Here and now

Historical perspective gives depth to our picture of the Church and to ourselves as individual Christians, enabling us to see over the horizon of merely today. Yet history can also become a kind of false ‘ark of the covenant’ that subverts our worship ‘in spirit and truth’ by preventing us from seeing Him walking ‘in our midst’ whose death rent the veil of the temple, and blinding us from the reality of living the heavenly life on earth.

Christ is not only born, not only did He pitch His tent among us in history, but He is risen, He is truly risen, and He who was dead is alive, and alive for ever, pitching our tent for us among the Holy Trinity. As the Church believes, God in Christ becomes man, so that man, yes, we who live in love and walk by faith, become God. In Christ, Heaven did not pay earth a courtesy call, but moved in with us, not in the remote past alone, but in every moment. ‘I am with you till the end of time,’ says Jesus.

Yes, He was, He is, He is to come. The real ark of the covenant is revealed to be in Heaven, which is shown to our unveiled eyes to begin here and now, for God is with us. With us, within us, among us, and in us. History is the prophecy of the marriage of Heaven and earth, but we live its fulfillment and partake of the wedding feast of the Lamb here and now.

Three hurdles

‘Look at all the trouble and all the suffering in the world. There is no god. How could a god allow this to happen? Despite all your pie-in-the-sky and wishful thinking, when the worst suddenly happens, you’re no better able to deal with it than anyone else. Face facts. There is no god,’ says the atheist.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: ‘This is the King of the Jews’. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ Luke 23:35-39

Here we have it. Both the atheist and those who believe in God or in ‘the gods’ have the same attitude. When the worst suddenly happens, both are at a loss. Irreligious or religious, there’s no help for us. Looking at the universe in the bare nakedness of our souls, we see both the beauty, and the terror, of it. ‘Why have they left me alone here without a pass key?’

Those who believe in no supernatural power sneer at faith. To them, faith is just a blind belief in spite of what really happens in the world. To many who believe in a supernatural power, whether or not they are religious, their belief is a vague mental consent to a proposition they don’t fully grasp.

Between the atheist and this kind of theist there is little difference. The apostle writes, ‘You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder’ (James 2:19).

If God were in fact the kind of god that the atheist rejects, then I too am an atheist. That is the first hurdle, to see that you don’t believe in a god you have made up in your mind, a god who is too small.

The second hurdle is to realize that to believe there is a God is not a mental exercise or a convenient way to integrate into society. This is belief in a god who is too big. If there were ever a case for atheism, it would be to leap these two hurdles.

Can we leap the third hurdle without knocking it, and ourselves, over? without tripping over it? This is the hurdle of faith, not belief, of trust, not mental assent, of honesty, not evasion, of clarity, not unfocused vision. Can we really have faith in the God who is, just as He is, in the goodness of His will for us in the face of all that happens?

This is not a god too small or too big, but the only God there is, who though infinite became finite, who though alive became dead, who faced the irreligious and the religious with the same unblinking eyes, who came answering questions we didn’t even think of asking.

Unbeliever or believer, go back and read the gospels with the same unblinking eyes, unafraid to face the facts, the reality of the world in which we find ourselves, unafraid of all questionings, by others or ourselves.

What He calls us to is not religious belief, but to enter into friendship, even into partnership, with Him. His story is not just another tale. When you read it, forget everything you ever heard or were told about it.

Start fresh, as though reading a book you’d never seen or heard of before. I’m not talking about the bible, that religious book. I’m talking about the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Read them with a mind that sees through unblinking eyes, and see what you make of them, and of Him. This is not mere history. It is His story. See what happens to your unbelief or your belief. Leap over the third hurdle, and see where your feet take you.

When Christ walks in hell

                    When Christ walks in hell,
                    will I follow Him even there,
                    will I walk inside His footsteps,
                    out of fresh and sunlit air?

                    He suffered, yes, and suffers
                    though no longer on the tree,
                    whose standing from the grave
                    gave God glory freeing me.

                    Do I go down as He descends,
                    delve deep my brother’s grave
                    to hold him close and cradle him,
                    help Him one soul to save?

                    The nether regions of the dead,
                    not painted myths and lore,
                    are open if I only dare
                    to go through Him the Door.

— Romanós

Sorrow, and gladness

Fruitless, even dead, trees in the landscape,
like the fig tree withered by Christ’s curse.
There are almost no other instances in the gospels,
maybe even no others, where Christ actually curses.
He sorrows. He chides. He calls to sanity and truth.
He feeds. He forgives. He sympathizes. He sorrows.
Yes, He sorrows, almost more than anything.
For our ignorance, our hatred, our greed.
He sorrows for the dead. He sorrows for us.
He even sorrows for Himself.
But He curses only that fig tree to its very barren branches.
Even unbelief, He does not curse, but warns, and laments.
‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! 
For if the mighty works done in you 
had been done in Tyre and Sidon, 
they would have repented long ago…’
Such is the work of the pre-crucified Christ.

Now He who was dead and who lives forever cries,
‘Awake, and let the Light shine on you…’

Φωτίζου, φωτίζου, η νέα Ιερουσαλήμ, 
η γαρ δόξα Κυρίου επι σε ανέτειλε. 

Χόρευε νυν και αγάλλου Σιών… 

Shine, shine, O new Jerusalem, 
for the glory of the Lord has arisen on you. 

Dance now and be glad, O Zion…

Asleep, and awake

I used to avoid Thomas Merton because I thought he had evolved out of Christianity and Christ by his explorations and experimentation with Eastern religious and philosophical thought. Consequently, I've read very little of what he wrote. In the final analysis I think what he did was confuse a lot of people, and blur the distinction between following Christ and merely believing in Him.

Now, I don't avoid Merton for any such reasons, but just because our paths are not probably going to cross. I have found Christ sleeping in the boats of the non-Christian religions and cultures, and all I want to do for the crews of those boats is awaken Him for them, and let Him awaken them to the Truth.

Now, I also find myself written off by some people because I am not afraid to go among the non-Christians and learn of them and from them. It startles people that I should know about the gods of India, for example, and that I don't think it is blasphemous to visit their temples or even to sing or hear their songs.

But there is only One Divine Nature, One God, to whom all paths do not lead from our end, but by Whom all things are possible from His end. And there is only One Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God from before the ages who came to us as a little child, and as a young man died for us, and not only for us, but for the whole world.

And not the gates of Hades or its captors could keep Him down, or out, or defeat Him in any measure, for He takes it captive, and releases all who seek Him from its darkness, all without asking our leave. And where I walk, following Him, takes me on many journeys 'where angels fear to tread,' and yet I trust Him. As I often say, there is no loss with Jesus.

No loss, nothing and no one. ‘I have saved everyone You gave to me, except the one who chose to be lost,’ says Jesus.

The ways of the Affectionate

We're nowhere close to the day of Christ's ascension yet, but I cannot pass by these words without leaving at least a trace of them for visitors to my blog. They are from a homily posted by Fr Milovan on his blog Again and Again. To read the entire homily, click here.
In the excerpt below, I have made a few corrections to spelling and grammar. Otherwise, it is presented here as it is (italics added).

…If He is the beauty that is within you, then He must have passed by your world. He set it alive within you and through you. The world has no existence without you, it does not exist apart from you. The world is your quadrant and you are its playground. Your world is printed, in its magnitude, on the face of God. Since this world is His creation, it will remain forever after He has baptized it, in the Last Day, in His global and eternal Light. It shall remain united in its matter, mind and light all together.

The world will become your Lord’s vestment upon the Second Coming of Christ.

Starting from this vision, Christianity is then knit into history and rooted in eternity at the same time, global and covering the universe with light; Christianity is responsible in time but free from its bondage. It is present in matter and motivates this matter with the motion of the spirit. That is why Christianity does not withraw from the flow of time just for the sake of a “romantic” eternity, nor does it passively stand like a viewer watching the course of events as if it were independent of human beings.

The believer doesn’t escape to a desert—not even if it became his hermitage—for he will have the whole world in his heart and prayers. Someone of us may seek solitude for peace and tranquility’s sake, but he has never deserted. His profoundness will become deeper as he stands in the divine presence.

The world is entirely included in Christ’s salvation plan.
Everything in the world is His dearly beloved with the exception of sin. Everything in it is attracted to heaven. Our mind is attracted towards heaven as far as this mind is awake, loving and hugging existence. But never in a way that we shall detest all the good in our world, not in a way that we should become indifferent to the construction, improvement and organizing of the world.

We can never say that this world ascends through its own powers, nor does this world progress automatically towards the better.
But we do preach that God elevates humans, surrounding them with His loving care.

The world is elevated and does not ascend by itself.
It struggles, and God accepts it and pulls it up to Himself. He, who is sitting up on high in His Bright Body, opens up and embraces him who is longing for Him.

After the Ascension of Christ, tomorrow the universe, in its turn, will be received up. These are the ways of the Affectionate.

—Metropolitan George (Khodr) of Mount Lebanon

I was in that room

A lot of things have gone through my head, both before and after I met Jesus son of Joseph. Sitting in the synagogue and hearing the Torah read, commented upon, for years, and then comparing what was said with what they did, those betters of mine, made me sense a cleavage in my mind, a breach impossible to mend, a wound that could not be stitched together and healed.

With the others, those of us who now understand what no rabbi or teacher of the Torah could ever know, I was attracted to this man whose words seemed to have an authority, a power and grasp of reality, that we had never encountered before. Not only that, but as we came to walk with him more often, we noticed it wasn’t just his words. What he did—sometimes incredible things—shook the very foundations we thought our faith was built on.

We were an odd bunch, those we began to call ‘the brothers’ as if we had the same mother. Before we met Jesus, our hearts hungered for something but we didn’t know what. Other tradesmen thought about their work all day, but we, even before we knew him and one another, were always preoccupied with thinking through questions that seemed to have no answers.

Some of us found ourselves thinking so much, we were bound to become insane, so we thought. All of us felt so close to the solution, yet infinitely unable to grasp it. When he appeared, as he was first pointed out by the baptizer John, a few of that righteous man’s followers began to follow him around, and then very soon they were telling us, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about.’

‘A likely story,’ I thought to myself and laughed out loud. I always laugh when I don’t understand, and why not? It’s better than weeping. It seemed to me then, after all my thinking, I had never gotten any closer to the answer to my question. In fact, I hardly even knew what my question was, but my mind never ceased its revolutions, sifting, straining, funneling, and soaking up what I could.

But I started following him, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth, with the others. He told us things we’d never heard before, opened our minds to fill them with what we never knew existed. In my bright moments, I believed him wholeheartedly, and with the others followed this peculiar rabbi, and went along with whatever he told us. His ideas at least made sense. I felt I was finally making progress.

In my dark moments, ah, well, what can I say? His teachings, even his doings, incredible and miraculous as they were, seemed somehow just talking and tricks. Maybe he was just a charlatan after all, a magician and smooth talker, all in one. As dark as I sometimes felt in those moments of doubt, though, even my doubt turned upon itself, and taunted me like the demon who says, ‘I never tell the truth.’

Towards the end, we all felt we were being dragged along behind him on a journey we’d hoped we’d never have to make, one which we couldn’t believe was happening. After all we had experienced with him, our hopes were held captive in the thought that everything would turn out victorious in the end. Instead, after ignoring his many warnings, we found ourselves driven with him at our head towards, not the kingdom of our people restored, but to the enactment of a hideous crime.

Impossible when it happened, and so quickly that we barely understood what was going on, he was arrested after our mystical passover together as we rested afterwards in an olive grove.

I was already descending from bright to dark in my mind and heart, one part of me believing, ‘He won’t let this happen,’ and the other part despairing, ‘It’s all over. It was never real. What a fool I’ve been.’ Neither my belief nor my doubt was right, as it turned out.

What happened that night launched all of us into isolation, fear and self-pity, even though it was Jesus that was captured, beaten, mocked, stripped, and nailed to a stake. We didn’t really give him a thought at all, though we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves. All we thought about was how our hopes and dreams had been dashed to pieces. We didn’t want to even be around each other at first and, except for the young one John, and his mother and a couple of the women, we didn’t want to watch him die either.

After his body was taken down from that scaffold, I didn’t want to live. I felt so ashamed, of myself, of him, of my dashed hopes, of my foolishness in loving him like I did. Yes, loving him, though when he was alive I didn’t let anyone know. I kept up my reputation of doubting and questioning, right up to my last moments with him and the others.

Later, when I heard that Judas had hanged himself, I couldn’t believe that either. Was that really Judas who led the guards to Jesus with a kiss? Or was it someone that just looked like him? It was so dark. In the even greater darkness that was my mind I thought, ‘It might as well have been me that led the guards to him. Did I ever really believe what he said or did?’

Still oppressed in a dark moment that I thought would never end, I hid myself from the brothers for days. Finally—I don’t know what possessed me—I got up the courage to look for them, going back to that room where we had all had our last supper with him. I almost couldn’t say his name. They told me some fool story about him being alive. I was overcome with doubt. I said words I now wish I’d never spoken.

I opposed Cephas and the others to their faces, my doubt flashing like sharp shards of broken glass to cut their hopes to slivers, as mine had been shredded. ‘You say he’s alive? How’s that? Can I see him too and poke my finger through the holes in his hands and feet and jab my hand into that spear cut slash?’ Little did I know that my scathing words, meant to hurt, would in the end heal.

They let me go, saying nothing, nor defending themselves. I hated them for that. I’d wanted them to oppose me, to counter my barbed accusations so I could feel justified in making them. ‘Hah! So they have faith, and I don’t!’ roared inside my head where no one but I could hear. Why did things always have to end this way? Why can’t anything good ever last? What is the point of it all?

Days passed. I hated the brothers because they seemed to have something that I would not permit myself to have. I hated myself more, I hated how I was, I hated my doubt, I hated my hateful words and the dark thoughts that produced them. That’s what drove me back to where they were hiding out. Hiding, yes, but at least, together. I was envious too of their company, where their first fears seemed to have yielded to a gentle, abiding love.

‘Why are they like that?’ I asked myself. ‘How can they still love one another and seem so peaceful and happy, when everything we lived and hoped for is finished, when it was crucified between thieves? Are they pretending? He can’t really be alive. We all saw his body, limp and dead, being moved somewhere by that rich man, what’s his name.’ Such were my thoughts as I approached the door and knocked.

Cephas let me in. He could tell, he said, that it was me by my knock. ‘What’s so special about it?’ I thought but didn’t ask. I barely had time to walk into the room as I heard the door slam behind me and the thud of the bolt falling. Then I heard my name pronounced from somewhere behind my back. I turned around quickly, almost running into Cephas who was right behind me.

We all turned to face the one who spoke my name. It was Jesus.

‘No! This can’t be happening!’ the words died on my lips as I felt every muscle in my body liquefy. I fell to my knees as though the weight of the world were crushing me down to the floor. Jesus looked at me and was softly asking me something, but my eyes and ears were both overwhelmed by what is beyond sight and hearing. I was blind and deaf for a moment.

‘My Lord and my God! My Lord and my God! My Lord and my God!’

I couldn’t stop babbling these words that didn’t even come close to what my spirit groaned inwardly. He came close to me, laying one arm across my shoulders and lifting me gently with the other. At His touch I felt weightless. I rose effortlessly and my mind was suddenly clear. I could see with my eyes, hear with my ears as He said to me, ‘You believe because you can see Me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

Now, no matter what thoughts assail me inside or out, no matter what wars of words between men sunder the world’s peace for vainglory, I am no longer safe in what I know or merely believe or doubt, for beyond all this is the peace that only He can give, because I was in that room.

Making religion fun

There is a notion that religion has to be relevant to the times. That is, religion must be transmitted in such a way as to reach people and bring them into the faith. Often, this means making religion fun, especially for young people. Did Christ ever have fun? There is no mention of fun in the Gospels. There was some emphasis on food: the preparation and serving of food and eating together. We might imagine that during these meals there was sometimes levity in the conversation and some laughter. But, we have no indication that Christ (in His ministry) had fun as we know it today or that he attempted to make religion fun.

 Let us look at Martha and Mary as possible examples (Luke 10: 38). Martha was “anxious” and “worried.” By today’s standards, we might say that she was stressed out. What was Christ’s response to her? Did he tell her to take a vacation, go out with the girls for the afternoon, take a swim in the pool, or whatever the equivalent forms of relaxation might have been in those days? No, Christ told her to focus on discipleship, like Mary.

 “There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” 

 Luke 10: 42 

And, what was Mary’s discipleship? Was it one of relevance to the times? No, it meant sitting at the feet of Christ and listening to His teachings. Mary was not having fun, but she was gaining an interior disposition of peace and joy which surpasses any form of fun. Of course, between Martha and Mary, there is also the contrast of the traditional housework role of Martha and the elevated discipleship role of Mary which was made possible by liberation through Christ. It is not wrong to be a diligent homemaker, but discipleship or taking advantage of an opportunity to focus on that discipleship is better because it leads to Eternity.

 If you want to have fun, go to an amusement park. If you want to relax, go fishing. If you want to be entertained, watch a good movie. If you are stressed out, re-assess your priorities. If you want to be a disciple of Christ, however, do not confuse fun with sitting at His feet.

— Aunt Melanie, Repentance and Ascent blog

Not only on paper

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
Ephesians 3:17

A person does not have Christ 
who has Him only on his tongue.

Neither does a person have Christ 
who has Him only on paper.
Neither does a person have Christ 
who has Him only on the wall.

Neither does a person have Christ 
who has Him only in a museum of the past.

A person truly has Christ who has Him in his heart.

For Christ is Love and the throne of Love is the heart.

If Christ is in your heart, then, for you, He is God.

If He is only on your tongue, or on paper, or on a wall, or in a museum of the past—and even if you call him God—for you, He is but a toy. 
Beware then, O man, for no one can play around with God without punishment.

The heart is a seemingly narrow organ, but God can dwell in it. When God dwells in it, then it is filled, and filled to overflowing, and nothing else can stand in it. If, however, the whole world were to settle in it, it would remain empty without God.

Brethren, let Christ, the Resurrected and Living Lord, pour faith into your hearts, and your hearts will be filled, and filled to overflowing. He cannot enter and dwell in your hearts except through your faith. If you do not possess faith, Christ will remain only on your tongue, or on paper, or on the wall, or in a museum of the past. What benefit is there for you in that? 

What benefit is there for you in holding life on your tongue and death in your heart? For if you hold the world in your heart and Christ on your tongue, you hold death in your heart and life on your tongue. Water on the tongue of the thirsty does not help. Let the living Christ into your heart, and your will be permeated with the truth and you will sense unspeakable sweetness.

O Resurrected Lord, cleanse our heart from the deadly guests who dwell in it and do Thou Thyself take up dwelling in it, that we may live and glorify Thee. To Thee be glory and praise forever. Amen.

— Nikolaj Velimirović, Bishop of Ohrid and Žiča

Dying and reviving gods

The theme of death and resurrection is a common one in the religions of mankind, starting from the earliest ages. The Egyptian Osiris, the Akkadian Tammuz, the Greek Adonis, and yes, according to Wikipedia, the Christian Jesus. All of these are listed, and many more, under headings of mythology, yes, even under Christian mythology. You can’t blame Wikipedia; they have to stay objective.

What all of these deities, except Jesus, have in common is that they are all in some special way related to the annual cycles of vegetation. Even the Canaanite god Baal is a dying and reviving god. Fraser’s The Golden Bough has taken us on an imaginative, guided tour of many of these deities, and C. S. Lewis has easily debunked the lumping of Jesus into this group of vegetation myths in his writings, and I have nothing to add to either of these.

What I have been thinking of is the effect of these dying and reviving gods on their worshippers. We have little to go on except the historical record of some of their rites, but not much on what, if any, was the moral effect they had. This is where, I think, there is a big difference between Jesus Christ, the only historical figure known to have been executed and resurrected, and all these other gods.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, even if the world does not accept its reality, has an effect on His followers that is consistent and can be documented from the earliest times until now. In fact, one does not have to be a scholar to research this effect: it is open to anyone who dares to follow Jesus, not just study Him.

Everyone who has followed Jesus has had this experience: There is always something in them which they cannot at any cost keep and still follow Jesus. For some it is a specific experience they desire, something they want to be, or have or do, which they cannot be, have or do and still, in good conscience, claim to follow the Master. Why is this?

Because Jesus is the Word of God, the only Teacher of mankind, and there is a book, the Holy Bible, the only divinely revealed scriptures ever given to humanity, which claims to be the written image of Who He is. Jesus said to His disciples, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Christians have something from Jesus that the devotees of the dying and reviving gods did not have, divinely revealed scriptures, the Hebrew Old Testament, and the Greek New. These two scriptures mean endless trouble for those who want to keep living in the ordinary human way and still try to please God. In fact, they say it’s impossible.

And so, that’s the predicament we find ourselves in, with Jesus.
This is why the only true dying and reviving deity is paradoxically called the Living One, the one who was dead but is alive, while His remedy for His disciples’ dis-ease is, in fact, Death.

Though He was Himself God, He humbled Himself, hiding His glory (as do many of the pagan gods in the myths when they come down to man), assumed the condition of a slave (this none of the pagan gods was able to do), and became as all men are, experiencing with us and for us all that it means to be a human being, including physical death. Somehow, His work for us has achieved what man could not do on his own: He reopened for us the gates of Paradise, and gave us access to the Tree of Life which, it turns out, was the very Tree on which He was suspended between heaven and earth.

But back to us, we cannot have things the way we want and still follow Him on the path He led the repentant thief, the path to Paradise.

Religion would make rules for us, forbidding this and that, and give us methods of self-denial that, if followed religiously, would somehow make us worthy of the Garden, but the makers of religion hide from us and from themselves the certain truth of Christ’s own words, that if we want to live, we must die. Back we are to acknowledging that there are some things we cannot take with us when we follow Jesus into Life, and among those things there will always be at least one that we know we cannot live without. Hence, we must die.

Dying and reviving gods, before Jesus, there were none in reality: all were but myths, mankind’s dreaming of heaven.

Dying and reviving gods, after Jesus, literally following Jesus, there have been, are and will be many: these are they who, laying down their lives for love of Him, follow the Lamb wherever He goes and, like Him, dying they live forever.

Only one Passover

The world is quite happy to oblige us in helping us celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as if we needed any help. In its grosser, more obvious forms, the pre-Easter deluge of candy, cards, flowers artificial and natural, and the rest is in our faces long before the world is really ready for them. It’s as if it wants to fool itself as well as us, into thinking that Easter is a springtime renewal holiday, a sort of ‘out with the old, in with the new’ holiday, at best a kind of spiritual spring cleaning, as if we could ever really clean ourselves.

But that’s what the world likes to think, and it’d be only too happy if the Christians, for whose sake the world goes to all this trouble, would just settle down and get with the program. Unfortunately, there’s a fringe group of these ‘incredible Christians’ that seems to want to push something else at the world. Well, patience and forbearance isn’t the monopoly of these fanatics. The world can be patient too. Along with its helpers, satan, and the flesh, the world never seems to tire of taking over our lives, even the smallest details.

So we find ourselves going to church services to celebrate Easter, after which many communities have fun activities for the children like Easter egg hunts, and of course, there’s plenty of chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chickies to go around. Those Christians who belong to communities that try to take the season more seriously, prepare themselves with fasting, prayer, confession and good works, then trade all this abstinence for an extravaganza on the night of Pascha.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with celebrating Pascha, the Lord’s Passover, with feasting and other delights. In fact, Holy Church has been encouraging us to do this at least ever since John Chrysostom preached his famous sermon that we still read in Greek and English at the end of the Resurrection service…

Do you honor God? Do you love Him?
—here’s the very feast for your pleasure.
Are you His servants, knowing His wishes?
—be glad with your Master, share His rejoicing.
Are you worn down with the labor of fasting?
—now is the time of your payment.
Have you been working since early morning?
—now you will be paid what is fair.
Have you been here since the third hour?
—you can be thankful, you will be pleased.
If you came at the sixth hour,
you may approach without fearing:
you will suffer no loss.
Did you linger till the ninth hour?
—come forward without hesitation.
What though you came at the eleventh hour?
—have no fear; it was not too late.

God is a generous Sovereign,
treating the last to come as He treats the first arrival.
He allows all His workmen to rest—
those who began at the eleventh hour,
those who have worked from the first.
He is kind to the late-comer
and sees to the needs of the early,
gives to the one and gives to the other:
honors the deed and praises the motive.

Join, then, all of you, in our Master’s rejoicing.
You who were the first to come, you who came after,
come and collect now your wages.
Rich men and poor men, sing and dance together.
You that are hard on yourselves, you that are easy,
honor this day.
You that have fasted and you that have not,
make merry today.

The meal is ready: come and enjoy it.
The calf is a fat one: you will not go hungry away.
There’s kindness for all to partake of
and kindness to spare.

Away with pleading of poverty:
the Kingdom belongs to us all.
Away with bewailing of failings:
forgiveness has come from the grave.
Away with your fears of dying:
the death of our Savior has freed us from fear.
Death played the master: He has mastered death.

The world below had scarcely known Him in the flesh
when He rose and left it plunged in bitter mourning.
Isaiah knew it would be so.
‘The world of shadows mourned,’ he cried, ‘when it met You,
mourned at its bringing low, wept at its deluding.’

The shadows seized a body and found it was God;
they reached for earth and what they held was heaven;
they took what they could see: it was what no one sees.
Where is death’s goad? Where is the shadows’ victory?

Christ is risen: the world below is in ruins.
Christ is risen: the spirits of evil are fallen.
Christ is risen: the angels of God are rejoicing.
Christ is risen: the tombs are void of their dead.
Christ has indeed arisen from the dead,
the first of the sleepers.

Yes, there is certainly nothing wrong with celebrating Pascha, the Lord’s Passover, Easter (as it is called in English and other Germanic tongues) with feasting and celebration. This is what the Lord wants us to do, though He celebrated it with His disciples at a campfire on a beach, grilled fish on the menu. The world, when it can’t distract us with cheap tricks, still goes in for the big illusions, still hopes to snare us, to make us forget the Truth—or has it already succeeded? There’s a fine line between happiness and joy, between indulgence and celebration.

Let our feasting, like our ikons, be windows into the life of the age to come, reminding us of our destination, letting us see glimpses of it, like the first rays of a sun still below the eastern horizon. Let our feasting not be commandeered by the world, the flesh and the devil, the three of whom delight in deluding us, in denuding us of our covering, the Lord Jesus, turning our anticipation of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb into just another gorging ourselves on the flesh of lambs. We must not be found without our wedding garment, lest we be cast out into the outer darkness.

Brothers, let’s celebrate the Lord’s Passover with spiritual rejoicing and not be satisfied with mere mortal happiness. Let our hospitality toward one another be real and from the heart, for the One who was dead and is alive forever is really in our midst. If we are Jews, let’s live as though the Passover Night and the Exodus from Egypt really happened, for in truth they did, and they still do. If we are Christians, let’s live as though the Passover Night and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened, for in truth, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, by death trampling down death, and to those in the tombs, bestowing Life.’

There really is, after all, only one Passover.

The risen Christ

It’s nice, isn’t it, when the weather is just right for the season or for a special holiday?

Pascha, that is the feast of Christ’s resurrection for the Orthodox Christian, fell a week later than Easter, and last Sunday was the first real day of the warm side of spring, almost summery, here in Oregon. The light was intensely bright and has continued to be ever since. The cherry tree outside my window on the east side of the house finally bloomed victoriously, two weeks later than all the others on the west side where the warm afternoon and evening sun burst open the blossoms earlier.

People get the idea that Easter time, the season of resurrection, should be all flowery and cheerful, with nature coming back to life and all. It seems to make the idea of Christ’s coming back to life more meaningful, in fact, it seems to push out almost any other meaning His resurrection can have, for some people. Hence, the fascination for floral arrangements, colored eggs, baby chicks and bunnies. But it’s really just a coincidence of nature, an instance of God’s ikonomía, His plan of salvation, interacting with the created world. In the southern hemisphere, the world is descending into autumn at Pascha, not ascending to spring.

That’s really alright. Christ is not a “dying and rising god” whose myth tries to infuse meaning into the annual cycle of vegetation. That’s the function of the baalim and elilim, the divine “nothings,” Osiris, Tammuz, and Adonis. No, Christ is nothing like them. For one, He lived as a real man in a country and time we know with reliable certainty. Not only that, but the stories about Him are not folk tales and myths full of imaginary exploits. He really did do the things the bible says He did. Moreover, His dying and rising again to life, though it seems at shallow glance to be just another example of the dying and rising gods of folklore, also really did happen, and it’s attested to by a multitude of witnesses who agree in all but minor details. That’s the history lesson part of it…

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not even mere history, though it’s rooted there. It’s not even a “one point in time” event, but rather an opening out of time into another realm of being, one that unlike the myths is not just a story to be retold or reenacted, but a reality in which a man can live even to this very day. Why is that? Because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, death has no hold on Him, and He dies no more, and neither does anyone who believes and lives in Him. “I am the resurrection and the life…”

Back to the weather. Yes, it’s glorious. The winds are warm and the sun seems supernaturally bright, yet with a kind of brightness that opens our eyes even wider and permits us to see what we couldn’t see as well before. It’s no mere word play that the week following Pascha should be called “Bright Week.” Nature may be cooperating this year and providing a natural metaphor to accompany the real brightness—that of the Son of God, the Light of the world, who was dead and is Alive—but it is that other radiance that is the effect of Pascha. It opens our spiritual eyes to see ourselves and the world around us as we really are.

Knowing thus the Lord in His resurrection, and walking in this unwaning brightness, how is it that we can still sin?

We learn that we do not sin less because we don’t want to sin more, but because we can’t sin more. We would sin more if we could, but Christ has removed our sins as far from us as the East is from the West. When we are weak, He strengthens us and so arranges circumstances that we can find an escape from occasions of sin, if we want to. In fact, He makes it hard for us to sin, so when we do, we can see by the brightness of His resurrection the truth about ourselves, and turn to Him asking for mercy.

Christ is the faithful, the true. We can know this not by mere hearsay, but because He has treated us with such kindness by remaining with us to this very hour, just as He promised.

“And lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world…”

This is the risen Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, the Pantokrator.

Bright Monday News

This post is very, very long, but forgive me, I couldn't help myself. It is just too good to tantalise you with fragments. The following is a talk given by Archimandrite Elias Morcos in 1964, which I discovered posted here in English translation of the original in Arabic here.

The Revival as a Return to God

The Church in her human reality is always something less than her perfect true reality. We must always surpass our human weakness within her in order to arrive at her perfect true reality. This is the revival: this constant effort, this continuous movement from the way we are to the way we should be.

The Church is the salt of the earth and completes the work of Christ in the world. The Church works, she is present, for the sake of the salvation of the world. We can say that she is the center of being, in her its destiny is achieved. The world corrupts and ages, but the Church is continuously renewed for the sake of the salvation of the world. But if the salt is corrupted, then how can it be salty?

The Church is the group of those who believe in the Lord Jesus and who have united around him to live the life of the Gospel, the life of God. They have no concern except to follow the Lord’s teaching and to follow in his footsteps. The group is in the world and for the world, but at the same time it is not of the world. From the beginning, from the ascension of the Lord to heaven, it is oriented toward the age to come, awaiting the return of the heavenly bridegroom and hastening him on. From now on, it lives in the last days, in the fullness of time, “it uses this world as though it doesn’t use it, and buys as though it doesn’t own.”

However, the coarseness and weakness of human nature weigh upon the Church, since she is made up of humans. Sins and failings and imperfections remain, and doubles will continue to remain as long as human beings are human. But the Lord has born all things and taken them all upon himself, and as a result there is no barrier.

The Lord Jesus has passed over our life and has cleansed us and taken us from weakness to strength and from corruption to life. In order for the Church to continue to be the Church, she must follow the Lord and cleave to a continuous Pascha, surpassing the self and constantly passing from the weight of the world and its many varied temptations to the victory of the Lord and the purity of the divine life.

Everything that exists is in a state of motion and progress. Vegetable, biological, and social life, the sciences… everything grows and is perfected. And how much more so the spiritual life. It is progress and growth, an infinite reaching toward God’s life. For that reason it is said that, “one who looks back is not suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The temptations of this world are many and varied. They take an evil appearance just as they take a good appearance. All of them are clear in their result, in that they are a stopping in the world, a stopping along the way, a stopping in the exodus, the passing over, Pascha. They are an obstruction to God’s eternal Pascha. The journey to God is a journey without end. Every stopping along it leads us to the corruption of the world.

We acquire upright faith. We build churches. We hold services and prayers. We celebrate the feasts. We have all the richness of Orthodoxy, its liturgical and spiritual and ascetic treasures… But naturally, if all this remains external it is not enough. There is no doubt that the journey towards God is at its base an inner striving of the heart, in God’s being a God to us, living, personal, inner. It is said, “If you want to kill God, then kill man’s inner life.”

No, the Church is not in the externals, it is in the heart. As the Bible says, “One who does not meditate in his heart has no knowledge and no understanding” (Isaiah 44:19). We know this, but in our habitual action we very often forget it. We know that the Church is not in the stone and not in the chants and not in the institutions and what is visible, but all its beauty is from within. If we are satisfied with the externals and we do not understand them and do not enter into their deep, living meaning, then the externals become something dead and superficial that comes between us and God rather than leading us to Him. It turns into an absolute value or an obsession or a reason to be distracted from God. Then we confuse the externals and the true, unseen glory, forgetting the words of the Bible, “On that day the glory of Jacob will grow lean” (Isaiah 17:4).

But if we transcend appearances and desire to live and enter into the essence, there is a Gospel that we must follow. There are teachings and divine commandments that we have abandoned for the sake of the commandments of men. Unfortunately, not only have we abandoned them, but often we have mocked them and we have mocked those who keep them. The logic of the world here is the logic of wealth and lust and it glorifies a lifestyle that dominates our entire life.

No, the Church is not in hearing the Gospel but in applying it. If we do not maintain our chastity, our poverty, our humility, our mercy, then where is the Church? If we do not desire righteousness and purify our hearts and we do not do good works, but rather tear each other apart, then where is the Church? It is something difficult and ineffective? But have we tried? Have we experienced the Lord’s commandments to the very end in order to taste their sweetness and effectiveness? Or have we preferred the bitterness and emptiness of the pleasures of the world to the very end?

The Lord put a great deal of emphasis on keeping his commandments and he strongly urged this in his final sermon since he knew that “the prince of this world” will prevail over hearts. But if we are of the Lord and not of the prince of this world, should our faith not start from this? Does our Lord not deserve that we trust in his word and try to act according to his commandments so that we will be blessed? “If one loves me, he will keep my word. If you keep my commandments, then you shall be established in my love.”

But the Church herself is not commandments and ordinances so much as Love of the Lord and striving for his face. For this reason we do not understand the commandments if we see them as dry ideas, devoid of their marrow and their taste. Virtue is not in actions but in the movement of the heart within the actions. It is through actions oriented toward the Lord, cleaving to him and longing for him.

How can the Church be commandments when the Lord said through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept. Line upon line, line upon line. Here a little, there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, to whom He said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,’ and, ‘This is the refreshing’; yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was to them, ‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,’ that they might go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and caught” (Isaiah 28:10-13).

And to the youth who had kept the commandments from his infancy, the Lord said, “You lack one thing.” That one thing remaining is love: to long for the Lord in our heart and to desire him alone.

This is not for some people and not for others. It is a call, it is an invitation, to all. All of us are called to love the Lord with the love of life. All the life of the Church is the life of invitation: “‘I have redeemed you and I have called you by your name. You are mine,’ says the Lord to his people” (Isaiah 43:1). Likewise the Apostle Paul says, “We also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11).

The people without a calling and love is “a people ravaged and plundered,” the Bible says. The Church does not exist without the visible Church, the Christian people. Our religion is a religion of incarnation. If we do not embody it, if we do not follow the Lord, then where is the Church?

“Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power” (1 Thessalonians 1:5), says the Apostle, but out of habit and the passing of time, we often take the words without their true meanings, the shadow instead of the person and thus we mock the Lord. We might hear the call and do something. We might go for a part of the way. We might be given the grace of prayer if we ask for it, the fathers say. But if we do not do all the Lord’s will, there will come a day when we discover that we have no faith and no forgiveness.

“Woe to the person whose reputation surpasses his reality,” says Fr. Silouan. But the Lord says, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God” (Revelation 3:1-3).

In order for us to truly follow the Lord, we must have force and self-emptying. Jesus came to be crucified, not to talk. If talking was enough, then Jesus would not have been crucified. He said, “He who wants to follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” This total commitment, the commitment of the cross is doubtless painful and scandalous. But it is the only way in the Church.

Pain here is a birth pang, and a birth pang is the beginning of any existence. We have no existence in the Church and the Church has no existence in us without the cross of commitment and its pains. But those who abide will be wiped out: “They slept a heavy sleep,” says the Psalmist, “and they found their hands empty” (Psalm 72:18). The issue is the issue of true commitment that we plunge ourselves into. We do not love our life to the point of death, a commitment in which we break the barriers of our freedom like breaking the sound barrier: in our freedom, we empty ourselves of our freedom in order to follow the Lord, and only then does he open before us the way into space.

This ultimate commitment is what makes the Church the Church. Everyone can contribute in this commitment to the Church of Antioch, each one in his field and surroundings and profession, fathers and sons according to the gift of the Lord. It is within the ability of fathers to offer the best and most precious gift, if the Lord wills.

I would like to repeat to you what a Coptic monk, a friend of mine, wrote, “O people of Antioch, the voice of the Lord to you, as from the voice of the great prophet Samuel: offer, offer the good vessels that you have, which through all these years have become empty. Offer them so that they can be filled with God’s oil. Do not be stingy with your sons and daughters, so that they can become your vessels of salvation on your day of hardship and so that they can become oil of joy and gladness in the time of war. The Lord will be pleased with you and your times of relief will come from him. Do not say enough, enough. The world looks upon you. Yes, enlighten once more, O Lord, Antioch so that the world will be enlightened by its light as in the first days.”

As for those who have truly committed to the Lord and have gone into the great depths—and among you are many of them—they do not stop along the way. If we have done something, we are not satisfied with it, as every stopping is a fall. No one is better than another.

“All the Church is a Church of penitents. All the Church is a Church of mortals,” says Ephrem the Syrian. We have not yet begun to repent. We have not struggled against sin to the point of blood. If we stop and we haven’t bled, then we have not brought it to the end and commitment, the revival, and the Church become mere expressions and empty clichés that we repeat in order to quiet our conscience. Our giving must increase in order to remain. May the spirit’s be to vigorously move forward and not stop short like Lot who remained alive while his wife looked back and died. We must renew our will like the stroke of a hammer in the soul so that it arrives at the profundities of existence.

“So the craftsman encouraged the goldsmith; He who smooths with the hammer inspired him who strikes the anvil, saying, “It is ready for the soldering”; then he fastened it with pegs, that it might not totter” (Isaiah 41:7). The danger of lethargy confronts us at every moment, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:30-31).

Brothers, if we understand the revival on this basis, and we walk in it with faith, steadfastness, and alertness, by His grace, He, for the sake of His glory, for the sake of His love and the Love of His holy Church which is above all and for all, He will allow the revival to be. At that point the revival will be at its true extent, proceeding after the Lord risen from the dead. Then each one of us will rise from his death. In an eternal exodus we shall follow him in his Pascha, he whose life has no end, amen.

Day without night

I saw that there was no temple in the City since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the Temple, and the City did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it. The pagan nations will live by its light and the kings of the earth will bring it their treasures. The gates of it will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there…
Revelation 21:22-25 Jerusalem Bible

The whole of the message of Christ is contained and taught in two yearly feasts: Christmas, the nativity of Christ, at the time of the winter solstice, and Easter, Pascha, the resurrection of Christ, at the time of the spring equinox. This isn’t the Church taking over two pagan religious festivals and converting them into Christian ones. This is Nature itself pointing to the truths of faith and existence given a place within the New Creation, demonstrating that there is only Christ, who is in all, and in whom all ‘live and move and have their being’ (cf. Acts 17:28).

The world wants to localize these holidays, wants to contain them within calendar dates, wants to milk us for money as ants stroke and milk their aphids for nectar, giving us short respites between ‘holidays’, between milkings, so we can sufficiently recover. It doesn’t matter to the world whether the holidays are real or not. We tend to blame commercialism for spoiling the holidays, especially Christmas but to a lesser extent Easter, but it’s not their fault. ‘It’s not against human enemies that we struggle, but against fallen spiritual powers’ (cf. Ephesians 6:12).

So, they make Christmas end with a splash of presents and crumpled, glittering wrapping paper on the afternoon of December 25th, and they’d just as soon like to see Easter disappear under mountains of discarded candy boxes and deflowered Easter lilies: all very valuable and costly in the days leading up to the holiday, and suddenly transformed by studied consumption into garbage before sundown of the Lord’s Passover. Just as there is no mention of the birth of the God-Man during official Christmas, there is no mention of His resurrection during official Easter.

For the disciples of Jesus Christ whom He has ‘set free like birds from the fowler’s net’ (cf. Psalm 124), the great and holy Pascha does not disappear after the day of Resurrection, nor does the God-Man’s taking birth from the Theotokos retreat into mere myth and folklore after the day of Incarnation: These holidays are not days that inhabit one number on the world calendar. They are not days at all, as we experience them, but entrances into the Divine Nature, into the life eternal, the life of the Holy Triad, which begins in time but proves to contain even time itself.

In Christ’s birth, God becomes Man, not once, but forever, taking human nature up into the Divine Nature, divinizing the whole Tree that Man is, Himself one of us, by hanging on that Tree as its first fruit.

In Christ’s resurrection, Man becomes God, not once, but forever, reopening to us the gates of Paradise, a Serpent raised on a stake, inviting us to partake of the Fruit of the tree of life, renewing all creation.

In Christ’s birth, the two greatest commandments, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27) become One commandment: to love your neighbor is to love God, thus brotherly love is theological.

In Christ’s resurrection, His entire life as Man becomes the pattern of our life, and only by following Him, by doing what we see Him doing, ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill’ (Matthew 5:17), can we fulfill the One commandment, becoming by grace what He is by nature.

Tradition mandates twelve days to celebrate the birth of Christ, and after the day of His resurrection an entire week is gathered up into a single liturgical day, and a total of forty calendar days will hear the greeting ‘Christ is risen! He is truly risen!’ But after celebration, life must go on. We still must live our day to day lives. Tomorrow, I must return to the office and deal with what I find there, pretending to be ‘only human’ when I know by the testimony of His rising from the dead, that Christ is with me, even as He stands in the Presence of His Father, for He says ‘where I am, there will My servant be also’
(John 12:26).

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet He did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself to assume the conditions of a slave, and became as all men are; and being as all men are, He was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised Him high and gave Him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11 Jerusalem Bible

This, beloved brethren, is the Day of Resurrection,

the Day without night,

the Life without death,

and the Love without end.

What, then, has death become?

Holy and Great Saturday

April 23, 2011
by Alana Roberts

Sir, we have heard of your death.
To die thus is plainly brutal.
But when we came to your tomb
the sweet smell astonished us.

You spoke once of white, painted tombs
that reek of corruption within.
Your tomb is shameful outside,
the grave of a malefactor,
but inside the breath is forever ravishing,
more than lavender and cloves.
What, then, has death become?

Bless my enemies, O Lord

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into your embrace

more than friends have.
Friends have bound me to earth,

enemies have loosed me from earth

and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms

and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.
Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter

than an unhunted animal does,

so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary,

having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle,

where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.
They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.
They have punished me,

whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.
They have tormented me,

whenever I have tried to flee torments.
They have scolded me,

whenever I have flattered myself.
They have spat upon me,

whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Whenever I have made myself wise,

they have called me foolish.
Whenever I have made myself mighty,

they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people,

they have shoved me into the background.
Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself,

they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully,

they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life,

they have demolished it and driven me out.
Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world

and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Bless them and multiply them;

multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

so that my fleeing to You may have no return;

so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;

so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins:

arrogance and anger;

so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;

ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception,

which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows,

that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.

One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize

that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good

and who has done me more evil in the world:

friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies.
A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand.
But a son blesses them, for he understands.
For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.
Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Bless my enemies, O Lord.
Even I bless them and do not curse them.

— Nikolaj Velimirović, bishop of Ohrid and of Žiča

Wounded by love

Follow the Lord to Golgotha.

A man wounded, knowing how to bear weakness
Isaiah 53:3 Septuagint

Be wounded
and know how to bear pain.
The Cross must be familiar and acceptable to you as a place to be and a mode of existence.

Then the Lord will come at some time, without fail, as He knows best. He will come and find you. He will touch your aching head, as "…He touched the leper" (Matthew 8:3).
He will speak to you. He will enter into you like light, repose, paradise. You will be aware of Him. You will feel Him. You will actually live His passion and resurrection. You will find yourself inside the icon of the Resurrection, of the Descent into Hades.

This icon will be an expression of your life. Christ will be constantly leading you by the hand, bringing you to light, to freedom, to an unending journey which is Himself.

You understand then the words of the Lord, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" (Luke 24:26) Christ had to suffer and to come forth as a Bridegroom from the tomb.
A great mystery!

You feel that you had to suffer, to endure pain, to die in the earth like a seed, so that there might shoot up from within you something that does not pass away.

I am created for some specific purpose, for something intangible, invisible to the naked eye, and yet incarnate.
I know it. I believe it. I experience it.

When I move away from it, everything goes awry, in my soul and in my body. When I am within it, I am firmly grounded and recover everything, the health of my soul and body. When I am alone, I am in communion with the saints. When I am in a crowd, I am nourished by the pure spring welling up in the desert within.

Reverence for this least and greatest thing takes the form of constantly going outdoors without protection, of asking at every moment only that His will should be done. Asking it not with my mouth and voice, but with my whole manner of living, all the time.

And when you ask that His will should be done, when your whole being is one bleeding petition, it happens. But this happening is not something you can determine in advance. It may happen by happening or by not happening. It may be that before your petition is even finished, the answer comes. Or you may wait years and wear yourself out, and be disappointed, and reach utter exhaustion, and be destroyed. And then, when you are no longer expecting anything—neither you nor anyone else—He Himself will come to raise you up, to take you with Him on a new journey.
Then you will understand why He was slow in coming for you. He was with you "in another form" (Mark 16:12), even when He had not come and you were waiting for Him.
…
How everything functions as a whole! How nothing is irrelevant, nothing is wasted! How the blessings go deeper than we hoped! How the afflictions, the pains and the perplexities till the field of our souls like a deep-cutting ploughshare! How totally and utterly the strange and heaven-sent rest differs in nature from the rest and satisfaction afforded by any earthly and temporary success! How it teaches us humility, how it schools us in love, how it reconciles us with others! It strengthens us, it invigorates us, and at the same time it makes us weaker, without any prickles or sharp corners which could wound others!

—Archimandrite Vasileios

My citadel is God Himself.

the God who loves me is coming…

Psalm 59:10 Jerusalem Bible (1966)

Unwalled city

It seems to me, from my limited experience of sixty-one years, that if you really trust Jesus completely, you are unafraid to trust yourself to people, situations, and the world in general, as they come your way.

By this I don't mean that you entrust yourself into everyone's keeping. But you are somehow able to discern, even without giving it much thought, and without anxiety, what is appropriate in every encounter.

You seamlessly entrust yourself to others in exactly and only those areas where trust even has meaning at all. You can be fearless because there is no longer anything to gain or lose. Why? Because of Christ.

He has you, and you have Him. Beyond both need and want, unopposed and defenseless, you are an unwalled city defended, like Rome, by that invincible weapon, the peace of Christ.

One

As I was reading the beginning of the letter of James the brother of God, I was touched by the tender care and intimate way of speaking that the apostle employs in writing his letter, and to people whom he didn’t even know face to face—to the twelve tribes of the diaspora—and even to us.

And I thought of how this letter along with the others is called the Word of God, is made to be the very words of God to us, even though in its language it is just the words of men. Yet we call the epistles, the writings of the apostles, the Word of God, scripture no less than the Gospels or the Tanakh.

It seems to me that even the holy and divine Scriptures demonstrate the One God who in Holy Triad loves as three, though He is One. The Tanakh, that is, the Old Testament, seems to be the message of the Heavenly Father, who speaks to us Himself, as His holy prophets fade into nothing as they speak.

The Gospels seem to be the message of the Only-Begotten Son who is also the Word of God, which He brought into our midst not by any writing of His own, but by His being: Now the Father whom no man has seen or can ever see becomes visible in the Son, no longer hidden in clouds, but revealing His face.

The Acts of the holy apostles and their Letters, these seem to be the message of the Holy and Life-Creating Spirit, who though invisible Himself, maintains the visible presence of Christ in our midst, as the brother who walks beside us. Invisible God becomes visible Christ becomes tangible brother man.

Like the water-gushing rock that followed Israel as they moved through the wilderness shielded from the heat of the sun by the cloud by day, illumined and warmed and protected in the dark nights by the pillar of flame, our God the Holy Triad has encircled us by the words of His holy and divine Scriptures.

Not satisfied to rule us with laws, He came among us to free us to righteousness by love, and now lives among us, in us, with us, upon us, even as us: we have the Message in its fullness, of the Father in unapproachable Light, in the Light of the Face of His Son, and by the Light of Tabor in the virgins’ lamps.

Where is the God of gods who summons the earth to His people’s trial, who alone does wonders, of whom we sing, ‘Who is so great a god as our God?’ Does He dwell in the misty mountain tops and thunder in the storm clouds? The glory of the Triad has made His home among us then, now, and ever.

Holy apostles, lovingly plant in us the seed that the Master planted in you, that you write to us who live at the end of time, that the Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life causes to sprout and grow in us, that we too may enter into the mystery of life in the Holy Triad with you, one mind, one will, one heart, one love.