Second Terrace

the wedding garment

And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast; but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, Behold, I have made ready my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ 5 But they made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment; 12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The Wedding Feast in this parable takes place at the Second Coming of the Lord. This is Last Day, when all of creation will be brought into communion with God, when “all things” will be transfigured by the fire of grace. All falsehood, all possibility of evil will vanish.

The Second Coming, which is called the “Parousia” in the New Testament Greek, is often described as a terrifying event. It is a moment of fearful judgment, of wrathful destruction of the wicked and the unjust. This is the dominant description of the Last Day in the Old Testament and much of the New Testament. It appears also in some of the descriptions of the Parousia given by the Lord Himself.

But there is another description of the Last Day -- and that is the theme found in the two parables of the Wedding Feast (this one in Matthew, and Luke 14.15-24). In both parables, the original invitees (for one reason or another) fail to come to the feast, so the Giver of the Feast -- God the Father Himself -- opens the banquet to anyone and everyone (even street people, those “on the thoroughfares,” “both bad and good”).

This description is one of happiness and delight, beauty and joy and peace. There is only the possibility of gladness at a Wedding Feast. It is a Feast that is joyfully prepared for by the Feast-Giver.

So it comes as a shock that when the Lord of the Feast found a man “who had no wedding garment,” he asked him “how did you get in here?” It is even more shocking that the man who was improperly clothed was bound hand and foot, and cast out into the “outer darkness” -- a place where there is no feasting or gladness, but “weeping and gnashing of teeth” instead.

What is this wedding garment, upon which so much of this shocking conclusion depends?

The wedding garment is usually interpreted as the “robe of baptism,” and so people who are not baptized will be “cast out” into hell because they are not clothed by the sacrament of baptism.

There is another interpretation, though. Immediately before the Parable of the Wedding Feast in the Gospel of Luke, the Lord gave two instructions about Wedding Feast celebrations. First, in Luke 14.7-11, He told His followers that whenever they attended such a feast, that they should not seek a place of honor (like near the bride and groom at a wedding reception), but instead they should go and sit at the lowest place -- and maybe when the host comes, he might say “Friend, go up higher.”

The Lord here is calling His followers to meekness and humility: “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14.11).

The second instruction is in Luke 14.12-14, and it is about the “invitation list” for Wedding Feasts. Who should be invited? The Lord called His disciples to rise above the conventional “self-sorting” behavior (that is even more of a powerful rule today), in which people invite people who are going to invite them to their own banquets. Just as the Lord had already said “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6.33), the Lord now says: “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, just because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14.13-14).

So already, the answer to the question about the meaning of the wedding garment is starting to come into focus. The garment symbolizes meekness. It also symbolizes the righteousness of true goodness and love -- which is exactly why the Lord insisted upon giving to those who cannot give back. And, by the way, there is no other valid meaning of righteousness: the Pharisees tried to define righteousness as the complete fulfillment of the Law, or “perfect piety.” The Sadducees tried to define righteousness as the perfect performance of cultic rubrics. It should be noted that this was never taught in the Old Testament: the Psalms are chock full of God’s denunciations of such devolved -- and depraved -- definitions.

But there is one more element in the symbolism of the wedding garment -- one more thread in the warp and weave of the fabric. And this element is the most important one. It is the element that makes meekness and righteousness possible.

And that element is joy, gladness, beauty and celebration. You cannot be meek without happiness. You cannot be joyful without love.

This theme, too, is associated with the Wedding Feast. In a manner that is deeply haunting, the theme comes to the forefront at the very beginning and at the very end of Jesus’ earthly and Gospel ministry. The first miracle, or “sign,” of the Gospel is the Lord’s turning of the water into wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana (John 2.1-11). What is wine for? It is, as we sing Psalm 103 at Saturday Evening Vespers, given by the Lord (no matter what the winebottle label says) “to gladden the heart of man.” By this very first sign of His Gospel, the Lord miraculously provides something even better than water for the wandering Israelites in the wilderness of the Exodus: He makes possible joy, by providing the wine of His own Wedding Feast at the Last Day.

At the end of the Lord’s ministry, at the Mystical Supper (right before He entered the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples), the Lord served them that same wine: “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you;  for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26.27-29).

Because this event of the institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is so much part of the grave steps of the Passion, and because it is so near to the unthinkable sufferings of Gethsemane and Calvary, we often do not recognize the promise. Jesus Christ, is at this moment, the Bridegroom Who is on His way to the Wedding … a Wedding that will occur at the Last Day. The Passion of Gethsemane, when the Lord experienced all the psychic agonies of sin, and the Passion of Calvary, when the Lord experienced all the physical and spiritual consequences of death, were both necessary steps that the Bridegroom had to take to win His Bride.

Salvation is the Marriage of Jesus Christ with His Bride, Who is the Church. That is why communicants of His Eucharist are called His “Body,” because in every marriage, the husband and wife become one flesh. This is the goal Jesus worked for, when He voluntarily gave up His glory in heaven and became man, submerging His divinity under His humanity. This communion, this marital union of the divinity with humanity, is exactly what the Holy Trinity planned for in Eternity. There was never a time when the Son of God would not become the Bridegroom.

That is why there is Joy Unthinkable in that wine that has become the Blood of the Son: it echoes and is illumined by the Last Day. But it takes meekness, and soft-hearted righteousness, to believe in salvation as marital communion. It takes humility to enter into joy. The gladness of the Wedding Feast is impossible for a person who wants to protect and inflate his ego.

The man who was not wearing the wedding garment in the parable was not meek. He was prideful. He probably wanted a salvation that consisted of the precise following of rules, the achievement of an exceptional pedigree. He was not interested in a wedding: he wanted a parade of heroes that highlighted folk like him, a parade in which one did not have to mix with the hoi polloi, the smelly masses, the lame, the poor, the street people of life.

He was obviously out of place. He was a black-suited mourner in the midst of bright-suited celebration. He was already bound hand and foot by his despondent pride. He was already weeping and gnashing his teeth, in his hatred of others, before he ever even started to elbow his way in toward the seat of honor. As in most parables, if careful attention is paid, what happens at the end is exactly what the characters of the story already were or had really become.

But for the meek and the ones who give themselves away in love -- exactly in the way of the Trinity and the way of Christ -- their joy is their garment. Salvation as marital communion is unimaginable in its infinite meaning -- but still, it makes a lot of sense to anyone who is “poor in spirit.”

We are all poor. We are all street people of the world. We are all infirm and lame. We are all neighbors who need the help of neighbors like us, who need to help and save. We, as the Body, all need the Lord as our Bridegroom and nothing less, nothing less than just to be and to become.

Because we are all invited to the one Wedding Feast at the Last Day that matters most of all:

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me,
“Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
And he said to me, “These are true words of God”

-- Apocalypse/Revelation 19.7-9 --

what we do when we pray

Prayer is one of the great concerns in the New Testament.

And what I mean by "prayer" is making requests of God on behalf of other people, and for oneself.

I do not mean by "prayer" the sort of meditative, spiritual communion that Origen described, in which one asked of God not a thing but simply, and beautifully, to become like Him, to "enter His sanctuary." 

This, too, is called prayer. But I mean the "lesser," humbler kind. The prayer that rises out of trouble, often. The prayer that is uttered in need and anxiety. The prayer that is often cried out in distress if not sheer panic. Or, more often, the prayer that responds to the recognition of need or injustice ... prayer that rises up from heartbreak and gut-wrenching pity. Sometimes, prayer that is expressed out of hopelessness or perplexity. Sometimes -- or more often than not -- a childlike, no, rather, even childish statement, "God get me out of trouble."

I may be wrong, but this lesser sort of prayer is not dealt with too much in the higher theologies. It is the sort of prayer that is actualized in Liturgy in the various litanies, and it is commended by St Paul in his exhortation to "pray without ceasing": an exhortation that is practiced, in Orthodoxy and beyond, by the tradition of the Jesus Prayer (i.e., "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner").

But even here, the simplistic request, or supplication, tends to become sublimated into more clearly delineated dogmatic definitions and higher levels of theological speculation. The Liturgical litanies are usually subsumed under the more respectable categories of liturgical and sacramental theology. The Jesus Prayer itself becomes the theme of discussions on whether the Name of Jesus is an effective evocation (whether total or in part) of divinity (as in  Bulgakov and Florensky); or a participation in the hypostatic properties of the Trinity (as in Metropolitan Kallistos Ware).

I am more than sympathetic to all these discussions. But still, they all seem to shy away from the simple offense of concrete requests, like the kind of requests discussed in the Gospel Parables: the Parable of the Unjust Judge is a particularly troublesome story -- troublesome, at least, to the sort of theology that I like to read -- in which a poor widow (who seems to be a common character in the Gospel narratives -- a symbolic character of poverty, weakness, so held in contempt by a God-rejecting world, so esteemed by a crucified God) asks just judgement from an Unjust Judge; and she wears down this Judge (so unlike a merciful God) to the point where he relents and confirms her simple request.

To be honest, this particular parable along with other parables and actual episodes in the Gospel narratives postulate realities of prayer that contend against the static ambience of doctrine. I suspect that this is one of the more important reasons why many Christians feel repelled by confessional or more doctrinal communities, even those who are identified with the Apostolic Tradition. They feel that their Christian experience, so populated and punctuated by prayer requests (that are often too rife with information and subtle denunciation) and humble prayer (again, often marked by cliché, heterodoxy and outright heresy), is neither informed by nor even comprehended by the theological concern (and compassion) of theological communities.

It is a real pity that Orthodoxy in general, and academic theology in particular, has not been more congenial to folk who believe -- against all odds -- that their humble prayers are efficacious. And, more often than not, against so many canonical boundaries (e.g., prohibitions of the faithful against mixing prayers with the less-than-faithful), the prayers of the heterodox end up being, actually (and scandalously to some), efficacious.

Efficacious. Despite all the "Father God's" and "I just wanna lift up so-and-so because of his/her (insert long pathology report) ..."

It seems to me that the Ascended Lord, Who is receiving the Kingdom until the Last Day, when He shall deliver it up to the Father, Who will then be "all in all" -- it seems to me that this same Lord is more interested in those who pray than those who theologize without prayer. It seems to me, also, that while it is not possible to truly theologize without prayer, the converse is not at the same rank: it may be that it is possible to pray without theologizing at all, at least consciously so.

The reason why prayer is written in Scripture as such an overwhelming concern -- and the reason why it stands out as such a primary imperative from Christ Himself, resonating through the entire life of His Body -- is that such humble, "secondary" prayer constitutes at least the beginning (or "root") of the working out, the actualization, of that "receiving" of His Kingdom. These humble prayers are little "works" in the great artistic extension of Trinitarian Love.

And as such these prayers must be, and can only be, characterized by Trinitarian Love. It is a Love that is completely kenotic -- that is, a "pouring out" of self and finding self in the receptive love of the other. It is a Love that is trusting with the trust of a completely innocent child who has no reason to doubt the complete providence of a compassionate Father. It is a Love that does not interrogate the need as to its utility or importance or place in a hierarchy of needs or priorities. It is a Love that is willing to be servile, unimportant, concrete and particular. It is a Love that is empathetic and sympathetic, motivated by a deified compassion that is symbolized by the pious distraction of Moses at the Burning Bush and the Good Samaritan at the Beat-Up Man in the Ditch.It is a Love that only blesses and never curses, never damns. It is a Love that is willing to wish before counting costs, willing to hope and idealize before figuring and assigning responsibilities, willing to imagine kingdom come and a better will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And, contrary to some of my favorite Orthodox writers on prayer, it dreams of big things where cancers and injustice have all gone down under the hill, not even hesitating to take the least bit of responsibility or even a nebulous willingness to take part in the fulfillment of these prayers -- such concerns are, at best, "put off" to "practical time," long after the last "Amen."

Such intercessory, kenotic prayer is -- even when uttered in a drunkard's crocodile tears -- an extension of the Love that is the real fabric and essence of the created world, linked, organically, analogously, with the uncreated divine world.

It is a Love at home in the trailer parks of the earth, so wickedly targeted by the tornadoes of the broken-off powers.

There is no possibility of modern individualism in this low-rent sort of prayer. Ego's (and all footnoting tendencies) have to be dropped at the door. This Kmart blue-light special habit of prayer is admittedly consumeristic, messy, tending toward wants instead of needs ... it doesn't wait on too much discernment or ethical reflection.

But it is willing to pray for enemies and irritants. It is willing to forget the restraints of time and space and jurisdiction (both here and in the hereafter). It is willing to pray for neighbors and aliens, for the dispossessed and the possessed. It is foolhardy enough to rush in to pray with the Sons of Sceva, even at the risk of getting beaten up just like the guy on the way to Jericho.

Hopefully, the Name of Jesus (as discussed by Bulgakov) will be a sufficient shield, even for the less adept.

The funny thing about this sort of prayer is that these prayers always come true, either now or then, somehow.

And always.

Theologians need apply.

lilies of the field

"What a mighty thing it is to live for God’s kingdom! Do not shrink back. Live for it; look for it, and you will find that it is so powerful it will completely overwhelm you – it will solve every problem in your life, and every problem on earth. Everything will become new, and each person will love the next in Christ. All separation and sin, all suffering and darkness and death will be overcome, and love alone will rule."

That passage is from J. Heinrich Arnold, in his hopeful book, Freedom from Sinful Thoughts.

There are more than a few who would laugh off these promises as pollyanna-ish and over the top.

Actually, no. Those who would dismiss do not laugh as a rule.

It is no secret that I'm Orthodox, and, moreover, of a sophiological bent. Orthodoxy is popularly depicted as a dour sort of religion with candles in the dark, clouds of incense wafting up into the unseen upper depths, long beards and black robes. And the great theologian Fr Sergius Bulgakov himself does not seem to refer overmuch to any comic expression, if at all.

(I may be wrong about Bulgakov, here. I'd be happy to be corrected.)

There are some who say that Christianity is exactly this and not associated with any sort of jester-hood, or idylls in the meadows with the smelling of flowers and poetizing on the rustling in the eaves, reading fairy stories, or especially laughing at some foppish tale of a vapid 1920's aristocrat who is unwittingly duped into the machinations of his "gentleman's gentleman" who, in turn, happens to be a practicing Spinozist. 

One who does say this (without any specific grimace about Jeeves and Wooster) is the inimitable Roman Catholic theologian Paul J Griffiths, who wrote, recently, about the spiritual peril of leisure (i.e., otium). In his essay, "Ora et Labore: Christians Don't Need Leisure," he proposed that for Christians, there is nothing between worship and work.

That's right: no leisure, no joking around, no "Wordsworthian idylls." All this, he says, is a descent into the miasma of narcissism. 

There was a time in my life that I would have embraced this message and used the words as a verbal blunderbuss at one and all.

Well, this is not that time (nor ever will be). So I counted it a blessing that the best writer and critique of our time -- David Bentley Hart -- set down pen (or typed on his MacBook) and took Griffiths to task. He responded on the Public Orthodoxy site in an "open letter." (I don't know exactly what "open letter" means. I hope it allows for the reading of other people's mail.)

I commend this letter/essay as one of the best things I've read in this troubling year. And frankly, during this present health challenge of mine, it comes as no small anodyne, or "balm of Gilead." So I thank DBH, once again, for his brain and his articulation.

The whole letter is worth your careful reading. But for the purpose of this essay, I'll conclude with this excerpt:

Well…nonsense. Twaddle, tosh, balderdash. Dare I say piffle, or even—more daringly—poppycock? (I don’t want to get too coarse here.) As I say, Paul, the luminous clarity of your mind is an object of veneration for me. But, to be honest, I doubt I have ever come across so egregiously excluded a middle. The dialectical impulse is strong in you, I know, but here I think you need to hew to a more median, Platonic, and analogical rule of reflection. You have so exaggerated one pole of Christian experience as to turn what should be a complementarity into an antagonism, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how you arrived at this bleak chiaroscuro etching of life in Christ. Where does it come from? Certainly, as far as I can tell, not from scripture, and most definitely not from the example of Christ. In fact, it seems to me that your whole “all ora et labora and no ludus makes Jack a good dull Christian” depiction of the faith is an almost point-for-point negation of the Sermon on the Mount. There, recall, Christ explicitly forbids his followers to fret and worry over the day’s needs, or to strive to achieve them, or for that matter to take any thought for the morrow at all; he commands them—commands them—to be idlers, as free of concern as the lilies of the field, lazily certain that God’s abundance will find them and bless them in their repose. To a peasant population crushed by debt and unending labor, Christ proclaimed a gospel of sweet insouciance. He called them to the sanctifying life of Bohemians and truants. To those who travail and are heavy-laden, he did not simply issue the command (to use your words) “Work, then: labora!” (or, I suppose, laborate!); rather, he promised to ease their burdens and grant them rest. Yes, we must labor; but labor is not the law of Christ.

Indeed. Labor (which needs must be) is not, despite this world's necessity, the law of Christ.

One There is Who is Good

A reflection on the Gospel text for last Sunday, August 19th: Matthew 19.16-26

“At that time, a young man came up to Jesus, kneeling and saying, ‘Good Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’”

The response of Jesus to the young man is puzzling. Of course, we all know that “One there is who is good” -- obviously, this refers to God. But isn’t Jesus “God”? Why did our Lord ask, “Why do you call me good?”

First of all, let’s look at the point that isn’t so puzzling: “God is the One Who is good.” The Apostles and the Church Fathers all say that God is only “good.” They say that “goodness” and “love” are the same thing. Some of the more philosophical Apostles and Fathers (like St John the Evangelist and St Paul, and Sts Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximos the Confessor and Isaac of Nineveh) say that because God the Creator is good, then goodness (or love) is the very foundation of all Creation. If there is anyone who is evil (like Satan, as the extreme example), he is evil only because he is rejection his own essential reality. No one or no thing is created as evil.

So while that is the “non-puzzling” part of the Lord’s statement in the Gospel, it has enormous implications. Consider this statement, as an example: “You are alive only insofar as you participate in God’s own life -- which is exactly what the goodness of the Holy Trinity is.”

But now to the puzzle. Why did Jesus say, in a very rabbinical “reply to a question with another question” manner, “Why do you call me good?”

It is rewarding to think hard about this difficult verse. To be sure, Jesus is pointing to the fact that God alone can be said to be good. A human or any creature -- even an angel -- cannot be said to “be” good. One can only say that a person “participates” in God’s goodness.

This is true. Whenever we do something good or whenever we love, we are freely working out of ourselves, yes, but we are participating in and extending a goodness that is already there. We add to God’s love our own individual, creative expression of Christian action, but still, that action is rooted and energized by the Holy Trinity itself.

But there is a deeper, more complicated dimension to Jesus’ statement. And here is that mysterious truth. When the Son of God became incarnate “by the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary,” he gave up his glory -- the glory he possessed as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. But for the sake of our salvation, he submerged his divine nature under his human nature.

From the moment of Jesus’ entrance into humanity, he would no longer act or appear in his divine glory on his own. Yes, there were moments in the Gospel when some people -- especially the apostles -- were able to recognize Jesus’ divinity. But in each of these moments, the Gospels are careful to insist that this was only by a direct revelation of the Holy Spirit, or the actual voice of the Father (like at Jesus’ baptism, or at his Transfiguration).

Jesus’ mission of salvation required that he would succeed as the “Second Adam,” in every measure where the First Adam had failed. In so doing, Jesus gave up completely living for himself, and completed took upon himself utter, perfect obedience to the Father.

Yes. Jesus was always divine in the Gospels: but in his humanity and perfect obedience, he always pointed to the divinity of the Father.

And that is why Jesus pointed away from himself, and pointed only to the Father, when said said “One there is who is good.”

*******

The rest of this Gospel story is somewhat of a disappointment. God’s goodness, as the fundamental basis of the world and the universe, is peaceful, beautiful and free.

Freedom, in God’s terms (and as discussed by the Apostles and Church Fathers) is “freedom to be, and freedom to become what you are created to be.”

This freedom has little or nothing to do with the defective meaning of freedom that is popularly understood these days. That lesser freedom is defined as “freedom to choose, or freedom to exercise one of as many options as possible.”

Clearly, the young man who approached Jesus was not free. He was, by all accounts, an upstanding, righteous person. He claimed to have successfully obeyed the Ten Commandments, and Jesus did not challenge that claim (although I remain skeptical).

What Jesus actually did challenge him with was this charge: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

Jesus offered the young man the highest degree of true freedom possible -- to be a literal disciple, following him on the road of the Gospel, accompanying him on the trail of the Passion, to the extreme obedience in Gethsemane and the Cross.

He challenged the young man with this phrase that goes way beyond the orignal question: “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” That -- mere escape from death or from the difficulties of the world -- doesn’t come close to the freedom, the real life, that Jesus offered. The perfection of “If you would be perfect” is not a stage of life where you don’t make mistakes or you don’t commit sinful acts. That is a negative definition, and it fails to give meaning to “perfection.”

“Making perfect” is the work of the Holy Spirit in finishing the design and form that was begun by Christ Himself, in his heavenly glory. “Being perfect” means following God the Son -- even in his hidden divine nature that was veiled by his humanity -- and growing in the Holy Spirit. That is a much higher calling.

“Being perfect” in this sense is the call to beautiful, peaceful freedom -- a life full of grace.

But the young man wanted to keep his lesser “freedom of choice” -- giving up his total wealth would surely deprive him of his options. He could not give up his “treasures on earth,” even if it meant an exchange for an infinitely better “treasure in heaven.”

So the young rich man “went away, sorrowful.” He probably thought he could get a custom-made religion that didn’t require a change of heart.

Jesus and the disciples watched him go. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” the Lord said, using a well-known metaphor for an impossible act, “than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

No camel can go through such a tiny opening. It’s true: with God, all things are possible. And that means that any camel, if it wants to, if it is brave enough to be free, can be shrunk by God tiny enough to fit through.

Then, and only then, by this sacrifice of ego, and the pouring out of oneself -- just as Jesus did when he gave up his glory -- can one actively, and beautifully, participate in the goodness of the One Who is Good.

there is only One that is good

 

"There is only One that is good" -- which is a grievously weighted text from today's Gospel reading (Matthew 19.16-26).

 

From our Lord Who said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, these particular words come as a heavy, heavy woe to the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

 

I've been busy fighting secularism and witnessing to the goodness, beauty and peace of the Holy Trinity, and the omnipresence of such divine, sophianic traces in the everyday life of the poor and not-so-poor, my neighborhood and the world. Suffice it to say, it's been hard work. And I've been trying to be a decent Samaritan to those left along the wayside.

 

So I, and some other clergy, have been doing our best under less than the best working conditions.

 

Now I'm shocked to find out that more than a few of my fellow-clergy (at least nominally defined) have been tippling back pink cosmos and draping gold jewelry as brands around their victim herd.

 

Woe to the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

 

For we Pharisees and Sadducees in the institutional church are certainly not good. Our institutional structures have been crumbling for decades, and in these past few years the acceleration of decline has been climbing on an exponential scale.

 

Treasuries have been frittered away by malfeasance and edifice-complexes. Corporate institutional development schemes have been adopted and believed in and transmogrified into stone-cold idols before callow eyes.

 

But far, far more important, the treasury of public trust and confidence is bankrupt today.

 

Zero. Less than zero.

 

Today, with the publication of Pennsylvania's stomach-churning, bowel-emptying 900-page report of sexual abuse by clergy -- priests, seminary rectors and even bishops -- I will say it out loud: the entire church's public profile has been permanently, irrevocably damaged ...

 

... i.e., polluted, toxified, besmirched, driven to the septic depth.

 

I am aware that some of my FB correspondents call for "non-judgmentalism" on my part and everyone else's.

 

Sorry, but no. I am from Pittsburgh. What's more, I worked with children, adolescents and other victims of sexual abusers for 15 years in clinical settings, and I have had the really bad fortune of getting dropped onto the ice of Lake Cocytus, just to interview the wretches who inflicted this abuse onto children.

 

I have never talked with such soul-less, self-vindicatingly sincere liars as I have with sexual abusers -- who almost always believed that the victim somehow led them into sexual acting out; that it was somehow "not bad" for the victim; that it was their "right" as an abuser; that they were only doing this out of their "depression" and history of "victimization."

 

As I looked into their pale eyes, I couldn't say "go to hell" as I wanted because in fact, they were already there. And loving it.

 

Do you know what happens to sexually abused children? Do you really understand that they will never, ever be the same? Can you come to grips with the fact that the innocence, the trustful wonder, the winsomeness, the magical playfulness that should have been rich in childhood has been, because of a sweaty fat man's white-collared tumescence, horribly mutated into post-traumatic stress coupled with premature sexual precocity and multi-faceted conduct disorder?

 

That now, ever since these “visitations,” these children have had to learn how to separate themselves from direct consciousness of life, to the extant that more than a few of my clients described watching experience “from a distance” because experience had become so poisonous ... one youth went so far as to tell me that he now watched life from the bottom of a Coke bottle, looking at reality through the aperture of a distant green-glass ring.

 

My God. This demonism was done under the rubrics of the Church.

 

My God.

 

Does the RC have any idea what it has done?

 

I have long called for friendship and cooperation with the Catholic Church. And I have taken a lot of criticism from some of my Orthodox friends for doing so.

 

Even today I will not end my friendship with priests and laity in the RC. But I will wait now and see if this present Pope will be a man and do something courageous, something significant and immediate. Every single bishop in Pennsylvania needs to be called to Rome, and many of them need to be laicized (and maybe prosecuted). I think Cardinal Wuerle needs to be removed.

 

Frankly, it is time that (non-episcopacy-bound) celibate clergy should start retiring to the confines of the chancery and the monastery. The parish, practically, is no longer a viable place for them.

 

Already, I have to take overwhelming precautions. I will never counsel anyone without some other adult (like my wife) in the same building. The door will always stay open. I will not travel with a youth by myself. I will not take a group of altar boys in a van to a retreat without an adult woman chaperone. I will not "hang out" with people, generally, except for my family and my close -- just as old and cranky -- friends.

 

Listen, brothers and sisters, you can stop with this nasty pro-Trump and anti-Trump business, because something worse has crept up out of the septic tank.

 

Mordor has won. We are now in the dark days of the second age. And it's the fault of prurient, blackhearted clergy.

 

Thank God there remains "One Who is good." There remains the Body of Christ, but for my part, the recognizable lineaments have surely changed.

come, my friends, 't is not too late to seek a newer world.

About ten years ago, I think, someone (I'm not sure if I want to name him now, mainly to protect the well-intended) -- from the Holy Mountain no less -- did a yeoman's job in comparing the work of the Hesychastic Fathers of Athos with the cognitive therapy theory of Beck and others, and found in his comparison a remarkable correspondence.

 

As a practitioner of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (and proud of it), I know for a fact that the practiced refutation of incorrect, maladaptive interpretation of experience remains the most robust treatment of the cognitive (i.e., "logistikon") dimension of "mental illness" (i.e., true psychopathology). When I read Vlachos' "Orthodox Psychotherapy" for the first time in the 90's, I was amazed by the almost miraculous and unwitting anticipation by Arnold Beck (and the crankier Albert Ellis) of the Spiritual Fathers in their emphasis upon reframing experience and reinterpretation of negative mindsets. The Spiritual Fathers called these negative interpretations "logismoi," and rightly blamed the demonic for their presence. Of course, the demonic nor any spiritual reality has any agency in CBT (or Behavioralism, or Freudianism, or Client-centered therapy, or Gestalt therapy, or Systems/Family-of-origin therapy or really anything else).

 

Oddly enough -- and please don't shoot me for saying this -- I really don't find much anywhere in psychotherapeutic theories for dealing with the unconscious, and pathologies lurking with the unconscious. Contrary to what we Orthodox therapists like to claim, neither CBT nor Orthodox psychotherapy contains much wisdom about what we call the "unconscious." And frankly, I think Freud (and his derivations) is just as impotent, because Freud is "mechanistic" in his view of the unconscious.

 

Jung is interesting, to say the least, in his explorations of the unconscious, but remains, let's just say, rather unsystematic and syncretistic.

 

My main point is this, though. CBT and the spiritual anti-logismoi practice is good for elementary psychopathology.

 

But (here is the main disjunction) it becomes powerless when the pathology proceeds from deeper layers of the "unconscious." Here is where we merely label patterns and habits as "passions" and prescribe some sort of virtuous habit to displace the respective passion. It seems that in the secular psychotherapeutic culture, too, there is this recognition of the limitations of CBT. Read this recent article in the Guardian, for a good instance.

 

This replacement is laudable and usually necessary. But all-too-frequently insufficient ... and egregiously insufficient.

 

At this point of impotency, Orthodox psychotherapy (and even some forms of secular therapy) recognizes the pathology as "demonic," and then resorts to some accepted practice of "exorcism."

 

I suspect that "exorcism" as understood and practiced today is inadequate. If it is effective (which may be debatable) at all, then it occurs miraculously in spite of the practitioner's understanding and practice. I oppose all practices (religious or otherwise) that are characterized by domination, drama, violence, or any cultic phenomena (e.g., interviewing demons and tying up victims). Such religious practice is nothing other than criminal abuse -- and I include in this the horrible stuff like the "re-birthing" exercises of "bonding therapy" for "unattachment disorder," where refractive disordered children were actually -- in certified secular therapeutic treatment providers, mind you -- rolled up in rugs, made to feel powerless to the point of crying out in panic, and "let out" to mimic the "birthing process" and then brought to the embrace of their parent-figure (whether birth parents or adoptive or therapeutic-foster parents) ... all of this somehow to insinuate the "attachment" experience of a newborn baby with his mother at her breast.

 

This is actually an example of secular exorcism that was practiced in the 1990's. If this is done today (and I hope it's not), it should be prosecuted as child abuse.

 

Again, if you recognize Freudianism gone quite amok here, you're spot on.

 

I wish we would all remember, in this age so addicted to the monster-movie grotesquerie, that in the age of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, that the office of "exorcist" was conflated with the office of "catechist." The best exorcism is catechism: Sophia ever defeats the agency of the father of lies and the lord of the flies.

 

The "Orthodox psychotherapy" as outlined by Vlachos does not understand the unconscious and is ineffective in dealing with it. And it matters little that the practitioner is augmented (or said to be augmented) with clairvoyant powers of analysis or levels of authority that commands radical obedience.

 

I suggest that what is called the "unconscious" remains a terrible, frightening, uncharted terrain for us all, whether we are helpers or (and this applies to all of us) "experiencers." Identifying "logismoi" and "passions" is not at all sufficient in recognizing the presence of the "person," of of the person's "coming-to-be." On the other hand, that unconscious terrain, even though "there be monsters here," will turn out to be blindingly beautiful, and populated by gossamer angels.

 

I honor the Hesychastic Fathers, as I continue to be the "Orthodox CBT" practitioner that I am proud to be.

 

But for the longterm client who is often labeled as an "endogenous depressive," or an "existential sufferer" ... for the person who has dreams that are recurrent and demands some interpretation ... for the one who feels "trapped in a gilded cage" ... for these friends of mine (and future clients), I am sick and tired of trying to unbury undisclosed memories or sins, and then confronting clients with their bourgeois passions of unconcern for the poor or hidden racism or unforgiveness or long-hidden shames.

 

I utterly reject the unethical judgmental ascription of "first-world problem" that is the usual implicit scorn of second-rate theologian/psychotherapists like myself.

 

I think, in this time of collapsing institutional structures and a passage into a very different meta-culture, that we are called to a brave exploration of what we call the "unconscious," and its chthonic link with the cosmos and the Creator.

 

And the navigational tools, the compass, the astrolabe and the chronometer, will be found in sophiology. A wide-open, brave and winsome, mythopoeic sophiology, no less. A sophiology that is not limited in the by the framework of the Neo-Patristic Synthesis or the Neo-Palamite emphases. A sophiology that is willing to embark on stranger waters, brave enough to perceive -- without reductionistic analyses -- greater phenomena than "normal" epistemologies ...

... a sophiology worthy of Lady Wisdom, who calls with greater urgency than ever at the gates.

I beg you, counselors, to be adept in Counsel, for that is how you can treat your neighbor as the First Samaritan would.

In these last days.

on the transfiguration

You were transfigured on the mountain, O Christ our God,
revealing as much of Your glory to Your disciples as they could bear.
Through the prayers of the Birthgiver of God,
let Your everlasting light also shine upon us sinners,
O Giver of Light glory be to You.

(Tropar for the Feast of the Transfiguration, Tone 7)

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. You can read about the event itself in the Gospel reading that is appointed for today: Matthew 17.1-9 (the event is also narrated in Mark 9.2-8 and Luke 9.28-36). St Peter reflects remembers this event in today’s Epistle reading in 2 Peter 1.10-19.

While this Feast does not get the attention and celebration that surrounds Pascha and Christmas, it certainly looms almost as greatly in the Gospel proclamation of the Apostles and the Church Fathers. The Transfiguration is an anticipation and a promise of the Ascension — when Jesus Christ would be restored to His “honor and glory,” seated at the right hand of God the Father.

This glory that would be fully restored at the Ascension is the same glory that Jesus willingly gave up at the Incarnation. St Paul refers to this surrender of glory in the extraordinary paragraph of Philippians 2.5-11. The second verse of this passage (which may have been an ancient hymn in the apostolic community) says this: “… though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped [i.e., kept and protected for oneself at all costs], but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men” (2.6-7).

Jesus remained completely divine in His nature. But in becoming completely human also, at the Incarnation, He “submerged” His divinity under the form of manhood … so that He did not “appear” as God … so that He gave up His godly advantages of universal knowledge, protection from all pain and disappointment, freedom from limitations of space and time. His divinity was “camouflaged” by His humanity.

All this was done in complete obedience as Son to His Father. It was the Will of the Father that humanity, and the world, should be saved. Jesus came in complete humble obedience to achieve that salvation.

This surrender of His glory and the hiding of His divinity were done not only to deceive satan and the demonic powers. More importantly, it was done for our sake, and the “sake of our salvation.” In our weak condition of fallenness, divine glory is beautiful, yes, but also terrifying, even intolerable. That is why Jesus took with Him, to Mount Tabor, only three of the disciples. This was not an arbitrary decision: these three had grown closest to Him in His journey toward the Cross. As the Tropar above says, “… revealing as much of Your glory to Your disciples as they could bear.”

But at the Transfiguration, Christ’s divinity shone through His humanity. The glory was unveiled by the Father. It happened at that point, because Jesus had by now “re-set” the Law and the Prophets to its new and proper setting. Now, and forever more, the Old Testament tradition could only be interpreted in light of the New Testament. Now, God is only to be known as the God of Love … not primarily as Power or Wrath. He is all-powerful, all-knowing and eternal precisely and only because He is Love.

This is why in the Transfiguration cloud of glory, Jesus was accompanied by Moses the Law-giver and Elijah the Prophet. The primary two Old Testament figures were now seen as anticipations of Christ’s work, and they were now actually part of His glory. Their entire ministries of speaking to and living out the Wisdom of God were now understood as finding their ultimate fulfillment in Christ’s ministry of the Cross.

In the Gospel of Jesus Christ (which includes the Old Testament and establishes its fundamental key to understanding it), the salvation of humanity is nothing less than total communion with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Divinity is to shine through humanity in each person in way that is analogous to the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor.

The Transfiguration is the picture of our salvation. We certainly do not become God in His essence, or substance. But we certainly are called — all of us — to become “God-like”: “His divine power [i.e., of Jesus Christ] has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him Who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, that through these promises you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become, instead, partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1.3-4).

Of course, that passage is the famous verse that refers to theosis, or “divinization” as the only full definition of salvation. But look carefully at this passage. Note the reference to “His own glory and excellence,” which is what is happening now just because He, Christ, is seated at the “right hand of God the Father,” restored completely to the glory “that I had with You before the world began” (John 17.24). Our present salvation/theosis is our own personal experience of Mount Tabor: it is given just because of the full glorification of Jesus Christ Who has ascended to the right hand of God, and it is sent by Jesus Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

By that Personal, Divine “touch” of the Spirit’s grace upon us, and by our own willing (i.e., “as much as we can bear”) participation, we may indeed turn away from a lifestyle of passion (that tends toward corruption) and turn instead to the eternal life of partaking in the divine nature.

But we should pay attention to the note of tragedy in the Gospel. The shining of Jesus was once again put away. Moses and Elijah disappeared. Peter wanted to remain at this point, but Jesus ushered them down the hill.

From that time onward, Jesus plainly prepared His disciples for the Passion. He told them about the Cross. But He also promised His resurrection after three days.

So it is with us. We do not escape the world. But it is up to us to desire and work for Transfiguration. Not only in our own hearts, but in our house, and neighborhood, and world around us.

the finding

When God creates, He communes:

there is no external power.

All grace, all being, all life

is personal,

and is love.

 

Creation is the first of God's self-sacrifice.

The aeonic world of the bodiless powers and

the universe centered on humankind --

All this came as an offering

of God to His creation,

 

With which, with whom,

He will never not interact ...

For which, for whom,

He will ever desire

For beauty.

 

Every interaction is a personal work,

an artwork of desire,

a rhetoric of devotion.

Every miracle of personal love,

an act of divine communion

and all is miracle.

Desire, the rhetoric,

will never end

even when love is unrequited.

 

He came for Creation,

He came for humanity wherever humanity was

to be found,

because, again,

there is no love without

communion, no miracle

without making, no word

without sound, no desire

without aching.

 

Were the beautiful children in the garden

under the boughs of the evening trees?

(to think that He Who is above being

desires these)

 

Were they waiting for the rustling of the leaves

and the poetry of names

and the tutelage of peace,

the Friend of the Friendship that used to be

the ground of being, known about, that is

until shame and an end?

 

He came but stood alone,

appointment cancelled

due to prior engagements.

The star-studded angel had

climbed the corporate ladder, it was

a hostile takeover and deals

were made. Along with some mis-

representations.

 

One of which was the uncomfortable fact

that there is a pesky association between

name and shame, that is,

 

if you can't hear the leaves any more

you forget what you're called

and who called you,

 

so to subsistence living then boy

and sew those leaves that used to sing

and dominance, privilege, deal with it

girl, it's the new management

and bottom line.

 

You lost yourself, so

we'll just make one up for you.

Watch TV, it'll come to you.

There's no such thing as name

so no such thing as shame,

it is what it is.

 

He came, but stands alone, and

the beautiful children are hiding behind

electric fog, the cartoon life

of fig leaves.

 

Where are you Adam? the Desiring One calls:

 

which cannot be answered,

as

Adam's lost himself, and Eve.

 

The first kenosis was creation,

the second was the incarnation.

The third outpouring was

for finding of those

who's lost themselves.

 

The widow turned her shack over

to seek her little coin.

The merchant sold his inventory

to buy his iridescent pearl.

The shepherd left his ninety-nine

to look for his sheepish lamb.

The Son of God set down his aristocracy

to become the Son of Man.

 

I had a suggestion for the incarnation

that he should make like a grand magician

and just issue a juridical proclamation

so as to avoid the inconvenience of

a difficult crucifixion.

 

But he insisted

on communion.

 

And just had to take the cross

to find the lost.

 

Because the cost of apotheosis

is divine and free

kenosis.

 

Work, hard hard work

of making, poetry

in the dark.

 

The communing God, how very odd

for us who're used to anti-communion,

not accustomed, these days, to a personal three,

and not to one who says, today,

if I'd be lifted up I'll draw all men

to me.

 

It's hard looking higher in the nameless land

of shame and confusion,

habituated to damnation

and we'd rather excuses than Jesus

and convenience.

 

but we may not deny

after forever

 

his plus-sign desire

and infinite true

persuasion.

 

After all,

he said friend,

at the end,

 

I found you.

 

To earth hast Thou come down, O Master, to save Adam:

and not finding him on earth,

Thou hast descended into hell,

seeking him there.

 

-- from first stasis of "The Praises" in Jerusalem Matins

children in the woods of seraphim

Richard Louv, author of the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, tells the story of interviewing a child who told him that he liked playing indoors more than outdoors “’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

As a former child psychotherapist, I wouldn’t go so far as to call this problem a “disorder.” But according to scientific studies, it is true that children who play outside are, as a group, much healthier than children who remain cooped up inside glued to a video screen. They are less likely to develop heart disease and diabetes. They develop better motor skills like balance and coordination. Their bone strength and immunity systems are better, too.

And out of my clinical experience, I can personally attest to the fact that children who suffer from ADHD (or depression) experience significantly fewer symptoms after spending time outside — and not just outside in organized sports, but in nature.

To be sure, there are many benefits that come from organized sports and large group activities. But what is far more beneficial for the physical and emotional health of a child is quiet, individual (or very small group) interaction with nature.

This is also true for adolescents and young adults.

This is even truer for older adults like you and me.

Some time ago, a junior high schooler told me that she wanted to attend liturgy more often. Her folks wanted to attend only a few times throughout the year. She thought, rightly, that she needed to commune with God and His people more often. We explored some options, like a church friend taking her on Sundays. But, sadly, no practical solution seemed available.

So I suggested a “last resort” (which should have been the first): “I’ll get you an icon and a prayerbook … pray the morning and evening prayers in your bedroom. But go outside. Learn to pray outside. God’s Temple is everywhere there.”

No, I didn’t give her the advice of those who say that they are “spiritual without being religious,” who want to worship God in their own way (and who, in the end, probably do not pray).

But I did give her the age-old advice of the hermitage: when you’re so far away from the community of faith, you can still pray when you recognize God in His creation, and commune with Him even there, everyday.

St Seraphim of Sarov certainly knew this well. Soon after his priestly ordination in 1793, he lived alone, in hermitage, in the forest of Sarov for over thirty years. As the biographer, V. I. Il’in wrote, “It was as if the ancient evergreen woods surrounding the hermitage … were calling him to immerse himself totally in the contemplation of God, to gather all his inward forces toward the undivided service of God, toward continuous daytime and nocturnal prayer to God.”

For great saints like St Seraphim, whom Fr Pavel Florensky called “… perhaps the most powerful light that has ever shined in Russia," the solitary life in hermitage produced a momentous transfiguration into the “angelic life,” in which the New Jerusalem is experienced even now. St Seraphim, like St Anthony the Great before him, gained power in the spiritual and material worlds, and became able to guide and comfort people. “The dark fire, the black flame, of Gehenna, prepared for those who blaspheme against and reject love, is overcome and defeated by the white, luminous heat of the Spirit. Eternal bliss is attained on the narrow path of ‘greatest resistance.’ That was Saint Seraphim’s path — he died fully in Christ, and that was why his paschal joy was so great” (V. I. Il’in, St. Seraphim of Sarov, 1971).

Not many of us are called to such intensities. But we can all participate in the peace and beauty of the hermitage. The Lord Himself sanctified this choice: “… so much more the report went abroad concerning Him; and great crowds gathered to hear Him and to be healed of their infirmities. But frequently He retreated to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5.15-16).

I am sure you can relate to these words from David, the Poet King — the Lord sure did: “Fear and trembling have come upon me, the darkness has covered me. I said: Who will give me wings like a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest? See how far away I have fled, I have dwelt in the wilderness” (Psalm 54.5-7 LXX).

There is restoration and renewal to be had in nature, in the wilderness, in close communion with God in His beautiful creation: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul” (Psalm 23.2-3 KJV). Some translations go so far as to render that last line “He converts my soul.” Or, “He beautifies my soul.”

I am convinced that it is high time to teach our children the art of hermitage, of solitude in nature, of retreat. Too many children and youth are fixed on a mind-numbing routine that oscillates from group regimentation in school (and organized activities even in the summer) to video entertainments in the evening.

I think we have assumed that church camp or any kind of summer camp fulfills this need for solitude in nature. No, it does not. I have nothing against camp, but it is usually an intense, programmed experience.

And, frankly, many programs that are called “retreats” are really not a retreat at all – they are, more likely, conferences or even conventions with lectures, breakout sessions, even financial and institutional development presentations.

What we need as children, adolescents and adults, and especially senior citizens, is solitude in the wild. We need to become persuaded by the rhetoric written deeply in every creature – that reality is truly creation, that primordiality is peace and beauty and the infinite presence of divine kenosis.

There is no reason to believe that children cannot be theologians. There is every reason to believe that they will wither without becoming one.

Once again, Louv writes that “As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, and this reduces the richness of human experience.” The regimented focus of school and office in the day, and video entertainment at night, forces us all (not just children) to ignore distractions and unnaturally exhausts our minds.

But in nature, we practice an easy-going attention known as “soft fascination” that produces feelings of calm, even peace, even joy.

So show your children the way. Take them on hikes, take them fishing. Teach them knots to tie and the names of the stars. Pray with them outside. Explain just how the flowers and the trees shine with the glory of God: and in the same breath, tell them that children and all people are the highest glory of God (St Irenaeus said so: “For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God”). I like chanting the Psalms on my porch: maybe you would like to do this too. An older bass-singer in my former choir told me that every time he plants, waters or cares for his flowers and vegetables, he prays, and blesses.

What an awesome idea! So today I plunged my fingers in the deep fertile loam, and set there my young green shoots of broccoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, kale, fennel, onions and lettuce. And sowed the peas, the carrots and the blackeyed peas.

And I prayed.

And felt like Adam in Eden before the Fall.

Because the Creator is the Trinity of Love.

Because Pascha has made possible Eden Again.

So let us help our children play in the woods of Seraphim, again, so they can again show us all how to be meek and inherit the earth.

the oceanic new

 

Lent is stepping out of the familiar world

into the perilous heaven of love divine:

the Great Fast launches the meek and the child

from the weary old lands

and into the oceanic New:

 

"You gave birth and are a virgin,

and in both you remain by nature inviolate.

He Who is born makes new the laws of nature,

and the womb brings forth without travail.

When God so wills,

the natural order is overcome;

for He does whatsoever He wishes."

 

-- Theotokion of the Fourth Canticle,

in the Monday Compline setting for St Andrew's Canon

 

"Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

 

-- John 16.33 KJV

 

"Therefore if any one be in Christ,

he is a new creature:

old things are passed away;

behold, all things are become new."

 

-- 2 Corinthians 5.17

 

"Behold, the former things are come to pass,

and new things do I declare:

before they spring forth I tell you of them."

 

-- Isaiah 42.9

 

"And He that sat upon the throne said,

Behold, I make all things new.

And He said unto me, Write:

for these words are faithful and true."

 

-- Apocalypse (Revelation) 21.5