we pronounce the name of someone, we mean his nature—who he really is. Recall that Moses asked the voice in the Burning Bush what his name was. ‘Who shall I say has sent me?’ Moses asked. And the answer came: ‘Say that “I am” has sent you.’ (This is the Septuagint rendering.)

That is why icons of Christ Pantocrator (‘The Ruler of All Things’) have Ὁ ὬΝ (‘He Who Is’) written above Christ’s head in the halo: As the Word of God made flesh, Christ is ‘He Who Is’, the ‘I am’ who sent Moses.

That is why Christ himself says in the Eighth Chapter of the Gospel of John that ‘…you will die in your sins if you do not believe that “I am”.’

That is why when the crowd came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked them who it was they wanted. The crowd replied ‘Jesus, the Nazarene’. He replied ‘I am’ and they fell to the ground, before their Creator.

Hence, what is it that we are asking? We are not really asking anything. We are blessing God. We are saying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts’, but in a voice suited to a mortal upon the earth.

We are blessing God.

When we bless God in this way, there is a self-negation that we assert: when we pray that God’s name be sanctified, we are denying our own self-love; we are denying ourselves. We are negating ourselves so that God might be sanctified, so that his name might be made holy.

Moreover, when we bless God’s name in this way, we are denying the evil in us. For us to pray from the heart that God’s name be sanctified is to deny sin. It is to say that we have turned to God and away from the Devil, away from his pomps.

There is a sense in which we are in fact petitioning God that his name be hallowed: we are asking that in a world in which darkness is the norm, in an impure heart such as our own, that the name of God be hallowed: that the name of God be hallowed by the advent of justice both in the world and in our own being.

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

May your Kingdom come;

This is more clearly a petition. However, it also contains an element similar to the preceding: for us to wish and ask God that his Kingdom come is to deny ourselves and our own petty kingdoms; it is to turn ourselves over to the Kingdom of God; it is to open our hearts to God and to his Kingdom. Recall that the Kingdom of God is within you. There is no sense in the Our Father that we are to engage in a holy war to bring about God’s Kingdom on earth. There is no sense that we are committed to the forcible conversion of the pagans. For recall that entry into the Kingdom of God is something that begins with a voluntary approach to the baptismal font and continues with a fundamental reorientation of all one’s life so as to pass from the ‘according to the image’ received in baptism to the ‘according the likeness’ that we accomplish through the Grace of the Holy Spirit when we are willing co-workers with the Holy Spirit in our ascetical endeavours. All of this is implied in the petition.

This is not to deny that the Church has a missionary role to play in the world. It is to deny that the petition is for the establishment of a worldly kingdom that is to be accomplished by violence. ‘For my Kingdom is not of this world.’

In praying ‘May your Kingdom come,’ we recognize that we ourselves can not bring about the passage from the ‘according to the image’ to the ‘according to the likeness’; this is something that ultimately and fundamentally must be wrought by God. Recall that the culmination of the ascetical ascent is the Divine Illumination by the Holy Spirit that confers a participation in the Divine Love, so much so that we are no longer subject to the eight passions. If the Kingdom of God is within us, then it might be thought that in such a case that the Kingdom of God has come. This is true, but to the extent that this is possible for a person on earth before departure from the body.

Indeed, that is how the Fathers interpret the Transfiguration of Mt Tabor: The Transfiguration occurred a week after Christ said that ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God coming in power.’ The Fathers understand that this reference is to the event of the Transfiguration.

As St Peter said, ‘It is well for us to be here.’ As the icons of the transfiguration portray, the three apostles are struck by the revelation of the Trinity but St John, the author is the Fourth Gospel, is particularly lost in reflection: it is he who will convey the deepest sense of the revelation.

It might be remembered that St Gregory Palamas prayed continually to be enlightened by the Light of God and other saints have prayed similarly: in praying the Our Father we too are praying God to grant us this Divine Illumination that will transform us fully into sons or daughters of God by grace, when the Kingdom of God has come within us and we no longer are subject to the passions but participate in the Love of God that Jesus had and conveyed to his disciples when he washed their feet; when he came to them on the evening of the first day, the doors being barred, and said ‘Peace to you;’ when he asked them after a fruitless night fishing, ‘Children, do you have anything to eat;’ when he himself prepared a meal for them on the beach while they were hauling in the catch.

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

May what you will come to be, as in the Heavens so upon the earth.

We have translated more literally than is customary. This is so we can discuss the deeper meaning of the petition with greater clarity than might be possible with the customary translation.

The Greek word θέλημα conveys the thing that someone wills, not the faculty of the will that all men have. That is, if it is my will to go to New York, then that is my θέλημα. My faculty of will is called my θέλησις.

So what is it we are asking in this petition? Let us suppose that it is my will to go to New York tomorrow. Well, I can get in my car or boat or airplane or whatever and go to New York. But let us suppose that I pray the Our Father in earnest. Then what I am praying is that what God wants be done. Now some people say that God is most often indifferent if we go to New York or not; it’s how we live when we go to New York that is important.

We look at the matter somewhat differently. Jesus said that he came not to do his own will but the will of his Heavenly Father. When we pray the Our Father we are asking that what Jesus wanted happen to us to: that we no longer seek to do our own will, but the will of our Heavenly Father.

Hence, what this petition requires is a continual struggle of ‘kenosis’ or emptying. This is a big Greek word. What it means is that we empty ourselves of ourselves so that God might fill up the empty space that we have left by getting rid of ourselves. Each time we pray that the will of God be done, we are emptying ourselves, negating ourselves, turning ourselves over to God in trust that what he wants is better than what we want; we are passing from being spiritual children to spiritual adults who no longer have temper tantrums is they do not get their way, but love their Father and revere his name.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·

Give us today our daily bread;

We all have needs. One of the deepest messages of the Gospel is to trust in the Providence of God. This is a very deep lesson for the Christian. Early Christians sometimes took it to mean that they didn’t have to work; St Paul in Thessalonians was obliged to combat this false notion. There was a tradition in Syrian and Sinaite monasticism that the monk would not work but wait on the Providence of God; we have discussed this. However, even if we work according to strength, we have to change our orientation. Yes we work, but it is not ‘all about us’ anymore. It is about God’s providence which provides for our needs. It is no longer an ego trip, no longer a matter of my inheritance, my salary, my income, my astuteness as an investor or designer of financial instruments—it is a matter of the love of God for us and what he provides us. It is clear that this orientation has been lost in America, even among Protestants.

Moreover, there is a false doctrine among Calvinists that wealth is a sign of God’s smile upon us, a sign of our election to salvation. There is no such doctrine in Orthodoxy. It is true that sometimes God showers material blessings on a Christian just as he did on Job both before and after his trial; it is also true that sometimes God allows the Christian to be tempted by poverty so that he might see whether he or she really loves God—and not just the material possessions that God has given or allowed the person to gather.

However, a much more fundamental doctrine in Orthodoxy is that personal wealth is no particular indicator of sanctity and value in the eyes of God: it is possible to be wealthy and a friend of God; it is possible to be poor and a friend of God; the opposite in each case is possible. What matters is our spiritual wealth, our virtue. We can’t take our material possessions with us, but we can and do take our virtue—or lack of it—with us when we die. And we all surely must die. In Orthodoxy the wealthy man is the man of love, the man who cares.

Recall that one of the Beatitudes is ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.’ What this means is that the humble inherit the Kingdom of God.

Finally, it should be noted that the petition we have is not for fast cars and women and motorcycles and speed boats—it is for our daily bread. This petition entails humility: we have to humble ourselves and realize that just like anyone else we are in need of our daily bread from God. Not for anything fancy or special—let them eat cake!—but for our daily bread, the food of peasants and the poor of the earth.

So in praying this petition we are humbling ourselves before our Creator and asking him for our basic needs.

In common with the patristic understanding, we take praying for our daily bread as being to pray for our shoes, our heating bill, our rent, our kid’s clothes, and so on and so forth: for our genuine needs. It might be worth reflecting on among those of our readers who are unemployed and with no prospects of employment: Jesus Christ taught us to pray to our Heavenly Father for our daily needs; he taught us that God hears our prayers; he went so far as to speak the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge: the widow never gave up. Hence, we must continually pray to God to provide for our daily needs with the faith and hope that he will be faithful to his word—and he cannot be unfaithful to himself—and provide us our daily needs.

We had the occasion to speak to a priest recently about the burden of his pastoral duties. He remarked that the economic crash has come very heavily and very quickly, so much so that people are out on the streets without a place to live anymore, so much so that people are committing suicide.

For those in despair over their economic situation, trust in the Providence of God is very important, as is prayer for their daily bread.

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,

And forgive us our debts,

Now we come to the heart of the Gospel. This is a very, very deep petition. Who can say that he is without sin? Who has repented from the depths of his heart so that he no longer needs to repent? Who is so humble that he no longer needs to humble himself to ask forgiveness for his sins? And God will hear us.

Recall that St Silouan wrote that before he went to the monastery he met a convicted murderer who after he had served his time was gaily dancing at a party. Intrigued, St Silouan asked the fellow how, a murderer, he could dance so gaily at the party. The man replied: when I was in prison, I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to forgive me my sin, and he heard me and now I can sing and dance.

So we must be: while we are yet in prison, we must pray and pray and pray for the forgiveness of our sin so that God might hear us and grant us forgiveness. For as the ascetical Fathers teach, in whatever condition God finds us at the hour of our death, in that condition we will go to eternity. Hence, before we die we must pray for God to forgive us our debts. Moreover, the Fathers such as St John of Sinai are clear that without such a sure sense of the forgiveness of our sins and of the concomitant presence of the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are in trouble if we die unless we are distinguished by our humility. It is now that is the time of our prison, now the time that we must implore God to forgive us our sins. And here is that petition.

ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·

As we also forgive our debtors;

This is God’s ‘catch-22’ for us sinners. We want to obtain—if we are serious Christians—the forgiveness of our sins and bold assurance before God. But we can attain to this only if we forgive our own debtors. God is very clear on this. We forgive; he forgives; we don’t forgive; he doesn’t forgive. Nothing in the Gospel could be clearer. That’s the deal. Take it and forgive to receive forgiveness; or don’t take it and enter eternity without bold assurance before the Lord of Hosts, the Creator of your soul.

This is a very deep struggle. For while we are sinners, that does not mean that we can’t be sinned against, wounded, sometimes seriously, sometimes grievously. But there’s no other way: we have to purify our hearts and forgive. This can be a great struggle.

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

And do not lead us into temptation,

A humble man who has ‘been around the block’—who has some experience—will pray this petition with feeling. In fact, an index of spiritual maturity is how seriously a man will pray this petition. The more serious he is, the more he will get down on his knees and ask his Heavenly Father not to lead him into temptation. He has learned. There is no longer any time for fooling around.

What are these temptations?

As we have learned, there are eight passions. These passions map into eight types of sin. Hence, there are eight basic types of temptation. We are praying in utter sincerity for God not to lead us into temptation.

Recall that we learned in the petition above to subordinate our own will to the will of God. Perhaps God does not want us to go to New York. More importantly, whether or not we go to New York, the Devil will find a way to meet us on the way. When we pray that God not lead us into temptation, we are praying that he guide our steps so that we not run into the Devil on our way. Those of us who are spiritually blind, and don’t know where to go and where they are going, for those of us who are wandering like lost sheep must pray that God not lead them into temptation. The spiritually mature, those who see their blindness, will pray not only that God’s will be done completely in their lives, but also that God not lead them into temptation.

ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

But deliver us from the Evil One.

This is even more important. This is not only a matter of being delivered from the human condition of bondage to sin so as to attain to the fullness of the ‘in the likeness’ of a son or daughter or God who manifests a likeness to God in all the virtues, especially the virtue of love. It is a matter of being delivered from the Devil. Just as in the previous petition, the sensible Christian and monk will pray to be delivered from the Devil. The Devil, to use a metaphor, has many tentacles and gets mixed up in many things. Sometimes we don’t realize that we have been affected by evil, by the Devil, by our passions, by the demons, put it how you will. But here we pray seriously to our Heavenly Father for him to deliver us from the Evil One.

It is no longer a matter of me, but of the Lord: To pray the Our Father in utter seriousness, I have to convert; I have to be baptized; but above all I have to repent.

And here we can see what repentance is: it is an emptying of ourselves, of our pride and egotism so that God be all things in all.

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[1] Thus the Septuagint. A translation based on the Hebrew would more likely read ‘My flesh bristled with the fear of you; on account of your judgements I have feared.’

The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25, 1 – 13)

Then the Kingdom of the Heavens will be compared to ten virgins who, taking their lamps, went out to meet the Groom. But five of them were prudent and five were dull, which five dull, taking their lamps, did not take with them oil. But the five prudent virgins took oil in their vessels along with their lamps. The Groom being delayed, all grew drowsy and slept. But in the middle of the night there came a cry: ‘Behold! The Groom comes! Come out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins rose up and tended their lamps. But the dull said to the prudent: ‘Give us from your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ The prudent, however, answered, saying: ‘Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves.’ But while they were going out to buy, the Groom came and those who were ready entered into the marriage celebration with him and the door was closed. Later, the remaining virgins also come, saying: ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’ He, then, having replied, said: ‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Be watchful, then, for you do not know the day, neither the hour, in which the Son of Man comes.

Question from Reader 1: Are you reading the Bible in Greek?

QUESTION: Are you reading the Bible in Greek?

ANSWER: Yes.

First, the Old Testament. In the Orthodox Church, the Old Testament is read in the Septuagint Version. The Septuagint is in ancient Greek, in a form of Greek called 'Hellenistic'. In the case of Orthodox Churches that are not Greek-speaking, the Old Testament is translated into the national language from the Septuagint.

The Oxford English Dictionary says this in its entry for ‘Septuagint’:

The Greek version of the Old Testament, which derives its name from the story that it was made by seventy-two Palestinian Jews at the request of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 b.c.) and completed by them, in seclusion on the island of Pharos, in seventy-two days. (Denoted by LXX.)

The authority for the old story is the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates, long known to be spurious, which purports to give contemporary evidence of the undertaking. The translation is now held to have been made of Egyptian Jews, independent of each other and living in different times.

There is a web site (link updated August 29, 2010) that has comprehensive information on the Septuagint, with many links.

The canon of the Septuagint is broader (it contains more books) than the Protestant version of the Old Testament, based on the Masoretic edition, and broader (but not much) than the Roman Catholic edition of the Old Testament.

The Septuagint exists in a fairly limited number of versions (ancient manuscripts). There is a critical edition.

The psalms are of course included in any edition of the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, the numbering of the psalms, and to a certain extent their division into specific psalms, differs from Western translations of the Old Testament based on the Masoretic edition of the Old Testament. The Septuagint also includes Psalm 151, not accepted in the West.

However, for the translations of the psalms, I have been using a service book called the Psalter. This contains the psalms with the readings, numbering and divisions of the Septuagint, but arranged for recital during the services in Church. The edition I am using was published in Athens in 2005. When I’m stuck for a word to convey the exact nuance of the Greek, I sometimes refer to the Revised Standard Version, even though it is based on the Hebrew. This is not very useful. The King James Version is more useful.

Next, the New Testament. I use the textus receptus of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It is in the original Greek. In the critical apparatus of the edition of the Greek New Testament called Nestle-Aland (26^th Edition), the readings denoted M (Majority) more or less correspond to the textus receptus, as the editors of Nestle-Aland themselves point out. Nesle-Aland is the standard critical edition of the New Testament in the original Greek. It contains most of the variant readings found in the manuscripts of the New Testament.

For the Gospel in particular, I depend on an edition of the original Greek originally published in Venice in 1847. When I am interested in the variant readings of a passage, so as to shed further light on the meaning of that passage, I refer to the variant readings in Nestle-Aland.

In translating the New Testament, if I am stuck for a word to convey the nuance I am looking for, I prefer to look at the King James Version, but I also refer to the Revised Standard Version. However, I do not have much confidence in the King James translations of the epistles of Paul, since those translations depart quite visibly from an Orthodox interpretation.

In cases of serious doubt about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, whether in the Old or in the New Testament, I refer to the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church, starting with St John Chrysostom.

In the case that I am translating a passage of Scripture as it is used in the Church services, I refer to the service books of the Orthodox Church for the exact form of the text to translate. That is why the translation of the Gospel in the previous post begins ‘The Lord said’. Reference to any edition of the New Testament, including the textus receptus, will show that that phrase is not in the Bible. In the service books of the Church, it is added to the Gospel passage in order to make the reading in Church smoother. Similarly, my choice of where to begin and where to end the Gospel passage was dictated by the service book for Orthros of the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross. It was not arbitrary. (Orthros corresponds in the West to ‘Matins’, the early morning service.)