| 2010 Epistle from the Ecumenical Patriarch for the (New Calendar) Nativity of Christ BARTHOLOMEW By the Mercy of God Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch To the Plenitude of the Church Grace, Peace and Mercy from the Savior Christ Born in Bethlehem Beloved brother concelebrants and blessed children in the Lord, Within the somber atmosphere that recently prevails throughout the world with the diverse affliction of the financial, social, moral and especially spiritual crisis, which has created increasing frustration, bitterness, confusion, anxiety, disappointment and fear among many people with regard to the future, the voice of the Church sounds sweet: Come, O faithful, let us raise our minds to things divine and behold the heavenly condescension that has appeared to us from above in Bethlehem … (Hymn from the 6th Hour, Christmas) The unshakeable belief of Christians is that God does not simply or indifferently observe from above the journey of humanity, which He has personally created according to His image and likeness. This is why the incarnation of His only-begotten Son and Word was from the very beginning His “good will,” His original intention. His “pre-eternal will” was precisely to assume in His person, in an act of extreme love, the human nature that He created in order to render it “a participant of divine nature.” (2 Peter 1.4) Indeed, God willed this prior to the “fall” of Adam and Eve, even before their very creation! Following the “fall” of Adam and Eve, the “pre-eternal will” of the Incarnation embraced the Cross, the Sacred Passion, the Life-giving Death, the Descent into Hades, and the Resurrection after three days. In this way, the sin that infiltrated human nature thereby infecting everything and the death that surreptitiously penetrated life were completely and definitively dispelled, while humanity was able to enjoy the fullness of the Paternal and eternal heritage. However, the divine condescension of Christmas is not restricted to things related to eternity. It also includes things related to our earthly journey. Christ came into the world in order to spread the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven and to initiate us into this Kingdom. Yet, He also came in order to help and heal human weakness. He miraculously and repeatedly fed the multitudes who listened to His word; He cleansed lepers; He supported paralytics; He granted light to the blind, hearing to the deaf and speech to the dumb; He delivered the demonized of impure spirits, resurrected the dead, supported the rights of the oppressed and abandoned; He condemned illegal wealth, heartlessness to the poor, hypocrisy and “hubris” in human relations; He offered Himself as an example of voluntary self-emptying sacrifice for the sake of others! |
| Having discussed also the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty, the archpastors decreed: 1. To decree to the abbots and abbesses and rectors of the monasteries and parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia to commemorate the Royal Passion-Bearers during the dismissal of Liturgies in the following manner: “The Holy Righteous Passion-Bearers Tsar-Martyr Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexei, Tsarevnas Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; Holy Martyrs Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Nun Barbara and those martyred with them,” to commence on January 1/14 until the end of 2013. 2. And before the veneration of the cross during the first Sunday of Great Lent, to sing Eternal Memory to the Righteous Tsars and Tsarinas of the Romanov Dynasty and to “all members of the family of the All Russian Royal House,” in accordance with the Rite of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. 3. The general celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty will be held at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Toronto, Canada, on September 5-8, 2013, to coincide with a Russian Orthodox conference and a session of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. At the proposal of Bishop Peter, the Synod decided: “To instruct the clergymen of all monasteries and churches of the Russian Church Abroad, on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ, to prayerfully mark the 200th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon, commemorating Righteous Tsar Alexander Pavlovich and all the Orthodox leaders and warriors who laid down their lives for the Faith, the Tsar and Fatherland.” Discussing the practice of divine services in the Russian Church Abroad, the members of the Synod of Bishops noted the importance of preserving traditions inherited from the holy fathers, founders of the part of the Russian Orthodox Church located abroad, and carefully examining persons preparing for ordination into the clerical ranks and those wishing to be received into the bosom of the Russian Church Abroad. |
| The inextricable link between the Heavenly and the earthly Churches was manifested by the canonization of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev, 1881-1950) of Boguchary, that took place at this Bishops’ Council. Archbishop Seraphim performed his ministry in Bulgaria where he ended his earthly pilgrimage. This saint set an example of righteous life and fervent and unfeigned love for his flock, and was glorified by God during his lifetime by blessed gifts and after his demise by miracle-working. In the following words, well-founded, strong and striking, he emphasized the necessity to zealously preserve the Orthodox faith: An important characteristic of the Church is immutability in her dogmatic and moral and canonical teaching which comes from God Himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ It is this immutability of the teaching of the Orthodox Church which has preserved the apostolic faith in all its purity that distinguishes her from all other Christian confessions . It is by this awareness that the Russian Orthodox Church has been and always will be guided. Rejoicing at seeing that the people of God have ever deeper veneration for saints pleasing unto God, the Sacred Council blessed the church-wide veneration of the synaxis of saints who had been locally venerated before, including the Passion-Bearer Yevgeny (Botkin), the doctor who had died together with the Royal Passion-Bearers. His church-wide veneration acquires special importance now when the Church seeks to find out the ultimate truth about the murder of the Royal Family. These days a new stage has begun in examining the remains found in Yekaterinburg and allegedly belonging to the Royal Family. The Sacred Bishops’ Council insists on an unbiased and comprehensive scientific expertise, since for the Church the remains of passion-bearers are holy relics. The remains found in Yekaterinburg may be regarded as such only provided that any smallest doubt in their authenticity is dispelled. The Russian Orthodox Church prays for the restoration of peace in the long-suffering Ukrainian land, since the armed confrontation is going on in the southeast of the country. At a time when churches are being seized and the children of the canonical Church are being persecuted, the Council calls upon her faithful to pray ever more zealously for the bishops, clergy, monastics and laypeople of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. |
| This year Orthodox Christians and the Catholics are celebrating Easter on the same day – but this is not always the case. In fact, there are many distinct reasons why many a year the Orthodox Church celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on a different day than the Catholics. We spoke with Fr. Jon Magnolias, a Greek-Orthodox priest at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Modesto, CA, and asked him to explain what factors determine if the Orthodox Church celebrates Pascha (Easter) on the same day the Catholic church does. His explanation is below and clarifies the matter immensely: “As Greek-Orthodox Christians prepare to celebrate Easter on Sunday, April 16th, we would like to shed some light on the reasons why the Orthodox Christian Church celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ later than the Catholic one. While the issue is somewhat complicated, it may be summarized in the two factors at work that cause this conflict in dates: 1) The issue of the calendar; and 2) the adherence by the Orthodox to the early practices of the Christian Church. The first factor, the calendar, has to do with the fact that the Christian Orthodox Church continues to follow the Julian calendar when calculating the date of Pascha (Easter). The rest of Christianity uses the Gregorian calendar. There is a thirteen-day difference between the two calendars, the Julian calendar being thirteen (13) days behind the Gregorian. The other factor at work is that the Orthodox Church continues to adhere to the rule set forth by the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea in 325 AD, that requires that Pascha must take place after the Jewish Passover in order to maintain the Biblical sequence of Christ’s Passion. The rest of Christianity ignores this requirement, which means that on occasion Western Easter takes place either before or during the Jewish Passover.” The end result is that the Orthodox Church usually celebrates Easter as much as five weeks later than Western Churches. However, this year is an exception as Orthodox Easter in 2017 is on the same days as the Catholic celebrations. One thing worth noting is that this the last time that the two Churches will share Easter celebrations until 2025! Recently, the Easter holiday has fallen on the same day in 2010, 2011, 2014, as the two dates coincide only when the full moon following the equinox counts as the first full moon after March 21 in the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Africa, Orthodoxy in JUSTIN M. LASSER Christianity on the African continent begins its story, primarily, in four separate locales: Alexandrine and Coptic Egypt, the North African region surrounding the city of Carthage, Nubia, and the steppes of Ethiopia. The present synopsis will primarily address the trajectories of the North African Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the Nubian Orthodox Church. The affairs of Christian Alexandria and the Coptic regions have their own treatments elsewhere in the encyclopedia. ROMAN-COLONIAL NORTH AFRICA After the Romans sacked the city of Carthage in 146 during the Third Punic War, they began a sustained colonizing campaign that slowly transformed the region (modern Tunisia and Libya) into a partially “Romanized” society. In most instances, however, the cultural transformations were superficial, affecting predominantly the trade languages and local power structures. It was Julius Caesar who laid the plans for Carthage’s reemergence as Colonia Junonia in 44 bce. This strong colonial apparatus made North African Christians especially susceptible to persecution by the Roman authorities on the Italian Peninsula. Because the economic power of Carthage was an essential ingredient in the support of the citizens in the city of Rome, the Romans paid careful attention to the region. The earliest extant North African Christian text, the Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs (180 ce), reflects a particularly negative estimation of the Roman authorities. Saturninus, the Roman proconsul, made this appeal to the African Christians: “You can win the indulgence of our ruler the Emperor, if you return to a sensible mind.” The Holy Martyr Speratus responded by declaring: “The empire of this world I know not; but rather I serve that God, whom no one has seen, nor with these eyes can see. I have committed no theft; but if I have bought anything I pay the tax; because I know my Lord, the King of kings and Emperor of all nations.” This declaration was a manifestation of what the Roman authorities feared most about the Christians – their proclamation of a “rival” emperor, Jesus Christ, King of kings. The Holy Martyr Donata expressed that sentiment most clearly: “Honor to Caesar as Caesar: but fear to God.” Within the Roman imperial fold such declarations were not merely interpreted as “religious” expressions, but political challenges. As a result the Roman authorities executed the Scillitan Christians, the proto-martyrs of Africa. Other such persecutions formed the character and psyche of North African Christianity. It became and remained a “persecuted” church in mentality, even after the empire was converted to Christianity. |
| When the truth of icon-veneration had triumphed definitively, the honor fell to St. Lazarus Zographos to install an icon of Christ in the very place where the mad heresy had begun. St. Lazarus painted an icon of the Savior on the Chalke Gate, opening to the palace courtyard, from which the iconoclasts had earlier toppled the icon. St. Lazarus Zographos St. Lazarus magnanimously prayed for his torturers his entire life, and the Lord heard his prayer. The holy iconographer’s tormentor, Emperor Theophilus, repented before his death and was forgiven by the Fathers of the Council of Constantinople in 843. The Council of Constantinople once again – and definitively – affirmed the right of the faithful to venerate the holy icons. It was then that the radiant feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy was established. The Holy Patriarch Methodius, a multitude of clergy, the Empress Theodora, her young son the Emperor, and jubilant crowds of people walked through the Royal City with holy icons, placing them in all the churches of the city. Having returned to the true faith, the capital of the Empire once again began to be adorned with holy things. The incorrupt relics of the Holy Patriarch Germanus and of St. Theodore the Studite were brought to Constantinople, the first sacred bodies of passion-bearers who had suffered under the heresy of iconoclasm to appear there. Then one of the greatest of sacred objects, the head of the Lord’s Forerunner, was also returned to the Royal City. St. John the Baptist appeared in a vision to Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople, showing him where his precious head was hidden. It was found in Comana and, to the great joy of the Orthodox, once again returned to the reigning city, where it was made available for veneration. Once again a stream of miracles gushed forth onto the faithful from the Baptist’s divinely-wise head. The victory over the heresy of iconoclasm laid the foundation for the universal feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which from then to the present day has been celebrated by all the Local Churches. This triumph placed a full stop, as it were, to Orthodoxy’s centuries-old struggle with distortions of the holy faith, instilled by the devil through vain heretics. |
| And because a full account of his life is given in the Acts of the Apostles, I only say this, that the twenty-fifth year after our Lord " s passion, that is the second of Nero, at the time when Festus Procurator of Judeasucceeded Felix, he was sent bound to Rome, and remaining for two years in free custody, disputed daily with the Jewsconcerning the advent of Christ. It ought to be said that at the first defense, the power of Nero having not yet been confirmed, nor his wickedness broken forth to such a degree as the histories relate concerning him, Paul was dismissed by Nero, that the gospel of Christ might be preached also in the West. As he himself writes in the second epistle to Timothy, at the time when he was about to be put to death dictating his epistle as he did while in chains; At my first defense no one took my part, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their account. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me; that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and that all the Gentiles might hear, and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion – clearly indicating Nero as lion on account of his cruelty. And directly following he says The Lorddelivered me from the mouth of the lion and again shortly The Lord delivered me from every evil work and saved me unto his heavenly kingdom, for indeed he felt within himself that his martyrdom was near at hand, for in the same epistle he announced for I am already being offered and the time of my departure is at hand. He then, in the fourteenth year of Nero on the same day with Peter, was beheaded at Rome for Christ " s sake and was buried in the Ostian way, the twenty-seventh year after our Lord " s passion. He wrote nine epistles to seven churches: To the Romans one, To the Corinthianstwo, To the Galatians one, To the Ephesians one, To the Philippians one, To the Colossians one, To the Thessalonians two; and besides these to his disciples, To Timothy two, To Titus one, To Philemon one. The epistle which is called the Epistle to the Hebrews is not considered his, on account of its difference from the others in style and language, but it is reckoned, either according to Tertullian to be the work of Barnabas, or according to others, to be by Luke the Evangelist or Clement afterwards bishop of the church at Rome, who, they say, arranged and adorned the ideas of Paul in his own language, though to be sure, since Paul was writing to Hebrews and was in disrepute among them he may have omitted his name from the salutation on this account. |
| The early reformers saw in ‘natural theology’ the theoretical basis for the dominance inflicted by the papal Church on western societies. The rationalistic-deductive justification of metaphysics subjects conscience to the necessity of accepting ‘truths’, which have the character of logical ‘axioms’. The objective authority of the metaphysical axioms is transferred to the established institution that represents and ‘administers them: it ensures the social dominance and wordly power of the harsh institution of the Roman Church. Martin Luther (1546) engages in a devastating critique of scholastic rationalism. The God of Luther is inaccessible to reason, he is a ‘God who hides himself’ (Desus absconditus): ‘There is no immediate knowledge of God, the revelation of God is itself a mediated revelation...God as revealed is precisely a hidden God. In order to reveal himself, he conceals himself in the cross and in the passion.’ 36 In order to approach the ‘hidden God’, faith alone is sufficient (sola. fide); the objective rational justification metaphysical knowledge, so far as it arms the subject with intellectual certainties, at the same time subjects it to the institutional establishment of objectified knowledge. In contrast, absolutized faith leads to the release of the subject from its subordination to objectivity, to its coming of age. For the rest, faith is absolutized as a strictly subjective potentiality for ‘knowledge’ of God and, more particularly, as participation – psychological and emotional – in the mystery of the cross and the passion. The truth about God is hidden in the death of Christ, that is, in God " s ultimate abandonment of his own divinity. Already from Luther onwards, we have the formulation of a ‘theology of the cross’ (theologia crucis), which is but the unanticipated prelude to the theology of the ‘death of God’. Western Europeans were familiar with the formulation ‘God is dead’ (Got ist tot), long before its use by Hegel, 37 and prior to Nietzsche " s disclosure of it as fact; it was chanted in the Protestant liturgical hymn for Good Friday: ‘O grosse Noth! Gott selbst liegt todt’. 38 From the perspective of the subjective and emotional piety of the early Reformers, God’s abandonment of his divinity on the cross signifies the death of the ‘abstract God’ (des abstmkten Gottes), that is to say, it is also the imperative abandonment of any human demand to know with objective proof the-transcendent Absolute. And it is only through such an abandonment of metaphysical abstraction that God can be preserved as a particular fact of individual faith. |
| Lay aside thy grief, Mother, lay it aside./Lamentation does not befit thee who hath been named ‘Blessed.’/Do not obscure thy calling with weeping./Do not liken thyself to those who lack understanding, All-Wise Maiden./Thou art in the midst of My bridal chamber (Strophe 5). Saint Romanos’ Thrknos mks Theotokou is devoted to visualizing the via dolorosa through a dramatic dialogue rooted in the concept of Mary as Birth-Giver of God (Theotokos). Herein is another important theological point of the kontakion: to reinforce the formulation of the (Third) Ecumenical Council at Ephesus identifying the Virgin as the Birth-Giver of God (Theotokos). The refrain of the hymn, “My Son and My God,” as well as its structure are, accordingly, informed by the polarity of the human and divine aspects of Christ’s relation to His All-Pure Mother. As in all kontakia, the theological program here is framed by the prooimion and concluding strophe. In the former, the Mother of God simultaneously asserts her natural motherhood and acceptance of the Crucifixion as having transcendent significance. The clause concluding the proem emphasizes the paradox of the Passion: “Even though Thou dost endure the Cross, Thou art [remainest] my Son and my God” (God cannot be put to death; a mortal son would be taken from his mother by death). In the final strophe, similarly, the Saviour is addressed as “Son of the Virgin, God of the Virgin,” both to summarize the doctrine of redemption and to underscore that, as a woman and mother, the Theotokos required divine support to find the courage (parrhksia) to accept the harsh paradox of Golgotha. Between these two bookends is a series of direct exchanges of increasing frequency, organized by the pious narrator’s commentary into symmetrical groups of strophes. The Virgin holds forth for the first three strophes and is answered in as many. The Virgin speaks again for two strophes to which Christ responds in two. The Virgin then has a single strophe that inspires the poem’s climax: a theological speech in which the Saviour presents the redemption, the healing of our “ailing” forefathers, by means of a medical metaphor. The instruments of the Passion are transformed to be a healer’s tools: “Like a doctor, I will strip down and reach where [the ailing Adam and Eve] lie/and treat their wounds./I will perform surgery on their sores and calluses with the spear./I will also use vinegar to staunch their wound./Having explored their ulcer with the surgical probe of the nails, I will apply My cloak as a dressing./And then, carrying My Cross as a medicine chest/I will make (full) use of it that thou mightest sing with understanding,/‘Through suffering, He destroyed suffering/my Son and my God’.” (Strophe 13) |
| For St. Maximus, 249 the divine humiliation, the kenosis, was not an impoverishment of the deity, but an ineffable descent of the Son who is reduced to the ‘form of a slave’ without ceasing to be fully God. It is in virtue of this humiliation that Christ, the new Adam, incorruptible and immortal in His human nature–a nature which was completely deified by the hypostatic union–submitted voluntarily to all the consequences of sin and became Isaiah’s ‘Man of sorrows’ (liii, 3). Thus, by assimilating the historic reality in which the Incarnation had to take place He introduced into His divine person all sin-scarred, fallen human nature. That is why the earthly life of Christ was a continual humiliation. His human will unceasingly renounced what naturally belonged to it, and accepted what was contrary to incorruptible and deified humanity: hunger, thirst, weariness, grief, sufferings, and finally, death on the cross. Thus, one could say that the person of Christ, before the end of His redemptive work, before the Resurrection, possessed in His humanity as it were two different poles–the incorruptibility and impassibility proper to a perfect and deified nature, as well as the corruptibility and passibility voluntarily assumed, under which conditions His kenotic person submitted and continued to submit His sin-free humanity. That is why St. Maximus distinguishes two assumptions of humanity by the Word: the natural assumption and the relative or economic assumption. 250 The first is, so to speak, concealed by the second. It is only manifested once before the Passion, when Christ appeared to the three Apostles in His deified humanity, resplendent with the light of His divinity. The hymn for the feast of the Transfiguration clearly expresses the two aspects of Christ’s humanity–His natural state and His state of voluntary submission to conditions of fallen humanity: ‘Thou wast transfigured on the mountain, O Christ our Lord, and the glory has so caught the wonder of Thy disciples, that when they see Thee crucified they will understand that Thy Passion is voluntary, and they will proclaim to the world that Thou art truly the Splendour of the Father.’ 251 |
|
|
