Beyond tomorrow

Even while she was still with us, I found myself talking to her, asking her, when alone and needing some comfort, especially when I awoke in the middle of the night, for prayer. It was hard to understand, and to accept, the story she told us, about the angel, but then, we had no trouble hearing and believing the other story, but that was all about her Son. This time it was about her but, unlike the first visit of Gabriel, which brought the word of good news, this visit seemed nothing but the harbinger of sadness.

How could we put up with it? How could I live suddenly alone? She was my mother, more than only mine, for twenty-four long years. She was a mother to all of us, and it was wonderful to be back in the Holy City again with the brothers, all of us returned to where it all began. Like the scripture says, ‘From north and south, east and west, I gather you.’ She was so calm, and her eyes looked so dreamy, almost as if she were going to weep, when she told me, ‘Just think! Only a fortnight, and I will see him again!’

See him again? ‘What do you mean, Mother? Is this why we have all come back to Jerusalem? Is this why you were so insistent that we all find ourselves here, together, as we once stood on the Olive Mount, watching him go? So that as the angels declared, we could watch him come back in exactly the same way we saw him go?’ Words such as these with half-hope and excitement I blurted out, forgetting all else, and spoiling the serene moment that surrounded the lucid jewel of her expectation.

‘No, no, beloved Son, not that! Not even he could tell us that, nor could an angel of the Most-High! Only the Father knows that time, that hour.’ Still perplexed, I waited for her to continue. What she related was difficult to grasp, and to accept. To blunt its sharpness, she reminded me that the same message would one day be vouchsafed to me as well, but not yet. I too would see the day I would go forth to meet him, but that day was yet far off. No, this was her time. Angels always bring good news.

The word had gone out, I don’t know quite how, but all of us, all except Thomas, were now somewhere in the City, or close by. Over the course of a few days, I had chance to meet with them, with Cephas, with my brother Jacob, with all of the brothers, by ones and twos, and I handed over to them the news that our Mother, our beloved Mother, the Mother of our beloved Master, had given me. It was never easy, and there were tense moments, words of astonishment and incomprehension, even of disbelief.

‘Of this we are sure,’ I told them, ‘that on the fourteenth day after the angel’s visit, the Master will welcome his Mother into the Life eternal, carrying her as a babe in his own arms, escorted by the angelic host.’ No, we would not see what she would see, but we were privileged to encircle her bed at that precise moment, and through her eyes, the Light of Light, even the true God of true God—blessed, blessed, blessed be He!—was to shine on us, casting away forever all shadows from her life and ours.

Twenty-four years of living together, her silence as well as her testimonies teaching and strengthening me, crossing lands and seas, preserved by her witness, by her very being, the Mother of my Lord and Master, Jesus, of my Savior… over, forever over! I was disconsolate. But when had I not known it, understood that this time of blessing would also come to an end, that all that is human must, like a book, be finished and closed? Yet the One who writes us and fills the world with our testimony, He lives.

‘Evening came, and morning came, day one,’ I began counting, clinging desperately to the words of scripture, fervently hugging to myself every moment I was able to spend with her, while she continued living as she always had, caring for me, creating the inner world for me to retreat to after laboring so hard to build the outer—but I, while she waited so patiently and with unperturbed certainty for her Son to arrive, I could not keep myself on task, I could not work. It was a very strange kind of fasting.

Little did I think to feed my body, even though with foods from her hand I would never taste again. No, but I fed my eyes with her beauty, yes, her beauty, for though she was my Mother, to see us together, one would think at most she were my sister. But now, my hair grown white, my beard and side locks the same, though still young inside I was, outside those who did not know me took me for an elder of Israel, and she for my young bride. And indeed, a bride she was, whom we knew as ‘the Unwedded.’

Sojourning among the Gentiles in the northlands, in Ephesos of Diana of the hundred breasts, we walked together, meeting the people where they were, her womanly witness the hidden foundation of mine seen and heard, and when we coaxed her to speak, she speaking of her Son, Jesus, enlivened all hearts and minds, unleashing many from the bondage post, and watering their lives as a life-giving fountain. How many miracles followed us wherever we were sent. Yes, she was a water-bearing rock, for me.

And that day we were cast ashore, alive, from the raging sea. Who would imagine that a humble daughter of Israel would be found following her young son, taking ship and sailing to the copper island, to Cyprus, to visit the only man living who was dead and brought back to life after lying four days in the tomb? But the God and Father of us all, who sent His beloved Son to us as her Son, guarded our path wherever we went, toppling idols as He did when we were cast, boatless, on that rocky shore.

‘Zeus and Hera!’ they shouted, the villagers, as they ran to greet us and ask us to preserve them from the wrath of the earth quake. But we were only humans, the mother of Jesus, and his beloved friend. We sat down together on the shore, made fires to warm ourselves, and waited for the rescue that the Lord would decree, meanwhile calming their frightened faces with the story of the only Lover of mankind. How they took to it! how they believed! not from my lips only, but from the Mother of us all.

My mournful thoughts return to that final day. Long since I had stopped counting as the day drew near. The days count themselves when we are afraid of what lies ahead. It happened so peacefully, everything so in order, as if everyone were directed intimately in thought, word and deed. We gathered around where she lay, and waiting, our fast more natural and unconscious than our own heartbeats. Expecting a miracle, she just fell asleep, and we, afraid to awaken her, just looked on. Fragrance filled the room.

What happened next, I cannot remember clearly. It seems I was brushed aside as others more vigorous in intention and plan—it was obvious they knew what to do—took charge. I saw the holy body of my little Mother carried away somewhere and I, still grieving, sat with my back against a wall, wondering what I would do next, what life I would have beyond tomorrow. My brother Jacob came and raised me up and so much as said, ‘Come along,’ and my body sheepishly followed, my mind lodged in my heart.

The next thing I remember was the sealing of the tomb. My eyes saw, but my heart did not believe, and inwardly I wretched to the core of my being. ‘You will not abandon my soul to She’ol,’ I murmured to myself, remembering my Master, who trampled death by death and bestowed Life to everyone in the tombs. Like Thomas who said it aloud when, arriving a few days later and coming to see us, Mother and me, like Thomas I cried inside, ‘I don’t believe it! It’s impossible! She can’t be dead!’ as I looked on.

And Thomas did finally arrive. Why was he allowed to be late? Why was he the only one not there? Just like the last time, he missed the Lord when he came among us, resurrected. Only this time, none of us saw the Lord with our physical eyes, as we did behind that locked door, in that room. But we believed the word that the angel spoke to Mary, as she told us, ‘The God who loves me is coming.’ Sometimes we have nothing to rely on but our faith but, as Jesus said, ‘Your faith has healed you.’ So, faith is enough.

Again, he must see with his own eyes, or he will not believe! ‘Thomas, can’t you let anything alone? Why must we disturb the rest of her body in the tomb, just for you? We told you, she has been taken by her Son, our Lord. Isn’t that enough for you? Isn’t faith enough?’ He regained his calmness and after a moment, ‘No, faith is not enough, not for me. I want to see her one more time. It’s not that I don’t believe what you’ve told me. I just want to see what all of you saw. Can you grant me that?’

Suddenly, we were ashamed of ourselves. How thoughtless, how unfeeling of us. She was his Mother as well as ours. In fact, Mary had a very tender place in her heart for Thomas and always seemed to dote on him more than on the rest of us when he appeared at her door. They seemed to understand each other, the mother of faith and the brother of doubt. So we relented. With a slow, silent pace we walked to the garden where her tomb was. We broke the seal and with difficulty shifted the stone covering.

There was that fragrance again! The same fragrance we smelled in the room when she fell asleep! Like roses, only richer, deeper, like an essential oil. There were roses scattered about the floor just inside the tomb, at least that is what I saw. Cephas went right in, as he did the last time, but I stayed outside, somehow afraid of what I might see. Thomas followed him closely, and Cephas bumped into him as he abruptly turned about and pushed past him to shout, ‘She is not there! Her body has disappeared!’

Now, as I lie here and ponder the darkness of unknowing, how great is the wisdom of God! how profound His mystery! He does not ask our permission before He moves. He just decrees His will and performs it! ‘Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth, as it is in the heavens!’ we pray over and over, yet when He does what we have asked, we are dumbfounded. The Mother of our Master, of our Lord, yes, the Mother of our God—how can we say such things?—but yes, the Truth is dawning on us.

Now I know for sure

Touching Him, no one ever remains unchanged. I didn’t touch Him. He touched me, but not with His hands. He touched me with His words, and starting with that fateful day, nothing in my life remains the same.

I was a common servant then, a boy really, hired out by my poor parents whenever anyone needed help. I always did as I was told. I was glad to help my father and mother, who gave me life and did so much for me, even though sometimes I wished I could be free like the other boys, to amuse myself. When I became a man, I still honored my parents and, seeking to help them in their age, I hired myself out, working for a man that supplied marriage suppers with food and drink. I traveled all over Galilee with my master, catering the weddings of small and great. I continued to sleep in my old corner at home when our business brought me back to my village. That’s when I brought my earnings to my family’s relief. When I was away for longer, I sent word to my younger brother to meet me where I was. He took the money for me, and between him and me, we four were able to have food and shelter, and even a little for giving alms. From my father I learned, contempt of the poor is a luxury no one can afford. Though a man be poor, there are others poorer still. ‘Cast your bread on the water,’ my father used to say, ‘at long last you will find it again.’

You will no doubt believe me when I tell you that I was a poor man, for as you can see, that is what I am. When I tell you that I whom you see before you now clad in moth-eaten robe and faded turban was once Chuza, the steward of the great prince, Antipas of Galilee, you will laugh. I don’t blame you. I also laugh, though not out of doubt, but out of faith. For He that is Mighty has put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek. Like our forefather Yosef in Egypt, I was raised up out of my humble state to serve the Lord’s purposes, and when I had done as I was told, He released me to dwell the rest of my days in peace. For no one who serves a great prince is ever safe, or free of cares. The Most-High is merciful, blessed be He! Now, I will tell my story.

I was of marriageable age, but my family’s poverty constrained me from taking a wife. As I have already related, I worked with a master who catered marriage feasts, from Nazareth, to Cana, to Capernaum, everywhere in Galilee. So it was, that we were hired to prepare the feast for the marriage of a man of Cana and his bride. This is what happened. Half-way through the feast, the supply of wine we had ordered ran out. My master was beside himself. As he explained it to the steward of the feast, one of the guests, a young woman—or, at least, she looked young—overheard what was said. At her left sat a handsome young man whom I took to be her lord, though afterwards I discovered to my amazement, he was her son. I was standing near with another helper, awaiting my master’s orders. I heard the woman tell the man, ‘They’ve run out of wine.’

The young lord—for now I was sure he was a lord because of his gentle courtesy—replied, ‘My lady, what does this have to do with you and me? It is not yet time.’ In the pause that followed, I puzzled within myself, ‘What could he mean, saying, it is not yet time?’ but I had no time to wonder, for the woman turned to me, tugged on my sleeve and said, almost in a whisper, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

I felt embarrassed and confused, but something in her voice gave me confidence as I approached the young lord from his left, bent down, and waited for his instructions. He nodded across the courtyard where the feast was being given, and my eyes followed his gaze. There were six stone water jars lined up against a wall under the eaves. He commanded, ‘Those jars are empty. Fill them with water.’ My companion and I were more than bewildered, but I said to him, ‘Come on! Let’s do what the master says!’ The debate between the man we worked for and the steward of the feast kept their attention off us while we filled the jars.

Fortunately for us, there was a stone cistern just over the garden wall. It didn’t take us long to finish our task.
We were out of breath when we returned to the young lord. ‘Now, go back to the jugs. Ram, you fill a pitcher and pour it into a goblet. Chuza, you give the goblet to the master of the feast.’ I was as stunned as my companion, if his expression meant anything. ‘How does he know our names?’ I asked myself, as we hurried to do what the young lord commanded.

We came up, I reached out and handed the steward the goblet. ‘What is this?’ he gasped as he looked at the rich red wine in the cup, then took a drink. ‘Baruch, what is this?’ he demanded of our master. ‘You tell me the wine is run out, and now your boy hands me this?’ It was impossible for us at that moment to know for sure if he was mad or glad. He asked for another goblet, and we filled it. This the steward took to the head table and handed to the bridegroom. ‘Taste and see!’ he proudly said, and then spouted, ‘Others offer the fine wine first, and then the common, after everyone’s too drunk to know their left hand from their right. But you, Aharon, you saved the best till now!’ He looked around to make sure everyone had noticed.

This is where nothing remains unchanged. This is where no one remains unchanged. The paths of everyday life, zigzagging as they always have, are penetrated from an unseen center, where sometimes a hand is seen, sometimes a voice is heard, but from beyond the world the lightning flash that earths itself in every man is deflected by divine knowledge. A new point of entry is emblazoned on the heart, and the Lord of myriads of divine chariots takes more than Sinai for His sanctuary and Judah for His domain. My life suddenly was broken free from the bonds of fate, and like a golden leaf I was carried downstream in a glistening torrent, and deposited at the Lord’s feet.

Yes, He picked me up, though at the time I didn’t know who He was, only that he must be a young lord. Now I know for sure, He is the Ancient of Days.

The gossip began immediately as the marriage supper was ending. Everyone had his own version to tell of what happened, where the wine came from. Ram and I knew, but we didn’t tell. Strangely, no one even bothered to ask us. Gossips are never interested in the truth. Our master was wroth with us nonetheless, and dismissed us both from his service, punishing us for his mistake, and envious of our startling invention. I returned home dejected and cheated of my wages. Days later Baruch turned up at the door of my parents’ house asking for me. They told him they did not know where I was. He said he would pay them my wages if they would tell him how I had produced the wine. ‘What are you talking about?’ they protested. ‘What wine?’ But of course, I had told them all.

The first change was losing my livelihood. The second was finding it again. I did not have to look for it. It found me. As I now know, He found me.

Not long afterwards, an official came to our door with two soldiers asking for me. ‘Is this where we can find Chuza the wine maker?’ My parents were afraid, thinking, ‘What has he done now?’ I sensed their fear and emerged from behind the opened door. ‘Are you looking for me, sir? I am Chuza, but I am no wine maker.’ ‘That’s for the king to decide,’ he replied. ‘We are here to present you to the king. He has heard about the marriage feast in Cana.’

Afraid, and yet not afraid, I turned myself over to the soldiers and they carried me into the presence of the prince. (We do not call Herod Antipas ‘king’ for we have no king but the Holy One of Israel, blessed be He!) I was surprised at his gentleness as he asked me in detail what happened at that feast. Something inside me said, ‘Tell him the truth,’ and I did as I was told. About the young lord and the lady, I told him. What she said, what he said, I revealed all. ‘Well, this is a wonder!’ exclaimed the prince. ‘Come, Chuza! We sense that there is something about you, something mysterious and auspicious. Come and stay with Us, and be Our steward. Since you have told Us the truth, We want you to rule Our household.’

I looked down and stammered, ‘But majesty’—I didn’t know how to address him; I had never met a prince before—‘I am only Chuza, the support of my aged parents. You must be mistaken. I did nothing. I performed no miracle. It was that man I told you about. I only did what I was told, what he commanded.’

The prince stood up—he was seated and I knelt before him—and raised me to my feet. ‘Come, Chuza, We make you Our steward. We will provide for your parents. We will give you a wife as well. Stay with Us.’ And so it was. My parents were cared for, and my brother too. The prince gave me a wife of the house of Israel, even of the house of David, the virgin Joanna. Her family was rich, known at court. They were Hellenists. At the time, I knew nothing of these things. Now, I know more.

Joanna was chosen for me because—again, this was a change incredible and unexpected, for both of us—she was a relation of the mother of the young lord that worked the sign. Yes, it was Joanna who explained it to me. Miryam was the mother of the young lord whose name was Yeshua. Though her family and Miryam’s were of different wealth and station, Joanna visited Miryam and Yeshua often, helping them. Unknown to me, she was even at the marriage feast, and drank of that new wine that knew no vine. Joanna and I lived happily together in the palace for three years, as we followed the young lord, she with her feet, I only with my heart.

‘For three years?’ you ask. ‘What happened to that life, emulator of Yosef son of Yaakov?’ I know, I know. Yes, it is very hard to believe, but I am telling you the truth. I was the steward of Herod Antipas. Joanna was my wife. The young lord Yeshua grew in stature and in favor with God and men. Well, with some men, and only for a time. The same who followed Him when He healed and fed them, many of those called for His execution, not knowing who He was. But I knew. Joanna knew. When they lay His lifeless body in the tomb, my Joanna went with some other women disciples—yes, my wife was among the first to know He had scattered hell’s minions and taken it captive when He rose from the dead—to anoint His body. She came back screaming that the tomb was empty.

The commotion came to the ears of the prince. He was already very troubled, for the sake of that Man, as were all the rulers of the parceled land of Israel. He called us into his presence, seeking to know the reason for this outburst of my wife’s.

‘What is this all about?’ he demanded. In my heart, I knew that a tie was about to severed. Touching Him, no one ever remains unchanged. The prince had commanded me, one day not long before, to tell him the truth, for he wanted to know, and I told him. This time it was different. Seeking not the truth, indeed terrified of it, nevertheless he asked. As she began to speak, he suddenly shut tight his eyes, shot out his left hand, and barked, ‘Enough! Enough of these lies! I’ve heard all I want to hear! Get out of my sight!’ Even with his eyes closed, Joanna’s testimony pierced through those jeweled eyelids.

As quickly as I once was snagged in the maw of his service I was—we were—disgorged, and turned out into the street as though we had never known the palace. This was, for me, a blessed relief, for I wanted to follow that Man with more than my heart. Returning from Yerushalayim where she had followed Him that holy week before the Passover was sacrificed, she now shared with me the good news that He was to meet His disciples right here in Galilee, and that is what, in fact, happened, not many days after. Yes, He appeared to us again and again in those days before Shavuot. Even I was among those who met Him again, this time knowing who He is.

Touching Him, no one ever remains unchanged. I didn’t touch Him. He touched me, but not with His hands. He touched me with His words, and starting with that fateful day, nothing in my life remains the same.

Citizen of Paradise

‘On Your Creation, O Master, take pity. Cleanse me by Your compassion,’ over and over again this morning, these words from the memorial prayers for the reposed, those who have died, and other words too, but mostly these, kept streaming through my head.

The thoughtless who examine and criticise the Church for praying for the dead, saying that it is useless since the dead have already gone into eternal life or into eternal damnation and therefore profit nothing by these prayers, miss the point entirely.

Yes, we pray for the dead, but that is, for us, who think we are alive but who are spiritually dead, they are for us, those who are struggling every day, every hour and moment, gasping for a breath of Life while being buried alive by the weight of our sins and the sin of the world.

The modern or post-modern (I can no longer distinguish them) who hear the Christian cry out, ‘Take pity, Lord! Cleanse me by Your compassion!’ observe the scene condescendingly, thinking, ‘He pretends to be a sinner, so he can pretend to be saved.’

But this is no pretense, our knowing and confessing that we are sinners. I know for sure that I am a sinner, and only one thing I know with more certainty—that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and, whether I believe it or not, I am the first.

People may praise me, and for a second or two I may forget myself and feel glad. Then I remember, and I know that they are giving me bricks to lay on what they think is my foundation, but in me there is no foundation, not even a poor one. I know that; they don’t.

I may sometimes even do worse things. I may praise myself, trying to amass bricks of gold, not to lay on a foundation that isn’t there, but to store in a strong box that has already been plundered and no longer even has a lock. The greatest earthly riches cannot console me.

Faced with the fact of sin, with the temptation to descend into its filth, put a bible in front of me, and some worldly seduction, side by side, the bible gleaming, the seduction luring to shadow, and left to myself, shunning the God who would tear the net, I let myself be caught in it.

The bible is there, right in front of me. I know much of it by heart. Yet my heart treads water, as I stand in a pool of my own blood, grumbling like Israel in the wilderness, refusing to enter a land of delight, even while praying, ‘make me again a citizen of Paradise.’

O God! Your Word, I confess, is Truth, yet I cannot arise by my own efforts. Nothing I can do is any help. Running to You for strength, my weak soul pines for the liberty of hell, as my eyes are captured by its false promises. Run to meet me, as You always do, and carry me.

I have lost everything, only to know that all that I had was and is and always would be worth nothing. In You alone are the riches of freedom, of love and of peace, freely given to all who come to You, through the Opening torn in the veil of this world, Your Son’s Body.

Yes, Lord, I am the one who was made in Your image, though I am scarred by my transgressions. On Your creation, O Master, take pity, cleanse me by Your compassion, and once again make me a citizen of Paradise.

Falling away

Falling Away

by Mary Hardy, found at Mary Hardy Art, Recent Work

The following is a quotation adapted from The Prologue of Ohrid which I found posted at Aunt Melanie's blog, Walk in Wisdom…

Why do some people, well-educated and baptized as Christians, fall away from Christianity and give themselves over to philosophy and to learned theories, pretending these to be something more truthful than Christianity? They do so for two principal reasons: either out of a totally superficial understanding of Christianity or because of sin.

This short quote brings to mind so many things. One of them is a quatrain I have memorized from my high school days' reading of the English poet, Alexander Pope:

A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
but drinking largely sobers us again.

But what is said in the quote from the Prologue is more direct, applicable and specific, dealing as it does with a subject of greater importance than just 'learning' in general.

As an Orthodox Christian I believe in infant baptism, and for the reasons that the Church defends it, but I also understand and sympathize with the idea of believer's baptism, and I see how it would be an antidote to the abuse of the ancient Church's established practice.

In Orthodoxy, baptism into Christ is not seen as a kind of magic operation which, once done, somehow guarantees the recipient of the grace of God and of salvation. Before one is aware of the grace of baptism, it does operate in a way as if by magic, but this is pure grace. Once a baptised person comes to the age of reason, where they can be held accountable for following the commandments and understanding what sin and grace are, and who Christ is, then grace can be resisted, and a person can fall away.

The ancient Church evolved over the course of a few centuries the whole structure of customs and what are now seen as traditions to provide an environment in which a person could live and mature in Christ from infancy to old age, yes, from cradle to grave, but in a real sense, not in the blasphemous and sarcastic sense and practice that many people have come to hold it. Even today, a woman bringing a baby into the church off the street and asking for it to be baptised is not (supposed to be) allowed in Orthodoxy, because the Church only baptises infants on the assurance of the faith of the parents (or godparents).

Although this protocol is followed in most places, its application can still fail, because whole families can be ‘in the Church’ publicly, while at home they are anything but ‘in the Church’—they go through the motions of Christianity, without discipleship, without real faith. This is why in Orthodoxy, the insistence on the family being the basic unit of the Church: this is what the ancient Church based all of its public structures on, those same ones we follow to the letter today, but without that primary foundation, the Christian family, the tradition doesn’t work.

The family must be ‘the Church’ and not just ‘in the Church.’ This is what antiquity expected, this is what Orthodoxy relies on, but if the reality of the day-to-day existence of the Church in the world is simply the maintenance of the externals of public worship with a nominal veneer of shepherding and instruction, that cannot be enough. Hence, the dissatisfaction with, and the apostasy from, the Church as social institution. This is not something that has only recently become a problem, but in every age the Church vacillates between the extremes of daily faithfulness and nearly total apostasy.

On the personal level, why individual Christians fall away from Christianity, is simply and amply put by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic in the Prologue from Ohrid, ‘either out of a totally superficial understanding of Christianity or because of sin.’ The superficial understanding of Christianity is, I think, due to a lack of fellowship with and following of Jesus Christ, seeing Him only as a religious figure to be ceremonially worshiped, but not as one’s personal Master, Lord and Savior. It’s not enough to see Him only as one’s Savior and Lord: one must see Him and follow Him as one’s Master. That is what it means to be a disciple.

And what do we make of those who fall away from Christianity because they are giving in to even as little as one sin from which they cannot tear themselves? In everything else they can be the most moral and just people, and yet they live in sin, knowing it is sin but accepting it as inevitable and even normal or because ‘everyone is doing it.’ These too stay away from the Church, though they may have been baptised into it as infants or even as adults. What we usually find when we talk to them about the Church is that, when they look at it, all they can see are its faults, and these they use to justify themselves, following the laws of human nature.

The Church is that family from which no Christian can exclude himself, and from which no Christian can be excluded. On the one hand, once you accept Christ you have nowhere else to go but the Church, unless you believe you are the last and only Christian on earth: in which case, yes, stay away. On the other hand, no one who truly confesses Christ and follows Him can be or ever will be excluded from that great company of the saints which is the Church, no matter what say the rules and regulations of men. For all, this should be both a comforting and sobering thought.

We are all living waking and sleeping lives, but as followers of Jesus, we want to stay awake as much and as long as we can.

Father, keep waking us up, even when we are tired, until after our longest sleep, we finally awake to gaze our fill on Your likeness.

Near

I can’t help it. I love the Church. I don’t care if she is imperfect.
I can’t help it if she’s all too human. What would you have her be?
She can only be what she is, but by faith,
she will be what Christ, her divine Bridegroom, has made her.
Yes, she is His Bride, she, and no other.

The apostle writes,
‘Do not stay away from the meetings of the community,
as some do, but encourage each other to go;
the more so as you see the Day drawing near’ (Hebrews 10:25).

What if the meetings of the community are occasions
for glorying in the flesh?
What if going to them angers and upsets you?

Well, ask yourself then, ‘Why is this?’

What are you doing
that you notice the glorying in the flesh of the brethren?
Who is it that you have your eyes on,
them, yourself, or the Lord?

Ask yourself, ‘Who am I to be angry?
And why should I be angry?’
Who is being offended? Who is offending?

To offend is a choice, to be offended, the same. Yet God, who has the greatest and most just cause to be offended by our sinful thoughts, words and deeds, He forbears. The ‘righteous’ put themselves forward to castigate and judge the unrighteous, and the ‘correct’ advance to rebuke those who offend them.

All the while, the eye is not single, the body is not full of light, in the one who lets himself be offended by the folly of others, in the Church, or in the world, it doesn’t matter.

‘When you go to the temple, be on your guard.
Go near, so that you can hear;
the sacrifice is more valuable than the offering of fools,
even if they are unaware of doing wrong’ (Ecclesiastes 4:17).

I know whom it is that I have trusted,
I know in whom I have believed.
I know the truth He speaks, and that truth is strong to save,
as He has said, and sets me free.

Free from what?
Free from judgment, free from fear, free from ignorance,
free from hatred, free from every bondage
to what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted or thought.

How can one say he loves God and His Christ,
while he hates the Church?
Perhaps he hasn’t yet grasped what the Church is.
Perhaps he only hates the false images of the Church
that have tucked themselves into the corners of his mind.
Perhaps he thinks that the Church is only what he sees.

The world thinks that Jesus Christ is only what it sees.
The world thinks He’s just a man.
Looking past His miracles
because ‘just a man’ can’t perform miracles,
‘It must be sleight of hand—He’s just tricking us!’

So the Church too is only what he sees.
A broken down, corrupt, self-centered society of hypocrites.

‘They’re just a bunch of hypocrites!
They’re just play-acting, pretending to be sinners
so they can pretend that they’re saved!’

Looking past their miracles—hypocrites can’t perform miracles
—he focuses on what he’s chosen to see,
just as he’s chosen to be offended.
It’s a vicious circle, literally.

Yet the Church, like Christ her Divine Bridegroom, is different on the inside than she appears on the outside. Her exterior may be plain, it may be rude, it may be disfigured, as it is written of her Spouse,
‘His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and His form marred beyond human likeness’ (Isaiah 52:14)
that He was not recognized for who He was.

So it is with the Church. Those who look only at her outside never really enter her and see her from the inside. Even when they seem to enter her, they still stand apart as her judge, just as Pilate while in the presence of Christ stood apart, and asked mockingly,
‘What is truth?’

The Bible cannot be understood outside of the Church,
nor dogma outside of divine worship.
Neither of these, not the Church nor its worship,
are within our control as followers of Jesus.
All that is within our control is our own wills,
and free will was granted to us as a test of our being.

Do we chose to take offense and give offense through the abuse of our free wills, or do we choose to follow the commandment?
‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself’ (Luke 10:27).

And who is our neighbor?
It is everyone we meet, and not least our brothers in the faith,
with whom we are joined in one body, the Body of Christ, the Church,
to whom the apostle writes,
‘my greetings to the Lady,
the chosen one, and to her children,
she whom I love in the truth’ (2 John 1).

This is why I say, I love the Church. This is why I encourage you too, brethren, to love her. Don’t set yourselves up over her to judge her, but treat her as Christ has treated you, overlooking your sins and giving you time to repent. This is what John the Revelator means when he writes,

Happy the man who reads this prophecy aloud,
and happy those who listen to him, if they keep all that it says,
because the time is near.
Revelation 1:3

We shall be free

Five discoveries or inventions (the original meaning of ‘invention’ was ‘discovery: in old history books, ‘the invention of the Holy Cross’ means ‘the finding of…’) have at various points in our evolution given mankind the ability to become something more than we are by nature. At least one of these occurred in pre-history, one at the dawn of civilization, one inaugurated what would later become the ‘information age’, and the last two are bunched in the lifetimes of people today and threaten to be the precursors of post-history. Without these five, man would be little more than an animal sharing the planet with all other life forms. With them, we have gone from being mere lords of the earth to its possible destroyers.

The first, fire, comes before the dawn of history, that is, before we have written records to ‘prove’ what happened, as in the adage ‘if it didn’t get documented, it didn’t happen.’ Possessing the secret of how to make fire, we became a terror to all creatures. We learned to cook with it. We also used it as the basis of almost every weapon known to humanity. No, swords don’t kill with fire, but you can’t easily make a sword unless you have fire. By fire we also overcame the darkness of night, enabling us to increase our power over others, making them slaves. Labors done by day provided for our basic needs. Working at night made us think of ourselves as ‘gods’. We didn’t have to sleep. We could grow rich and powerful.

The wheel. Almost every ancient people had it sooner or later. A few (American ‘Indians’) used it in making toys but missed its technological application, a fatal mistake. No people without wheels ever got anywhere. They were subsumed under other peoples who road over them in chariots or outwitted them by wagons and pulleys. Almost every mechanical invention derives its possibilities from some form of the wheel. We used it to make the best pottery. We found that rolling it over and over again overland let us transport objects great distances. Running ropes over and under other wheels, we could raise and lower objects too heavy to move any other way. Abstractly, wheels in our heads got other balls rolling.

A third invention, great enough to be included because through it we began to write history, not only make it, was writing. Discovered by many races (maybe independently) all over the planet, it almost guaranteed the continuity of every human endeavor, while at the same time aggravating and sometimes defeating the cultures into which it was introduced. The third invention I am counting is, however, not writing itself, but rather its expansion into every corner of every nation, and into every cell of every mind, through the printing press, through movable type. Here, finally, is the genesis of the real middle class, a new sort of humanity that really believes it can do anything, because it knows everything.

For almost five centuries the third discovery made its inventors and owners lords of the world in a way that no one could have ever foreseen. Personal liberty, economic prosperity, progress in every field, divided the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’. The unbridgeable gap between godlike but godless races and classes on one side, and everyone else on the other, believe what they may, was formed gradually. Christianity is still caught in the middle, trying desperately to bridge the gap without success because it too has been divided between two irreconcilable cliffs. Without forgetting itself and remembering Christ, it cannot begin bridging the gap, for only He is Mediator between man and man, as well as man and God.

The automobile, everywhere the sign and symbol of the ‘new man’, is the fourth invention, standing at the threshold of the ‘modern age’, and in four generations realizing the dreams of every race from the beginning of time, to fly, to glide over the earth effortless and powerfully, to see the world from the vantage point of the gods, to depart and arrive the same day on a journey that on foot might take weeks. To every man, woman and child is power given, and speed, and authority. Behind the steering wheel no one is weak, or slow. No one can be ignored. No one can have his rights trampled. The singular sign of entry into the middle class is the ownership of a car. It makes you ‘lord of the earth’ in a personal way.

The final, the fifth invention is, what do you think? The computer? The internet? These are definitely the bases for it, but they are still generalities, cannot be held in the hand, making that hand all-powerful. The fifth invention is the cell phone. As if created by divine fiat, this device has emerged and in less than a generation has invaded the human race faster than any plague. Overtaking every people and nation, no matter how primitive, making up for uneven technological and cultural development, and granting access to the world of ideas to everyone who has one and knows how to use it. Fire, wheel, printing and automotion, all taken up and culminating in a hand-held divinizer of the human species. Man as god.

‘If something is possible, we can do it,’ is the innate attitude of mankind, and it is put there by the Maker. Why, then, is it that by these five inventions we have not created a paradise planet? The easy answer provided by one religion after another is that we’re somehow flawed as a species. Non-religious man senses this, writes God off as a worthless bungler and proceeds to do the best he can (if he is an idealist), or decides here and now to take advantage of the situation and do the best for himself (since there is no accountability). Clearly, our five inventions and every other revealed by reason (that Divine spark) make us godlike, but always at a price we cannot pay. We shift that burden onto others, to prosper ourselves.

That is the bad news. That is our glory turned to shame. The good news is that the New Man has arrived. He didn’t pay us a mere ‘courtesy call’ or, like the gods of pagan mythology or our modern fantasies, come to tantalize us with what could never be ours. Every one of the five inventions has a flip side, or rather, they were never discoveries of our own but gifts He sent us ahead of Him. He always goes to prepare a place for us. In time, He went ahead to prepare an earth. Beyond time, He goes ahead to prepare a heaven. These five ‘inventions’? We have to let Him show us how to use these things He’s given, unlearn our abuse of them. The good dreams He sends are true. Choosing them, we shall be free.

The faith that sings

It seems difficult to enter into discussion with someone who, by the very slips they display in their challenges, demonstrates at the outset an irrational prejudice against things that are patently undemonstrable or arguable on the basis of discussion at all. Orthodox simply do not 'adore' ikons. To even pose such a inquiry begs the question and supplies its own answer.

Archimandrite Vasileios says something to the effect that dogma cannot be understood outside of worship. The same thing, in my experience, can be asserted of holy and divine scripture. Sitting somewhere and studying the bible can lead us to one set of conclusions, experiencing it in worship leads us to sometimes a very different set, sometimes diametrically opposed.

The question then becomes, what is the Bible after all? Is it a book that fell from heaven infallible and ready to be implemented as the rule of a spiritual police state, as the Muslims believe of the Qur'an? Or is it something quite unexpected and different, a verbal mirror reflecting a living God whose will was to become the Man He always wanted us to be?

If it is a kind of mirror, it shows us ourselves as we are, and Him as He is, and bridges the gap between in such a way that migration from death to life becomes a possibility. Then, we realise that it is not meant for us to analyse the reflective surface of the mirror, which is what it is only so that we can become what He is by seeing Him and following His movements reflected in it.

History shows that the Church has understood since the beginning that the scriptures are without doubt the expression of God’s infallible word, paradoxically eternal and before the Church and yet temporal and within the Church, never over it, but rather the ground which supports it and on which it is being built, and a fertile soil for the fruition and harvest of souls.

The argument against the Orthodox faith and church, waged both on a personal and on an institutional basis, is undercut by the testimony of the fruit that it has itself produced, not very good fruit, and the kind of tree that it has proven itself to be. A very old tree that still produces much good fruit is not likely to be cut down in favor of a young tree whose fruit fails to ripen.

Reality, scientific but even spiritual reality, does not yield itself easily to quantification. Not everything perfect can be reduced to numbers and counted. Reality is not about structure but about relationship. A circle exists, and not three of its diameters make its circumference, but the relationship can be expressed only by π, a constant, though not a number as man thinks it.

All divine things exist and operate in a frame of reference that cannot be encompassed by the human mind. The mistake of proud man is to take ownership and responsibility for what is beyond him in every way, seeking to bend it to fit his expectations. So doing, we kill what is alive, not realizing either what true life is, or that Life has come to pitch His tent among us.

This is the dividing line between religion, whether Christian or non-Christian, and the encounter with Him Who Is. Whether we start out with reams of rules or pages of pictures, neither is complete until we discover that neither was the Truth until both were taken in His hands, transformed by His touch, and given back to us breathing the fragrance of His myrrh-bathed wounds.

Sadly, the Bible’s reputed defenders worship what cannot be worshipped, as they decry us who worship only the Divine Nature, God in Three Persons, for whose love our hearts lean in veneration of all that pertains to Him, even each other, following the only divine commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. A greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.

That is the faith that sings.

Together

εις μίαν, αγίαν, καθολικην και αποστολικην εκκλησίαν…

in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church…

Symbol of Nicæa

God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.

Consequently, the only really adequate instrument for learning about God is the whole Christian community, waiting for Him together. Christian brotherhood is, so to speak, the technical equipment for this science—the laboratory outfit. That is why all these people who turn up every few years with some patent simplified religion of their own as a substitute for the Christian tradition are really wasting time. Like a man who has no instrument but an old pair of field glasses setting out to put all the real astronomers right. He may be a clever chap—he may be cleverer than some of the real astronomers, but he is not giving himself a chance. And two years later everyone has forgotten all about him, but the real science is still going on.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course, everyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.

— C. S. Lewis,

Mere Christianity, Book IV, Ch. 2

Remember who your teachers were.

2 Timothy 3:14

Full or empty

This morning I listened to a recording of traditional Ethiopian music, singing with flutes, strings and drum, as I drove to work. Usually, I do not listen to music when I’m driving to and from work. Instead I often sing and pray, pray and sing, and sometimes just silently think, about life, about God, about the world. This morning, though, I wanted to listen to someone else sing. I was just feeling thankful, because I have one more day.

The music was very joyful and exuberant, and the people were praising their Shepherd, the Lord Jesus. I don’t know their language, but knowing some Hebrew and Arabic, I can sometimes make out in general what they are singing. Their joy was so genuine, even though they were singing for a performance, I don’t believe in their minds and hearts they were performing. Singing praise to the Lord and worshiping Him in their hearts, that seems to be what they are doing all the time. Hearing them touched me very deeply, and for a few moments I was there with them, their hearts and mine bursting with genuine and ineffable joy, making music before the Lord who was, who is, and who is to come, the living God. How can their joy be so real? They sound as if they really are astonished and thankful and raised above themselves.

If my life were simple, if all that was before me was the day, with my simple work to do, my family to provide for, my livestock to herd or my crops and orchards to tend, if my mind had silent places in it, empty places, where I could meet the Lord and speak to Him face to face, where I could hear His voice, then maybe my life would also be so ready to tremble with living joy at the mention of His name, at the remembrance of His mighty deeds, His wonderful victories over death and the grave. When death is so real because it is so near, so is resurrection, so is the reality of eternal life, so are the words of Jesus, the words of His promise, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’ (John 11:25).

But my life is not simple, my empty places few; with the rest of modern Western humanity, I am too full, full of things, full of sounds (I won’t call them music, noise rather), full of relationships (shallow though they be), and worst of all, full of myself. Can there be room for joy when my heart is so protected from danger, risk, even from death behind this phalanx of busyness? Does the modern man believe that if he keeps himself busy, death will not touch him? If he stays as full as possible, crowding his mind and heart with things to watch, listen to, relate to, speculate on, be entertained with, if he flees the barren silence and stark desertedness of being empty, can he escape his own death?

That’s why, I think, we marvel at the spontaneous, unconscious and legitimate joy we hear in the singing of ‘primitive’ people praising and thanking their Savior, why we are attracted to it and want to possess it but cannot quite enter into it ourselves. We enjoy it and seek to possess it, but we end up only with the sound effects without the corresponding feeling, we load it into our store of fullness, and as we do so, we don’t even realize that we are moving in the opposite direction of those joyful singers. They are with Jesus, walking along with Him as He passes through our world, even our world of today, like His invisible escorts. And we, we are with the funeral possession of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), passing Him going the other way. If only He would stop and raise our son!

But we insist on being full, not empty. There is no room for Him in our inn, not to be born there, not to tend the wounded there, even if the wounded is ourselves. Like the rich farmer who boasts to himself, ‘Take it easy, my soul, your barns are full, loaded with all that your heart desires,’ yet to whom the Spirit that wants to lodge inside of us has to speak from without, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you’ (Luke 12:20), and we still don’t realize the Truth: ‘How can the empty behind the full be so abundant?’

Are we full or empty? Have we decided whom to serve, the rich Lord whose followers are all made poor, or the poor Son of Man whose followers are all made rich? It is true as the saints have said, ‘This world is this kind of field: he who owns the biggest part owns the worst part.’ This is not about possessions per se, but on where we store them up, not about materialism but about preoccupation, not about formal faith but about Yes and No. This is about full and empty, which is it? Which is better, which worse? Which have you chosen? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’ What can this possibly mean? Who is it, the rich man who welcomes you readily, or the poor man? And what is poverty?

Full or empty.
Will we be so full that we cannot fly?
Or will they find our tombs as empty as they found the Christ’s?

Gerasenes

Once I prayed, ‘Religion is our protection against You,’ betraying my own self-deception along with the hidden thoughts of countless other hearts. We think we have settled the score and ‘made our peace with God’ when we ‘accepted’ Jesus, so now we have the right to keep our treasures buried, lest they be discovered and plundered, or spent.

The world classifies belief in God as just another private fetish which we are free to indulge in as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. We go along with this charade and wear our ‘public’ religion as a mask, but what is our real religion? Defend our Catholicism or our Orthodoxy or our ‘walk with Jesus’ as we must, but in the dark night of faith, whom do we trust?

True religion, like true worship, is always more than we bargained for. The living God will no more stay ensconced in His distant heaven than the living Christ is willing to remain in His tomb. We may believe our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. We may trust in Him for our salvation. But we live as though our safety consists precisely in making sure He stays away.

Inwardly we plead with Christ more anxiously than the Gerasenes that He leave our town, so we don’t lose any more of our precious pigs.

The psalmist declares, ‘You scour the wicked off the earth like rust,’ but what about the rest of us? Not the ‘wicked’ yet not exactly the ‘righteous’? No, not the righteous at all. We want the wicked to be no more because they too, like our own sins and negligence, are witnesses against us. How happy we should be, if only we, the meek, could inherit the earth, right now!

Save us, O Son of God! Deliver us from our religious fantasy! You fed our ancestors with manna and quails in the wilderness, and still they refused to enter a land of delight. Today, You feed us with Your very self, tendered to us in the mystery of Your Body and Blood, and still we refuse to ascend Your holy mountain, where the Light of transfiguration casts no shadows.

    Yahweh, who has the right to enter Your tent,
    or to live on Your holy mountain?

    The man whose way of life is blameless,
    who always does what is right,
    who speaks the truth from his heart,
    whose tongue is not used for slander,

    who does no wrong to his fellow,
    casts no discredit on his neighbor,
    looks with contempt on the reprobate,
    but honors those who fear Yahweh;

    who stands by his pledge at any cost,
    does not ask interest on loans,
    and cannot be bribed to victimise the innocent.
    If a man does all this, nothing can ever shake him.

Psalm 15, Jerusalem Bible

With eyes wide open

This is nothing at all that I wrote, but rather thoughts that I think, intimations that I feel, and here they are in written form. The author is Fr Stephen, and I have borrowed them to post here, just a few passages that mean a lot to me. Click here to read his entire testimony, titled The Sacrament of the Heart.

In the hands of Christ, bread always becomes His body: all things become what they truly are. In Christ the Kingdom of God is revealed and made manifest. Thus where Christ goes, “the blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Matthew 11:5). The sacramental life is not a special instance in which Christ initiates an ecclesiastical ceremony. What the Church may experience as “ceremony” is nothing other than the revelation of the Kingdom of God. Any claim which is less than that is a denial of the ministry of Christ.
…

The mystery of existence, any existence, is only made clear when seen in the light of Christ. It is this mystery of existence that we properly call sacrament. Things are revealed to be what they truly are when they are brought into proper relation to Christ. It is because the truth of all things is sacramental that we can say this.
…

The quiet life of the heart generally perceives intuitively, dwells in the present, accepts the reality that God gives in the moment. It does not distance or dominate or label. It is not governed by fear or desire and has no need to defend or justify.
…

If the heart does not perceive the sacramentality of all bread, then it will likely be blind to the true mystery of the bread of the Eucharist. In the same manner, those who do not perceive the true mystery found in the saints and the Mother of God, will not be able to see the true life of the people around them. The saints are not of note because they are unusual: they are of note because they reveal our true humanity.
…

It took centuries for those who claimed the name “Christian” to forget the truth of every meal. They would blindly seek to restrict the sacraments and give the land of the Kingdom over to meaninglessness and amnesia. But the Kingdom of God has come in Christ and the whole world is a sacrament. Christians are called to take, bless, break and give with eyes wide-open. Then the wonder of God’s mystery will unfold before us: every morsel of bread revealed to be His Body; every tree His Cross; and every human being a saint. Then we can begin to love as we are loved and become what we already are.

Eden of the Second Adam

The erroneous interpretation of the Sabbath as ‘a day of rest.’

Christ has His own re-education program on this topic, in that the conventional reading of the creation story tells of God making people and then resting, without qualification—it was understood early on that human beings were established as divine proxies. Thus, Christ is able to heal on the Sabbath, because that is what you do, so that God can rest.

The purpose of describing human beings as being made ‘in the image and likeness of God’ was not to draw the distinct relationship with God directly (this was a strictly monarchic benefit/obligation—and yes, Adam is formulated as a ‘natural king’ rather than a king that is coronated) but to establish the circumstances under which God was able to rest.

In other words, being created in the image and likeness of God allowed human beings to dominate the created order as God’s proxy—the created world looked at Adam and Eve and said ‘Yes, there’s God, it is time to stay in line.’ From the perspective of the universe, God, Adam, and Eve were indistinguishable prior to sin, and the sin essentially was what ‘blew their cover’ and gave the universe leeway to disobey.

Had God’s plan not been sidestepped, hundreds, if not millions, of divine proxies would populate the garden, expand and reinforce the domain, allowing God to rest. That is the context of the Sabbath: That we engage our nurturing potential, love one another and be active stewards for the created world. That we emulate the very values you mention above—St Paul is clearly aware of this interpretation, though he is not as explicit in his Genesis reading.

And yet Peter, who is given the keys of the kingdom because he was the only apostle who actually knew what the king of Judah was supposed to be like, well, he was able to extend this metaphor deeply in Acts 2, when he gives the speech at David's tomb, and you have these people now who listen, three thousand accept the challenge to emulate Christ's kingship, and you have, as it were, a new Eden as it is described in what follows:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47

This passage gets misinterpreted often as socialism or communism, but it is in fact the Eden of the Second Adam, where all are kings and queens and all share equal hegemony, rights and responsibility to love each other and the world in full.

— Jacob Aaron Gorny

Just a thought

It’s funny how the four fasts emphasize fasting, probably because the popular definition of fasting revolves around food intake. We could call the four fasts ‘Lent,’ but that would only emphasize the sombre idea of ‘giving up’ something, because that term has been ‘pre-loaded’ with a millennium’s worth of sanctimonious baggage. But if the fasts, such as the current Theotokos Fast, emphasized not constricted food consumption, or the substitution of daily delights (the movies, going out for a drink, computer games) with rigorous prayer marathons, but instead, ‘serving one another with acts of love, of mercy, of benevolence,’ I wonder what we would do during these ‘holy’ seasons.

Looking for you

Starting in Eden, it was not Adam and Eve who went looking for God, ‘but Yahweh God called to the man, “Where are you?” He asked.’
God was looking for man. Later, though Noah could see that the world was full of wickedness, he had no plan, no work to do to fix this problem, but then, ‘God said to Noah, “The end has come for all things of flesh…”’ and gave him the instructions as to what he was to do. Not Noah’s search for God, but God’s search for a man who would obey Him. Our first father Abraham, though he lived among an idolatrous people and was offended, he would have remained there, had not ‘Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you…”’ Again, not man’s search for God, but a living and caring God looking for man. Throughout the Bible, this story, this true story, is repeated over and over again. It’s true that in Psalms, we read things like, ‘I have sought You with my whole heart, do not let me stray from Your commandments,’ but these words are the prayers of one whom God has already found. God looked for him, found him, and now he seeks God. It’s not that we don’t look for God, but that’s not how we find Him: He looks for us, He finds us, we accept Him and what He has done for us, and now we look for the God whom we know, to please Him who is our Savior and Lord.

In all the myths, you never hear of a god looking for man, only men looking for gods. When they don’t find them, since they know that there must be a ‘divine something,’ they comfort themselves with man-made gods and religions. Planting these seeds, they obtain trees which bear fruit after their own kind, from ancient times down to the present, fruit that may give wisdom and knowledge, but can never give eternal life.

But here we have a God, the God, who is looking for man, and when He finds him, there is no such thing as religion anymore. ‘I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.’ When He finds us, He plants in us His own seed, that grows in us and bears fruit after its own kind, fruit that will last, the fruit of eternal life. He is always looking for man. He is looking for me. He is looking for you.

Metamórphosis

Everything about this day bespeaks transformation.

After attending the Divine Liturgy this morning and receiving into me the very pledge of the théosis promised in this solemn, high feast of Metamórphosis, I returned to earth to shop for my weekly groceries—in keeping with the Fast, soy milk and rice cereal for my breakfasts, fruit, especially grapes, and vegetarian entrées for my lunches at work—these are the comestibles of Lent, but that’s all they are. The real Fast, the great Fast, is kept invisibly within, and tangibly without, ‘Eat anything! anything you like! just not the flesh of the brethren!’

But the feast, as always hidden from the world—God is so shy! He doesn’t want to frighten us into submission—the feast was celebrated by a congregation of two or three dozen people in all, including the priests and cantors, out of a community of eight hundred families. Yes, hidden from the world, but hidden also from ourselves. The grape harvest was in, too, and how fitting, as the holy day of Christ’s transfiguration on Mount Tabor was anciently appointed as the day of blessing of the grape harvest—and so I blessed and ate grapes for my lunch!

Metamórphosis, transformation, or as the normal English translation of the name of this feast day, Transfiguration. These words all have something to do with the change of shape or form, but what we are celebrating in this event is not that kind of change. True, the three disciples, Peter, James and John, saw Jesus standing, talking to the prophet Elijah and the lawgiver Moses, and His face was as bright as the sun, and His garments whiter than any bleach could make them, but their experience was not just visual, it wasn’t something only taken in by their eyes.

They heard a Voice, ‘This is My Son, the Beloved, hear Him!’ issuing from the depths of a bright cloud, words which down the ages every false prophet and religion-monger has taken to himself, claiming to be somehow what Jesus is, but always failing, miserably. No one has ever had these words spoken about him, but Jesus, son of Joseph, Messiah of Israel, who was proclaimed by His resurrection from the dead, the God-Man. The Voice could have spoken these words of Jesus as His body hung on the Cross, shamefully mutilated and despised, but it did not.

Instead, in the dead of night, the darkest night, on a mountain top, a very high mountain, in the presence of only three mere humans, and two human souls suspended in the loving memory of the Father, two souls whom He brought into His active memory to show them His Son, rewarding them for their labors and suffering. We do not know what Jesus was saying to them. We do not know why He chose that day and hour to reveal to the dead and the living the One who was the Life of both, but that is what the Father did, and not without the Holy Spirit.

Here we have the second ikon in the New Testament record of the revelation of the Divine Nature as Holy Triad, the first being at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. There too the Voice spoke. There too the Spirit Holy descended and stayed on Him. Now, for a second time, for the second and last time, the Divine Nature reveals Himself, Father speaking His word of command, Son revealing to man the very face of the Father in all glory, Spirit enfolding and brightening not just the Father and Son, but the dead and the living as well, welcoming man into God Himself.

There is another ikon of the Divine Nature as Holy Triad, and it’s the one most people think of when they remember the Holy Trinity. It is the three Angels seated at table, usually with Abram and Sarai in the background, serving them. This ikon is yet a premonition of the Reality that would unfold in the events marking the beginnings and endings of the earthly ministry of the Messiah of Israel, an ikon shadowy as it were, obscure and full of mystery, questions not answers. The ikons of Theophany and Metamorphosis, the Baptism and the Transfiguration, not so.

Not shadowy, obscure, but full of light. Both feasts are associated with the Light of Christ—Theophany is called ‘Tón Photón’ or ‘[Feast] of the Lights’—and here we have the feast in which Christ is revealed as not only the Light but the Source of all Light, the Metamórphosis, the transformation, matter transmuted into energy, which is what it always was, is, and will be. Even human science itself may one day catch up to this Truth, which much of theology has fruitlessly busied itself speculating about rather than experiencing. What Truth are we talking about? No, not what, but Who.

Once again, the Divine Nature breaks in upon our private conversations, both inner and outer, to reveal Himself as not what, but Who, as One, yet Three, as Divine, yet Human, and opens a door of welcome into Himself not as things but as persons, welcoming human beings to become what He created them to be, partakers of the Divine Nature, not cosmic dust, co-workers with Him in the garden universe, co-redeemers with Him of all of nature, which waits with longing and expectation for the revelation of the sons of God, for Metamórphosis, the restoration of Creation.

Now, let’s go and finish blessing the grapes…

Originally posted August 6, 2011

Except for Jesus

‘I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner.’

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

This is of course very true, that if and as we pray, intercede, for others, we cannot condemn or hate them. I wish I could say that this is a truth in general practice, but it is not. By and large the Church of today does not pray, even when it goes through the motions formally in liturgies and litanies, even when it gathers in little clutches of ‘Spirit-filled’ prayer. No matter where you go in Christianity today, real prayer is at a bare minimum, carried on probably more in private, in ones, twos and threes, perhaps a few more, but still pitifully thin. So should it surprise us that the churches are in the state they're in?

Bonhoeffer says, ‘A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed’ (ibid.). This is rather strong language, but is it true? I think it is. What we see around us is in fact destroyed Christian communities. Notice he didn’t say, ‘annihilated’ but ‘destroyed.’ I would be interested to know whether the word he used was zerstört (German, utterly destroyed) or some other expression.

Coming from America's greatest poet, ‘no man has ever yet been half devout enough; none has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough,’ and these words coming from a man who was certainly not a mainstream Christian, if he was a Christian at all. Yet, I agree with him, adding, ‘no man has ever yet prayed enough, interceded enough,’ and I can say that with only one objective piece of evidence—myself.

I don't know what else to say. I try to pray without ceasing. I even pray while I am consciously sinning, if you can call that prayer. Yet, even my standing before God as I am in complete confession of my sinful state, trusting in His mercy and grace alone to save me from myself, I know that the greater sin is my inability or lack of dedication to pray, asking for the needs of the brethren. I hold up the lives of those I love, but rarely those I hate, or am indifferent to. And my prayer to Him, to help me to pray better, to intercede more manfully, seems to me to be pure hypocrisy.

In the end, I can only say, ‘Father, let it be unto me according to Your will, not according to my deeds, for I am pitiful, blind and lost, except for Jesus.’