| The other apostles, who came to Christ already in mature years, or who did not immediately and decisively follow Him in the days of their youth, were more strongly tried by the weight of the spiritual flesh, and only by many labors did they attain to the ascension to the third heaven. John, who from his earliest youth strove diligently towards purity of heart, gave his heart to Christ as soon as he saw Him, although he himself was not free from the attacks of sinful thoughts and temptations, but easily deflected and conquered them. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Mt 5:8). With a clean heart, John, while still in the flesh on earth, was raised in his spirit to the very Throne of God and, seeing His beloved Lord Jesus sitting on it with the Father, proclaimed with a loud voice to all the word: In the beginning with the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1). In his Gospel he lays the foundation for the dogmatic teachings of the Church, and discloses the primary foundation of Christian life: the commandment of love. Being filled with love for the Creator of all, the Word, he is full of love for His creation, and thereby comes to know the Divine Nature and Divine Providence, to the extent that this is possible for man. Thus John, “full of this love, and being full of this theology,” and proclaiming the universal and most-elevated doctrine of the Word of God, was made the “founder of our pure faith” (verse on “Glory”), or the foundation-layer of Orthodox Christian theology. John is called the Theologian, inasmuch as it is he who chiefly uncovers and proclaims the doctrine of the Word of God, and along with it all the lofty Christian doctrine of God. Besides John, the Church has given the title of Theologian only to the great Church Father, St Gregory the Theologian, and also recognizes St Symeon the New Theologian. What distinguishes St Gregory the Theologian? Again, the same qualities as John the Theologian: purity of heart, a striving for God from earliest youth, and a complete giving-over of himself to Him. |
| Fr. Steve Tsichlis: Your Eminence, we believe of course that the Eucharist is objectively as you said the presence of Christ. Can the Eucharist work effectively within the soul of a person who is not also as Saint Paul says, “working out his salvation with fear and trembling?” What’s the connection between the grace given to us in the Sacraments and our personal effort or synergia in practicing the faith? Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: You have rightly said that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an objective presence. It does not depend on the faith of the priest, the faith of the people, or the faith of the individual communicant. Christ is present even if our faith is weak. If someone receives Communion without sincerity, not believing that it is the body and blood of Christ, nevertheless they do indeed receive the body and blood of Christ. But, if they lack faith they will not receive the grace of Communion, the effects of it, the fruits of the Sacrament. They will receive the body and blood of Christ but if they lack faith they will receive the Sacrament not for the healing of soul and body, not for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life; they will receive the Sacrament to their own condemnation. And this is what Saint Paul says very clearly that if you come to the Sacrament not discerning the Lord’s body, you will receive it to your own damnation. Those are his words, not mine. But, I accept what he says. So if we come unbelieving, we do indeed receive the Sacrament but without faith the fruits of the Sacrament will not be shown and will not be apparent in our life. Fr. Steve Tsichlis: Your Eminence, you have written a great deal about Saint Symeon the New Theologian , about personal experience of the Holy Spirit, and of course that was one of Saint Simeon’s emphases. Can you talk a little bit more about the sacramental life and our experience of Christ – our experience of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental life? Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: Yes. Saint Symeon the New Theologian, like earlier fathers such as Saint Mark the Monk , places a great deal of emphasis upon the sacrament of baptism. |
| —Metropolitan John (Snychev) Refraining from anger and wrath is our personal work and it requires great ascetic labor; but becoming immoveable and acquiring perfect calmness of heart and perfect meekness—this can only be the work of God in us. —St. Symeon the New Theologian A Christian cannot produce any desired change in himself of his own accord, and Christ will not reward him for any such change if he does not commit himself to Christ with all his heart. —St. Symeon the New Theologian On the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian Great Lent. Sretensky Monastery. Photo V. Kornushin/Pravoslavie.ru " O Lord and Master of my life! A spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and vain talk give me not; but rather a spirit of chastity, humble-mindedness, patience and love bestow upon me Thy servant. [And further, Yeah O Lord King, grant me to see my failings and not condemn my brother, for Thou art holy unto the ages of ages.] " This is the prayer that you, brothers and sisters, have heard many times in church during these days. It was written by St. Ephraim the Syrian, a pastor and teacher of the flock of Christ, who lived in the fourth century A.D. and left this inheritance to the Church; and the Church has commanded that we pronounce it during the days of Great Lent at every divine service, except on Saturdays and Sundays. Why did the holy Church introduce this prayer and not another into the services of Great Lent? In order to remind us what we must ask and beg of the Lord at the threshold of fasting and repentance. Just as a mother guards her children from catching a cold, so does the Church guard us now from temptation, hinting to us about the angle that temptations make take against us and by what means we can deflect them. Feeling the tenderness of the Church's maternal care for our salvation, let us redouble our attention and enter into accord with her good intentions for us, and follow her instructions as children follow their mothers' counsel. When the holy Church has us pray to the Lord during fasting and repentance for the banishment from us of the spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and vain talk, she shows that this particular spirit attacks us during the time of Lent more than at any other. In fact, what time is more convenient for exercise in God's word than the time dedicated to preparing ourselves for confession and Communion? Yet it is during this time that the spirit of idleness tempts us the most! What time is more opportune for spiritual contemplation than the time dedicated to attending church and hearing there soul-saving prayers, readings, and hymns? Yet it is during this time that impure thoughts enter our thoughts! What time is better for exercising silence than the time of repentance? And yet this is the time that we most tend to engage in the vain talk! |
| St. Theophan the Recluse tells that we should always do our best in school, or with work training, that we should use the minds the God blessed us with to the best of our ability – always remembering to give thanks to God. To do all things for the glory of God. But we don’t remember St. Gregory because of his intelligence or his education. We remember and honor him because of his relationship with Christ. From the time he could read, his mother made sure that he had holy books to read, especially the Holy Scriptures. He not only trained himself in the way of the world, but he focused also on the training of his heart and of his soul. We know he was intelligent, and we can assume that he had a great deal of intellectual understanding of his Christian faith. His father was a bishop, his family was very pious; he was raised in the Church and in that environment of real focus and dedication to Christ. But he understood that simply reading the Bible and believing the events wasn’t enough. He had to live the words of Christ to truly understand their meaning. We call St. Gregory “the Theologian.” Only three saints of our Church have that title – St. John (writer of the Gospel, Epistles and Revelation), St. Gregory, and St. Symeon the New Theologian (who lived in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, and wrote extensively about the mystical and spiritual life of the Christian). To define what a theologian in the Orthodox Church means, we’ll use the words of St. Gregory – he writes that only those who are experienced can properly reason about God, those who are successful at contemplation and, most importantly, who are pure in soul and body, and utterly selfless. To reason (theologize) about God properly is possible only for one who enters into it with fervor and reverence. To be a theologian in this sense requires an absolute and uncompromising cooperation with the grace of God in every aspect of one’s lives. Knowing God, loving God and our fellowman, ascending from our baseness and sinfulness to the glory and majesty of God – this is the theologian/saints only desire. |
| Baptism, though, confers not only the Holy Spirit. The Fathers also affirm that through baptism " the Lord is in us, " united to us and we to him, as Bride and Bridegroom. Thus the ritual also signifies a sacred marriage, a nuptial union, as proclaimed in Ephesians 5. In the words of St Mark the Ascetic, " at baptism, Christ comes to live at the altar of the heart. " In his work on Orthodox Spirituality, Fr Dumitru Staniloe transposes this affirmation onto a mystical plane, declaring that " at baptism [Jesus] is in me, a supreme kenosis " (p. 227). Baptism confers not only the Spirit, it also creates a union between the believer and the Son. The Father sends both the Son and the Spirit to dwell within and to sanctify those who submit themselves to rebirth, in faith and in love. And thereby the Father fulfills the work of what St Irenaeus of Lyon called " his two Hands. " Finally, the Fathers affirm, baptism sets us on the pathway toward " deification. " It creates the conditions -- ecclesial and eucharistic -- by which those who allow themselves to be led by the Spirit can pass through the ascetic stages of purification and illumination, to arrive at last at union with and communion in the God of love. Baptism, however, can only be realized in the life of a person insofar as he or she accepts to make that pilgrimage with a certain ascetic discipline that focuses on repentance. St Peter of Damascus (11th-12th c. ?), St Symeon the New Theologian and many others, make the point repeatedly that baptismal renewal demands asceticism, a gradual dying with Christ. This they see achieved through a purification of the passions by the keeping of God " s commandments. Baptismal grace remains hidden in the heart, St Symeon insists, until it is activated by the energy of the Holy Spirit (Practical and Theological Texts, 74ff). This suggests that acquisition of that grace requires a " synergy, " cooperation between God and the human person, in which God takes the initiative but we respond with faith, obedience, and a relentless struggle against our innermost impulses that make us rebel against the divine will and reject divine mercy. |
| Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:1-8) looks to the New Year 2022. It opens with a powerful message and also a clarion call. We read: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight!” The message is about the gospel of Christ. The call is to prepare the way of Christ and to make His paths straight in our Church and in our lives during 2022. The message is our spiritual foundation, the good news of the gospel. The call is to live according to the spirit and teachings of Christ; it beckons our hearts and minds to the promise of new life, a turning of the page of anxiety and frustration to a new horizon of hope and calm in Jesus Christ. The text speaks only of the beginning of the gospel. This beginning was the witness of John the Baptist. Later the entire ministry of Jesus, from Baptism to death and resurrection, is presented as good news for the world. The beginning of the gospel for St. Mark and all of the Evangelists is the witness and testimony to Christ by John the Baptist, a strange figure to modern eyes but nonetheless the voice of God for the Evangelists. John was a prophet, a messenger of God, “the voice in the wilderness,” who anticipated the coming of Christ and cried out: “Prepare the ways of the Lord; make His paths straight!” Many heeded the testimony and joined the spiritual revolution that Jesus started. Others rejected the testimony which led to the paradox of the death and humiliation of Jesus by crucifixion. But God in His wisdom and goodness worked things out for the salvation of humanity. By the power of God’s Spirit, Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, opening a boundless source of grace and renewal for our lives. “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make His paths straight!” What is the way of Christ? How do we make His paths straight? We come to Christ from different households, different experiences, different jobs and duties, different ideas and convictions. But the way of the Lord is one and the same for all of us according to St. Symeon the New Theologian, a tenth century Church Father. The way of Christ is the way of love as exemplified and taught by Him. He said: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you . . . By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). |
| As different as Bangkok was, I am sure the kingdom of heaven will be even more radically different. And I wonder if many of us will undergo culture shock when we try to settle there. The City of God, the New Jerusalem described by John the Theologian in the Book of Revelation, sounds rather foreign: And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. (Rev. 4:8) The constant singing, the twenty-four-hour-a-day worship, and the many-eyed and many-winged angels make for a culture very different from that of my small town in Pennsylvania; even different from stranger places like New York or Los Angeles. Perhaps the degree of culture shock we shall encounter in the kingdom of heaven depends upon how far we are from it today. Of course, we are heirs of the kingdom (James 2:5), but the Fathers of the Church teach us that the kingdom of heaven is accessible now. For example, Symeon the New Theologian wrote, “seek, knock, that the door to the Kingdom of Heaven be opened and you may enter into it and have it within you.” Similarly, Isaac the Syrian said that “the stairway to the kingdom of heaven is within you, secret in your soul.” If we have the kingdom of God within us, if we are used to worshiping with the angels, then we cannot feel out of place when we take our great sabbatical leave to the heavenly kingdom. Source: Touchstone You might also like: Culture Shock and the Orthodox Church Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Culture Shock Thomas S. Buchanan My family and I recently had an opportunity to spend a few days in Bangkok. One of the perks of being a professor is that occasionally you get to go on sabbatical, so the Buchanans headed for the farthest place from work: Australia. But Bangkok was a stop along the way, so we decided to venture out ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| Today many churches are being built, restored, and renovated – which witnesses to the demand for Orthodoxy, its enduring relevance, and its vitality and spiritual power. Churches in Russia and other Orthodox countries are filled with people, and those Orthodox people who are forced to leave their homelands look for churches abroad, because they neither want nor can live without the Church. And this holy church, in which we have gathered today, stands on scaffolding and is being restored, both because it is in demand, and because people need it. Never – neither in the pre-Revolutionary era, nor between the world wars, nor in the post-war period – have as many people gathered in this church as in recent years. What draws them here? The divine services, the icons, the church singing? All three. But above all, it is because here, in church, people encounter the Living God Himself in prayer and the Holy Mysteries. And nothing can replace that encounter. The Triumph of Orthodoxy consists in the fact that, over the course of many centuries, the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church has remained inviolate; it has, as before, preserved the same Apostolic faith, the Patristic faith, the Orthodox faith, which was preached by the Fathers and Teachers of the Church. Do many in today’s Western so-called “post-Christian” world know the names and read the works of Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, and Gregory Palamas? At best, these names are known by scholars: professors and academics, who study the works of the Holy Fathers as monuments of the past, as museum exhibits. But Orthodox people read the works of these Fathers; for them, these works are a testimony of faith that refresh and animate people’s hearts just as they would have done ten or fifteen centuries ago. Do many today in the West read the works of the ascetic and spiritual writers of the ancient Church? But the Orthodox – monks and laity – read these books and guide their spiritual life by them. Once a professor from a Western theological faculty visited St. Silouan, who lived in the first half of the twentieth century on Athos, and asked him: “What do your monks read?” Silouan replied: “Macarius of Egypt, Isaac the Syrian, Symeon the New Theologian, The Philokalia .” The professor was astonished: “With us, only learned theologians read these books.” Silouan said: “Our monks not only read these books but, if these books were lost, they could write new ones, no worse than the previous ones.” |
| Those who went against this law of death and corruption – who rebelled against the devil and enslavement to sin – were like a small branch cut from this bush of mankind and then transplanted through an operation (the flood) to a new land. The bush itself was flooded by the waters, just as a gardener cuts a rare sort of currant from the top, transplants the cutting to a new place, and burns up the bush. So too did the Lord destroy the part of humanity that was hopeless for eternal life. The Virgin Mary was given the opportunity to bring salvation into the world. All these people took a different path than that of Eve. They strove to fulfill the will of God and, fulfilling it, to bring mankind to that plan that He had prepared for them. The Promised Child The Mother of God comes into this world as a child of promise. Her parents, Joachim and Anna, were censured by the Jews for not having children – and therefore they would be erased from the history of salvation, for they did not have any hope to participate in the history of humanity. It is to them that the Virgin in born. They vowed that, when they would bear a child, they would dedicate it to God… We celebrate the Nativity of the Mother of God, because in her the Lord finds a place for Himself. As St. Gregory Palamas explains, the Word of God was not just the law for the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, but could Himself become incarnate and become man, taking on human nature cleansed from sin through her ascesis, her prayer, and her meekness and self-control. The Living Book of the Pre-Eternal Word Nicholas Cabasilas, a contemporary of Gregory Palamas, says that the Mother of God became a living book containing not only the Law, but also the Lawgivers. He says that she gave us not only what we had lost in Adam and Eve, but that God gave us something even greater: something that Adam and Eve did not have. But if the Lord had not found the first in the Virgin Mary, He could not have found it in the second. When we celebrate the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, glorifying the Mother of God along with her parents, we understand that we are also called to offer a particular gift to God: our own heart. Laying aside our own sins and passions, let us become real and genuine. For it is because God will be born in our hearts – in the daring words of Symeon the New Theologians, so that we ourselves would ascend into the order of the Theotokos – that our life might be permeated with the light of Christ and that others might attain the Kingdom of God and eternal life through us. Amen. |
| But every person can only understand things to a certain degree, and his understanding of whatever he encounters will always depend on his life and spiritual experience. So it’s not difficult to guess that a Greek, a Jew or an Egyptian of the third century heard the Gospel in a different way than an American of the Twentieth Century. But if this difference is inevitable then how can we choose the understanding that would correspond to the faith of the first Christian communities in the most accurate way? Orthodoxy carried through the ages the understanding of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth given by the first generations of (mostly) Middle East Christians. Of course this initial experience was enriched and expanded, something was dimmed in it, something flashed brighter, but continuity from the ancient times has been preserved. In my opinion this tradition of reading the Gospel is historically and spiritually deeper and more reliable than the attempts of looking at it through the modern secular culture. Orthodox theology honestly states: we interpret the Gospel. We cannot understand the Gospel unless we interpret it. Interpretation is inevitable. The way Christ was tempted in the desert shows us that Scripture is not self-sufficient: it is the lines from Scripture that the devil uses to tempt Him. “Nowadays the devil, just as he did when he tempted Christ, uses Scriptures to prove that Christianity can exist without the Church”. The apostle Peter warned: “No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Peter, 1:20). If the Scripture were understandable by itself Paul would not have had to explain it in such a sophisticated manner. Would it be clear without his help what the story with the two wives of Abraham means (Gal. 4:21-31)? A letter is not enough, one needs the Spirit. That means we should think about how we can step onto this “holy ground”. We are warned that we can only step there “with shoes off” (see Ex. 3:5) and where the Lord Himself will show us the final sense of what He wrote in Gospel. “He who has acquired consciously within himself the Teacher of spiritual knowledge has gone through all Scripture, has gained all that is to be gained from reading, and will no longer have need to resort to books. How is this? The person who is in communion with Him who inspired those who wrote the Divine Scriptures, and is initiated by Him into the undivulged secrets of the hidden mysteries, will himself be an inspired book to others—a book containing old and new mysteries and written by the hand of God.“ – wrote Symeon the New Theologian in the 10 th century. For an adequate interpretation of the sacred text one needs the spiritual experience coming from the same Source as that of the authors of the Bible. People who have this experience in its complete fullness are called saints by the Church. As Fr. Sergey Bulgakov once declared saints are “religious geniuses”. |
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