Second Terrace

ware the word "liberal"

In the last few weeks, a number of clergy (even hierarchs) have been called "liberal" and therefore suspect.

The word "liberal" itself has a lot of meanings, depending on time in history, location, and situation. In the early 20th century in American religious history, "liberal" was utilized as a negative term to describe clergy and academics who, because of their modernist commitments, denied or diminished certain "fundamentals" of the faith.

That use of "liberal" is more stable than the political use of "liberal." This latter usage has changed wildly over the years, so that a "liberal" from a hundred years ago can be (and is) called a "conservative."

Case in point: time was that a "libertarian" like Ayn Rand (or Rand Paul) was known as "liberal," because of their commitment to the cancellation of traditional regulations that conserved the environment (like the commons and park lands) and old-fashioned society (like guilds).

Now, almost unbelievably, a libertarian is commonly called "conservative."

The difficulty -- and I would add, tragic difficulty -- rises when the religious use of "liberal" is mixed with the political use.

If a priest or minister (or bishop) is called "liberal," I need to know which meaning is intended. It is a far, far more serious thing to me that a cleric is theologically or religiously "liberal," in that he militates against (or obfuscates) the tenets of the Nicene Creed, that he might deny the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption by the Cross, the reality of the Sacraments.

It is quite another thing entirely that the cleric might embrace liberal (or conservative) political positions. A hierarch who stands for environmentalism, racial and economic justice might be called "liberal," but a case could be made that in an earlier time he could justifiably be called faithfully conservative.

To make things even more difficult, it should be remembered that there are political positions that are manifestly at variance with Christianity. As patristic writers like Chrysostom, Basil, and the Gregory's repeatedly warned, Christians should not ally themselves to oppressive governmental or economic forms, whether these appear as usury or Strong Men who surround themselves with personality cults.

In effect, if you read me at all, please refrain from even the suggestion that hierarchs and clergy are "liberal" simply because they suggest the use of different spoons in communion, or if they care about the environment or social justice.

In particular, please do not suggest that a priest or a minister or a bishop is anything less than Orthodox simply because he heeds pandemic measures. We can all critique how well the government is doing in managing this unprecedented crisis -- and these critiques must be made, because there really is an Orthodox and prophetic response to the politics of epidemic.

But just as it is correct to hold government and medical authorities to the hard standards of Christian charity, it is at best questionable to engage in the many forms of denial and dismissal of the crisis: it is likely not rational or charitable at all.

Stewardship, justice, and charitable public health are not what makes a liberal (in the sense of anti-traditional Christianity). Denying the deity and salvation of Christ is.

And, perhaps, denying the brotherhood of humanity -- especially if that denial is done in the name of political affiliation.

the statues that need to stand

Cue Sam Cooke:

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much about biology
Don't know much about a science book,
Don't know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be

So while that melody’s jangling in your head, just think on this: that song, from the 1960 album “The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke,” is now sixty years old.

My buddies in Rockwood High School loved this number, and deployed it to justify their passive-aggressive inattention during Mr Greg’s American History class.

American history is hard in high school, and gets harder as years go by. The difficulty is not so much in having to learn more dates and details. The increasing difficulty lies in the “disappointment of myth.” 

As the grades get higher and the books get thicker, the hapless student finds out that a lot of pretty stories one learned early on turn out to be only pretty and probably not all that true.

It is unlikely that six-year-old George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. And it is unlikely that the first President threw a silver dollar across the mile-wide Potomac (what is more likely is that he threw a piece of slate across the much narrower Rappahannock near his childhood home).

These “unlikelinesses” are indeed disappointing. Still, these stories remain “mythical.” What remains underneath these stories is the unchanging truth of the heroic virtues of George Washington, which should not be in doubt. Washington, unlike many politicians, does not demoralize the historian. He becomes more complex as more details of his life are discovered -- but these added complexities enrich his story.

It turns out that he wasn’t the greatest battlefield tactician (he was a far better strategist), but he was a great leader in adversity. He was a unifier and inspirer. A tall and dignified figure, he encouraged virtue and discipline, quiet and steadfast determination.

But he was also a slave-owner. This is a fact, and it is a grave disappointment. At the time of his death in 1799, the population of enslaved persons at Mount Vernon was 317.

It is often said that those were different times then, and so he shouldn’t be judged by modern ethical conventions.

But morality -- the awareness of right and wrong -- is not something that evolves. If humanity is made in the image of God, then indeed, “all men are created equal” -- and must be treated so with equity by American justice. In the Bible, slavery is recognized as an unfortunate social reality, but it is not condoned. The Judeo-Christian tradition was first in antiquity to recognize slavery as a horrible, cancerous thing. Thusly, this same sense of its inherent wickedness echoes all throughout American history, despite America’s painfully long accommodation of its “peculiar institution.”

So the first President might be an inspiration in many virtues, but he cannot be excused for his participation in an evil institution. 

This is an example of why history is hard. History might be buoyant at times, but more times than not it is burdensome. This is true of all history, even Church History, which in particular is usually "idealized." This single fact makes singing “I don’t know much about history” so appealing.

But growing up demands wrestling with history as it is, not as what one would like it to be. Adult history is a lot more complicated than movies like “Gone With the Wind” or reveries like “The Lost Cause.” These pretty stories of bygone days are romantic, and talk about pain and loss: but the problem is that they don’t tell the whole story -- they don’t talk about everyone’s pain, and they ignore a greater part of the loss. 

The burden of disappointing facts will come: but then will come the buoyancy. In adult history, the order of fairy-tale-then-disappointment is reversed. In the grownup telling, first the disappointing details raise their ugly heads like the Lernean Hydra, but then surprisingly comes expanded possibilities and horizons, hope and healing.

It is true that “you can’t heal until you see the hurt.” But there is indeed healing after the whole hurt is recognized. As the Book of Psalms says several times, “In the evening may come weeping, but joy comes in the morning.”

I think this deep poetic sensibility ties together the rhetoric of two great adversaries: adversaries at least until April 9, 1865 -- a date which concluded four long horrible years of destruction, disappointment, and despair. 

A few months after the Battle of Gettysburg, on November 19 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the cemetery for thousands of soldiers slain. Haggard, pale, and obviously ill (probably from prodromal smallpox), he tried to describe how the nation could go on after such horrors, such sacrifice, such pain:

“ … that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The true memorializing of the historic truth -- the buoyancy and the burden -- of the Civil War and the aftermath of slavery, lies not in statuary or monuments, but in “a new birth of freedom.” 

General Robert E Lee agreed. In 1866, he expressed a similar sentiment about the erection of Confederate statuary: “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”

The Civil War, or if you will, the “War of Northern Aggression” -- no matter what you call it -- was a four year holocaust of thousands and thousands of American young men. On the other hand, American slavery was a four hundred year long holocaust of literally millions of black men, women, and children, all made in the image of God and should have been treated so. Racial prejudice and injustice, both systemic and individual, are as General Lee writes, “sores of war,” “marks of civil strife” that must be recognized, healed and repaired.

If statues are necessary memorials, there is not enough room in this county, or indeed the entire country, for enough statues to stand for Americans who’ve suffered and died -- especially enslaved Americans.

Carrying the burden of history, as we all do, we can with buoyancy resolve to an “increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

You and I, with such buoyancy of moral devotion, are the real statues that need to stand. 

And move.

the cloud of witnesses

The Ranks of Saints

The “proskomedia” is the service of preparing the gifts of bread and wine that takes place right before Liturgy,

In the service, a cubical portion is cut out of the prosfora loaf. This portion is called the Lamb, which becomes the Body of Christ in Liturgy. To the right of the Lamb (from the Lamb’s point of view) is placed a triangular portion that is symbolic of the Theotokos. She stands in her own place, to represent the fact that she is the first to have crossed the threshold of the Last Day, and is now in the Life of the Resurrection. As such, and as she is the Mother of Christ God, she prays as no other creature can. For her, there is no interval between the “now and the not yet.”

But to the left of the Lamb is placed a three by three matrix of nine smaller triangular portions. Each of these portions represents a “rank,” or group, of the “cloud of witnesses” described by St Paul in Hebrews 12 (in the Epistle Reading for All Saints Sunday).

These nine ranks are like the nine ranks of the Bodiless Powers (according to St Dmitri of Rostov: the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; then the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; then the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels). The nine ranks of Saints that stand to the left of the Lamb are starting in the top left corner, 1) all the Bodiless Powers and the Angels; then below that 2) the Holy Prophets; 3) the Holy Apostles; then starting at the top to the right of the first, 4) the Holy Bishop Saints; 5) the Holy Martyrs; 6) the Holy Monastics; 7) the Holy Unmercenaries (i.e., miracle-working, pro bono physicians); 8) the Holy Grandparents of the Lord Joachim and Anna; and 9) the Holy Patron of the community and the Saints commemorated on that day, and all the Saints.

All the Saints, in all these groups or categories, are depicted on the discos as we are calling them, too, along with the Theotokos, to pray for us, and to gather with us in Divine Liturgy.

The Cloud of Witnesses

These particles for the Saints are not what we usually think of “memorials.” Memorials, in our culture, are monuments to help us to remember those who have departed from us. Most people in our culture think a memorial “keeps memory alive” of those who are lost and will never be seen again.

In Orthodoxy, we understand the word “memory” in a completely different way. “Memory” for God is “present consciousness” — and God is presently conscious of all Time all at once. For Him, there is no past or future — all is Present. That is why, by the way, we sing “Memory Eternal” for the departed, just because that Divine Memory is exactly the Eternal Present. So while our loved ones may be temporally and temporarily departed from us, they are never departed from God. Thus St Paul says “Absent in body, present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5.8).

This never-ending, never-interrupted “presence with the Lord” becomes even more intimate, more obvious, when a Saint “falls asleep” — which is the Christian term for death (ever since the Lord, before raising the daughter of Jairus, said that she was only “asleep”). When any falls asleep, they enter into the immediate Uncreated Light, the Glory of the Holy Trinity, and the undoubtable, unavoidable Presence of the Lord.

For some, this will begin a long, long duration of accepting this presence.

But for the Saints, since they have opened their hearts to the filling of the Holy Spirit, they already love the Presence of Christ. Their tears are wiped away. And their experience is called, poetically in the Bible, the “Bosom of Abraham” (which was, at the time of Jesus, an idiomatic phrase for the afterlife of the righteousness).

We are now in the period of time that the Revelation to St John (i.e., the “Apocalypse”) calls the “Millennium.” It is not a literal thousand year period: it is a symbolic term for the interval between the Ascension and the Second Coming. And it does not happen “later,” after the Second Coming or some sort of “halfway” approach (as is depicted in the Rapture doctrine of some Protestants).

Jesus is sitting enthroned right now, at the Right Hand of God the Father, and “His Kingdom shall have no end” or interruption.

And “He is wonderful in His Saints.” Right now.

In this time period of the present Millennium, the Saints actually “reign” with Christ, just as He promised in Matthew 19 (today’s Gospel Reading):
“Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

The Lord is sitting on His glorious throne at the Right Hand of the Father, and the Apostles, along with all the Saints, indeed to judge, or rule, the “twelve tribes of Israel,” which is, first of all, the Church, and all humanity and the cosmos.

The Rule of the Saints

But what is this “reign,” or “rule,” or “judging” that is done by the Saints?

First of all — and this is obvious — they “witness.” They are not ignorant. They are aware of our life. They are not limited by our fallen awareness — an awareness that is tinged with unbelief, hopelessness, and despair. Thus, they are able to be aware without the harmful suffering of pain.

Our actions — that is, our “living out” the life of the love of Christ — are recognized by them in truth. Neither pretense nor hypocrisy can hide reality from the Saints: and upon this criterion they judge.

They exercise authority in such truthful judgment, which is utterly different from the authority of worldly judgment that is based on lies. Thus, worldly judgment depends on violence, domination, the threat and fear of death, and the infliction of death on humanity and all life. This dependence on domination and violence is inherently satanic. It is the character of Antichrist.

But the Reign of Christ is just like Christ. It bears His character of love, the pouring out of self (i.e., “kenosis”). Jesus made this very clear in His response to the Apostles’ infighting over leadership:

“You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Matthew 10.42-44).
The Lord is simply saying that His Body — the Church — must be like Him, the Head. “The Son of Man,” He continued, “also came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 10.45).

This is the only sort of “politics” that Christians really know. If they practice any other politics — like the politics of power and domination (or, God forbid, violence) — than they are practicing politics that are outside the Body of Christ, politics that are in opposition to Him (another word for that is “antichrist”).
This is true in the here and now. It is even truer, more obvious, in the “here and forever” of the Bosom of Abraham, the Present Reign of the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ, and the Saints who reign with Him.

That reign of true divine power is only the rulership of divine kenosis, the rulership of giving self away in love.

The Manifestations

That is the “character” of the Reign of the Saints. So how is this Reign “actualized”? How does it work out?

How is it manifested?

The Mother of God and some of the Saints have frequently appeared in the Millennium, this Age of the Church. Their appearance is mysterious. There is no scientific definition, as their appearance eludes all material confinement or laboratory observation. The scientific method cannot be applied to them.

But they appear in their own personal freedom, and according to the Lord’s loving, providential direction. Their personhood is recognizable: and it should be borne in mind, here, that beyond the constraints of the Fall (as the Saints are in the cloud of witnesses), all persons are recognized as there are no longer the limitations of ignorance and the anonymity of individual isolation.

Beyond their appearance, their reign is manifested in their continual prayer to the Lord in praise, and prayer to the Lord in intercession for us.

The Present Rulership of the Saints is the most powerful sort of Reign there can be. It is the Reign of Prayer. It is the Reign of Love.

If it is said that Love is less powerful than violence and domination, then that is said from a mind that believes the lies of antichrist, the enemy.

But belief in Christ as the Risen Son of God, and being filled by the Holy Spirit, enables one to recognize, in mind and heart, that there is nothing more powerful than the Love of Christ.

It is by this Love, and only by this Love, that the Saints do Reign — now and forever.

true pentecostal

What happened at Pentecost is more important than we know.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Jesus Christ did everything He did -- His Nativity, His Gospel ministry, His Passion in Holy Week and the Cross, His Resurrection -- just so Pentecost would happen.

One can go even so far as to say that the entire Creation and the Providence of the Universe were done so for the sake of Pentecost.

Of course, there is no taking away from the significance of the Incarnation, which was the descent of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, into humanity and Creation.

It is clear that the Son of God, for eternity before His descent, had been active in Creation as the Word and Image of the Father, the Artist of the Cosmos and the Ground of all Thought. This is emphasized in the first chapter of the Gospel of St John.

But in the Incarnation, Christ did something unprecedented: He assumed all humanity -- which is, as St Maximos the Confessor makes clear the beating heart of the universe -- into His Body, redeemed it at the Cross, and ascended into Heaven. He regained His eternal and heavenly glory, but now still and forever human as well as God. And in the mysterious ten days after the Ascension, He asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit.

The Father, in response to this request, sent the Holy Spirit, Who then descended into humanity. This is precisely what happened at Pentecost.

So what happened on Pentecost, fifty days after Pascha, that was totally new? And unprecedented?

What was NOT new

First of all, there are a few things that were not new. “Prophesying” was not new -- this phenomenon, and probably also speaking in tongues (“glossolalia”) was already known in Israel, and even in other cultures. King David’s predecessor, Saul, was known to have “prophesied with the prophets” (1 Kingdoms/1 Samuel 10.10): the Septuagint adds that “the Spirit of God came upon him.” So it is not correct to say that “speaking in tongues” was a new sign of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit was very much active throughout all of the Old Testament, long before Pentecost. It was by the operation of the Spirit that any of the Prophets prophesied. The Prophets foretold things that would happen in the future -- especially the coming of the Messiah.

They also were moved by the Holy Spirit to call the people of Israel to repentance, to go back to loving God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength (Deuteronomy 6.5).

The Holy Spirit spoke through the Prophets, too, to lead society in spiritual growth and theological maturity even beyond the first generations of Israel. The Prophets revealed to Israel that God was more than a vengeful, wrathful God — this “theology” of omnipotence and divine anger was common in the pagan world, as it is today. But the Prophets proclaimed that He is God the Father Who is Love. St Irenaeus of Lyons described this as an ongoing revelation of God the Father introducing, generation by generation, His real nature to Israel. That is why the Prophets called for even deeper repentance, deeper change. The Prophet Jonah was led, unwillingly, to announce repentance far beyond the boundaries of Israel, even to the worst of alien Gentiles -- the Assyrians in Nineveh.

This was all leading up to a climax. The Holy Spirit, through the Prophet Jeremiah, promised that there will come a day when the Law will move from the outside to the inside, from external “tables of stone” to internal spirituality: “I will surely put My laws into their mind and write them on their hearts. I will be as God to them, and they shall be as My people” (Jeremiah 38.33 LXX).

The Holy Spirit gave gifts all throughout the Old Testament to help humanity make it to this point. The Spirit gave gifts of prophecy, of “tongues,” of craftsmanship (like Bezalel and Oholiab with the Tabernacle in Exodus 31), of poetry and music (like King David), of miracles (like Elias and Eliseus especially). The Holy Spirit was always leading humanity to a “New Song” (Psalm 97.1 LXX; Isaiah 42.10; Apocalypse/Revelation 5.9), in a higher key than the songs before.

Spiritual gifts, then, were not the new, unprecedented thing in Pentecost.

What IS new

What is new in Pentecost is exactly the Descent of the Holy Spirit. As never before, the Holy Spirit descended as Person, as Hypostasis, into humanity and Creation, just as Jesus Christ had descended in the Incarnation.

Just as Jesus poured Himself out in “kenosis” in the Incarnation (Philippians 2.7), so now the Holy Spirit does the same. The Spirit surrenders His own glory (just as Jesus had done so until the Ascension) in two ways. First, the Spirit never brings attention to Himself, but glorifies only the Son. Second, the Spirit accepts and “suffers” the limitations of humanity. The Descent of the Holy Spirit is a descent upon all of humanity -- and yet, humanity will open up to the Holy Spirit in only (and tragically) partial ways. Sadly, it is (and always will be) possible to deny the Holy Spirit’s mission, and thus to blaspheme Him.

It is only by the personal descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that Jesus Christ remains with the Church: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28.20). This remains true despite His ascending into Heaven. It is the Holy Spirit Who personally glorifies Christ and makes Him present. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus told His disciples on the night before His betrayal, “He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears he will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16.13).

Jesus promised His disciples, on the eve of His Passion, that “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14.18). How was this to happen, given that He will indeed leave them during those terrible Three Days between Good Friday and Pascha … and then again, forty days later? “I will ask the Father,” Jesus said, referring to those ten days between Ascension and Pentecost, “And He will give you another Comforter, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14.16-17).

We should pay close attention to two revolutionary words: “another Comforter.” This word “another” indicates that Jesus Christ Himself is a “Comforter” already, and that the Holy Spirit is actually the Second Comforter. It means that both the Son of God and the Spirit of God reveal to humanity and Creation that God is Father, that God is Love.

Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit comfort us with the Personal Love of God. They both comfort us with the revelation of God as beauty, God as goodness, God as truth, God as the goal of our life desire, God as the One Who draws us all to full communion with Him.

“Communion” really is the Pentecostal Mission of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit Who makes us One with the Father, One with Christ, and One with each other. It is the Spirit Who is working now to draw all humanity, and all Creation, into Oneness with God -- a perfect and full and unlimited Communion on the Last Day, when “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15.28).

The new possibility of prayer

In these troubled days, it has become fashionable to ridicule the cliche “thoughts and prayer” — the kind of empty expression often sent as a response to the news of some tragic event.

This is terribly unfortunate, as that ridicule, and the empty use of the expression, completely misses the reality of prayer.

Prayer is the best thing you can do in any and every situation. It is not only the last resort, when no solution is in sight: it is also the first resort and every resort. “All action begins in the soul,” the Hesychastic Fathers repeatedly remind us.

And all love, the deepest and perfection of action in human nature, begins in prayer.

There is no other way for love to bloom.

The Incarnation and Pentecost — both Descents, the first of the Son and the second of the Spirit — make prayer universally possible for the first time.

This is what communion with the Father is all about. “Prayer” remains the best word — in fact, the only word — that we can use to describe the relationship of the Son and Spirit with the Father. Without denying at all their co-divinity and consubstantiality with the Father, the undeniable and earth-shaking truth remains that the Son and Spirit both call the Father “God.” Their relationship within divinity is exactly called “prayer.”

The word “prayer,” over centuries of time and overuse, has been stripped of its radical meaning. “Prayer” is precisely — just because it is the word for the Son and the Spirit’s communion with the Father — the word for our communion with God.

Origen once suggested that the sort of prayer of “asking,” or “supplication,” is inferior to the prayer of “adoration” and the seeking of mystical union. As much as I honor Origen, I think he is wrong here. In relation to God the Father, all of our prayer is “inferior,” and there really is no dividing of prayer into different types or forms.

The “communion of prayer” was described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7.9-11).

And it is exciting and enlightening to pair these verses with what the Lord said about prayer in His Upper Room Discourse, hours before He was betrayed: “In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full … In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father” (John 16.23-28).

When Jesus said “that day,” He was referring to Pentecost, the Personal Descent of the Holy Spirit upon humanity. Prior to that day, there was a “distance,” and a difficulty in prayer. There needed to be an intermediary, or a chain of intermediaries between humanity and God.

This was exemplified in the book of Daniel (chapter 10). There, we read of a mysterious, demonic resistance to prayer — which for Daniel’s supplication, took twenty-one days.

That resistance is driven away by the Personal Presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, we can approach the Father directly in prayer (that is, in the Holy Spirit), all because we exist in the Name of Jesus — that is, in His Body.

The true Pentecostal

The Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, is really the truest “new sign” of Pentecost, not “speaking in tongues” or any “spiritual gift.” She is, out of all humanity, the greatest “Pentecostal,” who stands long before the American pentecostalism of the Azusa Street Revival (a three year long event that started in 1906) or any camp meeting or “brush arbor” meeting. The Virgin Mary is the one who is filled most with the Holy Ghost, and brought perfectly into communion with the Holy Trinity. She is the Sign of Pentecost, but also the Sign of the End.

After the first chapter of Acts, we hear no more of the Virgin Mary. And that is well. She, as the most perfect sign of the Holy Spirit, as the one most deified by the Spirit, recedes precisely to glorify the Name of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit never brings attention to self, but always attends to the Son.

The Virgin Mary did -- and does -- the same. It is by her prayers that the world was turned upside down in the rest of Acts. It is by her prayer -- in maternal communion with the Father -- that history was changed, that Time is now propelled toward universal transfiguration.

We, too, can change history.

In these days, we must change history.

So at this Feast of Pentecost, when someone comes up to you and asks “Is the Orthodox Church Pentecostal?” you can answer, confidently, that indeed Orthodoxy is Pentecostal, but so is all of humanity, and so is all Creation. Whether or not an individual wants to be enfolded into that Uncreated Fire of the Holy Spirit is up completely to him or her. At least for now.

But who would want to miss any moment of that Comfort of Two Comforters, that beautiful goodness and truth, that unshakeable knowledge that God is Father to us all?

Welcome to Pentecost, which with Pascha, is the most important day of the year.

there are no sides

-- Philonese Floyd weeps at the site of the execution of his brother

We’ve had more than our fill of bad luck recently. The Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown measures, with 40 million people losing their jobs, were bad enough. And then we got last Monday, May 25th, in Minneapolis.

Someone recently wrote on social media that it was time to “choose up sides,” as if there was a line in the sand on which to make a stand. Obviously, this came from someone who didn’t have all the lights turned on upstairs. But more importantly, that kind of talk only throws gas on the fire.

We don’t need inflammatory speech like that. The temperature in the land has already busted the top of the societal thermometer. We’ve had enough.

Everyone has had enough: enough of riot and destruction, enough of bigotry and injustice.

On all sides.

Because when it comes to humanity and justice, peace and unity, there can be no “sides.” We are one country, one human race.

Every human being should be horrified by the torturous execution of +George Floyd. Every human with a sense of justice (and this should cover everyone made in the image of God) should be angered by the delay in the arrest of the fired officer who murdered him, and the ongoing delay of the arrest of the other three ex-officers who are accomplices in the murder. Every adult who’s seen death up close will shake his head in disbelief at the official autopsy: asphyxiation cannot be camouflaged by euphemism.

It is logically and Christianly impossible to excuse or minimize this injustice. And, frankly, there is much reasonable cause for social protest.

But there is no cause at all for riot and rampage … no cause for water bottle throwing, cherry bomb and bottle-rocket firing, and in-your-face spouting of cursing and vulgarity … no cause (except for cheap criminality) for breaking windows and looting … no cause on heaven or earth (but maybe hell) for setting buildings ablaze.

There is, at the same time, no cause at all for the President to clear a street with militarized police, tear gas, and flash grenades – all of this just to brandish a Holy Bible in a gesture that I, a PK who’s watched thousands of Billy Graham-type sermons, have never seen.

The Bible cannot and must not be held up as a sign of hardfisted power.

There is a sharp and moral difference between protesting and rioting.

Riots are never constructive. At the end of every destructive riot there is not only property loss, but loss of hope, loss of community, even loss of life. Despair sets in. People are torn apart, separated into grudge-charged labels.

Protest, on the other hand, can change things. America itself was born out of protest. The Protestant Reformation made “protest” a religious name, and it brought about many good things for not only Protestants, but even for Roman Catholics and other Christian communities. In the 19^th Century, evangelicals and revivalists were at the forefront of abolition, labor reform, and monopoly-busting. Another Martin Luther (as in “MLK”) led a series of non-violent protests that at least started a process of positive change.

Admittedly, the change hasn’t gone far enough. That is a fact. It is not changeable by point-of-view.

When it comes to point-of-view, or perspective, I frequently try out a “thought experiment” that I highly recommend. It’s called “turning the tables.” It goes like this: if I saw a man from my own community cuffed face-down on the pavement with his neck knelt down upon, how would I feel? Or if a young woman who had my skin color was mistakenly shot in her own home? Or if I’d seen the same sort of thing on TV not just once or a few times but more than I could count?

How would I feel if I had to set my son or grandson down and have “the talk” with him -- not about the birds and the bees, but about always being hypervigilant, to stay not only safe but “safe looking”?

I can tell my granddaughter today that if she was ever scared, she can run to the nearest policeman. I just hope that my friend can say the same thing to her little Isaiah, an African-American child who’s winsome as my Evelina Rose.

If the tables were turned like this, and I had much to protest and much to fear, I hope that I would listen to people like the rapper Killer Mike, who said this past Monday in Atlanta, “Don’t burn down your own house … if you want to change things, get out and vote!”

But the tables are not really turned for me, nor for you. Like it or not, there’s a crisis we have to face and there is peril. As a community, we need to approach this crisis in a problem-solving attitude. We need to be cool, calm, and professional. We need to suppress inflammatory speech: just as we would not tolerate violent speech from rioters, so we cannot tolerate ugly words from civil authorities. We need to -- once again quoting Killer Mike -- “make our houses fortresses of peace.”

We need to deliberately reach across the divisions and keep up the hard work of “un-dividing.” We need to carry on the work of racial reconciliation and justice. Christians -- whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Episcopalian, Mainline Protestant and Fundamentalist, and Charismatic and Pentecostal -- need to immediately stop thinking of social justice as "liberal." Labeling the concern of justice like this is at least lazy, if not deliberately evasive, or even craven.

We have to insist on moral courage from our religious and political leaders: there can’t be any delay in denouncing brutality and injustice … there can’t be time taken to check your polls and to stick your finger in the air …

… my senators and your senators, my representative and your representative, must no longer be controlled by tweets from the Whitehouse.

We need to demand the de-militarization of civil police: police need to look more like Mayberry than Judge Dredd. We need to demand that the military permanently stay out of civil involvement. The Insurrection Act of 1807 must be repealed and rejected: it is deeply immoral. As the son-in-law of a decorated WWII vet and Ex-POW, I have always honored American soldiery: deploying them to American streets is a deep dishonor to the memory of every fallen American hero.

We need to make sure everyone 18 and over can vote, and know that they have full suffrage and participation in the story we call “the American Experiment.” There is nothing conservative or Christian about ever making voting hard. In this time of pandemic, mail-in balloting should be available to everyone and everywhere.

Since I’m a Christian, I’m going to wax a little religious here. Jesus cares about only one ethnicity, and that is humanity. “In Christ,” St Paul says in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor freeman” -- meaning that the human race is un-divideable, un-categorizable, un-labelable.

And I could go on with the verse’s sentiments: “In Christ there is neither black nor white, neither Anglo nor Hispanic, neither legal or undocumented, neither rich nor poor.” In His humanity, there are no racial or socio-economic divisions: these were never God’s Will -- the Garden of Eden, or the City of God, is the only Christian politics there can be.

There are and can be no sides: God doesn’t recognize a single one, inside or out.

I remember the protests of the Sixties, and true enough, there were a lot of regrettable things then said and done. But there was a winsome candle that flickered here and there. One such winsome example was a song that I learned at Camp Sunrise Mountain in 1969 -- a song that we should probably dust off and start singing again:

“Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let there be Peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be
With God as our Father
Brothers all are we
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.”

I'd rather sound sappy like that, than draw a line in the sand.

God has gone up with a shout

Without leaving the bosom of the Father,

you share our humanity on earth, O sweetest Jesus.

Today, you ascend to heaven in glor--  from the Mount of Olives,

in your compassion raising our fallen nature

to place it with yourself at the right hand of the Father.

The bodiless powers in heaven are struck with fear and amazement,

and glorify your love for humanity;

with them, we on earth glorify your condescension for us and you ascension,

and we say: ‘O Lord, who fill your disciples

and the mother who gave you birth with ineffable joy,

by their prayers grant us also the joy of your elect
and the grace of salvation.”


-- Vespers of Ascension

God is Spirit

-- "Christ and the Samaritan Woman," Lucas Cranach the Elder (1532)

Holy Scripture is infinitely filled with Divine Truth. That isn’t surprising, as Christ is as spiritually present in the words of Scripture as He is physically present in the Eucharist.

Because Christ is the Source, the Meaning, and the Goal of all Scripture, then Scripture can be infinitely interpreted. There is no end to the Wisdom that Scripture expresses, as it is revealed by the Holy Spirit to the Body of Christ — the Church throughout time and space.

The Gospel for the Sixth Paschal Sunday, about Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan Woman, is filled with many, many teachings, even on a cursory view:
Jesus got thirsty (and hungry, and tired, and He felt pain), and asked human help for water.

Jesus offers, through His Friendship, “living water” for the thirst of the heart. In other words, He is the fulfillment of the deepest and most crucial human need and desire. He is the Spring of life, for which we all thirst.

“Eternal life” is not just “forever,” as in an indefinite extension of time. “Eternity,” more importantly, is a quality and condition that transcends time and space. It is communion with God — this is the true desire that motivates every human being, despite humanity’s frequent misdirection of desire.

Jesus identified her tragic situation out of His deified humanity. Recall that He submerged His divinity under His humanity. His knowledge of her failed marital situation did not come from His divine nature, but His deified human nature.

When the woman wondered about Jesus’ authenticity as a prophet, she deferred the issue to the coming of the Messiah — as both heterodox Samaritans and orthodox Jews had done for centuries.

In speaking with the outcast Samaritan Woman, it is obvious that Jesus doesn’t care about ethnic or cultural boundaries. There is only one ethnicity that Jesus cares about — and that is humanity. He doesn’t care about any of our “divisions,” whether they are cultural, political, even moral. He didn’t then, He doesn’t now.

“Worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth”: this is a promise that was fulfilled at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit as Person descended upon all humanity. The Holy Spirit glorifies and makes present Christ to all humanity, neither exclusively at the Samaritans’ Mount Gerazim, nor at the Jews’ Jerusalem. Every human is witnessed to in their heart about Jesus by the Holy Spirit — and that worship of the Father through the Son is exactly the worship that the Father seeks.

Jesus explicitly identified Himself as precisely that Messiah. “Messiah” means “Anointed One” — that is, anointed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism on Theophany by John the Baptist. “Christ” is simply the Greek translation of “Messiah.”

“God is spirit”: the word “Spirit” is not limited to the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The whole Trinity is “spirit”: the Father is “spirit,” and so, obviously, is the Holy Spirit. Even the Son is “spirit” — indeed, He was spirit before the Incarnation, but even and especially after the Ascension He is spirit, but remains human as well.

So what does “Spirit” mean, then?

“Spirit,” first of all, means that God is beyond the limitations of matter. But the word also means that God is beyond all the limitations of “location.” Even the angels are limited — they are not “spirit” in the way that God is spirit.

Secondly, “spirit” means “life.” God is the source of all reality and all life. But in particular, God is the source of “noetic” life — that is, the spiritual life of angels and humans.

Thirdly, “spirit” is precisely what Love is.

Thus, God cannot be specified in matter, obviously, but God cannot be limited to Time or Space. The Father must be worshipped as He is — spirit. And He must be worshiped truly — not as a concept or artifice, or as part of Creation (which is a common human failing). Origen writes that “those who worship the Father in spirit and not [limited to] the flesh, in truth and not in types, are the true worshipers” (Commentary on the Gospel of John).

St Evagrius of Pontus writes this in his Chapters on Prayer:

“If you wish to pray, you have need of God ‘Who gives prayer to him who prays” (1 Kingdoms 2.9 LXX). Invoke Him, then, saying, ‘Hallowed by Thy Name, Thy kingdom come’ — that is, the Holy Spirit and Your Only-Begotten Son. For this is what He taught us, saying, ‘Worship the Father in spirit and in truth.’ He who prays in spirit and in truth is no longer dependent on created things when honoring the Creator but praises Him for and in Himself [i.e., God]. If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”

The “Kingdom” here is the bright presence of the Two Comforters — Christ, and the Holy Spirit Who glorifies and makes present Christ Himself. The Second and Third Persons of the Trinity usher us — in true prayer — into the worship of the Father.

Thus, there is no restriction of place for true prayer, which really is “worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth.” God is spirit — so the revolutionary news is that there is no limitation of Time or Space for this awesome, beautiful, peaceful, bright and glorious prayerful worship (or “worshipful prayer” — same thing).

Worship in spirit and in truth is true meaning of humanity. It is what you and I desire most.

Everywhere is Holy Ground. Every moment is the Eighth Day, the Day of Salvation. God as Spirit is already at the depth of your soul, in the embrace of every love, and in every occasion of beauty in Creation.

He is waiting for you. The Father seeks you, He desires you to meet Him in spirit and in truth.

on myrrh-bearing and the three days

The unnaturality of death

When Jesus died on the Cross, He experienced something profoundly “unnatural.” Because He is the Son of God, and because the Spirit completely deified His human nature — that is, His body and His human soul — He would never have died a “natural death.” In other words, He would never have died of old age or even of sickness. He got hungry and tired, yes: but disease and old age are legacies of the Fall, and that did not apply to the Son of God.

So for Jesus to die, He had to be murdered, the most unnatural death of all — which is exactly what the Cross is. The Cross is a symbol for humanity’s entire rejection of God. God, however, turned the Cross into a symbol of His overwhelming Love.But there is another reason why His death was “unnatural.” And this unnaturality is something shared with the entire human race. It is the reason why Jesus voluntarily accepted death.That “unnaturality” is the separation of the soul from the body. Death was never meant to be part of the order of things. But because of the Fall of humanity into sin and rejection of God (and His love, which is everything that God is and stands for), humans brought death upon themselves … because the rejection of God and His love is a profound rejection of what life is.

So if life is rejected, it falls apart. That is exactly what death is: a “falling apart,” or separation, of the soul from the body. Human death — at least, and maybe all death in biological life — was never meant to be the customary order of things.

And this is what Jesus voluntarily took upon Himself, so that He could overturn all the consequences and aftermath of the Fall — even death itself.

The descent

Both body and soul of Christ’s were human. His spirit is divine. His body remained in the Tomb, but His human soul (His “psyche”) and His divine spirit descended into the non-physical realm of death called Hell.

Hell is the source of all the signs of death. All the passions, all despair, all hatred and violence and domination, come from and are rooted in Hell.

Hell is the destiny, the endpoint, of all rejection  of God’s love. It is where every human soul that has rejected its own essence — which is to reflect divine Love and to participate in the beauty of its Being — ends up, because it is the bottom of the Abyss.

Hell is the dark domain of broken mirrors.

Jesus, after and precisely because of the Cross and Gethsemane, descended into this Hell to rescue humanity from this prison locked “by gates of brass,” as verses from Saturday evening Vespers repeatedly reminds us.

He announced to all this glorious invitation, as His hidden divinity is now revealed at the bottom of all existence, at the darkest point of death … the divinity that obliterates the authority of sin and death, and destroys Hell’s gates: “Come unto Me, all ye that are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (from Matthew 11.28-30).

Immediately after this moment, Jesus "led the host of captives" out. St Paul describes this moment explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians, “Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.” In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that He had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is He who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things (4.8-9).

Whether all of humanity left with Him remains a mystery. But who would ever stay behind in Hell when Jesus Himself opened a way out?

The Body that remained

This descent takes place during the mysterious and dark Three Days, the Triduum, the interval between Good Friday and the Sunday of Pascha. The mystery of these Three Days is veiled in holy mysticism, analogous to the mysterious Ten Days between the Ascension and Pentecost.

During these Three Days, the Body of Jesus Christ remained in the Tomb.

Here is where things become radically different from the usual process of death. Here is where a radical change occurs within human history, within our time and space:

The Body of Jesus does not decay. It does not even begin to decay. It remains whole, unbroken (remember that His legs were not broken to hasten His death on the Cross, as were the legs of the two thieves).

It remains undefiled, uncorrupted.

This is important, because Jesus’ humanity — while vulnerable to the “sinless passions” of hunger, thirst, sorrow, and fatigue — was never “Fallen” humanity. It never participated in the sinful passions of Hell, the signs of death.

St Gregory of Nyssa writes that the human soul and divine spirit of Jesus never broke the connection it had with the body of Jesus. As every human soul in death “remembers” its body, even more so the soul of Jesus maintained the wholeness of His body, even in these Three Days of death.

The wholeness of Jesus’ Body in His tomb, His remaining “incorrupt” and never decaying, is an exceedingly important Sign of Jesus’ divinity and His totally divinized, resurrected humanity.

His incorrupt Body is the Sign that Jesus destroyed death's power of corruption. Indeed, it is a Sign in the here-and-now of the eventual triumph, at the Last Day, of Christ over all the "falling apart," the physical (and spiritual) decline and biological entropy, that had been going on since the Fall.

His Body did not decay.

That is why we remember this Sign at every Divine Liturgy. Following the Epiclesis, the celebrant lifts up the cubical Bread that is now the Body of Christ. He breaks it into four portions. And the portion labeled IC (of ICXC NIKA) he places into the chalice of the Blood of Christ.

And after this, the celebrant (or deacon) pours warm water into the chalice, saying “The fervor of faith, full of the Holy Spirit.”

This pouring of warm water is the potent Sign that Christ destroyed death even and especially in the act of suffering death, and that His Body did not suffer corruption even and especially as Christ suffered sinless passions, just as Scripture prophesied.

This is a correction of the teachings of the Sixth Century Aphthartodocetics and Phantasiasts, who insisted that Christ did not suffer hunger, thirst, sorrow, and fatigue. They taught that if He did, then His body would have to decay. The Orthodox Church responded, faithfully, that Christ took upon Himself all humanity in its reality and in its descent, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says: “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One Who in every respected as been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4.15).

The Myrrh-bearers

It is heartbreaking that the decay of death was so ingrained, so customary, that Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus (who secretly visited Jesus at night in John 3), and the Holy Myrrhbearers took enormous risk in preparing the Body of Jesus.

After taking the Body down from the Cross, Joseph and Nicodemus wrapped it in a shroud, along with one hundred pounds of burial spices — a blend of aloes and myrrh (reminiscent of the myrrh brought by the Magi at the Nativity). They had to work quickly, as the Sabbath of Passover was drawing nigh (John 19.38-42).

No work — even the necessary work of burial — could be done on the Sabbath, especially this Sabbath, as it was a “high holy day” So the women who would do the final preparations of Jesus’ Body had to skip a day.

The women came — including, according to Holy Tradition, the Mother of God, Mary the Theotokos — on Sunday, the first day of the week. They brought even more spices to anoint the Body, and to prepare it against corruption and decay the best they could.

It is poignant that this was the loving human way to hold off decay, as long as might be possible.

But death always had its way.

Until this day.

It just seems right that these brave, heartbroken women who stayed faithfully with Jesus on the Cross, closer to Him than His Apostles, would be the first to hear the Angels (very much like the angelic choir at the Nativity), sing “Rejoice, O pure Virgin, again I say rejoice. Your Son is risen from His three days in the tomb, and He has raised all the dead. Let all people rejoice.”

They were the first to see the empty sepulcher, and the linen cloths that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had wrapped around the Body of Jesus — now lying empty and neatly folded.

The Myrrrh-bearers who were going, faithfully, to do their last ministry of love, were the first to receive the greatest reward, the greatest news that Christ is Risen, and that He is Risen indeed.

Thomas who did not doubt

-- Doubting Thomas, by Caravaggio

If the events of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection would have happened today, then in the few weeks afterwards I (along with other mental health professionals) would have looked upon the poor disciples as showing signs of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Think about it. It’s easy to understand the horror of their experience of seeing their Master led away to Crucifixion, but things were already getting rough before then. In the few months before, Jesus changed the tone of His teachings. He was getting more and more critical of the Temple and the Synagogue, as it was becoming clear that the mainstream Jewish religion was rejecting Him outright. At the same time, He was getting His disciples used to the fact that when He entered Jerusalem, He was entering into the Passion which would end up on Golgotha.

Already, the disciples were getting traumatized: they followed Christ from the royal procession of the King on Palm Sunday, through one fearful event after another in Holy Week, and finally the crisis of the arrest in Gethsemane.

This week-long travail came to a head, I think, at the singular point of the weeping of Peter. When Peter realized what he had done -- denying the friendship and love of his Master, not just once but three times -- he broke down completely. This denial is one of the few events that is recorded in all four Gospels. The fact that he wept is recorded in the three “Synoptic” Gospels: Matthew 26.75, Mark 14.72, and Luke 22.62. I would like to think that John did not include this fact because of his filial love for Peter.

This weeping is important, because it is unprecedented. Never before in the history of literature and story-telling was the weeping of a commoner recorded. Greek tragedy is chock full of heroes and villains weeping, but they were all aristocrats. The German (and very anti-Christian) philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche accused Christ and the Church of ruining civilization precisely by paying attention to non-aristocrats, and taking note of the weeping of common fishermen like Peter.

Of course, all the disciples had been weeping --  not just the Apostles, but all who had followed the Lord and had loved Him … and had failed Him.

The only ones who had not failed Him were the Mother of God, and the women who stayed, faithfully, around her at the foot of the Cross. But they, too, were weeping.

This weeping, the growing anxiety during Holy Week, and the horror on Golgotha -- these are all understandable traumas.

But we should consider that the Resurrection was itself traumatic to these same disciples, the same ones who were weeping.

It was unthinkable, totally, that the abyss between life and death could be crossed. We need to take that “unthinkability” seriously, because it plays into the difficulty that Thomas (and really all the disciples) experienced. 

Some might say that they should have remembered the cases of Enoch and Elijah, who did not die, according to the Old Testament (Genesis 5.24 and 2 Kings/4 Kingdoms 2.11). Then there was Moses, who died alone on the top of Pisgah on Mount Nebo, and no one knew where his body was buried (Deuteronomy 34.5-6) -- it was known, mystically, that the Archangel Michael himself “disputed with the devil about the body of Moses” (Jude 1.9). 

And most importantly, some might say that the Lord Himself prepared the disciples for His death and His resurrection. Right after the Transfiguration -- which Peter, James, and John must have thought was the end of the story, the arrival at victory -- Jesus began telling them that He would suffer, but He would rise from the dead (Matthew 17.9 and Mark 9.9).

I have heard this said -- that the disciples came up short in faith by not believing beforehand that Jesus would rise again after three days. So the idea is this: the disciples were told multiple times that their Lord would rise again. Add to this that the Old Testament had a few examples of people not dying. Why, then, did the disciples worry so much? Hadn’t they heard Jesus Himself say, on at least seven occasions, that things would be okay? 

But that is just the problem. Things can’t be “okay” if Death -- that is, all of Death -- is the Death on Good Friday, Death on the Golgotha Cross. 

That death was so big, so total, that being assured by Jesus that He would rise again was, for them, a psychological impossibility. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Think of Peter’s tears.

And before we start thinking that we would have done better, even with the advantage of being able to look back from our “happily ever after” perspective, the fact remains that we are stuck in the same position, pre-Crucifixion, that the disciples were stuck in:

In our heart of hearts, when we’re dead honest in the ghost hour at three in the morning, we are no better. We know Death as the End, and humanly speaking in the dread dark of the night of the Fall, we are too familiar with the hard, despairing view of the Abyss that no one’s ever crossed … and made it back.

So it comes as no surprise that when Someone Did Come Back, that it was news too good to be true ... that the One Who Came Back was hidden from view, a view that was conditioned by and habituated to Death, the psychological Tyrant of all humanity … humanity from Adam, through all the savages of cave dwellers to primitive craftsmen and farmers, to the first cities in Sumer and the Indus Valley and the Nile and the Han Dynasty in China and the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica and the Anangu aborginal groups of ancient Australia.

We are all, unavoidably and whether we’d like or not, faced with the full granite despairing face of Death -- the full psychic dread and horror -- convinced and persuaded, that Death is the very end … that’s just how our human nature responds to the Fall.

And that is how we, as persons, respond to the Death of Someone we love. Love is meant to be forever. That is how the Holy Trinity wrote Love into the warp and weave of all Creation.

So Death is a horrible, unnatural break of human love. Love was never meant to be broken. It is unimaginable that Love could survive, or come back from, that brokenness.

So it should be no surprise that poor Thomas, who was left out of the blessed reunion of the Risen Christ with ten of the twelve Apostles on the evening of Pascha, couldn’t bring himself to accept the news. Let us not be too hard on Thomas, who is called “Doubting Thomas” unjustly. Judging by the behavior of all the disciples (and we should include ourselves), all disciples were “doubting.”

When the ten Apostles, who had met the Risen Christ in the Upper Room at 4 pm on Pascha, told Thomas of their unbelievable news, Thomas said something that was completely honest and human: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in His side, I will not believe” (John 20.25).

Thomas’ honesty is amazing. He did not rush to believe something that, quite honestly, was unbelievable in human experience and history. But neither did he reject his friends’ report out of hand. He simply stated that he, too, needed the personal experience, the actual sight, hearing, and touch of the Risen Christ, the return of his Friend from across the abyss of Death.

The Gospel story of the Lord’s personal reunion with Thomas melts the heart. After so much pain, so much horror, so much heartbreak, Jesus takes His disciple’s hand, and has him touch the scar from the spear in His Side, and the scar from the nails in His Hand. 

Why is this so critically important? It is not just to leave more evidence so that you and I can “sign onto” the Resurrection -- because it isn’t just by reading the text that we believe. Thomas (and the rest of the disciples) had to know beyond a shadow of the doubt that the Resurrected Christ, though very much changed into the glorified resurrected body, is still the same Jesus they came to know. Jesus was now on His way to ascending into the heavenly glory of Divinity, so He could not longer be contained by the world, nor was He accessible to human familiarity.

But the Risen Christ of the Resurrection is the same Jesus of the three-year Gospel ministry, the same Good Shepherd and Friend Who called the disciples out of the fishing boats, the fields, the tax collecting tables -- out of the darkness of sin and the fear of death into the Light of Love.

In Jesus, Love descended into the Abyss of Death, the total brokenness and horror, and that same Jesus came back.

Only God could do that. And that is why Thomas, who did not doubt, knelt down and said, before any other disciple -- and, for that matter, before any other human being -- “My Lord and my God!” (John 20.28).

Jesus said, then, “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20.29).

That is you, and that is me. We believe, because Thomas and all the other disciples, took their belief and ran with it, all throughout the world. And throughout history. They all preached words that were written into the Gospels.

But it was their words, their belief, that calls us to believe in the Resurrection, and thus to know Jesus as “My Lord and my God.” It is not just the printed words in the Bible, but hearing and acting in the Holy Tradition handed down by the Apostles that we can receive the bright news of the Upper Room …

… that what was once unbelievable, that the news seemingly too good to be true, is believable indeed, and truly Good News.

why complain about webcasts now?

A largely unhelpful essay on "The Eclipse of the Tactile in Times of the Epidemic." It is, of course, preceded by the imperative hook "Don't Touch It!"

 

Yes, the epidemic is bad. Yes, it is a wretched thing that we cannot be together and celebrate the Eucharist as a community. Yes, many things are lost when we meet together online.

 

But now is not the time to complain about the internet, and its ability to provide platforms where we can meet at least photonically, if not molecularly. In a time of plague, it is important for the faithful to meet as best they can. It is not a time, as the author suggests, to simply discontinue liturgy, or services, or classes.

 

Yes, in the old days, there were no such things as morse code, or telephone, or TV, or the internet that could bring immediacy over the distances. Yes, back then before realtime communication, the Fathers did not use the Internet.

 

But I wonder if they would have if they could have. I know for a fact that there are elders in Greece who talk at length with their spiritual children, because it is the only thing available.

 

And that's the thing. What is available, if we cannot be with each other face to face? Some of us clergy are able to broadcast, one way, Facebook or YouTube broadcasts of Liturgy, Orthros, Vespers, and other services. My own diocese (ACROD) recently broadcast for 12 straight hours the one-half hour Moleben to the Cross (which is particular to our Carpatho-Rusyn tradition).

 

Others of us broadcast on two way meeting platforms, upon which the people can say "Amen," or sing together with the cantor and priest.

 

How can this be anything less than a blessing? How can it, in a time of plague, be the subject of dreary, dyspeptic academic critique? Why, if temples are closed because of Christian protection of others from infection, would anyone complain?

 

All these broadcasts are a blessing. Prior to this pandemic, they were a blessing to shut-ins, who felt, in a way, connected to the community.

 

We are all shut-ins now, Prof Manoussakis.

 

And while we cannot have the best, at least let us have the least.