Wars and Rumours of War

We are like the man in the Gospel who is in doubt on account of wars and rumours of war. We are somewhat concerned and worried about the international situation. One war has just finished, and people say that it is intended to be a prelude to the next. For the next war, serious men of serious power are said actively to be considering the use of nuclear weapons. From thinking the unthinkable, serious and powerful men have today come to consider actively, and perhaps even to plan for actively, the unthinkable.

Some years ago we visited the Elder. It was during a time of war (which war?). The Elder compared one of the belligerents to the Devil. He remarked that he was praying for the war to be contained. And, in fact, the war did stop at a fairly good juncture. The Elder didn't say anything about praying for the belligerent he compared to the Devil to be smashed.

Another Elder is quoted as remarking about that same war that it was inevitable. He also had harsh words for that same belligerent. But the ‘inevitable’ he seems to have meant in this way: nothing anyone could do would prevent that war. It didn’t seem to have the sense that the war was just or necessary.

During World War II, it is said, Elder Sophrony (Sakharov) every day prayed with tears flat on the ground in his cave for the 'least evil side' to prevail—leaving it to God to figure out which side that might be.

It is said that Elder Sophrony's own Elder, St Silouan, who died about a year before the outbreak of World War II, when he thought of or prayed for Europe saw a black cloud hanging over it.

Several Elders on Mt Athos received an ‘information (pleroforia)’ when World War II began, a spiritual ‘information’ which was confirmed some days later when word reached Mt Athos that the war had broken out.

The saintly Elder Joseph the Hesychast, if we remember correctly, experienced great spiritual pain the day of outbreak of World War II, a pain humanly explained only when word reached Mt Athos that the war had broken out.

(Remember, this was before the day of cell phones.)

What are we to make of all this?

It seems to us that we should pray in all seriousness. For what? For ‘our side’ to win? Not really. The days are past of the ‘just war’ that let us smash our enemy without batting an eyelash and with a clear conscience.

The Gospel advises us to pray for all men in authority that we might live our lives in peace, that we might attend to our religious duties in peace. We should pray earnestly for all men in positions of authority on both sides (or on every side) that they might have wisdom (not delusion, fanaticism and messianic ideas) and coolness (not cold-bloodedness, callousness and cynicism). That they might truly fear God and consider well their responsibilities before God for what they plan to do. They are common men, without great intellectual attainments. May they obtain the wisdom from God to plan correctly for their own futures and for the futures of all men, both in this world and in the next. In this world because we cannot always foresee the consequences of our fatemongering fateful decisions; in the next world because God is not mocked, he who said through his own Son that not all those who call out ‘Lord, Lord’ will be saved, but he who does the will of the Father in Heaven as it is taught in the Gospel. It is an act of love to help the blind man find his way. Let us help the blind find their way.

Some Epithets of Mary

There are a number of epithets used of Mary in the Orthodox Church. We would like to look at a number of them.

The first epithet is Panaghia. This epithet means All-Holy, All-Holy One, All-Holy Woman.

The next epithet is Theotokos. This is a difficult word to translate. It literally means she (or, her) who gave birth to God. Theotokos is a very important word theologically, playing a role as it does in the defense of Orthodoxy against the Nestorians, who denied the fullness of the incarnation. Hence, it would be useful to interpret the term correctly when we are translating the services of the Church. We do not think that merely leaving the word in the Greek does justice to what is involved: the untranslated word becomes a sort of proper name, devoid of meaning and content except for a professional theologian.

The sense of Theotokos as it was debated in the Nestorian controversy is that because the person that Mary bore was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, he who had taken up human flesh from Mary in taking up a full human nature, Mary is justly to be called she who gave birth to God. It does not have the sense, as some New-Age types would like to think, that Mary is some sort of eternal matrix or ground of being that somehow brought forth the Godhead. The Nestorian position itself is that Mary gave birth to a mere man who was united to the Godhead. This would have made Jesus a man of vastly superior attainments to other men, but still a mere man. This position is actually quite popular in popular modern Western conceptions of Jesus

The next epithet is Mother of God. From the above, this should be clear.

The next epithet is Ever-Virgin. This should also be clear. In contrast with some Protestants, but in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church (or should we say that the Roman Catholic Church maintains the Orthodox tradition?), this means that the Virgin Mary never knew man, even after Jesus’ birth. The Fathers interpret the references in the Gospel to Jesus’ ‘brothers and sisters’ to refer to children that Joseph, a widower, had by a previous marriage.

The next epithet is Unwedded Bride. This is a difficult epithet to translate into English without creating unnecessary connotations. The sense of course is that Mary became the Bride of God—she gave birth to the Son of God—without for all that ever having known man.

Mary

Since August contains the Feast of the Dormition of Mary, the Mother of God, it is dedicated to Mary in the Orthodox liturgical cycle. It therefore behoves us to say something about Mary. We think that it is impossible for us to say anything worthy of the Mother of God, but let us try, we who are unworthy of her, to say something not unworthy of her.

When the Archangel Gabriel approached Mary in Nazareth, he greeted her thus: ‘Hail, you who have been shown grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.’

What can we say? An angel of God greets a mere woman with these words. And Mary ‘seeing [the angel] was agitated at his word and wondered what sort of greeting this might be.’ And the angel said to her: ‘Do not fear, Mariam, for you have found grace before God.’

And after the angel announced the birth of Jesus by Mary, Mary replied: ‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.’

Mary then went quickly to see her kinswoman, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And whence comes this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’

And Mary replied: ‘My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he looked upon the humbleness of his maidservant. For, behold, from now, all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One did great things for me and Holy is his Name. And his mercy is to generations of generations, to those who fear him. He made strength with his arm, he scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart; he deposed strong men from their thrones and humble men he raised up. He filled hungry men with good things and rich men he sent away empty. He defended Israel his servant to remember mercy, just as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed [singular] to the Age.’

We do not know what to add to these Gospel passages that is worthy of Mary. We are like the angel in this troparion:

Gabriel, astonished at the fineness of your virginity and at the exceeding brightness of your purity, cried out to you who bore God: ‘What encomium shall I bring forth to you that is worthy? What shall I name you? I am in wonder and beside myself. Therefore, I cry out to you as I was commanded: Hail, you who have been shown grace!’

May you pray for us, Mary, Mother of God, you who gave birth to God.

The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration (August 6), on Sunday for those of us who follow the new calendar, is similar to the Theophany (January 6) in that it is a revelation of the Holy Trinity. Of course, the Transfiguration has been a very important feast since the Hesychast controversy of the 14^th Century, because of the connection between the light that shone around Jesus on Mt Tabor in the Transfiguration, and the Uncreated Light taught by St Gregory Palamas to come by Grace to the Hesychast. What is important in Orthodoxy is to encounter this Light, this Grace.

How did the Blind Man Receive His Sight?

How did the blind man receive his sight? He received the Holy Spirit.

The Ascension

The Ascension is a very important feast for Orthodox spirituality.

In Orthodox theology, the person of the Word of God became flesh, taking to that person of the Word of God a full human nature. The person was and is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity from all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit in unspeakable communion. This unspeakable communion Elder Porphyrios calls in Wounded by Love the Uncreated Church. That Second Person of the Holy Trinity took on our complete human nature—yet without sin—when he was conceived as a man in the womb of Mary. As was announced by the Archangel Gabriel, he was given at birth and circumcision the name of Jesus. Jesus, who is called Christ, is the Word of God made flesh. He has two natures in one person, his divine and his human nature. The person remains the Word of God, now made flesh—now having taken on a complete human nature.

We are emphasizing this Christology so as to make clear the importance of the Ascension. Because the person of Jesus Christ is always the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, his divine nature did not need to ascend to the Father. It was and is always with the Father. “I and my Father are one.” However, this is not the case with the human nature of Christ.

We learn from St Basil the Great that the human nature of Christ was divinized at the moment of Jesus' conception in the womb of Mary (March 25). This means that from the instant of his conception in the womb of Mary, Jesus was a perfect man, the second Adam, a man like us in all things but sin. But this is the key to our understanding the Ascension. Because Jesus was a perfect man, an undefiled image and likeness of the Father, the Ascension must mean something more. And that something more is the difference between our vocation as Christians, and the state of Adam and Eve in Paradise. We are called to ascend with Jesus through the grace of the Holy Spirit sent by the Father (as much as is humanly possible). Hence, our divinization does not stop with the restoration of the likeness to God that Adam and Eve had in Paradise, but continues in our own ascension, especially after our earthly life, in death and the General Resurrection.

What is is the nature of divinization? This is a difficult concept for the non-Orthodox to grasp. Essentially divinization has to do with the image or icon of God that man was created and intended to be. To be divinized means to attain to the properties (characteristics, moral and spiritual virtues) of God—the likeness to God that Adam and Eve lost by their disobedience—through the grace of God, through the uncreated grace of God that the Orthodox identify with the Holy Spirit and call the 'uncreated energies' of God. To be divinized means to enter into intimacy with God. But this intimacy of man with God is not a distant similarity only, but includes the concept of a union that is portrayed in Holy Scripture by the image of marriage. Hence, to be divinized is to marry God. It is to be like unto God. It is to become a friend of God. But as the Fathers point out, it is to become all of these things without becoming God by nature.

When in the Ascension the human nature of Jesus Christ ascended and sat at the right hand of the Father, the human nature of Jesus reached the fullness of this intimacy or union with God in a relationship of love and gnosis. And this ascension of Jesus Christ opened the way for all men, all those who share in the same human nature, all those who have been baptized, to ascend to the same intimacy with God (as much as is humanly possible).

Popular Culture

The Da Vinci Code is just the tip of the iceberg.

We first came across the plot-line of The Da Vinci Code some twenty-odd years ago when we browsed the paperback book-rack while paying our check in a hotel restaurant. Jesus married. St Mary Magdalene. He had children and founded the Merovingian line. We didn’t buy the book. The plot-line seemed blasphemous to us.

It still does.

We note that the author of the original paperback that we saw so long ago sued Dan Brown over The Da Vinci Code for plagiarism. Lost his case.

What struck us some twenty-odd years ago was that the plot-line was just more of the same.

That’s what interests us.

This week it’s The Da Vinci Code; last ‘week’—a few years ago—it was The Last Temptation of Christ. Next week—in a few years, that is—it will be something else. Moreover, these are just the headline-grabbing films, possibly because of good ‘under-assistant West-Coast promotion men’. What we are the more interested in is all the films that are cranked out every day in the West, and how they handle religious themes.

First of all, let us be frank: if another religion were treated in films the way Christianity is today, there would be trouble. Not from Christians, but from members of the other religion.

A popular American film treats of a serial murderer. The serial murderer makes his first phone call. Visible on the wall behind him in his house is a crucifix. Art, of course.

Another popular American film caricatures the Christian beliefs of the FBI agent while exalting the hard-boiled ‘realism’ of the LAPD homicide detective. It shows a homicidal maniac, part of a neo-Fascist paramilitary group, in the final scenes, while he is fighting it out to the death, as prominently wearing a cross around his neck. Shakespearean characterization, of course.

A British punk kung-fu thriller has villains who masquerade as electric Evangelical Christian missionaries to the slums.

The same thing in a Chinese kung-fu thriller: one of the villains is a ‘Russian’ (this must be the ‘Round-Eyed Peril’) masquerading as a Christian missionary.

Then there are the films that glorify the occult.

Then there are the films that glorify lesbianism.

These are not traditional Christian values.

This is a very complex matter that would require a very deep sociological analysis of Western society from the point of view of the social construction of reality. Groups and their shared points of view (Weltanschauungen); how those common points of view are defined and maintained within the group; how new group members are ‘converted’ to the group point of view. Those same groups and their shared political and cultural power in the broader society. Political battles in American society over who gets to determine the ‘narrative’ of American history and society.

(‘Narrative’ is a buzzword nowadays; in this context it seems to mean the ‘interpretation, the interpretative story-line, the interpretive plot-line or point of view that explains the phenomenon’.)

What is important is that today there are competing ‘narratives’ of American, and in general Western, history and society; and that various groups are purveying to their own members their own ‘narratives’, and using political means to advance those ‘narratives’ in the broader society. Moreover, some of these groups have members who work in popular culture and who are either consciously or unconsciously advancing an anti-Christian ‘narrative’—we think that in many cases it is conscious, but without a realization of its foundation in group-think.

The disquieting thing about the treatment of Christianity in popular culture today is that popular culture is advancing an anti-Christian ‘narrative’: various members of various groups working in popular culture, including the media of mass communication, are advancing ‘narratives’ that attack or denigrate Christianity.

It is in this context that we see The Da Vinci Code.

This is not a conspiracy theory. We know nothing about Dan Brown; we know nothing about the film company that shot the film based on his book. However, it is a suggestion that a sociological analysis of what is happening is long overdue.

We ourselves have steadfastly avoided political discourse on this blog, so we will not proceed any further, except to say that the ‘narrative’ we ourselves are advancing is the Orthodox Christianity of those who say, ‘We did not know whether we were in Heaven or on earth.’ It is the ‘narrative’ of the Gospel of the love of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life so that we might have life and have it abundantly. It is the ‘narrative’ of the man born blind whose eyes were opened by Jesus.

The Cross of Christ

The Cross is a mystery. Any attempt to explain this mystery can encompass only a small part of its meaning, only a small part of its depth. According to the wisdom granted to him by God, St Paul has much in his epistles that approaches this mystery—this foolish act of God as St Paul himself puts it—and it is the epistles of Paul which form the basis of our theology of the Cross.

In the West, in the Reformation, a problem was posed of the nature of justification. This is a problem over the specific nature of the salvific act of Christ on the Cross. Without our wanting to say that the matter is theologically not important, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation arguments are hardened positions of one sort or its opposite—slogans, even, that were used as banners in vicious armed conflict—which really have nothing to do with a balanced Orthodox approach to the Mystery of the Cross. When we participate in the services from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday, but also the services up to and including the ‘Second Resurrection’—Vespers of Easter Sunday—we enter mystagogically into the Mystery of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The hymns of these services are particularly rich in mystagogical content, particularly rich in an interpretation of the Cross which is fully dimensioned and completely Orthodox. There is no great special emphasis on legalism in the texts of these services, that legalism which is the basis in the West of the argument over justification by faith or justification by works. For the Orthodox, the question of the nature of justification is a ‘tempting thought’. Hence, we think that it is the wrong road, except perhaps in professional theology, for us to occupy ourselves with the ‘Orthodox answer to the question of justification’. It is more important to be baptized, so as to enter ontologically into the Mystery of the Cross, than it is to worry about ‘our position’ on justification by faith or justification by works. This is not to deny the necessity of catechism prior to baptism.

In participating in the services from Maundy Thursday through to the Second Resurrection, we live spiritually the betrayal, the trial and the Crucifixion—with the two sinners, the one who said, ‘Remember me in your Kingdom,’ and the one who rejected salvation—but also the Resurrection of Christ. Spiritually, the services are particularly rich: for example, while most people are taken by the midnight Resurrection service of Saturday towards Sunday, we ourselves have always preferred the first Divine Liturgy of Easter, which takes place on Holy Saturday: the Liturgy of St Basil combined with Vespers. Since Vespers of any day pertains liturgically to the next day, Vespers of Holy Saturday is a Resurrection service, along with the Divine Liturgy celebrated with it. It has always seemed to us that spiritually this service is a deeper encounter with the Resurrection than the Orthos and Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom celebrated with the Service of the New Light after midnight on Holy Saturday.

We are incapable of providing at the moment a commentary on the services from Maundy Thursday through to the afternoon of Easter Sunday. However, it strikes us that these services provide a balanced theological encounter with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. What is continually apparent to us is that the Orthodox hymnographical treatment of all the Mysteries of Salvation, not only at Easter but also during the other Feasts of the liturgical calendar, is far more nuanced and multi-dimensional than the problems posed by Western theology. It is here, in the texts of the Feasts of the Orthodox liturgical calendar, that we find the answer of the Church of God to the human condition. And it is by participating in the Mysteries of the Church that we enter ontologically into those Orthodox answers, beginning in our baptism.

Hence, we find life in the texts of the services of the Orthodox Church—many people believe that the hymnographers were inspired by God—and, having experienced in our own baptism a similitude of Christ’s death on the Cross, in our own baptism we also enter into this Paschal life, when we encounter the Holy Spirit. It is this life of the Holy Spirit which is our hope, our pledge of freedom from the human condition. As the services put it, it is through the Cross of Christ that man is returned to the dignity of Adam and Eve in Eden before the Fall. This is accomplished in our baptism.

May the Light of Christ shine upon all of us!
Orthodox Monk

The Mystery of Unction

On Wednesday of Holy Week, in the evening, the Mystery of Unction (Greek: Euchelaio) is celebrated. There is no particular reason why this mystery should be celebrated as part of the liturgical cycle, and no one, not even experts in liturgy, seems to know how it entered into the liturgical cycle of Easter. That being said, there is no reason for anyone to avoid attending the Mystery at Easter. It is a great mystery, for the healing of body and soul and for the forgiveness of sins. It does not replace confession, but supplements it, especially in cases where there is bodily illness, or, even, for that matter, psychological or spiritual illness. It does not work mechanically, so as to replace, say, three pills and one injection, but in common with all the Mysteries, it works mystagogically. That means that our participation in the Mystery is an encounter in the Holy Spirit with the mercy of God the Father. Hence, we do not approach the Mystery of Unction mechanically, but as an encounter with our Father who is in the Heavens, who knows what is to our profit. That, again, is not to suggest that we should not pray for the healing of our body, soul and mind, but it is to say that we encounter God in a relationship of spiritual love. The Mystery of Unction is especially powerful when we have made a good confession, one which frees us from those actions which estrange us from God.

Palm Sunday

The Gospel reading of today is this:

Jesus, then, six days before Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, he who had died, whom he raised from the dead. Lazarus, then, there set him a meal, and Martha was serving; Lazarus, on the other hand, was one of those reclining at meal with him. Mary, then, taking a pound of myrrh, pure nard, very expensive, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the myrrh. One of his disciples, then, Judas Iscariot, he who would betray him, said: ‘Why was this myrrh not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?’ He said this not because the poor mattered to him but because he was a thief, and he had the money-box and he used to take what was put in it. Jesus then said: ‘Let her be, she has kept this for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you; me you do not always have.’ Knowing, then, that he was there, a great crowd from the Jews also came, not on account of Jesus alone, but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. The High Priests, however, took counsel to kill Lazarus too, because on his account many of the Jews were going and believing in Jesus. The next day, a great crowd, which had come for the Feast, hearing that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took palm fronds and came out to meet him; and they were shouting: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!’ Finding, then, a young ass, Jesus sat on it, as it is written: ‘Have no fear, daughter of Zion! Behold your king comes to you sitting on the colt of an ass.’ But his disciples did not at first know these things; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written concerning him and that they did these things. The crowd, then, which was with him was bearing witness that he had called Lazarus from the tomb and had raised him from the dead. On account of this also the crowd met him, because they heard that he had done this sign.

(John 12, 1 – 18)

A few points about this Gospel passage. In an echo of the Song of Songs, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anoints the feet of Jesus with a pound of precious perfume and wipes his feet with her hair. Mary is a type of the Hesychast who cultivates a pure Eros or love for Jesus: the mystic approaches Jesus not only intellectually but with a pure love free of disturbances of fleshly desire.

As for Judas, there’s not much here about secret ways to Jesus, about secret agreements to help out Jesus in his return to his celestial home. Too bad—John is the disciple who reclined against Jesus’ breast in the Last Supper; he’s the eye-witness who’s reporting here, and he seems to have had a very sharp eye for detail.

Jesus is the King of Israel. Palm Sunday is an important Feast of the Master, but it lasts only a day: it is the preliminary to Holy Week; and immediately we leave the atmosphere of joy and exultation and turn to the King of Glory, as the icons of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion are entitled. As John himself says in the Gospel passage: ‘…when Jesus was glorified…’. When was Jesus glorified? On the Cross. The Cross is a very deep statement about the human condition.