On Gratitude (with thanks to St. Nicholai Velimirovich)
Luke 17: 12-19 (The Ten Lepers, only one of whom returned)

[Start with a meditation on the virtues of hard work and gratitude; hard work so that we can be proud of what we have done and foster an appreciation for the amount of effort that goes into the making and sustaining of things. This makes us grateful for what we have, and especially the amount of effort that goes into gifts that we receive from others. But what if these virtues break down? What if there was a society where hard work was not required and gratitude was neither expected nor offered? What if everything was both easy and taken for granted? Would this be a society comprised of real men and women, or of spoiled children? Would those who understood the need for virtue – and who cultivated it within their own lives – [would they] not weep when they saw the corruption that surrounded them?]

We are taught through small things, not always being able to understand big ones.

• If we cannot understand how our souls cannot live for a moment without God, we can see how our bodies cannot live for a moment without air.
• If we cannot understand how we suffer a spiritual death when we go without prayer and the doing of good deeds, we can see how we suffer and die when we go without water and food.
• If we cannot understand why it is that God expects our obedience, we can study why it is that commanders expect obedience from their soldiers and why architects expect it from their builders.

So it is with gratitude. If we do not understand why it is that God seeks our gratitude – and why He seeks it in both thought and action – we can look at why parents demand gratitude from their children.

• Why do parents require that their children thank them for everything, both large and small, that they receive from their parents?
• Are parents enriched by the gratitude of their children?
• Are they made more powerful?
• Is it to feed their egos?
• Does it give them more influence or status in society?
• No, parents are not enriched by their children’s gratitude, and it takes time and effort to cultivate it in them. So parents spend time and effort on something that brings them no personal enrichment. Why do they do it?
• They do it for love. They do it for the good of their children so that they will grow up to be civilized and a benefit to society and to their own families.
• “A grateful man is valued wherever he goes; he is liked, he is welcomed, and the people are quick to help him.”

What would happen if parents stopped teaching their children gratitude? How would their children turn out? How would society turn out? Isn’t it every parent’s obligation, then to demand gratitude from their children?

And so it is with God. He does not need our thanks. There is no way to add to His infinite power. There is no way to add to his glory. He in no way benefits from the thanks that we give Him.

• And yet He demands that we thank Him every morning for getting us through the night.
• And yet He demands that we thank Him at every meal for the food on our tables.
• And yet He demands that we thank Him every Sunday for the gift of His Son.

It seems like a lot, right? Couldn’t we just skip it? No. Not if we want to be good. Not if we want to be holy.

• It isn’t just about doing things to please God (He is what He is regardless of our actions),
• and it isn’t really about doing things because we need to follow God’s rules.
• It is about being (and becoming) good and doing what is right.

 God desires that we be His children, through Christ, He has made this possible. Through our baptism and through our confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, we can join the ranks of the saints. This is not something to be taken for granted.

• We are like the lepers who encountered Christ in today’s Gospel
• Because of our disease, we are not fit to join the saints and angels of God.
• But Jesus Christ has healed us of our disease. He has nailed our sins to the Cross. He has restored our fallen humanity to a state of grace.
• This is not something we have earned, nor is it something we deserve, nor is it something that Christ had to do.
• All ten of the lepers received the gift of health and their ability to walk once more with those who are well in a healthy community. Only one was grateful.
• Christ God suffered and died so that all of humanity could receive the gift of healing and eternal life, and the ability to live in everlasting joy with all the saints and angels.
• What is our response?

Are we like the spoiled child that expects everything he receives (and more), that believes that everything is his due? If so, what kind of life can we expect to have? How can it not be stunted and incomplete? What kind of families and communities can we expect to grow around us?

Or are we like the child who grows into the virtuous adult, the one who everyone likes to have in their company, who brings out the best in those around him? If so, will our lives not be better? Will our community not thrive?  Will we not have shown – through God’s grace – that we belong with the saints?  Not because we are avoiding being punished or are being rewarded for following God’s rules; but because the faith evidenced in following God’s rules has allowed Him to grow within us.  As with the tenth leper, our faith has made us well. 

We are not worthy of the gifts that God has given us. We accept them with open arms. We offer our thanks for them. And we join the ranks of holy ones and angels that continually proclaim His glory.

Homily: Holiness Changes Everything (Sunday after Theophany)
Ephesians 4: 7-13
St. Matthew 4: 12-17 

Review/Introduction. 

Ontology of Beauty.  Designed to provide a deeper appreciation for our faith and to demonstrate the blindness of materialism (to include the “new atheists”).  When materialists describe our appreciation for beauty, they either try to show how an appreciation for beauty somehow increased evolutionary fitness, or, in a more sophisticated way, say that it is a happy coincidence.  We know that there is more to beauty than these explanations allow.  God is beautiful, and His infinite beauty continually flows into creation as naturally as do logic, life, and love.  Beauty draws us into a growing relationship with something Good beyond ourselves, while at the same time resonating with and nourishing the spark of beauty within; it is not only real, but it is perfecting.  It’s ontology is sacramental.

Today we are continuing the feast of Theophany; the celebration of God’s revelation to us of His Triune (Three in One; One in Three) nature at Christ’s Baptism.  God the Father (the First Person of the Trinity) is revealed through His voice, which acknowledges Jesus as His Son (the Second Person of the Trinity), while the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) descends on Him and confirms this great truth.  This is an important thing for us to know, and we thank God for this revelation.  Among other things, the prayerful contemplation of the Trinity tells us much about how we, though separate persons, can and should be united; that the Church is more than a collection of like-minded individuals, and that the thing that they share is the thing that best defines them.  It describes how we can, as the Liturgy says, have “one mind” yet maintain our own identities, thoughts, and charismas.  

Theophany as an Introduction to Holiness. 

But it is not this mysterious truth that the Church, through the hymns and scripture of the feast, would have us focus on.  No, the poetry and prophecy of the feast of Theophany is on the reaction of creation to the presence of the Messiah, the Christ, the God-man Jesus; and in so doing it brings up another reality that – along with the reality of beauty that we discussed last week – “confounds the Greeks” (i.e. the new atheists and all materialists).  This reality is the ontology of holiness and its effect on creation.   

Holiness I: a source and reflection of spiritual light, warmth, and power.

Holiness is a quality that blessed things have; things that have been sanctified through their dedication to and proximity to the absolute source of spiritual light, warmth, and power.  This source exists outside of creation, but creation is designed to thrive under its influence; and having thrived, to become holy itself.  You get a sense of holiness when you perceive that something is “good”; and by good, I do not mean useful or pleasing.  These are the selfish perversions of “goodness”.  I mean when you can just tell that something is wholesome and right; when it just seems to radiate spiritual light, warmth, and power.

Holiness II: Eden as the Cultivation of Holiness.  

As the race created in the “Image of God”, humans had a special blessing to be cultivators of a holy creation.  The rest of creation, in turn, was created to respond to us.  But when we forsake holiness in favor of profanity, our special relationship with creation changed; we became as much of a curse to creation as anything else.   We, along with everything else, were created “good”, but we have forsaken this goodness and the result is a world that yields weeds and thistles along with fruits and vegetables.

Holiness III:  But God desires the restoration of creation with us as its cultivator.  

Old Adam – that is to say, old humanity – forsook holiness and lost its special relationship with the rest of creation.  Adam fell, and scripture tells us that creation groaned in agony as a result.  But here scripture is simply affirming something we already know: we are at odds with the world – some would say we are at war with it, and our attempts to subdue it through sheer force and technology have been met with, as God describes “thorns and thistles”.  The response of the best environmentalists can only mitigate the affects of this sundered relationship; and the desires of the purist secular and pagan ecologists, while well intended, cannot be realized through good will alone.  It seems that we are destined to wrestle with the world until either it or us are destroyed.

But into this mess comes new hope: the New Adam; the one who never forsook holiness; the one who is, in fact, the pre-eternal source of holiness who chose to join the race of fallen Adam so that through Him it might be restored.   Spiritual warmth, light, and power radiated from His flesh.  He was holy and creation responded to Him.  The waters of the Jordan were transformed by His contact with it; water became the source, the mechanism, of the perfection of humankind.  All the wickedness that had come to dwell within the Jordan were “turned back” due to the presence of the messiah, the God-man Jesus.  Wickedness cannot abide the presence of holiness.  It is forced to either fight it or flee.  And this influence of Christ on creation did not stop at the Jordan.  The world could not be still at His presence: the good responded to Him as it was intended; the wicked either repented and joined Him in holiness or doubled down in its profanity.  

Conclusion: the mission of the Church.  

The marvelous thing is that through Him all of creation is being renewed.  His ministry on earth was just the start, the seed.  When it was planted in the earth at His death, it immediately sprang out of the earth with greater power and purpose.  Through Him, by embracing His holiness – now risen as the Holy Orthodox Church with Him as its root and head –  we can bring holiness to the world.  In the saints, this took very tangible form; but I know that you have seen it operate in your own life.  You respond to holiness and you have seen others do the same.  Some recoil in shock and revulsion; others reflect it back so that the mutual glow is increased.

Am I being too abstract?  Try this.  The materialists say there is no proof of what I am saying: let’s show how wrong they are.  Repay profanity with holiness.  When someone is being mean and spiteful, meet it with patience and kindness.  See what the reaction is.  If you are pure in your intent, there will be one of two reactions: either the spite will dissipate or it will attack.  In either case, do not stop the experiment: watch how your friends and enemies alike respond to the holiness you bring into their lives.  Watch how its presence in others affects you.

Not only will this confound the new atheists in our midst, it will bring joy back into this troubled world.  And that is the real point of the Theophany of Our Lord.

The Sunday before Theophany
On Repentance and Its Relationship to Beauty and Love
2 Timothy 4: 5-8;  St. Mark 1: 1-8

“Behold, I will send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight;”

After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Sandals – he knew humility (despite the many temptations he faced for pride!).  The problem is that we don’t: we must listen to and heed St. John’s message (as found in St. Matthew 3:2); “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”.  This is not some prophecy of doom, but a revelation that God is among us – and the warning that we need to prepare if we are to meet Him well.

“We need to repent?  We need to change?  Why?”  Some preachers might come at this by pointing out the many temptations that we succumb to, call us to account for the resulting sin, and explain the need for contrition,  confession, and absolution.  I want to come at it from a different direction: I want to focus on how this call for repentance flows naturally from one of the central components of our faith about the world and how it works.  Specifically, I want to explain how an appreciation for the existence of beauty should naturally lead us towards repentance (and from repentance to glory).

Why come at it this way?  Because I am concerned about our faith.  There are strong attacks being made against Christianity, and I am not sure that people with a lukewarm and superficial faith can withstand them; people whose faith is not informed by deeper knowledge and experience will drift away.  There is a sense in which that might be useful – I am not sure how much good a superficial belief does a person, and we have all seen first hand the detrimental effect that nominal Christians have on the internal life of our parishes, not to mention their witness to the broader community.  God says of such people – through St. John the Theologian - that He will vomit such people out of His mouth (Revelation 3:15-17)!  No one wants to be vomited out of the mouth of God – and we do not want it to happen. 

This is why we must evangelize the lukewarm Christians in our midst.  And it is not enough to give them a set of rules, describe how they have broken these rules, and then call them to repentance.  Nor is it enough to give them more words that describe what it is that the true Christian believes or what Orthodoxy is.  We must do everything we can so that they can personally experience the literal Truth of God’s grace.  Ideally, this would happen through our worship together, but without an appreciation for the deeper nature of the things that worship taps into (the “Old Magic” as Aslan puts it in the Narnia series), it does little more than provide sentimental entertainment.  People need to be taught so that they can enjoy the fruits of worship; they need to be taught so that they “may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13b)  I am not talking about the removal of doubt, but the answer to every thinking Christian’s prayer; “Lord I believe; help me in my unbelief!” (St. Mark 9:24; St. Luke 17:5). 

I think that one of the best ways to strengthen our faith and counter these new attacks –  and especially the misleading reductionism of the militant atheists – is to focus on the fundamental existence of beauty, morality, and love and the implications of this ontology for us.  Today I will focus on the sacramental ontology of beauty.

1.  Beauty is basic, it is real, and it is eternal. When we say that something is “beautiful”, we do not mean that it interacts in a pleasurable way with the conglomeration of memories that culture and experience has put into our minds: we mean that it has a specific quality to it.  It is beautiful.  When we say that we like such a thing, what we really mean (or should mean, if we practice humility) is that it is actually likable.   Yes, our description of beauty is filtered through our culture and experience - how could it not be?  But there is a quality of beauty that flows into this world as a continual outpouring of the absolute Beauty of her creator.   Just as the warmth of the sun points to the heat of that great star, so to does beauty serve as a sure sign that there is more to this world than our personal enjoyment of it.

2. Beauty is NOT for passive entertainment.  It is interactive.  Enjoyed properly, it draws us outside of ourselves as we participate in this special quality.  We can be selfish in our encounter with it, simply appreciating how it makes us feel; but we get even more out of it when we release the tethers of selfishness and really lose ourselves in a good piece of art or music or, better yet, worship.  When this happens, we experience something right and true: we encounter and commune with something wonderful outside of ourselves.  And when the exhibition is over, the concert has ended, or we have come to the end of the book or movie or service; the memory of it awakens within us a longing for more.  Our hearts have been enlarged by the time we have spent in communion with greatness.  Beauty resonates within us and nourishes and increases our capacity for it.  Once this process has begun, things change.  After this, we find that when we are separated from Beauty, there is an ever larger empty space inside that needs to be filled.  We want to enjoy it more; we want to fill our nights and days with it.  We want it to become part of our lives – in, short, we want to become one with Beauty; to sacrifice everything for the sake of Goodness becomes our most earnest desire.  Were such a consummation not possible, the existence of such transcendent Beauty would be the cause of the greatest despondency.  But the Good News is that consummation is possible.   God desires it and has satisfied our mutual longing through the Gift and Grace of His Son.  This is the Gospel: that Beauty has become Incarnate not just so we can appreciate Beauty, but so that we can join Him in His Beauty.  Through Him we can be made beautiful.

Which is simply another way to say that encounters with true beauty are sacramental (mysterious): something fundamental is revealed through them, and by participating in these encounters, the seed  of glory within us is nourished and we become more beautiful, perfect, and godly ourselves.  But this does not happen automatically.

3.  Becoming beauty.  There are many wrong ways to try this: we do not become beautiful through surgery or going to concerts or even just by coming to the Divine Liturgy (the greatest gift of beauty offered on this earth).  We do it by embracing the deeper virtue.  We do it by submitting ourselves to its logic and allowing it to transform our lives in its image.  Let me paraphrase an old saw (how Michelangelo created David out of stone): if we want to become beautiful; then we start with what is already there and remove all the bits that aren’t right.  If we want to participate in the experience of beauty, then we cannot do things that are ugly.  We cannot be ugly ourselves.  Which brings me to a critical point:  it isn’t enough to look in the mirror to tell the difference between good and bad (beauty and ugliness) within us – our pride and psychoses do not let much of the truth in there.  Our pride will either completely overlook many of our obvious warts and defects (perhaps even calling them “beauty marks” or, just as bad condemn things that are actually God-pleasing,  No, we do not have enough discernment to affect the necessary changes on our own.  We need help. 

We need to turn our attention away from ourselves toward the source of beauty; the standard of perfection; the wellspring of everything that is good.  Christ is Goodness and Beauty Incarnate.  When we encounter Him, when we live our lives within the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, we will know the essence of beauty; we will desire more; and we will want to change our lives so that we can better bask in and reflect His glory.

Which is simply another way of saying not just that “Beauty will save the world, but  “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Matthew 2: 13-23 (The Slaughter of the Innocents)
Herod (and us): from temptation to possession

Five Steps of Sin

1. The temptation (logismoi) occurs.  We are NOT accountable for this.
2. Interaction with the thought – what are the options?  What would it look like?  In his summary of Orthodox Spirituality in Mountain of Silence,  Fr. Maximos (now Mp. Athanasios of Limassol) says that this is not sin, either.  I disagree – a symptom of the disease we have is that it is all but impossible for us to imagine possibilities objectively.  
3. Consent to do the sin.  This is always a sin, even if we do not carry out the action.
4. Defeat to the idea.  Not only is this sin, it weakens us to future temptations.
5. Passion, obsession, or possession by the temptation.  

Let’s look at Herod’s descent into madness.

1. He had an idea to kill all of the male infants.  This was not the only choice he had; others would have been less wicked – some may have even softened his heart enough to meet the Christ with joy.  This was the temptation.
2. What happened when he interacted with this idea?  Moreover, what happened when he considered all the possibilities?  Was it a simple cost-benefit calculation, comparing all the options about how to react to the birth of the prophesied Messiah?    When he did the math, was it purely objective, or was the scale weighted in a certain direction by his feelings, feelings that were driven by his pride and desire to rule?  Remember that, as the King of the Jews, the people of God, he could have brought the Christ child into his palace and raised Him there to rule.  But that option was not the one that drew his attention – it was drawn towards murder.  It was drawn towards regicide and the slaughter of as many lives as necessary to guarantee it.  This was not because it was the best solution – it probably wasn’t even the best way to keep himself in power.  But it felt right.  And so of all the ideas, or all the logismoi, both sinful and graceful, he focused on this one.  He imagined what it would look like, how it would work.  Which takes us to consent.
3. He consented to the idea.  He entertained it, not just to imagine whether or not it could work or to figure out the best way to get it done – it was more than that.  He chewed on it.  And somewhere along the way, he made it happen.
4. Next, he was defeated by it.  Not just because he pulled the trigger, but because it came to define part of how he defined himself.  He was a man who did whatever was necessary to keep himself in power.  All other things were defined and valued in relationship to this identity, to this desire, to this obsession.
5. And this is the final step – he was possessed by it.  And here is a difficult truth about his path to possession: this was not the first time he had united himself with this kind of sin.  He had assassinated rivals, to include his own wife, to consolidate his power.  Even before that, he had waged war against his own people in order to capture Jerusalem.  Not to free it from the Romans, but in cooperation with the Roman general Marc Antony in order to put himself in charge. 

Do you see how, once he had given in to sin – in this case, violence - for personal gain, it made it easier to do so in the future?  All of his fallen psychology kicked in to make repentance more and more difficult.  For example, the devaluation of the lives of others, the web of justifications and lies that he had to convince himself of in order to keep himself going?  For someone like this, it takes a real wake-up call to get them to change.  He got the call when the wise men came, but he didn’t just hit the snooze button, he threw away the clock.

“Send word so that I can go and worship Him myself.”  Doesn’t that just drip with evil?  How would Herod worship Him; with gifts?  With prostrations?  That is how the kings from the east did!  Not at all.  Quite the opposite.

What about us?  The wide road to sin-full-ness

Now here is the rub.  I’ve been describing Herod’s descent into madness, but that is the same wide road that beckons to us all.  

What sins do we entertain?  What sins do we chew on?  Are we obsessed by?  What wickedness have we justified so fully that we feel its evil as good?

And as if it wasn’t enough that each of us individually, thanks to ancestral sin, cannot imagine sin without engaging with it, we are surrounded by cultural systems that seek to deaden our instinct for the holy and replace it with other things, like hedonism and power and self-loathing and anything else that the marketers of the powers of the air can distract us with.

It's easy to see this happening in others.  We know people who have fallen into all kinds of sin and justified it.  They immerse themselves in an internet subculture and the next thing you know they are defining themselves in new ways that separate themselves from the good, the true, and the beautiful.  

But it’s so hard to see this in ourselves.  Herod had several baths of purification built into his temple.  He was so far gone that he didn’t see the irony of maintaining ritual purity while living such a debauched and self-aggrandizing life.  We should be very concerned lest we fall in the same way.

What sins do our own personalities, conditions, and cultures lead us to accept as normal or even good?  How can we get around the unreliability of our feelings – what we like to call our consciences when it comes to seeking the good?   How do we deal with the fact that we are so far from being able to see things as they are and weight alternatives objectively?

What then, can we do?

The first step is to admit that we have a problem.  To admit that the “old man” we put to death during our baptism is not entirely dead.

The second step is to cultivate an instinct of humility, including the willingness to admit that we rarely as right as our self-confidence would have us believe.

The third is to build relationships of accountability and discernment.  How do you react when people correct you or offer a version that differs from your own?  Taking criticisms well is a sign of spiritual maturity.  It’s one that tyrants, narcissists, and sociopaths don’t have.  And it’s one that we are missing unless we work on it.  But we need it.  We need to have people in our lives that tell us the things that we miss, the things that we get wrong.

Herod skipped all these steps, and he died in his sin.

We have given our lives to Christ; we are called to something better than tyranny and the slaughter of innocents.  

Let’s learn to live the kinds of lives – lives in communities of mutual love, trust, and support – that give no place for temptations to grow.

Let’s live in Christ, together.

Sunday before the Nativity
Hebrews 11:9-10,17-23,32-40
St. Matthew 1:1-25

After giving a refresher on motivated reasoning, Fr. Anthony notes how much context affects what we think about our ancestors from the genealogy of Christ.  He then encourages us to tip the scales of our judgment so that we are more charitable towards people/things we are inclined to dislike, more skeptical towards people/things we are inclined to like, and generally more loving towards all.  Enjoy the show!

Today Fr. Anthony uses the simple theory of reading (word recognition x decoding -> reading comprehension) to talk about chanting and why it is so difficult for those new to Byzantine chant to learn it (because they do not have the equivalent of word recognition), especially if they cannot read music (because they have neither the equivalent of word recognition nor the ability to decode).  Enjoy the show!

Revelation 11
20 November 2024
Chapter 7

Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011).

Patrick Henry Reardon, Revelation: A Liturgical Prophecy (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 53.

Fr. Patrick Reardon. 

The final preservation of God’s elect was foreshadowed in their deliverance at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

This sealing with the mark of the true Paschal Lamb fulfilled the promise contained in that earlier marking of Israel with the sacrificial blood of its type (Ex 12:21–23). Both Ezekiel and Exodus are important for the understanding of this seal. Ezekiel’s reference was to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, of which everyone was aware who saw the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The passage in Exodus 12 had to do with the last of the ten plagues visited upon Egypt, the slaying of the firstborn sons. This sealing in Revelation, then, involves a new Exodus, in which God’s people will be delivered, not left to share in the sin of the earthly Jerusalem.

Fr. Lawrence Farley:  What is this seal? The image is drawn from Ezekiel 9. In this passage, angels were to slay all in Jerusalem that rebelled idolatrously against Yahweh. But before they began their dreadful task, one angel went through the city and, at the divine command, put “a mark” (in Hebrew a tau) on all who were faithful (Ezek. 9:4). To be thus marked on the forehead is to enjoy the protection of God and an immunity from coming judgment….

This time of great tribulation seems to last throughout the age, for in Matthew 24:29 the Second Coming is said to occur “immediately after the tribulation of those days.” The parallel version of this verse in Luke 21:24 seems to confirm this, for it describes what Matthew refers to as “great tribulation” as a time of “great distress upon the land … [the people] will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled”—that is, until the end of the age. Even the original prophecy of Daniel 12 states that the “time of tribulation” will be followed by the resurrection of the dead, when “many of those who sleep in the dust will awake” (Dan. 12:2).

It would seem then that in Matthew 24 the “great tribulation” is the age-long time of suffering for Israel that began with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70…

This understanding of “the great tribulation” (7:14) as the suffering of the Church throughout the age explains too the difference in the two crowds mentioned in this chapter. In 7:1–8, John receives a vision of the Church on earth, sealed and protected by God in preparation for their entering the final time of conflict. It is the Church of the final days. In 7:9–17, however, John sees a vaster multitude. This crowd comprises, not just the Church of the final days, but the Church gathered throughout all the centuries, coming from “the great tribulation,” the age-long struggle with the world. Unlike the former crowd, this multitude is vast beyond counting, stretching into the horizons of heaven. It is the Church glorified at last, fresh from its victorious struggle, an overwhelming testimony to the power of God.

Sunday of the Forefathers. 2 Timothy 1:8-18; St. Luke 14:16-24 In this homily (that Fr. Anthony would have preferred audibling to his deacon - if only he had one!), Fr. Anthony challenges us to be strong like the three holy youths but not to put ourselves in the fires of our own hells by making mountains out of molehills. Or something like that. He really needed some sleep, bless his heart! Enjoy the show!

In this homily on Ephesians 2:14-22, Fr. Anthony uses the Simple Theory of Reading to teach about why Byzantine Chant - and theosis - are so difficult, why we need a change of heart more than new words, and how the Church is the solution to our existential crisis. Enjoy the show!

Revelation 10
04 December 2024
Revelation 5:1 - 

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 85–112.

o can stand?”

Loosening of the First Seal

6:1. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living beings saying, with a voice like thunder, “Come!”

And here the good order of those in heaven is shown, from the first orders coming down to the second. Thus, from one of the fourfold-appearing living beings, that is, the lion, he heard originating from the first voice the command “come” <being spoken> to the angel forming the vision through an angel in a figurative fashion. The first living being, the lion, seems to me to show the princely spirit of the apostles against the demons, about whom it has been said: “Behold, the kings of the earth have been gathered together,” and also, “You will appoint them as rulers upon all the earth.”2 [60]

6:2. And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and the one sitting on it having a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

… Thus we explained the loosening of the first seal as meaning the generation of the apostles, [61] those who bend the gospel message like a bow against the demons … [and the return of the nations]

Loosening of the Second Seal

6:3. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living being saying, “Come.”

I think the second living being, the calf, is said to characterize the priestly sacrifice of the holy martyrs, while the first <living being> describes the apostolic authority, as was said.

6:4. And out came another horse, bright red, and the one sitting [62] upon it was permitted to take the peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another; and he was given a large sword.

We suppose that this means the second succession of the apostles, which is completely fulfilled through martyrs and teachers, during which, while the remainder of the gospel message was spreading, the peace of the world was abolished, <human> nature having been divided against itself according to that which had been said by Christ, “I did not come to bring peace to the earth but a sword,” through which the slain martyrs were lifted up to the heavenly altar. The fire-red horse <is> a symbol of either the shedding of blood or the flaming disposition of those suffering for Christ. What was written about the one seated on <the horse>, that he was permitted to take the peace, shows the all-wise allowance of God testing the faithful servants through trials.

Loosening of the Third Seal

6:5. And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living being saying, “Come!”

I think the third living being, the man, is said to signify the fall of people and, because of that, torment, on account of the easy fall into sin through the power of free choice.

6:5b–6. 5b And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and the one sitting on it having a scale in his hand; 6 and I heard <something> like a voice in the midst of the four living beings saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm oil and wine!”

It is likely and sensible for a literal famine to occur then, just as it will also be announced by what follows. …

Loosening of the Fourth Seal, Showing the Chastisements Which Befall the Impious

6:7. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being saying, “Come!” [65]

The fourth living being, that is, the eagle, its high flight and keen eyesight coming down upon its prey from above, can signify the wounds from the divinely led wrath of God for the revenge of the pious and the punishment of the impious, unless being improved by these <wounds> they return.

6:8. And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and the name of the one sitting upon <it> was Death. And Hades follows him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill by sword and by famine and by death and by wild beasts of the earth.

The series <of events> drawn out previously are connected to the present events. For as Eusebius says in the eighth chapter of the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical History, in the zenith of the persecutions, during the reign of Maximin the Roman Emperor, innumerable crowds were killed by the coming of famine and plague among them, along with other calamities; and such that <the living> were not able to bury them, and yet the Christians then generously busied themselves with the burial <of the dead>, and many of those who had been deceived2 were led to [66] the knowledge of the truth by the philanthropy of the Christians. …

Seal, Meaning the Saints Crying Out to the Lord About the End of the World

6:9–10. 9 And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of people who had been slain on account of the word of God and on account of the witness which they had <made>. They cried out with a loud voice, saying, 10 “How long, O holy and true Master, before you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?”

6:11. And he gave them each a white robe and told them to rest again a little longer, until their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed in the future, even as they <had been>, completed <their number>.

And by these <words> the saints seem to be asking for the full consummation of the world. Wherefore, they are called upon to endure patiently until the completion of the <number of> brothers, so that they will not become complete without them, according to the Apostle

Loosening of the Sixth Seal, Signifying the Upcoming Plagues at the End of Time

6:12–13. 12 And I saw, and when he opened the sixth seal, and a great earthquake occurred, and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. 13 And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree casts its winter fruit when shaken by a great wind;

It seems to us that here a shift has taken place beginning from the time of persecutions to the time before the departure of the pseudo-Christ, during which so many afflictions were prophesied to come, and perhaps the people, being practiced in these afflictions, did not renounce the punishments brought upon them by the Antichrist, of such a sort as we have never known. We often find in the Scriptures that an earthquake certainly <represents> a change in <the course of> events. …

6:14a. And the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up,

The sky rolled up like a scroll hints at either the unknown <time> of the second coming of Christ—because silently and in a moment the scroll is opened—or also that the heavenly powers feel pain over those who fall from the faith as if they will suffer some kind of twisting on account of sympathy and sorrow. …

6:14b–17. 14b And every mountain and island was moved from its place. 15 And the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich and the commanders of thousands [and the strong], and every slave and every freeman, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of his wrath has come, and who can stand?”

Today Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Adam Roberts about his pastoral counseling practice.   Fr. Adam is the priest of St. Paul Orthodox Church in Katy TX, the Dean of St. Athansius College, a co-founder of Camp St Thekla, the author of several books, and has a Masters of Theology in Pastoral Counseling from the University of Balamand. In his counseling, he has counseled married couples as well as youth and young adults who are struggling with purpose and identity.  You can read more about his practice here. Enjoy the show!

Luke 18:35-43. Once again demonstrating that there is some overlap between a homily and a hostage situation (30 minutes!), Fr. Anthony talks about the life in Christ being less a moment of pure enlightenment and more about turning the long, slow slog of life into a graceful movement from joy to greater joy. Enjoy the show!

Galatians 6:11-18

St. Luke 18:18-27

Today Fr. Anthony uses the Apostle Paul’s call for a “new creation” instead of a fulfillment of the Law to help us evaluate the man’s challenge to the Lord.  Along the way, he shares the meaning of the commandments in the “new creation” and uses the metaphor of mountain climbing to help us understand Christ’s call to give everything up and follow him.  He notes that we are rich in worldly ways, making it as hard for us to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven as the camel getting through the eye of a needle.  He forgot to turn on his microphone before the actual homily, so he recorded this reprisal on the drive home. Enjoy the show!

Seals, Scrolls, and Wrath 

Excursus on the Three Senses of Scripture

• Literal – Straightforward reading of the text.
• Ex: The outside writing on the scroll, the man Jesus
• Allegorical – Heavenly meaning veiled in the literal
• Ex: The inside writing of the scroll, the God-Man the (contains both the physical (literal) and the unseen (spiritual)
• Moral – What are we to do with this revelation?
• Ex: Paul’s obedience to the revelation of Jesus Christ to be an Apostle - “Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26.19); contrast with Jonah

Tools of Interpretation: Scripture and Tradition

• Analogia Fidei (or “Analogy of Faith”): Scripture interprets Scripture
• New is Old revealed; Old is New concealed
• “This grace hid itself under a veil in the Old Testament, but it has been revealed in the New Testament according to the most perfectly ordered dispensation of the ages, forasmuch as God knew how to dispose all things.” - Saint Augustine
• Working Principle: Scripture is not divided. One part illumines other parts since all parts have God as its source; contrast to a mere academic approach that divides book based on different authors

• Scripture testifies to Tradition: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” – 2 Peter 1.20-21
• “Holy men” (literally ἁγίου ἄνθρωποι) can be interpreted simply as “saints”
• ἅγιος – adjective often used as a noun that can be translated “holy ones” or “saints”
• God is Holy and the source of all holiness; people considered holy, or of God, have a place of authority and deference in the Church in terms of practice and teaching

THE GOSPEL
(For the Ninth Sunday of Luke)

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (12:16-21)

Context;
13 Then someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the
inheritance with me.” 14 But Jesus said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator
between you two?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out and guard yourself from all types
of greed, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
The Lord spoke this parable: “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he
thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’
Every moment is an opportunity for grace, or to put it another way, to prepare for death – and
eternal life. There will be a judgment: how have used the opportunities that God has given us?
How have we prepared our soul?
How have we prepared the souls of our neighbor (union!!!)
And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I
will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid
up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’
Let’s look at how the man has prepared his soul.
St. Nikolai: the dog and the lamb.
He has killed his soul and moved his passions into its place!
The one talent.
How has he prepared his neighbor.
The original settting.
St. John Chrysostom.
But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you
have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich
toward God.” As He said this, Jesus called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
There will be a judgment.
Three types of preparation.

In this class, we review Vespers service components, work on matching pitches in hand offs, and chanting clearly and consistently.

Revelation: Lesson 8
Revelation 4:1 – 5:1

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 81–90.

4:1. After these I saw, and behold, an open door in heaven! And the first voice that I heard was like a trumpet [47] speaking to me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you the things which must happen after these.”

[Compare to the Ascent of Moses].

4:2–3. 2 And immediately I was in the Spirit. And behold, a throne stood in heaven, 3 and one sitting upon the throne who appeared like the stone jasper and carnelian, and a rainbow was around the throne that looked like an emerald.

… First, jasper, meaning, as pale green, the evergreen at once both the life-bringer and bestower of the food of the divine nature, through which every seed brings forth young sprouts. … And the rainbow like an emerald shows the variety and blooming virtues of the angelic orders.

4:4. And around the throne <were> twenty-four thrones, and sitting on the thrones <were> twenty-four elders wrapped in white garments, and upon their heads <were> gold crowns. [49]

… by the twelve elders <is meant> those who excelled in the Old, and by the twelve others those who excelled in the New. …

4:5a. From out of the throne came flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder.

4:5b–6a. 5b And seven torches of fire burn before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God; 6a and before the throne <something> like a glass sea like crystal.

…  The glass sea designates the multitude of the holy powers, and also the clarity, spotlessness, and calmness of the future life. … 

4:6b. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, <were> four living beings, full of eyes in front and behind:

The throne is shown by this to be signifying the reign and resting-place of God, in which and around which he saw the seraphim, being taught through the multitude of their eyes their ability to see God with regard to the divine light, and also that those eyes behind and in front receive light and knowledge from God.

4:7. And the first living being <was> like a lion, the second living being <was> like a calf, the third living being had a face like a man, and the fourth living being <was> like an eagle flying.

These living beings, we think, were also seen by Isaiah…  

4:8a. And the four living beings, each of them having six wings, are full of eyes all around and within,

…

4:8b. And they do not rest day and night, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!”

These holy powers do not rest, never ceasing the divine hymnody and offering the threefold blessing to the Tri-hypostatic Divinity. And the who is and who was and who is to come we said means the Holy Trinity.

4:9–10a. 9 And whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanksgiving [53] to him who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, 10a the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever.

[LITURGY!]

4:10b–11. 10b They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 “You are worthy, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.”

They say, “You, Master, are the cause and the provider of the crowns of victory, and thanksgiving is due to You from all things as creatures.”

About the Small Scroll Sealed With Seven Seals Which No One Who Has a Created Nature is Able to Open

5:1. And I saw in the right <hand> of the One who was seated on the throne a small scroll covered in writing on the inside and outside, sealed with seven seals.

… The seven seals, which no one of created nature is able to loosen, <signify> either the fulfillment of the scroll, which is obscure and unknown to all, or the dispensation of the one “who searches the depths of the Spirit of God.” The scroll also means the prophecy which Christ himself said in the Gospel according to Luke had been fulfilled, which things occurring thereafter are to be fulfilled in the last days.

The Good Samaritan and Veteran’s Day 

St. Luke 10:25-37 

Introduction.  

The Deeper Magic of Unity. The Division of Mankind into Nations. The Demons,  our Fallen Psychology, and the Reification of Separation. The Coming of Christ, Pentecost, and the Promise of Unity. 

And this is where we find ourselves today. We know that Christ has brought an end  to our division and allows us to be One as He is One; joyous, peaceful, and  continually progressing through the endless stages of perfection in peace … but  still living in a world where lives come to an end and violence between nations  ceases only so long as strength and vigilance are maintained. 

The Good Samaritan  

The need for our enemies and why our love for them actually brings us the light of  objectivity. Christ as the ultimate “other.”  

Veterans Day 

And so we come to the juxtaposition of this Epistle with our celebration of  Veteran’s Day. 

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month; temporary cessation of  hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in World War I.  And yet we still have war. People and nations still prey on and threaten one  another. Even when we are between wars, we no not have the peace of Christ, but  the peace of strength. And where we do not have the peace of strength, we have  war and the lessons of martyrdom. Our Church prays and works for the Peace of  Christ; and as that peace is worked for and anticipated, we pray for and support the  peace that comes from military might. This is the practice and teaching of the  Church. 

Right after the anaphora we pray: 

We also offer You this spiritual worship for the whole world, for the Holy, Catholic,  and Apostolic Church, and for all those who live in purity and holiness. And for  those in public service; permit them, Lord, to serve and govern in peace, that in  their tranquility we may lead a calm and quiet life, in all Godliness and purity.

From our Morning Prayers: 

Lord, save and have mercy on our civil authorities; protect our nation with peace,  subduing our every foe and adversary. Fill the hearts of our leaders with peaceful,  benevolent thoughts for your Holy Church and for all Your people so that we, in  their tranquility, may lead a peaceful and quiet life in true faith and in all  godliness and purity. 

And from St. Paul (1 Timothy 2:1-2): 

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and  thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, so  that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. 

And how is this peace that we pray for maintained? Through the sacrifice of men  and women in our armed forces and police who are willing to put our security and  comfort ahead of their own. [a note on the special sacrifice of Christian warriors]. 

It is obtained and maintained by soldiers, sailors, marines, and first responders who  are willing to suffer, to fight, to die, and yes, even to kill – not out of glory or any  kind of sinful passion; but only so that we – in the peaceful space their efforts create and sustain – might pursue perfection in Christ, and through this an end to  all wars achieved not through military victory or a well thought out and executed  set of treaties and institutions; but through the union of all people and nations into  one humanity, humbled and perfected in Christ. 

We thank all of our veterans and those serving now for your willingness to live the  kind of life that allows us the freedom to pursue true and lasting peace. 

We pray that Lord our God grant that we always be so blessed with men and  women [like these] who are willing to sacrifice their lives for us and we pray that  He gives us, the civilians, the strength and commitment to live in such a way that  their efforts are not squandered through our impiety, selfishness, and unwillingness  to live and spread the Gospel. 

Allow all of us to surrender ourselves to you, Lord, through the Cross, so that our  Union may be eternal and the peace between us become real and unending. Check out this episode!

Today, we talked about the kind of culture we should have at the kliros (to include risk aversion and gentleness). We worked on intonation and antiphonal psalmody, and talked about being patient as our skills develop.

The Decree of the Holy, Great, Ecumenical Synod, the Second of Nice (787 AD).

549

(Found in Labbe and Cossart, Concilia. Tom. VII., col. 552.)

THE holy, great, and Ecumenical Synod which by the grace of God and the will of the pious and Christ-loving Emperors, Constantine and Irene, his mother, was gathered together for the second time at Nice, the illustrious metropolis of Bithynia, in the holy church of God which is named Sophia, having followed the tradition of the Catholic Church, hath defined as follows:

Christ our Lord, who hath bestowed upon us the light of the knowledge of himself, and hath redeemed us from the darkness of idolatrous madness, having espoused to himself the Holy Catholic Church without spot or defect, promised that he would so preserve her: and gave his word to this effect to his holy disciples when he said: “Lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” which promise he made, not only to them, but to us also who should believe in his name through their word. But some, not considering of this gift, and having become fickle through the temptation of the wily enemy, have fallen from the right faith; for, withdrawing from the traditions of the Catholic Church, they have erred from the truth and as the proverb saith: “The husbandmen have gone astray in their own husbandry and have gathered in their hands nothingness,” because certain priests, priests in name only, not in fact, had dared to speak against the God-approved ornament of the sacred monuments, of whom God cries aloud through the prophet, “Many pastors have corrupted my vineyard, they have polluted my portion.”

And, forsooth, following profane men, led astray by their carnal sense, they have calumniated the Church of Christ our God, which he hath espoused to himself, and have failed to distinguish between holy and profane, styling the images of our Lord and of his Saints by the same name as the statues of diabolical idols. Seeing which things, our Lord God (not willing to behold his people corrupted by such manner of plague) hath of his good pleasure called us together, the chief of his priests, from every quarter, moved with a divine zeal and brought hither by the will of our princes, Constantine and Irene, to the end that the traditions of the Catholic Church may receive stability by our common decree. Therefore, with all diligence, making a thorough examination and analysis, and following the trend of the truth, we diminish nought, we add nought, but we preserve unchanged all things which pertain to the Catholic Church, and following the Six Ecumenical Synods, especially that which met in this illustrious metropolis of Nice, as also that which was afterwards gathered together in the God-protected Royal City.

We believe…life of the world to come. Amen.535

We detest and anathematize Arius and all the sharers of his absurd opinion; also Macedonius and those who following him are well styled “Foes of the Spirit” (Pneumatomachi). We confess that our Lady, St. Mary, is properly and truly the Mother of God, because she was the Mother after the flesh of One Person of the Holy Trinity, to wit, Christ our God, as the Council of Ephesus has already defined when it cast out of the Church the impious Nestorius with his colleagues, because he taught that there were two Persons [in Christ]. With the Fathers of this synod we confess that he who was incarnate of the immaculate Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary has two natures, recognizing him as perfect God and perfect man, as also the Council of Chalcedon hath promulgated, expelling from the divine Atrium [αὐλῆς] as blasphemers, Eutyches and Dioscorus; and placing in the same category Severus, Peter and a number of others, blaspheming in divers fashions.

Moreover, with these we anathematize the fables of Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus, in accordance with the decision of 550 the Fifth Council held at Constantinople. We affirm that in Christ there be two wills and two operations according to the reality of each nature, as also the Sixth Synod, held at Constantinople, taught, casting out Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Macarius, and those who agree with them, and all those who are unwilling to be reverent.

To make our confession short, we keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or verbally, one of which is the making of pictorial representations, agreeable to the history of the preaching of the Gospel, a tradition useful in many respects, but especially in this, that so the incarnation of the Word of God is shown forth as real and not merely phantastic, for these have mutual indications and without doubt have also mutual significations.

We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit indwells her), define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν), not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν) which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. For thus the teaching of our holy Fathers, that is the tradition of the Catholic Church, which from one end of the earth to the other hath received the Gospel, is strengthened. Thus we follow Paul, who spake in Christ, and the whole divine Apostolic company and the holy Fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. So we sing prophetically the triumphal hymns of the Church, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Rejoice and be glad with all thy heart. The Lord hath taken away from thee the oppression of thy adversaries; thou art redeemed from the hand of thine enemies. The Lord is a King in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more, and peace be unto thee forever.”

Those, therefore who dare to think or teach otherwise, or as wicked heretics to spurn the traditions of the Church and to invent some novelty, or else to reject some of those things which the Church hath received (e.g., the Book of the Gospels, or the image of the cross, or the pictorial icons, or the holy reliques of a martyr), or evilly and sharply to devise anything subversive of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church or to turn to common uses the sacred vessels or the venerable monasteries,536 if they be Bishops or Clerics, we command that they be deposed; if religious or laics, that they be cut off from communion.

[After all had signed, the acclamations began (col. 576).]

The holy Synod cried out: So we all believe, we all are so minded, we all give our consent and have signed. This is the faith of the Apostles, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith which hath made firm the whole world. Believing in one God, to be celebrated in Trinity, we salute the honourable images! Those who do not so hold, let them be anathema.

Those who do not thus think, let them be driven far away from the Church. For we follow the most ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We keep the laws of the Fathers. We anathematize those who add anything to or take anything away from the Catholic Church. We anathematize the introduced novelty of the revilers of Christians. We salute the venerable 551 images. We place under anathema those who do not do this. Anathema to them who presume to apply to the venerable images the things said in Holy Scripture about idols. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images.

Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to gods. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the Catholic Church received idols.

Many years to the Emperors, etc., etc.

535 Anastasius in his Interpretatio (Migne, Pat. Lat., Tom. CXXIX., col. 458), gives the word, “Filioque.” Cardinal Julian in the Fifth Session of the Council of Florence gave evidence that there was then extant a very ancient codex containing these words; and this MS., which was in Greek, was actually shown. The Greek scholar Gemistius Pletho remarked that if this were so, then the Latin theologians, like St. Thomas Aquinas would long ago have appealed to the Synod. (Cf. Hefele, Hist. Councils, Vol. V., p. 374, Note 2.) This reasoning is not conclusive if Cardinal Bellarmine is to be believed, who says that St. Thomas had never seen the Acts of this synod. (De Imag. Sanct., Lib. ii., cap. xxii.)

536 Constantine Copronymus turned many monasteries into soldiers’ barracks. In this he has been followed by other crowned enemies of Christ.

Epitome of the Definition of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum held in Constantinople, A.D. 754.530

The Definition of the Holy, Great, and Ecumenical Seventh Synod.

543

THE holy and Ecumenical synod, which by the grace of God and most pious command of the God-beloved and orthodox Emperors, Constantine and Leo,531 now assembled in the imperial residence city, in the temple of the holy and inviolate Mother of God and Virgin Mary, surnamed in Blachernæ, have decreed as follows.

Satan misguided men, so that they worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. The Mosaic law and the prophets cooperated to undo this ruin; but in order to save mankind thoroughly, God sent his own Son, who turned us away from error and the worshipping of idols, and taught us the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth. As messengers of his saving doctrine, he left us his Apostles and disciples, and these adorned the Church, his Bride, with his glorious doctrines. This ornament of the Church the holy Fathers and the six Ecumenical Councils have preserved inviolate. But the before- mentioned demi-urgos of wickedness could not endure the sight of this adornment, and gradually brought back idolatry under the appearance of Christianity. As then Christ armed his Apostles against the ancient idolatry with the power of the Holy Spirit, and sent them out into all the world, so has he awakened against the new idolatry his servants our faithful Emperors, and endowed them with the same wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Impelled by the Holy Spirit they could no longer be witnesses of the Church being laid waste by the deception of demons, and summoned the sanctified assembly of the God-beloved bishops, that they might institute at a synod a scriptural examination into the deceitful colouring of the pictures

(ὁμοιωμάτων) which draws down the spirit of man from the lofty adoration (λατρείας) of God to the low and material adoration (λατρείαν) of the creature, and that they, under divine guidance, might express their view on the subject.

Our holy synod therefore assembled, and we, its 338 members, follow the older synodal decrees, and accept and proclaim joyfully the dogmas handed down, principally those of the six holy Ecumenical Synods. In the first place the holy and ecumenical great synod assembled at Nice, etc.

After we had carefully examined their decrees under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we found that the unlawful art of painting living creatures blasphemed the fundamental doctrine of our salvation—namely, the Incarnation of Christ, and contradicted the six holy synods. These condemned Nestorius because he divided the one Son and Word of God into two sons, and on the other side, Arius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, and Severus, because they maintained a mingling of the two natures of the one Christ.

Wherefore we thought it right, to shew forth with all accuracy, in our present definition the error of such as make and venerate these, for it is the unanimous doctrine of all the holy Fathers and of the six Ecumenical Synods, that no one may imagine any kind of separation or mingling in opposition to the unsearchable, unspeakable, and incomprehensible union of the two natures in the one hypostasis or person. What avails, then, the folly of the painter, who from sinful love of gain depicts that which should not be depicted—that is, with his polluted hands he tries to fashion that which should only be believed in the heart and confessed with the mouth? He makes an image and calls it Christ. The name Christ signifies God and man. Consequently it is an image of God and man, and consequently he has in his foolish mind, in his representation of the created flesh, depicted the Godhead which cannot be represented, and thus mingled what should not be mingled. Thus he is guilty of a double blasphemy—the one in making an image of the Godhead, and the other by mingling the Godhead and

manhood. Those fall into the same blasphemy who venerate the image, and the same woe rests upon both, because they err with Arius, Dioscorus, and Eutyches, and with the heresy of the Acephali. When, however, they are blamed for

544

undertaking to depict the divine nature of Christ, which should not be depicted, they take refuge in the excuse: We represent only the flesh of Christ which we have seen and handled. But that is a Nestorian error. For it should be considered that that flesh was also the flesh of God the Word, without any separation, perfectly assumed by the divine nature and made wholly divine. How could it now be separated and represented apart? So is it with the human soul of Christ which mediates between the Godhead of the Son and the dulness of the flesh. As the human flesh is at the same time flesh of God the Word, so is the human soul also soul of God the Word, and both at the same time, the soul being deified as well as the body, and the Godhead

remained undivided even in the separation of the soul from the body in his voluntary passion. For where the soul of Christ is, there is also his Godhead; and where the body of Christ is, there too is his Godhead. If then in his passion the divinity remained inseparable from these, how do the fools venture to separate the flesh from the Godhead, and represent it by itself as the image of a mere man? They fall into the abyss of impiety, since they separate the flesh from the Godhead, ascribe to it a subsistence of its own, a personality of its own, which they depict, and thus introduce a fourth person into the Trinity.

Moreover, they represent as not being made divine, that which has been made divine by being assumed by the Godhead. Whoever, then, makes an image of Christ, either depicts the Godhead which cannot be depicted, and mingles it with the manhood (like the Monophysites), or he represents the body of Christ as not made divine and separate and as a person apart, like the Nestorians.

The only admissible figure of the humanity of Christ, however, is bread and wine in the holy Supper. This and no other form, this and no other type, has he chosen to represent his incarnation. Bread he ordered to be brought, but not a representation of the human form, so that idolatry might not arise. And as the body of Christ is made divine, so also this figure of the body of Christ, the bread, is made divine by the descent of the Holy Spirit; it becomes the divine body of Christ by the mediation of the priest who, separating the oblation from that which is common, sanctifies it.

The evil custom of assigning names to the images does not come down from Christ and the Apostles and the holy Fathers; nor have these left behind them any prayer by which an image should be hallowed or made anything else than ordinary matter.

If, however, some say, we might be right in regard to the images of Christ, on account of the mysterious union of the two natures, but it is not right for us to forbid also the images of the altogether spotless and ever-glorious Mother of God, of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, who were mere men and did not consist of two natures; we may reply, first of all: If those fall away, there is no longer need of these. But we will also consider what may be said against these in particular.

Christianity has rejected the whole of heathenism, and so not merely heathen sacrifices, but also the heathen worship of images. The Saints live on eternally with God, although they have died. If anyone thinks to call them back again to life by a dead art, discovered by the heathen, he makes himself guilty of blasphemy. Who dares attempt with heathenish art to paint the Mother of God, who is exalted above all heavens and the Saints? It is not permitted to Christians, who have the hope of the resurrection, to imitate the customs of demon-worshippers, and to insult the Saints, who shine in so great glory, by common dead matter.

Moreover, we can prove our view by Holy Scripture and the Fathers. In the former it is said: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth;” and: “Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath;” on which account God spoke to the Israelites on the Mount, from the midst of the fire, but showed them no image. Further: “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,…and served the creature more than the Creator.” [Several other passages, even less to the point, are cited.]532

The same is taught also by the holy Fathers. [The Synod appeals to a spurious passage from Epiphanius and to one

inserted into the writings of Theodotus of Ancyra, a friend of St. Cyril’s; to utterances—in no way striking—of Gregory of

545

Nazianzum, of SS. Chrysostom, Basil, Athanasius of Amphilochius and of Eusebius Pamphili, from his Letter to the Empress Constantia, who had asked him for a picture of Christ.]533

Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed out of the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters.

Whoever in future dares to make such a thing, or to venerate it, or set it up in a church, or in a private house, or possesses it in secret, shall, if bishop, presbyter, or deacon, be deposed; if monk or layman, be anathematised, and become liable to be tried by the secular laws as an adversary of God and an enemy of the doctrines handed down by the Fathers. At the same time we ordain that no incumbent of a church shall venture, under pretext of destroying the error in regard to images, to lay his hands on the holy vessels in order to have them altered, because they are adorned with figures. The same is provided in regard to the vestments of churches, cloths, and all that is dedicated to divine service. If, however, the incumbent of a church wishes to have such church vessels and vestments altered, he must do this only with the assent of the holy Ecumenical

patriarch and at the bidding of our pious Emperors. So also no prince or secular official shall rob the churches, as some have done in former times, under the pretext of destroying images. All this we ordain, believing that we speak as doth the Apostle, for we also believe that we have the spirit of Christ; and as our predecessors who believed the same thing spake what they had synodically defined, so we believe and therefore do we speak, and set forth a definition of what has seemed good to us following and in accordance with the definitions of our Fathers.

1. If anyone shall not confess, according to the tradition of the Apostles and Fathers, in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost one godhead, nature and substance, will and operation, virtue and dominion, kingdom and power in three subsistences, that is in their most glorious Persons, let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that one of the Trinity was made flesh, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone does not confess that the holy Virgin is truly the Mother of God, etc.

4. If anyone does not confess one Christ both God and man, etc.

5. If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving because it is the flesh of the Word of God, etc.

6. If anyone does not confess two natures in Christ, etc.

7. If anyone does not confess that Christ is seated with God the Father in body and soul, and so will come to judge, and that he will remain God forever without any grossness, etc.

8. If anyone ventures to represent the divine image (χαρακτήρ) of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, let him be anathema!

9. If anyone ventures to represent in human figures, by means of material colours, by reason of the incarnation, the substance or person (ousia or hypostasis) of the Word, which cannot be depicted, and does not rather confess that even after the Incarnation he [i.e., the Word] cannot be depicted, let him be anathema!

10. If anyone ventures to represent the hypostatic union of the two natures in a picture, and calls it Christ, and thus falsely represents a union of the two natures, etc.!

11. If anyone separates the flesh united with the person of the Word from it, and endeavours to represent it separately in a picture, etc.!

12. If anyone separates the one Christ into two persons, and endeavours to represent Him who was born of the Virgin separately, and thus accepts only a relative (σχετική) union of the natures, etc.

13. If anyone represents in a picture the flesh deified by its union with the Word, and thus separates it from the Godhead, etc.

14. If anyone endeavours to represent by material colours, God the Word as a mere man, who, although bearing the form of God, yet has assumed the form of a servant in his own person, and thus endeavours to separate him from his 546 inseparable Godhead, so that he thereby introduces a quaternity into the Holy Trinity, etc.

15. If anyone shall not confess the holy ever-virgin Mary, truly and properly the Mother of God, to be higher than every creature whether visible or invisible, and does not with sincere faith seek her intercessions as of one having confidence in her access to our God, since she bare him, etc.

16. If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, etc.

17. If anyone denies the profit of the invocation of Saints, etc.

18. If anyone denies the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment, and the condign retribution to everyone, endless torment and endless bliss, etc.

19. If anyone does not accept this our Holy and Ecumenical Seventh Synod, let him be anathema from the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and from the seven holy Ecumenical Synods!

[Then follows the prohibition of the making or teaching any other faith, and the penalties for disobedience. After this follow the acclamations.]

The divine Kings Constantine and Leo said: Let the holy and ecumenical synod say, if with the consent of all the most holy bishops the definition just read has been set forth.

The holy synod cried out: Thus we all believe, we all are of the same mind. We have all with one voice and voluntarily subscribed. This is the faith of the Apostles. Many years to the Emperors! They are the light of orthodoxy! Many years to the orthodox Emperors! God preserve your Empire! You have now more firmly proclaimed the inseparability of the two natures of Christ! You have banished all idolatry! You have destroyed the heresies of Germanus [of Constantinople], George and Mansur [μανσουρ, John Damascene]. Anathema to Germanus, the double-minded, and worshipper of wood! Anathema to George, his associate, to the falsifier of the doctrine of the Fathers! Anathema to Mansur, who has an evil name and Saracen opinions! To the betrayer of Christ and the enemy of the Empire, to the teacher of impiety, the perverter of Scripture, Mansur, anathema! The Trinity has deposed these three!534

530. In this epitome of the verbose definition of the council, I have followed for the most part Hefele. (Hist. of the Councils, Vol. V., p. 309 et seqq.)

531. Now four years old.

532. These are Hefele’s words.

533. These are Hefele’s words.

534. These are not given in full but are sufficient to give the true gist.

Revelation, Session Seven
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Chapters Two and Three – the letters to the seven churches

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 63–80.

The Things Declared to the Angel of the Church in Pergamum

2:12–13a. 12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: “Thus says the one who has the sharp two-edged sword: 13a I know your works and where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is.

This city was full of idols… 

2:13b. And you keep my name. You did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, that all-faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

…

2:14–15. 14 But I have a few things against you: that you have <some> there keeping the teaching of Balaam, who in Balaam taught [30] Balak to put a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat meat sacrificed to idols, and to practice fornication. 15 Thus you also have those who keep the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which I likewise hate.

So it seems this city had possessed two difficulties: First, the majority was Greek, and second, among those who were called believers, the shameful Nicolaitans had sown evil “tares among the wheat.”8 …

2:16. Repent. If not, I will come to you soon, and I will war against them by the sword of my mouth.

Love for humankind is also in the threat. For he does not say, “against you,” but I will war against them, those who are incurably “diseased.”

2:17. The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: To the one who is victorious I will give to him to eat from the hidden manna, [31] and I will give to him a small white stone, and a new name written upon the stone, which no one knows except the one receiving it.”

The “Bread of Life” is the hidden manna, the One who descended from heaven for us and has become edible. …

Things Declared to the Angel of the Church in Thyatira

2:18. And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: “Thus says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like glowing brass. [32]

… [T]his union, ignited by means of the divine Spirit, cannot be grasped by human reasoning.

2:19–20. 19 I know your works and your love and faith and service and your patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this very much against you, that you allow the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet, to teach and to lead my servants astray to practice immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.

…

2:21. I gave her time to repent of her immorality.

The evil <is> a choice, he says, since, having received time to repent rightly, she did not use it.

2:22–23a. 22 Behold, I will throw her on a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. 23a And I will strike her children dead.

…

2:23b–25. 23b And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches reins and hearts, and I will give to each of you according to your works. 24 And I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, any who have not learned the deep things of Satan, as they say: I do not lay upon you any other burden; 25 only hold fast to that which you have until I come.

These things are <addressed> to the deceived heretics and those deceiving others. [34] To the more simple he says: “Since you, through your simple manner, are not able to endure the cunning and quick-witted men, inasmuch as you do not know the deep things of Satan, as you say, I do not request that you do battle through words but that you safeguard the teaching which you have received, until I will take you from there.”

2:26–28a. 26 And he who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him authority over the nations, 27 and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as earthen vessels they will be shattered, 28a just as I myself have received <authority> from my Father.

To him who does my works,” he says, I will give authority “over five or ten cities,” as the Gospel said. …

2:28b–29. 28b And I will give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Morning star, or, it says, the one about whom Isaiah was saying, “How did he fall from heaven, the bright rising morning star?” whom he promised he will hand over to be “crushed under the feet of the saints.”22 Or <it is> the One who brings light, as has been said by the blessed Peter, [35] “dawning in the hearts” of the faithful, the well-known illumination of Christ. …. It is not surprising that we have taken this as referring to two things totally contradictory to each other. For we learn from the divine Scriptures that the lion of Judah <is> the Christ,30 and <the lion> from Bashan <is> the Antichrist. According to what is meant, it is this or the other. It <the morning star> also implies both the dawn of the future day, by which the darkness of the present life will be covered, and also its “messenger” bringing the good news of this <dawn>.32…

The Things Declared to the Angel of the Church in Sardis

3:1. And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: “Thus says the one who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: I know your works, that in name you live, and you are dead.

…

3:2. Wake up and strengthen those things which remain and which were about to die; for I have not found your works being fulfilled in the sight of God.

“Shake off the sleep of laziness,” he says, “and strengthen your members, who are about to die completely through unbelief.” For it is not the beginning of good works that crowns the worker, but the completion.

3:3a. Remember, therefore, what you received and heard, and keep [that], and repent. [37]

“Keep the tradition which you received from the apostles, and repent of laziness.”

3:3b. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you.

Naturally. …

3:4. You have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

“You possess this good,” he says, “that some people, those who have not soiled the garment of the flesh by filthy deeds, will be with me in the rebirth brilliantly attired because they have kept ‘the garment of incorruption’5 spotless.”

3:5–6. 5 He who conquers shall be wrapped about in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life, and I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

He who is victorious in the above-mentioned victory will shine like the sun in the clothing of his own virtues, and his name will remain indelible in the book of the living. [38] “He will be confessed before my Father and the holy powers,” even as triumphant martyrs, just as he says in the Gospel, “the righteous will shine as the sun.”7

The Things Declared to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia

3:7. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: “Thus says the Holy One, the True One, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens.

His kingdom is called the key of David, for it is the symbol of authority. The key is also the Holy Spirit, <the key> of both the book of Psalms and every prophecy, through which the “treasures of knowledge” are opened …

3:8. I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut; <I know> that you have little [39] power, and you kept my word and did not deny my name.

…  “I opened before you a door of instructive preaching, which cannot be closed by temptations. I am satisfied with the attitude, and I do not demand things beyond strength.”

3:9. Behold, I will give <you> those of the synagogue of Satan—who say that they are Jews and are not, but they lie. I will make them so that they come and bow down before your feet, and they will know that I have loved you.

“As a reward for the confession of my name,” he says, “you will have the return and repentance of the Jews, who will kneel before your feet, asking to approach me for the illumination which comes from me, remaining Judaizers secretly in their hearts, <though> not in appearance.”

3:10–11. 10 Because you have kept the word of my patience, I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth. I am coming soon. 11 Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. [40]

…  He rightly says, I come quickly, for “after the affliction of those days immediately” the Lord will come, as he says. For this reason he suddenly commands <them> to keep the treasure of the faith inviolate, so that no one loses the crown of patience.

3:12a. He who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God; he will never go out of it,

Naturally. The victor over the opposing powers is established <as> a pillar and a foundation of the truth, having in it the immovable base according to the Apostle.

12b. And I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which descends out of heaven from my God, and my new name. [41]

“Upon the heart of such a pillar,” he says, “I will engrave the knowledge of the divine name and of the heavenly Jerusalem, so that he will see in her the beautiful things through the eyes of the Spirit, and also my new name which will be known by the saints in the future.” …

3:13. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Let us pray that we ourselves possess such a little ear.

Things Declared to the Angel of the Church of the Laodiceans

3:14a. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “Thus says The Amen, the faithful and true witness,

…

3:14b. the beginning of God’s creation:

…  For the beginning of creation is the primary and uncreated cause.

3:15–16a. 15 I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you be cold or hot! 16a Thus it is that you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold,

Gregory the Theologian says, “We must live exactly hot or exactly cold.” … [I]in faith, the middle way and the lukewarm are worthless.

3:16b–17. 16b I intend to vomit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,’ and you do not know that you are miserable and wretched and poor and blind and naked.

“Just as lukewarm water causes people who receive it to vomit,” he says, “hence I too, through a word of my mouth, will vomit you like detested food into eternal punishment, for you mingled the thorns of riches with the seed of the divine word and you are unaware of your own poverty in spiritual matters and the blindness of your spiritual eyes and the nakedness of good deeds.”

3:18. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you will become rich, and that you may put on white garments, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.

…

3:19. If I love someone, I reproach and correct <him>. Therefore, be zealous and repent.

Oh, the love for humanity! How much goodness the reproach holds!

3:20. Behold, I stand at the door and I knock; if one will hear my voice and will open the door, I will come in to him, and I will dine with him, and he with me.

“My presence is not forced,” he says. …

3:21. He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself have conquered and taken my seat with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” [45]

The Kingdom and the repose of the future age are indicated by the throne.  …  Therefore, having made the cloud a vehicle for the rise heavenward in his Ascension,25 he also says through the Apostle that the saints will be “caught up in the clouds to meet him,” and he will come <as> Judge, as Creator and Master of creation, handing over to the saints to judge those who opposed the truly divine and blessed slavery, as the Apostle says, “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” that is, the “rulers of darkness.”28 …

In this class, we talk about chanting with predictable patterns, chanting together and intoning clearly.

Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Gregory Jensen about his most recent "Father, Speak a Word" substack article, "The Problem is I'm Shallow."  The idea is that our lives are superficial and unlikely to lead to the kind of healing and growth that we are called towards.  They also discuss a great irony: those who seem most motivated to move towards depth (the rigorists and gerundists) do it in a way that only increases the problem because they get distracted by the forms rather than inward discernment and change.  The answer to superficiality is 1) to become part of the Orthodox Church and 2) to immerse oneself in the (seemingly mundane and certainly repetitive) faith as it should be lived within our very real and often messy families and parishes.  Enjoy the show!

Revelation, Session Six and Seven
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Chapters Two and Three – the letters to the seven churches

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 63–80.

The Things that had been Written to the Angel of the Church of the Ephesians

2:1. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: “Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

He discourses with the church through the angel just as if he were an educator <speaking> to the one being instructed….

2:2–5a. 2 I know your works and your toil and your patience, and that you cannot bear evil men, and you have tested those calling themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them false. 3 And you have endurance and patience on account of my name and did not grow weary. 4 But I hold it against you that you have left your first love. 5a Remember, therefore, [25] from where you fell, and repent and do the works <you did at> first.

Accepting the church in two ways, he reprimands it in one way. He has put the one <reprimand> in the middle and the achievements on either side... 

2:5b–6. 5b If not, I will come to you soon and I will move your lampstand from its place, if you do not repent. 6 But this you have: that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

The movement of the church <means> to deprive them of divine grace…

2:7. The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

…  He promised to grant to such a victor in the war against the demons to eat of the Tree of Life, that is, to partake of the blessings of the future age, for, periphrastically, eternal life is meant by the Tree. …

The Things Declared to the Angel of the Church of the Smyrnaeans

2:8. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: “Thus says the First and the Last, who was dead and came to life.

The first as god, and the Last as having become man in the latter times, and having opened eternal life to us through his three-day death.

2:9a. I know your works and the tribulation and the poverty, but you are rich.

“Affliction and poverty in the bodily things, which you suffer patiently for my sake, being afflicted by the unbelievers and deprived of your possessions, but in spiritual things you are rich, having ‘the treasure hidden in the field’ of your heart.” [28]

2:9b. And the blasphemy of those who say they themselves are Jews and are not, but a synagogue of Satan.

…  “Judah” means “confession.”  [(Sept.) and they do not confess Christ]

2:10. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to put some of you in prison that you might be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

He says, “Do not fear the tribulation from the enemies of God through afflictions and trials, for <it will last only> ten days and not <be> long-lived.” For this reason, death must be despised, since in a little while it grants “the unfading crown of life.”

2:11. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: The one who is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.”

… He will not be harmed by the second death of Gehenna. [29]

The Things Declared to the Angel of the Church in Pergamum

2:12–13a. 12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: “Thus says the one who has the sharp two-edged sword: 13a I know your works and where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is.

This city was full of idols… 

2:13b. And you keep my name. You did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, that all-faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

…

2:14–15. 14 But I have a few things against you: that you have <some> there keeping the teaching of Balaam, who in Balaam taught [30] Balak to put a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat meat sacrificed to idols, and to practice fornication. 15 Thus you also have those who keep the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which I likewise hate.

So it seems this city had possessed two difficulties: First, the majority was Greek, and second, among those who were called believers, the shameful Nicolaitans had sown evil “tares among the wheat.”8 …

2:16. Repent. If not, I will come to you soon, and I will war against them by the sword of my mouth.

Love for humankind is also in the threat. For he does not say, “against you,” but I will war against them, those who are incurably “diseased.”

2:17. The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: To the one who is victorious I will give to him to eat from the hidden manna, [31] and I will give to him a small white stone, and a new name written upon the stone, which no one knows except the one receiving it.”

The “Bread of Life” is the hidden manna, the One who descended from heaven for us and has become edible. …

Flavius is an independent researcher and journalist who travels the world collecting and sharing the stories of how people and their faith are affected by war and hardship.  I think you will enjoy our conversation about his previous work, how he came to it, and the hardships too many Ukrainians are facing as a result of the combination of Russia's unjust and fratricidal war and local corruption.  Flavius's witness and voice are important and compelling.  You can read his article, "Ukraine's Two Wars: Ukrainians are dying on the frontline while fighting to preserve their faith" at The American Conservative. Enjoy the show! 

2 Corinthians 9:6-11. If we are not careful, the seeds we sow will grow briars. Sow well, in Christ!

Ten Commandments of Chanting

1. Bring and maintain peace in the kliros.  It’s a witness of cooperation, harmony, and reverence – nothing else belongs there (any more than it does in the altar or nave).

2. Come early and be prepared.  This is especially true if you are reading an epistle.  Prayer is part of the preparation.  Spend time with the priest before the service to compare notes/get on the same page (and get a blessing).

3. Our ears are more important than our voices.  

4. Make the hand-offs sound like you are part of the same team, not separate or (egad!) competing.  In chanting, this includes re-pitching only when there is a problem.

5. Chant clearly and confidently.  This is the Word of God, offered to His people.  

6. Chant humbly and without vainglory.  The kliros is a magnet for pride.  

7. Don’t settle for “good enough”.  Even beginners get the notes right.  Good chanting requires making the services witness to the harmony and unity of God.

8. Match the tempo of the service.  It’s not a race, nor is it a dirge.

9. Let the service speak for itself.  It is perfect, we become perfect in and through it.

10. Sing with joy and thanksgiving!  We bring beauty to the services as much through our witness as our voices. 

Terms:  

Intoning – musically reading simply around a single note.  Often done with Psalms.

Chanting – singing the words according to a set pattern or Tone.

Tone – a set melody based on a given system (e.g. Byzantine or Common).

Plain Reading – can be done with a normal reading voice or intoning

Kliros – the home base of the chanter(s).

The Good News I

According to St. John: 

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. (1:1-2)

Genesis 1: 26a, 27-28a

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it and rule... 

SUBDUE?!  RULE?!

Subdue into the pattern of
the good, the beautiful and the true.

The Curse (expulsion from Eden)

Using Beauty Against Itself? (the line of Cain)

The End of the Good, Beautiful, and the True? (Nephalim etc.)

Genesis 9:1,7

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth... (every wild beast will dread you)...

And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

Genesis 11 –  The Tower of Babel

The Restoration: Luke 3: 3-6

And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;  As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

The Good News II

According to St. John: 

And the Logos become flesh and dwelt among us.  (1:14a)

To all who received him, who believed in his name, He gave power to become children of God. (1:12)
And according to St. Paul:

In [Christ] you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (e.g. Ephesians 1:13-14). 

St. Matthew 28:16-20

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Beauty in Nature, Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Fellowship, and THE GULAG?!

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Gives insights into how people ended up in the Gulag

• This is really developed in the Gulag Archipelago 

• Ivan admitted that he surrendered to Germany to betray the USSR

• The young Gopchik gave milk to Ukrainian guerrillas

• The foreman was discharged for being the son of a kulak (SoanEotP)
  
  

Some insights into the state of faith and religion in the USSR

• Corruption in the Russian Orthodox Church

• Faith of the peasant/redneck (represented by Ukrainian) Orthodox

• Faith and (beautiful) martyrdom of the Baptists

One Day - On Beauty and Art (presages his essay)

Two bookkeepers, also zeks, were toasting bread on the stove.  They'd rigged up a sort of wire griddle to keep it from burning.

Tsezar was lolling at his desk, smoking his pipe.  He had his back to Shukhov and didn't see him.  Opposite him sat Kh-123, a wiry old man doing twenty years' hard.  He was eating gruel.

"You're wrong, old man," Tsezar was saying, goodnaturedly.  "Objectively, you will have to admit that Eisenstein is a genius.  Surely you can't deny that Ivan the Terrible is a work of genius?  The dance of the masked oprichniki!  The scene in the cathedral!"

Kh-123's spoon stopped short of his mouth.

"Bogus," he said angrily.  "So much art in it that it ceases to be art.  Pepper and poppy seed instead of good honest bread.  And the political motive behind it is utterly loathsome — an attempt to justify a tyrannical individual.  An insult to the memory of three generations of the Russian intelligentsia!" (He was eating his gruel without savoring it.  It wouldn't do him any good.)

"But would it have got past the censor if he'd handled it differently?"

"Oh well, if that's what matters...  Only don't call him a genius — call him a toady, a dog carrying out his master's orders.  A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste."

"Ahem!"  Shukhov cleared his throat.  He felt awkward, interrupting this educated conversation, but he couldn't just go on standing there.

Tsezar turned around and held his hand out for the bowl, without even looking at Shukhov — the gruel might have traveled through the air unaided — then went back to his argument.  "Yes, but art isn't what you do, it's how you do it."

Kh-123 reared up and chopped at the table with his hand. "I don't give a damn how you do it if it doesn't awaken good feelings in me!"

Shukhov stood there just as long as he decently could after handing over the gruel, hoping Tsezar would treat him to a cigarette.  But Tsezar had entirely forgotten that Shukhov was behind him.  So he turned on his heel and left quietly.

Never mind, it wasn't all that cold outside.  A great day for bricklaying.

Walking down the path, he spotted a bit of steel broken off a hacksaw blade lying in the snow.  He had no special use for it right then, but you never knew what you might need later.  So he picked it up and slipped it into his trouser pocket.  Have to hide it in the Power Station.  Thrift beats riches.

Solzhenitsyn:  Beauty will Save the World

Part One:  The Ontology of Beauty

One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today’s ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.

Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God’s heaven; then, however, his responsibility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence – in destitution, in prison, in sickness his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.

But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human beings – they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this artist’s vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by the work of his unworthy fingers.

Part Two:  Can (Just) Beauty Save?

One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved?

… It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious. Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition – and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted…

But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force – they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination. And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today? It is the small insight which, over the years, I have succeeded in gaining into this matter that I shall attempt to lay before you here today.

Part Three:  The Terrible Beauty of the Gulag

And as I stand here today, accompanied by the shadows of the fallen, with bowed head allowing others who were worthy before to pass ahead of me to this place, as I stand here, how am I to divine and to express what THEY would have wished to say?

Frequently, in painful camp seethings, in a column of prisoners, when chains of lanterns pierced the gloom of the evening frosts, there would well up inside us the words that we should like to cry out to the whole world, if the whole world could hear one of us. Then it seemed so clear: what our successful ambassador would say, and how the world would immediately respond with its comment. Our horizon embraced quite distinctly both physical things and spiritual movements, and it saw no lop-sidedness in the indivisible world. These ideas did not come from books, neither were they imported for the sake of coherence. They were formed in conversations with people now dead, in prison cells and by forest fires, they were tested against THAT life, they grew out of THAT existence.

When at last the outer pressure grew a little weaker, my and our horizon broadened and gradually, albeit through a minute chink, we saw and knew “the whole world”. And to our amazement the whole world was not at all as we had expected, as we had hoped; that is to say a world living “not by that”, a world leading “not there”, a world which could exclaim at the sight of a muddy swamp, “what a delightful little puddle!”, at concrete neck stocks, “what an exquisite necklace!”; but instead a world where some weep inconsolate tears and others dance to a light-hearted musical.

How could this happen? Why the yawning gap? Were we insensitive? Was the world insensitive? Or is it due to language differences? Why is it that people are not able to hear each other’s every distinct utterance? Words cease to sound and run away like water – without taste, colour, smell. Without trace.

As I have come to understand this, so through the years has changed and changed again the structure, content and tone of my potential speech. The speech I give today.

And it has little in common with its original plan, conceived on frosty camp evenings.

Part Four:  The Babel of Local Scales

Mankind has become one, but not steadfastly one as communities or even nations used to be; not united through years of mutual experience, neither through possession of a single eye, affectionately called crooked, nor yet through a common native language, but, surpassing all barriers, through international broadcasting and print. An avalanche of events descends upon us – in one minute half the world hears of their splash. But the yardstick by which to measure those events and to evaluate them in accordance with the laws of unfamiliar parts of the world – this is not and cannot be conveyed via soundwaves and in newspaper columns. For these yardsticks were matured and assimilated over too many years of too specific conditions in individual countries and societies; they cannot be exchanged in mid-air. In the various parts of the world men apply their own hard-earned values to events, and they judge stubbornly, confidently, only according to their own scales of values and never according to any others.

In one part of the world, not so long ago, under persecutions not inferior to those of the ancient Romans’, hundreds of thousands of silent Christians gave up their lives for their belief in God. In the other hemisphere a certain madman, (and no doubt he is not alone), speeds across the ocean to DELIVER us from religion – with a thrust of steel into the high priest! He has calculated for each and every one of us according to his personal scale of values!

One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: we shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.

A man with two hearts is not for this world, neither shall we be able to live side by side on one Earth.

Part Five:  Art Shares, Shapes, and Preserves Culture

But who will co-ordinate these value scales, and how? … Who might succeed in impressing upon a bigoted, stubborn human creature the distant joy and grief of others, an understanding of dimensions and deceptions which he himself has never experienced? Propaganda, constraint, scientific proof – all are useless. But fortunately there does exist such a means in our world! That means is art. That means is literature.   … 

They possess a wonderful ability: beyond distinctions of language, custom, social structure, they can convey the life experience of one whole nation to another. 

[It also] becomes the living memory of the nation. Thus it preserves and kindles within itself the flame of her spent history, in a form which is safe from deformation and slander. In this way literature, together with language, protects the soul of the nation.

But woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against “freedom of print”, it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. …

In some cases moreover – when as a result of such a silence the whole of history ceases to be understood in its entirety – it is a danger to the whole of mankind.

Part Six:  Lies and Suppression Destroy

What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. … The young, at an age when they have not yet any experience other than sexual, when they do not yet have years of personal suffering and personal understanding behind them, are jubilantly repeating our depraved Russian blunders of the Nineteenth Century, under the impression that they are discovering something new. …

And on top of this we are threatened by destruction in the fact that the physically compressed, strained world is not allowed to blend spiritually; the molecules of knowledge and sympathy are not allowed to jump over from one half to the other. This presents a rampant danger: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION between the parts of the planet. 

Contemporary science knows that suppression of information leads to entropy and total destruction. Suppression of information renders international signatures and agreements illusory; within a muffled zone it costs nothing to reinterpret any agreement, even simpler – to forget it, as though it had never really existed. (Orwell understood this supremely.) 

A muffled zone is, as it were, populated not by inhabitants of the Earth, but by an expeditionary corps from Mars; the people know nothing intelligent about the rest of the Earth and are prepared to go and trample it down in the holy conviction that they come as “liberators”.

Part Seven:  Creating a Shared Human Story

Friends! Let us try to help if we are worth anything at all! Who from time immemorial has constituted the uniting, not the dividing, strength in your countries, lacerated by discordant parties, movements, castes and groups? There in its essence is the position of writers: expressers of their native language – the chief binding force of the nation, of the very earth its people occupy, and at best of its national spirit.

We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.

And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the world, let it even reign in the world – but not with my help. But writers and artists can achieve more: they can CONQUER FALSEHOOD! In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness – and violence, decrepit, will fall.

That is why, my friends, I believe that we are able to help the world in its white-hot hour. Not by making the excuse of possessing no weapons, and not by giving ourselves over to a frivolous life – but by going to war! Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience:

ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.

And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

Revelation, Session Five
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Fr. Anthony Perkins

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Review – from the Orthodox Study Bible

Introduction and Blessing

1:1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.

2. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. [speaking of the Gospel of St. John] 

3.  Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Greeting to the Seven Churches

4.  John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, 

5.  and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.  To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, 

6.  and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever.  Amen. (OSB)

7.  Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him.  And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him.  Even so, Amen.

8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord (God), who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

10.  I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 

11.  saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.” And, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

12-13.  Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me.  And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment  down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.

New Material – from the Orthodox Study Bible

14-20.  His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.  I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.  Amen.  And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.  Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.  The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

1:14. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire

• OSB.  Further, Christ is here described as God, His hair (v. 14) being that of Daniel’s vision of God as the “Ancient of Days” (7:9; see also 1En 46:1). His eyes signify knowledge; His feet (v. 15), permanence and stability; His voice, authority or teaching; His right hand (v. 16), power; His two-edged sword, complete discernment. This imagery continues throughout Revelation to affirm the preexistence and eternal divinity of the Son of Man (see also Jn 1:1–18). Thus, in Christ man (v. 14) and God (vv. 15, 16) are united.

• St. Bede. 
  14. white. The antiquity and eternity of majesty are represented by whiteness on the head, to which all the chief ones adhere, as hairs, who, because of the sheep which are to be on the right hand are white, like wool, and because of the innumerable multitude of the white-robed and the elect, who come forth from heaven, are glistering like snow.
  eyes. The eyes of the Lord are preachers, who, with spiritual fire, bring light to the faithful, and to the unbelieving a consuming flame.

• Andrew of Caesarea.
  1:14. His head and his hair were white as white wool, as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire.

For even though he is recent amidst us, nonetheless he is ancient; rather, he is before time. His white hair is a symbol of this. And his eyes are as a flame of fire, on the one hand, illuminating those who are holy and, on the other hand, burning the sacrilegious.

1:15.  His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;

• OSB. 1:15 Dan 2:31–44 indicates this mysterious metal foundation not only provides stability but has the ability to forcibly crush all opposition as well. These images are contrasted with the feet of clay found in Dan 2:33, 43: the kingdoms of this world are not permanent, nor ultimately triumphant.

• St. Andrew of Caesarea. 

1:15a. And his feet were like glowing brass, red-hot as in a furnace. [21]

The divine Gregory also understood that the feet meant the divine condescension through the flesh. For his feet by treading on the divinity achieved our salvation. The feet are also the foundations of the Church, like glowing brass, which physicians say is a sweet-smelling incense, which they call masculine incense. Or otherwise: On the one hand, meaning the human nature by the glowing brass, and on the other hand the divine nature by the incense, through both of which is also shown the sweetness of the faith and the unconfused union <of the two natures of Christ>. Or the fine brass signifies the beautiful melody of the gospel proclamation, and the incense is the return of the nations by which the bride is summoned. And the feet of Christ are also the apostles, who have been tested by fire in the furnace of trials in imitation of their Teacher.

1:15b. And his voice <was> like the sound of many waters.

Naturally. His voice is in common with that of the Spirit, from which “rivers of living water flowed from the belly” of the faithful, and it made a penetrating sound over all the earth.

• St. Bede.  

15. feet. By the “fiery feet” he means the Church of the last time, which is to be searched and proved by severe afflictions. For orichalcum is brass, which, by much fire and various ingredients, is brought to the colour of gold. Another translation, which renders it, “like orichalcum of Lebanon,” signifies that in Judæa, of which Lebanon is a mountain, the Church will be persecuted, and especially at the last. The temple also frequently received the name of Lebanon, as there is said to ito, “Open, O Lebanon, thy gates, and let the fire devour thy cedars.”
voice. The voice of confession, and preaching, and praise does not resound in Judæa alone, but among many peoples.

1:16.  He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.

• OSB: 1:16 The Lord holds the stars that represent the seven churches (1:20), and hence, the Church. For Christ is Lord of the Church. In His just judgment, the sword He wields is the Word of God, which cuts effortlessly to the very marrow and heart of humanity (see 2:16; 18:15; Is 11:4; 49:2; WSol 18:15; Eph 6:17; 2Th 2:9; Heb 4:12). The brilliance of His face recalls the Uncreated Light John saw radiating from the Savior at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.

• Andrew of Caesarea.

1:16. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and coming out from his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword, and his appearance <was> as the sun shines in its power. [22]

Further down he says that the seven stars are the seven angels of the churches. The sharp, double-edged sword means his decision against the wicked, “sharper than any two-edged sword,” or the sword of the Spirit circumcising our inner man.38 Like the sun his face shines, not in a splendor <appearing> to the senses, but to the intellect. For he is the “sun of righteousness,” shining with his own power and authority, not like the sensory sun, which <shines> as a created object by God-given power and divine command.

• St. Bede.

16. right hand. In the right hand of Christ is the spiritual Church. “On Thy right hand,” he says, “stood the queen in a vesture of gold.” And as it stands on His right hand, He saithq, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom.”
mouth. He, the Judge of all things visible and invisible, “after He has killed, has power to cast into hell fire.”
countenance. Such as the Lord appeared on the Mount, will He appear after the judgment to all the saints, for at the judgment the ungodly will behold Him Whom they pierced. But all this appearance of the Son of Man belongs also to the Church, for He Himself was made the Christ in the same nature with it, and He gives to it a sacerdotal dignity and a judicial power, and to “shine as the sun in the kingdom of His Father.”

1:17-18. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.  Amen.  

• OSB. 1:17, 18 Mortal humanity cannot bear the revelation of divine glory, a frequent biblical theme (see Ex 19:21; 33:20; Is 6:5). Just as he fell prostrate at Mount Tabor (Mt 17:6), so also does John here, in the presence of the glorified Savior (see Ezk 1:27; Dan 10:7–9; see also 1En 14:24). Do not be afraid is a revelatory formula from the OT. As a signal for the theophany, it was carried over into the NT (see the Annunciation, Lk 1:30; Jesus walking upon the water, Mt 14:27—“Fear not, I AM”; the Transfiguration, Mt 17:7). In the OT God was called “the first and the last” (Is 44:6; 48:12), and so, too, is the Messiah. Some early heresies (e.g. Docetism) held that Jesus only seemed to die. But the Lord Himself testified, I … was dead, affirming the authenticity of His death; alive forevermore, His Resurrection—the power of which effects His lordship over death and its realm. The Orthodox icon of the resurrected Christ depicts Him with these keys (v. 18) in hand, standing triumphantly on the open gates of Hades.

• Fr. John Farley.  Like those receiving such theophanic appearances in Old Testament days (e.g. Ezek. 1:28; Dan. 8:17), John fell at His feet as if dead. Even though he had leaned in familiarity upon His breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23), yet such is the power of the Lord in His heavenly exaltation that even the beloved disciple is overwhelmed. The Lord restores him in preparation to write the things he has seen and will see.

He tells John, “Do not be afraid,” and in this He tells all of John’s churches not to fear. They need not fear death, martyrdom, or anything in all the world. Why? Because Christ has overcome the world, trampling down death by death. He became dead, but now He is alive to ages of ages. As such, He is the first and the last, sovereign over all (compare God as the Alpha and Omega in 1:8) and the Living One, the source of all life. He had authority over death and Hades by His Resurrection. Death cannot now separate us from Him, for He is Lord of both the living and the dead.

• St. Andrew of Caesarea. 
  Christ revived the Apostle himself who had suffered through the weakness of human nature like Joshua son of Nun and Daniel, by saying to him, “Do not fear, for I have not come near to kill you, since I am beginningless and endless, having become dead for your sakes.”
  1:18b. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. [23]

Instead <of being dead>, he has authority over bodily and spiritual death.

• St. Bede.  17. 

I fell. As a man, he trembles at the spiritual vision, but his human fear is banished by the clemency of the Lord.

the first. He is the first, because “by Him were all things made;” the last, because in Him are all things restoredu.

18. keys. Not only, He saith, have I conquered death by resurrection, but I have dominion also over death itself. And this He also bestowed upon the Church by breathing upon it the Holy Spirit, saying, “Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them,” and the rest.

1:19.  And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.  Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.  

• OSB.  John’s visions have to do with both the present (things which are) and the future.

• Fr. John Finlay.  Then Christ gives John a command: he is to write the things which he has seen, and the things which are, and the things which are about to happen after these things and send them to the main churches under his care in Asia. (From these seven main locations, they could be sent out to other smaller church communities as well.) This gives a basic outline of the Book of Revelation as a whole: it relates what John has seen (the vision of Christ in ch. 1), the things which are (the present state of the churches, described in chs. 2–3), and the things which are about to happen in the future (the prophecies of chs. 4–22).

• St. Andrew of Caesarea.  [nothing]

• St. Bede.  Reveal to all the things which thou alone hast seen, that is, the various labours of the Church, and that the evil are to be mingled in it with the good unto the end of the world.

1:20.  The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

• OSB. The angels of the seven churches have been variously interpreted as being (1) the guardian angels of the church communities; (2) the pastoral leadership of these local churches; (3) a personification of the prevailing spirit of the given congregations; or (4) simply the messengers responsible for delivering the letters. The term “angel” (heavenly or earthly messenger) is used over 60 times in Revelation.

• Fr. John Farley.  The introduction concludes with an explanation of the meaning of the seven stars in His hand and the seven lampstands among which He stands. The seven lampstands are the seven churches of Asia, and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. This is a reference to what may be termed the individual corporate personality of each church community. Each local church is thus portrayed as having an angel, even as each person has his guardian angel. Just as a person’s guardian angel resembles that person (see those who reacted to the announcement that Peter was standing unexpectedly at the door by suggesting that it was not Peter but his angel; Acts 12:15), so the church’s angel sums up and embodies the local church. The angel of the church is an image of the strengths and weaknesses of each church. In writing to the angel of the church of Ephesus, the Lord actually speaks to the church of Ephesus in its corporate aspect. We see this today as well, in that church communities have corporate characteristics—some are loving, some judgmental, some zealous, some lax. The reference to each church’s “angel” is a way of addressing each community as a community, using the language of the apocalyptic.

• St. Andrew of Caesarea.  Since Christ is the “true light,” because of this, those abundant in his light are lamps as they shine in the night of this present life. Naturally, the churches are called lampstands, because, as the luminaries, they “have the word of life” according to the Apostle. The lamps and lampstands are gold because of the honor and purity of the faith in them. An angel has stood guard for each of these, just as the Lord says,44 and Gregory the Theologian had understood the present chapter: he figuratively called them “stars” because of the brightness and clarity of their nature.

• St. Bede.   stars. That is, the rulers of the Church. For the priest, as Malachi says, is “the angel of the Lord of hosts.”

Malachi 2:7.  “for the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth, for he is the messenger (malakh/angel) of the Lord Almighty.”  

Fr. Anthony speaks about discernment, the perils of pride in the priesthood, and CS Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.

Revelation, Session Four
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Fr. Anthony Perkins

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Review

Introduction and Blessing

1:1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.

2. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. [speaking of the Gospel of St. John] 

3.  Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Greeting to the Seven Churches

4.  John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, 

5.  and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.  To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, 

6.  and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever.  Amen. (OSB)

7.  Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him.  And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him.  Even so, Amen.

New Material

8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord (God), who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

• Andrew of Caesarea.  Christ is shown here both as God and as the Ruler of all things, both beginningless and at the same time endless, existing now and existing before and having no end, since he is coeternal with the Father, and on account of this he will render to each one the wages of deeds done. Ps 62(61):12; Prv 24:12; Wis 16:14; Rom 2:6; 1 Cor 5:10

• St. Bede.  Who is. He had said this same thing of the Father, for God the Father came, as He also is to come, in the Son.

• St. Augustine.  The Lord himself said plainly in the Apocalypse, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first”—before whom is nobody—“the last”—after whom is nobody; he precedes all things and sets a term to all things. Do you want to gaze upon him as the first? “All things were made through him.”49 Do you seek him as the last? “For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified.” In order for you to live at some time or other, you had him as your creator. In order for you to live always, you have him as your redeemer.

9.  I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

• OSB.  Patmos: A small rocky island 40 miles off the western coast of modern Turkey, fifty miles south of Ephesus, to which the Romans exiled criminals.  John’s preaching must have been considered a seditious threat to the public interest if he was indeed a prisoner there.

• Logos.  According to a tradition preserved by Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome and others, John, the author of Revelation, was exiled there in the 14th year of the reign of Domitian and subsequently released to Ephesus under Nerva (96 ad).

• St. Andrew of Caesarea.  “Inasmuch as <I am> your brother,” he says, “being also a co-participant in the tribulations on account of Christ, I naturally have acquired trustworthiness among you. Being condemned to live on the island of Patmos on account of the witness of Jesus, I will announce to you the mysteries seen by me on it.”

10.  I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, 

• OSB.  In the Spirit may mean John received the revelation in a visionary ecstasy (see Ezk 3:12 - Then the spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a voice of a great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.), but more probably that he was in the worship (“in Spirit and in truth”) of the Lord. The Lord’s Day is the earliest reference to the Christian name for Sunday. The Didache and St. Ignatius of Antioch show this name was used very early for the day when Christians gathered to celebrate the Resurrection in the Holy Eucharist. As a fulfillment of the first day of the week of the old creation, Sunday becomes the “eighth day,” the “first day of the new creation.” The term “eighth day” is seen in 2En 33:1 (“On the eighth day I likewise appointed, so that the 8th day might be the 1st, the first-created of my week, and that it should revolve in the revolution of 7000; ⟨|so that the 8000|⟩ might be in the beginning of a time not reckoned and unending, neither years, nor months, nor weeks, nor days, nor hours ⟨like the first day of the week, so also that the eighth day of the week might return continually”⟩. and inaugurates the first day of the timeless age to come. The loud voice, as of a trumpet is a traditional, eschatological, apocalyptic introduction describing an appearance of the Lord (see Ex 19:16, 19; Mt 24:31; 1Co 15:52; 1Th 4:16).

• Andrew of Caesarea.  Having been possessed by the Holy Spirit and having a spiritual ear on the Lord’s day, also <this day> would have been honored by him on account of the resurrection, he heard a voice that seemed like a trumpet because of the loud sound—“the sound of their voice went out to all the earth”—declaring the beginninglessness and endlessness of God signified by the Alpha and Omega. By it he was commanded to send out his visions to the seven churches, because of the aforementioned number seven applying to the Sabbath period of the future age. For this reason also the great Irenaeus had written that the seven heavens and seven angels leading the rest of them had been created by God first.

11.  saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.” And, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

• OSB.  The glorified Christ introduces himself as the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, thus identifying Himself with God the Father (v. 8; 22:13). His position amidst the seven lampstands signifies His presence in the Church (see Mt 5:14)

• St. Bede.  Seven Churches.  The Church of Christ was not at the time in these places alone, but all fulness is comprised in the number seven. Asia, which is interpreted elevation, denotes the proud exaltation of the world in which the Church is sojourning, and, as is the method of the divine mystery, the genus is contained in the species. For the Apostle Paul also writes to seven churches, but not to the same as St. John. And although these seven churches are a sevenfold figure of the whole Church, still the things which he blames, or praises, came to pass in them one by one.

• Apringius of Beja (Latin Father of the 6th Century). Ephesus means “my will” or “my plan.” He wills that we know that the whole reality of our faith and the dignity of the catholic church is not to be ascribed to human merit, but they are the will of God and the disposition of the divine purpose. Smyrna means “their song.” And what else is the song of the perfect if not the celestial doctrine and the preaching of the gospel and the advance of the Christian religion, or the melodious confession of the catholic church? Pergamum means “to him who divides their horns.” This refers either to the insolence of the powers of the air, or to the arrogance of the heretics. And he teaches that the pride of the powers is always to be separated and divided from the congregation of the church, for the horns are either power or arrogance. He writes to Thyatira, that is “enlightened.” This signifies that, after the expulsion of heretical pride and after the defeat of temptations from the powers of the air, the holy church is deserving of the light of righteousness. Sardis means the “beginning of beauty.” The church is seized by the sun of righteousness and is illumined by the light of truth, so that she might have the beginning of beauty, the Lord Jesus Christ, and might always shine in perpetual light. Philadelphia means “preserving devotion to the Lord.” After possessing the sun of righteousness, after the illumination of holiness, after the comeliness of holy beauty, the church rightly is devoted to the Lord and preserves herself by an inviolable observation of devotion. Laodicea means either “a tribe beloved of the Lord,” or, as some would have it, “a birth is expected.” Both are meaningful, for she who has merited the beauty of faith and the sun of righteousness and knows that through faith the Lord cleaves to her, might also be a tribe whom the Lord loves, who is both loved by the Lord and preserved by the Lord. Furthermore, the church might well await her own birth, either the regeneration of baptism or the glory of the resurrection, whenever she preserves herself by humility and patience. 

• Pulpit Commentary (BibleHub).  [This] is just the order in which St. John would visit the Churches in making an apostolic circuit as metropolitan. With the exception of what is told us in these chapters, the history of the Churches of Pergamum, Thyatira, and Sardis in the apostolic or sub-apostolic age is quite unknown.

12-13.  Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me.  And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment  down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.

• St. Bede. 
  Here the figure of the Church is beautifully represented, as holding forth the light of divine love in the brightness of a chaste breast, according to that which the Lord saith, “Let your loins be girt, and your lamps burning.” And he denotes its perfection within and without by the two parts of the number seven; and the individual members of it, consisting of the four qualities of the body, “love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength.”
  
  13. Son of Man. He means that he is like the Son of man when He had overcome death, and had ascended into heaven. For “Although we knew Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we Him no more.” And it is well said, “in the midst,” for “All,” he saysl, “who are round about Him shall offer gifts.”
  
  garment. “Poderis,” which is called in Latin, “tunica talaris,” and is a sacerdotal vestment, shews the priesthood of Christ, by which He offered Himself for us, as a victim to the Father, upon the altar of the cross.
  
  girdle. By the “paps” he here means the two Testaments, with which He feeds the body of the saints in communion with Himself. For the golden girdle is the choir of saints, which cleaves to the Lord in harmonious love, and embraces the Testaments, “keeping,” as the Apostle says, “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

• Andrew of Caesarea.  That the voice <which he heard> was not sensory he signifies saying, I turned, not to hear it, but to see the voice, for spiritual hearing and seeing are the same. I turned, he says, and I saw seven lampstands—which he understood as representing the churches—and in their midst Christ, resembling a man—because he is also God and not a mere man—clothed in a long garment as a high priest of the things above, “according to the order of Melchizedek.” A golden belt was wrapped around him, not on the hip as <worn by> other men in the era of hedonisms—the divine flesh is inaccessible to these <hedonisms>—but on the chest by the breasts <to show> also how the boundless and righteous divine anger is restrained by love for humankind. The truth is shown in the girding of the Master’s breasts, that is, the two Testaments, through which the faithful are nourished. The belt is gold on account of honor, purity, and genuineness.

• St. Jerome.  In the law, John had a leather girdle because the Jews thought that to sin in act was the only sin.… In the Apocalypse of John, our Lord Jesus, who is seen in the middle of the seven lampstands, also wore a girdle, a golden girdle, not about his loins but about the breasts. The law is girdled about the loins, but Christ, that is, the gospel and the fortitude of the monks, binds not only wanton passion but also mind and heart. In the gospel, one is not even supposed to think anything evil; in the law, the fornicator is accused for judgment.… “It is written,” he says, “in the law, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ” This is the leather girdle clinging about the loins. “I say to you, anyone who even looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” This is the golden girdle that is wrapped around the mind and heart.

• OSB. One like the Son of Man recalls Daniel’s messianic figure (Dan 7:13—repeated by Stephen at his martyrdom, Acts 7:56). Christ called Himself Son of Man (see especially Mt 24:30ff.), for He is the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. Additional parallels may be seen in both the Old and New Testaments (Dan 10:6; Mt 17:2; Eph 6:17; Heb 4:12). We also see Him vested in high-priestly garments (see Ex 28:4; 29:5; Lv 16:4; WSol 18:24; Zec 3:4, 5). The gold with which He is girded is both royal (1Mc 10:89) and priestly.

14-16.  His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. [17a.  And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.]

• OSB.  Further, Christ is here described as God, His hair (v. 14) being that of Daniel’s vision of God as the “Ancient of Days” (7:9; see also 1En 46:1). His eyes signify knowledge; His feet (v. 15), permanence and stability; His voice, authority or teaching; His right hand (v. 16), power; His two-edged sword, complete discernment. This imagery continues throughout Revelation to affirm the preexistence and eternal divinity of the Son of Man (see also Jn 1:1–18). Thus, in Christ man (v. 14) and God (vv. 15, 16) are united.
  
  1:15 Dan 2:31–44 indicates this mysterious metal foundation not only provides stability but has the ability to forcibly crush all opposition as well. These images are contrasted with the feet of clay found in Dan 2:33, 43: the kingdoms of this world are not permanent, nor ultimately triumphant.
  
  1:16 The Lord holds the stars that represent the seven churches (1:20), and hence, the Church. For Christ is Lord of the Church. In His just judgment, the sword He wields is the Word of God, which cuts effortlessly to the very marrow and heart of humanity (see 2:16; 18:15; Is 11:4; 49:2; WSol 18:15; Eph 6:17; 2Th 2:9; Heb 4:12). The brilliance of His face recalls the Uncreated Light John saw radiating from the Savior at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.

• St. Bede. 
  14. white. The antiquity and eternity of majesty are represented by whiteness on the head, to which all the chief ones adhere, as hairs, who, because of the sheep which are to be on the right hand are white, like wool, and because of the innumerable multitude of the white-robed and the elect, who come forth from heaven, are glistering like snow.

eyes. The eyes of the Lord are preachers, who, with spiritual fire, bring light to the faithful, and to the unbelieving a consuming flame.

15. feet. By the “fiery feet” he means the Church of the last time, which is to be searched and proved by severe afflictions. For orichalcum is brass, which, by much fire and various ingredients, is brought to the colour of gold. Another translation, which renders it, “like orichalcum of Lebanon,” signifies that in Judæa, of which Lebanon is a mountain, the Church will be persecuted, and especially at the last. The temple also frequently received the name of Lebanon, as there is said to ito, “Open, O Lebanon, thy gates, and let the fire devour thy cedars.”
voice. The voice of confession, and preaching, and praise does not resound in Judæa alone, but among many peoples.

16. right hand. In the right hand of Christ is the spiritual Church. “On Thy right hand,” he says, “stood the queen in a vesture of gold.” And as it stands on His right hand, He saithq, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom.”

mouth. He, the Judge of all things visible and invisible, “after He has killed, has power to cast into hell fire.”

countenance. Such as the Lord appeared on the Mount, will He appear after the judgment to all the saints, for at the judgment the ungodly will behold Him Whom they pierced. But all this appearance of the Son of Man belongs also to the Church, for He Himself was made the Christ in the same nature with it, and He gives to it a sacerdotal dignity and a judicial power, and to “shine as the sun in the kingdom of His Father.”

• Andrew of Caesarea.
  1:14. His head and his hair were white as white wool, as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire.

For even though he is recent amidst us, nonetheless he is ancient; rather, he is before time. His white hair is a symbol of this. And his eyes are as a flame of fire, on the one hand, illuminating those who are holy and, on the other hand, burning the sacrilegious.

1:15a. And his feet were like glowing brass, red-hot as in a furnace. [21]

The divine Gregory also understood that the feet meant the divine condescension through the flesh. For his feet by treading on the divinity achieved our salvation. The feet are also the foundations of the Church, like glowing brass, which physicians say is a sweet-smelling incense, which they call masculine incense. Or otherwise: On the one hand, meaning the human nature by the glowing brass, and on the other hand the divine nature by the incense, through both of which is also shown the sweetness of the faith and the unconfused union <of the two natures of Christ>. Or the fine brass signifies the beautiful melody of the gospel proclamation, and the incense is the return of the nations by which the bride is summoned.33 And the feet of Christ are also the apostles, who have been tested by fire in the furnace of trials in imitation of their Teacher.35

1:15b. And his voice <was> like the sound of many waters.

Naturally. His voice is in common with that of the Spirit, from which “rivers of living water flowed from the belly” of the faithful, and it made a penetrating sound over all the earth.

1:16. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and coming out from his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword, and his appearance <was> as the sun shines in its power. [22]

Further down he says that the seven stars are the seven angels of the churches. The sharp, double-edged sword means his decision against the wicked, “sharper than any two-edged sword,” or the sword of the Spirit circumcising our inner man.38 Like the sun his face shines, not in a splendor <appearing> to the senses, but to the intellect. For he is the “sun of righteousness,” shining with his own power and authority, not like the sensory sun, which <shines> as a created object by God-given power and divine command.

2 Corinthians 4: 6-15. What is the light that God brought into the world? What did it do for the world? For mankind? The light is both the revelation itself and the very thing that grants the ability for it to be revealed. The revelation itself is the logic, beauty, and love that is the world’s foundation and driving law. And it must be admitted that such an underlying order is necessary for revelation: nothing intelligible can be revealed and understood if it has no logic or meaning. Chaos cannot be revealed, only endured: there is no sense to it. But in addition to creating the thing that would be revealed, God was also allowing for the possibility of its revelation: light was given so that man might see logic, beauty, and love and through this to know his Creator. Enjoy the show!

In this lecture, Fr Anthony further explores the role of beauty in music and iconography especially as it relates to the culture or "spirit" of a people. He reviews the following articles:

Revelation, Session Three
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Fr. Anthony Perkins

We also went over:
https://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/tremors_of_doub

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Correction from Last Week

• Revelation was removed from active use because it was being used to support the Marcionists, not the Gnostics [or Montanism as I said in the class!].  Lord have mercy, my brain is too small!

Review of Last Week

1:1-3. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.  Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.  Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.  

New Stuff

1:4 - 6.  (4) John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, (5) and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.  To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, (6) and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever.  Amen. (OSB)

Orthodox Study Bible Notes

• 1:4 Church tradition maintains St. John dwelt and was bishop in Ephesus, in an area where the seven churches were located along a major roadway. The number seven signifies fullness, suggesting the entire Church is also in view.
  
  

The doxology is Trinitarian, involving the Father (vv. 4, 6), the Spirit (v. 4), and the Son (vv. 5, 6). This initial greeting (lit., “the Existing, the Was, and the Coming”) may express the Father, the one who is (Ex 3:14); the Son, who was (Jn 1:1); and the Holy Spirit, who is to come (Acts 2) at Pentecost and shall always be present. Or it may denote the character of the Holy One, who is eternally present and exercises lordship throughout history (see Heb 13:8 – Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow). God reveals the meaning of the present in light of the past and the age to come. This title may be a paraphrase of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH (“I Am”), of Ex 3:14.

Seven is the number of fullness or completion. The seven Spirits of God most likely refers to the Holy Spirit and His several gifts, as this phrase is included in the blessing with the Father and the Son. Alternately the term could refer to the seven archangels who, according to Jewish tradition, stand before the throne of God (Tb 12:15; see also 1En 20:1–8; 90:21, 22; TLev 8:2; “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.”).

• 1:5 Jesus Christ is presented as the Risen Savior, Lord of all (see Zec 12:10), giving hope to the early Christians that the Church will not always be dominated by a cruel state. Instead of washed, many Greek texts read “freed.”
  The term witness (Gr. martys), used only here and in 3:14 in the entire NT, refers to Christ, the authentic witness of all divine revelation; all that God has revealed is summed up in His life, witness, Passion, Resurrection, and exaltation. He has inaugurated the new age, for He is firstborn from the dead in His humanity and has achieved a universal sovereignty by His death, Resurrection, and revelation of His Kingdom for the world’s salvation.
  
  

• 1:6 Those joined to the body of Christ in baptism comprise the messianic royal priesthood promised of old (see Ex 19:5, 6; Is 61:6; 1Pt 2:9; and the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil). This priestly ministry is to offer the world back to God in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving—eucharistically—as in the Orthodox Church’s Divine Liturgy. The universe itself thus becomes hallowed, transfigured, and sacramental. Amen is Semitic. It signifies ratification: an acknowledgment of something trustworthy.

From Fr. Lawrence Farley

John sends this message to the seven churches in Asia who were under his pastoral care. By choosing but seven of these churches, John widens the intended audience, for seven is also the number symbolic of perfection. Thus the Revelation is intended not only to the seven churches of Asia, but also for the perfect totality of all God’s churches.

In calling God Him who is and was and who is coming, John describes God the Father as the One who is sovereign over time and history and therefore over all the historical events that touch us. God sits enthroned as Lord of the present, the past, and the future, and therefore there is nothing in the past, present, or future that can ever hurt us. God is the Lord of time and of all our days.

The message not only comes from the hand of God, it also comes from the entire heavenly court. All in heaven offer the Church on earth this word of encouragement and triumph. The seven spirits before His throne are the seven archangels (see 5:6, “the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth,” and 8:2, the “seven angels who stand before God”). (In chapter 20 of the Book of Enoch, these angels are listed as Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, Gabriel, and Remiel.) Once again, the number seven is symbolic, an image for all the archangels who stand closest to God’s throne and hear His counsel. In saying that this message comes from the seven spirits before His throne, John means that this message comes directly from the Throne itself, with secrets not given to the world at large.

Later liturgical usage, in which reference to the Father and the Son was always followed by reference to the Holy Spirit, has misled some interpreters into seeing this reference to the seven spirits as a reference to the Holy Spirit. But when the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Book of Revelation, He is referred to simply as “the Spirit” (e.g. 2:7; 14:13; 22:17), always in the singular and never as “seven spirits” or as a “sevenfold” Spirit. These seven spirits stand before God’s throne; that is, they are portrayed as waiting upon God as a part of His heavenly court. It is inconceivable that the Divine Spirit, co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son, could be portrayed as such a servant. Indeed, the other references to the Spirit in the Apocalypse carry the suggestion of His sovereignty and authority.

The message also comes from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness (Gr. martus; compare our English “martyr”). Christ bore faithful witness before Pilate to the Truth, even at the cost of His Life (1 Tim. 6:13); John stresses this so that we may imitate His faithfulness. The Lord does not call us to walk in any place where He has not gone before.

Jesus is further described as the firstborn of the dead. In using this Jewish concept of the firstborn (in which the firstborn son is the main heir), John shows that Jesus Christ is the heir of the whole age to come; the entire coming Kingdom belongs to Him. His faithfulness unto death resulted in His victory and His inheriting all the world. Our faithfulness unto death will result in our sharing that victory. Death has no terrors for Jesus Christ, and so it need have none for us.

Thus Christ is also the ruler of the kings of the earth. Caesar may think he has no superior or master, but Jesus, the humble carpenter crucified under the governor Pontius Pilate, is the true Master of the Roman Empire and indeed of the whole cosmos. The Christians of St. John’s day, haunted by a sense of their own powerlessness and humility, were thus made to see their true dignity and power.

The Church is described as those whom the Lord loves and therefore continues to protect and care for (the present tense is used to denote Christ’s ongoing care), and as those who were loosed from their sins by His Blood. This is an important theme in the Apocalypse. The Cross of Christ was seen by secular Rome as His defeat and proof of how pathetic and deluded the Christians were—that they would worship a crucified man. But for John, the Cross is proof of the power of God that defeats all other powers. The Lord Himself said of the Cross, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). For St. John, our faith in Christ and His Cross also “overcomes the world” (1 John 5:5). Thus the Apocalypse speaks not only of us “making our robes white” in His Blood (7:14) but also of us overcoming Satan “by the Blood of the Lamb” (12:11). The Christians are not to be ashamed of Christ’s Cross, for through His Blood they overcome death, Satan, and the whole world.

In describing the Christians as a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, John asserts the privileges of the Christians in the face of the pride of Rome. The Roman powers may think the Christians are but poor, uneducated, and powerless, to be utterly disdained. John knows them to be God’s own Kingdom, one destined to outlast all the kingdoms of the earth, and to be priests to God Himself, with access to His awe-inspiring Presence. Priests had status and honor in the Roman secular world, and St. John says this is the true status of the Christians before God.

Bishop Averky

1:4.  The number seven is usually taken as an expression of fullness.  St John addresses here only the seven churches with which he, as one who lived in Ephesus, was in especially close and frequent contact.  But in these seven he addresses, at the same time, the Christian Church as a whole.

Grace to you and peace from the Tri-Hypostatical Divinity.  The phrase ‘which is’ signifies the Father, Who said to Moses: I am He that Is (Exod 3:14).  The expression ‘which was’ signifies the Word, Who was in the beginning with God (John 1:2).  The phrase ‘which is to come’ indicates the Comforter, Who always descends upon the Church’s children in holy baptism and in all fullness is to descend in the future age (Acts 2). (St. Andrew of Caeserea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, chapter 1).

By these “seven Spirits,” it is most natural to understand the seven chief angels who are spoken of in Tobit 12:15.  St Andrew of Caesarea, however, understands them to be the angels who govern the seven churches.  Other commentaries, on the other hand, understand by by this expression the Holy Spirit Himself, Who manifests Himself in seven chief gifts: the spirit of the fear of God, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of might, the spirit of light, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of the Lord or the spirit of piety, and inspiration in the highest degree (compare Isa 11: 1-3; “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;.”)

1:5. The Lord Jesus Christ is called here “the faithful witness” in the sense that He has witnessed His Divinity and the truth of His teaching before men by His death on the Cross.

“As Life and Resurrection, He is the first-born from the dead (Col 1:18, I Cor 15:20), and those over whom He rules will not see death, as did those who died and rose before, but will live eternally.  He is ‘prince of kings,’ and Lord of lords (1 Tim 6:15), equal in might to the Father and one in Essence with Him” (St Andrew, chapter 1).

1:5-6.  “Kings and priest” are to be understood here not in the strict meaning, of course, but in the sense in which God has promised this to His chosen people through the prophets (Exod 19:6); that is, He has made us, true believers, to be the best, the holiest people, which is the same thing that a priest and king are with relation to the rest of mankind.

Venerable Bede.

4. seven. By these seven churches he writes to every church, for universality is wont to be denoted by the number seven, in that all the time of this age is evolved from seven days.

Grace. Grace he desires for us, and peace from God, the eternal Father, and from the sevenfold Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, Who gave testimony to the Father in His Incarnation. He names the Son in the third place, as he was to speak further of Him. He names Him also the last in order, as He is the first and the last; for He had already named Him in the Father by saying, “Who was to come.”

5. the first-begotten. This is the same that the Apostle says, “We have seen Jesus Christ for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour.” And in another place, in setting forth the reproach of the cross, he added, “Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave Him the Name which is above every name.”

6. priests. Because the King of kings and heavenly Priest united us unto His own body by offering Himself for us, there is not one of the saints who has not spiritually the office of priesthood, in that he is a member of the eternal Priest

7. cometh. He Who was concealed, when at the first He came to be judged, will be manifested at the time when He shall come to judge. He mentions this, that the Church which is now oppressed by enemies, but is then to reign with Christ, may be strengthened for the endurance of sufferings.

pierced. When they see Him as a Judge with power, in the same form in which they pierced Him as the least of all, they will mourn for themselves with a repentance that is too late.

Amen. By interposing an Amen, he confirms that without doubt that will happen, which, by the revelation of God, he knows most surely is to come to pass.

Gregory of Caesarea.

1:4. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from the One who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne.

Due to the existence of many churches in many places, he sent <letters> to only seven, mystically meaning by this number the churches everywhere, also corresponding to the present-day life, in which the seventh period of days is taking place. For this reason also he mentions seven angels and seven churches, to whom he says, Grace to you and peace from the Tri-hypostatic Divinity. For by the who is the Father is signified, who said to Moses, “I am He who is,” and by the who was the Logos, “who was in the beginning with God,” and by the who is to come the Paraclete, who always enlightens the children of the Church through holy Baptism, more completely and more strongly in the future. It is possible to understand the seven spirits as the seven angels who were appointed to govern the churches, not counting them equal to the most divine and royal Trinity, but mentioned along with it as servants, just as the divine Apostle said, “I call upon you in the presence of God and the chosen angels.” By the same token, this may be understood differently: the One who is, and who was, and who is to come, meaning the Father, who contains in himself the beginning, middle, and end of all that exists, and the seven spirits <meaning> the activities of the Life-giving Spirit, following Christ God, who became man for our sake. For in many places each divine Person is indifferently placed and arranged by the Apostle. For this <reason> he says here:

1:5a. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

He is the one who witnessed to Pontius Pilate, faithful to his words in all things, the firstborn of the dead as life and resurrection, for those whom he governs will no more see death, like those who were dead before and rose, but will live eternally. Ruler of the kings, as “King of kings and Lord of lords,” equal in power with the Father and consubstantial. Elsewhere, ruler of the kings of the earth is also said <in reference to his mastery over> earthly desires. If, according to the Blessed [15] Gregory, this usage of he who is, who was, and who is to come, the ruler of all refers to Christ, then it is not unreasonable that words similar to those which will be said shortly after refer to him, to which also the ruler of all is attached and without the repetition or introduction of another person. For here the addition of and from Jesus Christ appears to confirm the understanding we have presented. For it would be unnecessary if he were talking about the only Logos of God and the person of the Son to add immediately and from Jesus Christ in order to show him as distinct from the other one, <since> the expressions that befit God equally honor and are appropriate to each of the divine Persons, and are common to the three, except for their distinctive properties, that is to say, the relationships <between them>, as said by Gregory the Theologian, and except for the Incarnation of the Logos. <This is> also clear from the things from which we learn, that in the Gospel the thrice-holy hymn of the Seraphim16 is said about the Son, in the speech of Paul in the Acts about the Holy Spirit, and then about the Father, in the offering of the awesome mysteries, to whom we are accustomed to say this prayer,19 as the blessed Epiphanios says in his homily On the Holy Spirit. <We say> these things to show that our own understanding does not contradict the patristic voices, and also, with God’s help, we continue.

1:5b–6. To the One who loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us kings and priests to God and his Father. Glory and dominion to him to the ages of ages. Amen.

The glory belongs to him, it says, who freed us through love from the bondage of death, and washed the stains of sin through the outpouring of his life-giving blood and water. And he has made us “a royal priesthood” so that we may offer, instead of irrational sacrifices, “rational worship”22 as a living sacrifice to the Father.  

In today's homily, Fr. Anthony reflects on our tendency to fear. He encourages us to remember that we are safe, and to not be anxious about anything but our sin. Enjoy the show!

St. Luke 5:1-11. In today's homily, Fr Anthony stresses the importance of building in God's name.  Using marriage as an example, he speaks on how we must strive to have Christ as the foundation for all we do; and we must build marriages that produce joy, not just endure to the end. He reminds us that we should never think we could build anything worthwhile without Christ. Enjoy the show!

In this lecture, Fr Anthony reviews Nobel Prize Winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn's acceptance speech. He shares how this concept of beauty fits into the Orthodox world and briefly touches on how today's culture has undermined the traditional values rooted in beauty, truth and goodness. Enjoy the show!

Revelation, Session Two
Christ the Savior, Anderson SC
Fr. Anthony Perkins

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.

• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),

• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).

• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).

• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Correction from Last Week

• Revelation was removed from active use because it was being used to support the Marcionists, not the Gnostics [or Montanism as I said in the class!].

• The Orthodox Study Bible; “[I]n the second and third centuries Revelation was widely twisted and sensationally misinterpreted, and the erroneous teachings brought troublesome confusion to Christians – a trend that continues to this day.”

Review of Last Week

• The Church wants us to be aware of the Last Judgement but from WITHIN the sacraments and the “good defense” God gives us through them. 

Authorship and Dating of the Work

• The author was St. John the Theologian

• St. John’s disciple Papias of Hierapolis, St. Justin the Martyr (lived in Ephesus), St. Irenaeus (disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna who was a disciple of St. John), St. Hippolytus (disciple of St. Irenaeus), St. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen were early leaders of the Church who knew and witnessed to this.

• The work itself (see 1:2; also exile on Patmos).

• The date of the work is AD 95/96

• St. Irenaeus; Against Heresies (5.30.3)

Purpose of the Work

• To show things that must shortly come to pass (1:1).

• Pastoral protection and encouragement to the early Church against state persecution and (internal) heresy.

• Apokalypsis means uncovering of something that has been hidden.

Style and Interpretation of the Work

• Apocalyptic Literature.  A “visceral” (Fr. Lawrence) and heavily symbolic genre.  It is meant to be prophetic in every sense of the word.

• “It is a human work.  But it is also an apostolic work, and as an apostle, John tells the truth, striving to convey to us the substance and power of what the Lord revealed to him for our sake.” (Fr. Lawrence)

• What are we to make of the diverse interpretations offered by saints?

• Not to be taken literally in the modern sense; “Thus, for example, a literalistic understanding of the images of this book has given occasion, and even now continues to give occasion, for the false teaching of “Chiliasm” – the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.” (Bishop Averky)

• Bishop Averky says four main categories of interpretation (and calls for a combination):

• Visions and symbols of the “last times” (end of the world, the anti-christ, second coming)

• Description of the historical pagan Roman persecutions against the Church in the first century.

• Look for realization of the prophecies in recent history.

• Allegorical and moral meaning.

• The Orthodox Study Bible: “Faithfulness in tribulation” is the main theme, with subthemes of

• Divine Judgment of human wickedness and

• The symbolic presentation of most major New Testament teachings concerning eschatology, the study of the last things.

1:1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.

• Andrew of Caesarea. “An apocalypse is the manifestation of hidden mysteries when the intellect is illuminated either through divine dreams or according to waking visions from divine enlightenment. To be given to Christ, it says, making this statement about him especially with respect to his human <nature>, since in the Gospel he <John> above all others dwelt on the sublime and things that befit God. And here, the magnitude of the divinity of Christ is shown through the attending angel, and through the name of the teaching servants, for “all things are his servants.” The must come to pass soon means that some of the predictions concerning them are to come to pass immediately thereafter and the things regarding the end are not to be delayed, because “one thousand years” to God is “like yesterday’s day, which is reckoned as having <already> elapsed.”

• St. Bede. The revelation of Jesus Christ.

•  The progress with which the Church that had been founded by the Apostles was to be extended, or the end with which it was to be perfected, had need to be revealed, in order to strengthen the preachers of the faith against the opposition of the world. And John, in his own manner, refers the glory of the Son to the Father, and testifies that Jesus Christ has received from God.

• shortly. That is, which are to happen to the Church in the present time.

• signified. He wrapped up this revelation in mystical words, that it might not be manifested to all, and become lightly esteemed.

• angel. For an angel appeared to John in the form of Christ, as will be seen more clearly in that which follows.

• John. That through John He might lay open to all His servants the things which he, by the privilege of a peculiar chastity, obtained above all others to behold.

• Oecumenius: When it is said to him, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him,” it is as though he said, “This revelation is given from the Father to the Son, and then from the Son to us,” his servants. By calling the saints the “servants” of Christ, he safeguards what is proper to his deity. For, to whom would men belong, unless to him who is the Maker and Creator of humankind? And who is the Creator of human-kind and of all creation? No one other than the only begotten Word and Son of God! For, the present author says in the Gospel, “All things were made through him.” And why does he wish to add “what must soon take place,” although those events which will take place have not yet occurred, even though a considerable span of time has passed, more than five hundred years, since these words were spoken? Because to the eyes of the eternal and endless God all ages are regarded as nothing, for, as the prophet says, “A thousand years in your sight, O Lord, are as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”3 For this reason, therefore, he added “soon,” not to indicate a measure of time which must pass before the fulfillment of what must happen, but to indicate the power and eternality of God. For to him who is, any passage of time, even should it be great and considerable, is something small when compared with that which is unending

1:2. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.  

• OSB: Testimony of Jesus refers to a witness concerning Jesus; not the testimony of Christ Himself.

• Andrew of Caesarea.  “Christ,” he says, “declared these things to me through an angel, as a master to a household servant, as I had borne witness to my confession to him,” of which, on the basis of the visions <he is> to bear witness and, in view of the return <to God> of those who hear, to preach both the things which are and which escape human understanding and the things which will occur in the future, for, prophetically, he had seen them both. And <this is> clear from what he says: those things which are and those which must come to pass. These are descriptions both of the present time and of the future.

• St. Bede; testimony. That thou mayest not doubt of the person of John, he is the same who gave testimony to the eternal Word of God incarnate, according as he saw, saying, “Whose glory we saw, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.”

1:3.  Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

• Andrew of Caesarea.  He blesses those who read and hear through the actions, for the present time is near, through which it is possible to acquire the blessing, and to all the work is laid open. As the Lord says, “Work [13] while it is day.” And elsewhere, the time is near, the time of the distribution of prizes, on account of the brevity of the present life in comparison to the future.

• St. Bede. Blessed. Teachers and hearers are therefore blessed, because they who keep the Word of God find that a short time of labour is followed by everlasting joys.

• Averky; “The book of the Apocalypse has, consequently, not only a prophetic but also a moral significance.  The meaning of these words is as follows: blessed is he who, reading this book, will prepare himself by his life and deeds of piety for eternity, for the translation to eternity is near for each of us.

• Fr. Lawrence.  Seven beatitudes (blessings) are pronounced upon (Fr. Lawrence):

• 1:3 “the one who reads and the ones who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things which are written in it”

• 14:13 the martyrs “who die in the Lord from now on”

• 16:15 “the one who keeps alert,” faithfully awaiting the Lord’s Coming

• 19:9 “those who are called to the wedding supper of the Lamb”

• 20:6 the martyrs who have “a part in the first resurrection”

• 22:7 all who “keep the words of the prophecy of this book”

• 22:14 all those in the martyric Church, “those who wash their robes, so that they may have their right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.”

(Galatians 2:16-20) Fr. Anthony kept close to his notes this week so as to avoid last week’s “hostage situation.” He addressed the temptation to recreate the Old Testament Law using The Way of Orthodoxy. This would be similar to the Judaizing and Babelizing temptation he warned against last week. Enjoy the show!

Sources: 

Andrew of Ceasarea: Commentary on the Apocalypse

Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament (Volume III)

Fr. Lawrence R. Farley. The Apocalypse of St. John; A Revelation of Love and Power

St. Bede.  Explanation of the Apocalypse; Letter of Bede to Eusebius

Fr. Thomas Hopko: AFR podcast - A Walk Through the Apocalypse (three parts)

Dr. Jeanie Constantinau: Search the Scriptures Live – Series

Fr. Stephen De Young; The Whole Counsel of God; Series on Revolution

Oca.org (Rainbow Series)

There was a certain hesitation on the part of the early Church to include the book of Revelation in the canonical scriptures of the New Testament. The reason for this was obviously the great difficulty of interpreting the apocalyptic symbols of the book. Nevertheless, since the document carried the name of the apostle John, and since it was inspired by the Holy Spirit for the instruction and edification of the Church, it came to be the last book listed in the Bible, although it is never read liturgically in the Orthodox Church. [Comment on historical reasons why!]

It is indeed difficult to interpret the book of Revelation, especially if one is unfamiliar with the images and symbols of the apocalyptic writings of the Bible, that is the Old Testament, and of the Judeo-Christian Tradition. There exists, however, a traditional approach to the interpretation of the book within the Church which offers insight into its meaning for the faithful.

The wrong method of interpreting the book of Revelation is to give some sort of exclusive meaning to its many visions, equating them with specific, concrete historical events and persons, and to fail to understand the symbolical significance of the many images which are used by the author following biblical and traditional sources.

First of all, the letters to the seven churches have both a historical and a universal meaning. The messages are clear and remain relevant to situations which have always existed in the Church and which exist today. For example, many older churches in all ages of history can he identified with the Church of Ephesus. Those under persecution can be compared with the Church in Smyrna. And not a few—perhaps some in America right now—can be judged with the Church in Laodicea. The seven letters remain forever as “prototypical” of churches that will exist until Christ’s kingdom comes.

The visions and prophecies of the main body of the book of Revelation present great difficulties, but mostly to those interpreters who would attempt to apply them to one or another historical event or person. If the general vision and prophecy of the book is seen as revealing the correlation between events “in heaven” and events “on earth,” between God and man, between the powers of goodness and the powers of evil, then, though many difficulties obviously remain, some will also immediately disappear.

In the book of Revelation, one comes to understand that the Kingdom of God is always over all and before all. One sees as well that the battle between the righteous and the evil is perpetually being waged. There are always the faithful who belong to the Lamb, being crowned and robed by Him for their victories. There are always the “beasts” and the “dragons” which need to be defeated. The “great harlot” and the “great Babylon” are forever to be destroyed. The “heavenly Jerusalem” is perpetually coming, and one day it will come and the final victory will be complete.

One notices as well that there is a universality and finality about the symbols and images of the book of Revelation, a meaning to be applied to them which has already been revealed in the scriptures of the Old Testament. Thus, for example, the image of Babylon stands for every society which fights against God, every body of persons united in wickedness and fleshliness. The image of harlotry universally applies as well to all who are corrupted by their passions and lusts, unfaithful to God Who has made them and loves them. The symbolic numerology also remains constant, with the number 666 (13.18), for example, symbolizing total depravity, unlike 7 which is the symbol of fulness; and the number 144,000 (14.3) being the symbol of total completion and the full number of the saved, the result of the multiplication of 12 times 12—the number of the tribes of Israel and the apostles of Christ. Thus, through the images of the book of Revelation, a depth of penetration into universal spiritual realities is disclosed which is greater than any particular earthly reality. The insight into the meaning of the book depends on the inspiration of God and the purity of heart of those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and minds willing and able to understand.

In the Orthodox Church, the book of Revelation has great liturgical significance. The worship of the Church has traditionally, quite consciously, been patterned after the divine and eternal realities revealed in this book. The prayer of the Church and its mystical celebration are one with the prayer and celebration of the kingdom of heaven. Thus, in Church, with the angels and saints, through Christ the Word and the Lamb, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the faithful believers of the assembly of the saved offer perpetual adoration to God the Father Almighty.

The book of Revelation, although never read in the Orthodox Church, bears witness to the divine reality which is the Church’s own very life. [Comment on other reasons!]

The Spirit and the Bride [the Church] say, “Come.” And let him who hears say, “Come.” And let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life without price.

“Surely I am coming soon” [says Jesus, the Lord].

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (22.17, 20)

From: https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/doctrine-scripture/new-testament/book-of-revelation  on 9/11/2024

The Last Judgment – The Experience of Prayer and Worship

St. Tikhon’s Seminary, Orthodox Daily Prayers (St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1982).

Morning Prayers:

The Judge will come suddenly and the acts of every man will be revealed; but in the middle of the night we cry with fear: Holy! Holy! Holy! art Thou, O God; through the Theotokos, have mercy on us.

6th Prayer, by St. Basil the Great

… Grant us to pass through the entire night of this present life with a watchful heart and a sober mind, awaiting the coming of the bright and manifest day of Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, when the Judge of all will come with glory to reward each according to his deeds. May we not be found fallen and lazy, but alert and roused to action, prepared to enter into His joy and the divine chamber of His glory, where the voice of those who feast is unceasing and indescribable is the delight of those who behold the inexpressible beauty of Thy countenance. For Thou art the true Light which enlightens and sanctifies all, and all creation hymns Thee unto ages of ages. Amen.

A Midnight Song to the Most Holy Theotokos

I am tossed in the tempest of life: direct me to the path of repentance. Deliver me from the eternal flame, from the evil worm, and from hell. Make me not a joy for demons, though I am guilty of many sins.

Compline

O Christ, give rest to the souls of Thy servants with the saints, where there is no sickness, sorrow or sighing, but everlasting life.

Resurrection Tropar, Tone 3
Let the heavens rejoice! Let the earth be glad! For the Lord has shown strength with His arm! He has trampled down death by death! He has become the firstborn of the dead! He has delivered us from the depths of hell, and has granted the world great mercy!

Prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos

Guard my wretched soul at the time of my death, driving away the dark forms of the evil demons. Deliver me from eternal torments at the Day of Judgment and reveal me an heir of the inexpressible glory of your Son and our God.

Evening Prayers

4th Prayer, of St. Macarius the Great

… Covering me Thyself, protect me from every assault of the enemy through Thy divine Power, inexpressible Love for mankind and Strength. Cleanse, O God, cleanse the multitude of my sins. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me from the snares of the Evil One, and save my passionate soul. When Thou comest in glory, illumine me with the light of Thy countenance. May I fall uncondemned into a sleep free of apparitions. Keep the thoughts of Thy servant untroubled, and keep far from me every satanic activity. Enlighten the reason-endowed eyes of my heart, that I fall not into the sleep of death. Send to me an angel of peace, the guide and guardian of my soul and body, that he may deliver me from my enemies. Then, when I arise from my bed, I shall offer Thee prayers of thanksgiving…

For the Day

Lord, exclude me not from Thy heavenly blessings.

Lord, deliver me from eternal torments…

Lord Jesus Christ, inscribe me, Thy servant, in the book of life, and grant me a good end.…

Lord of Heaven and earth, remember me, Thy sinful, shameful and impure servant, in Thy Kingdom. …

8th Prayer, to our Lord Jesus Christ

… Yea, O Lord my Creator, Who desirest not the death of the sinner, but that he should return to Thee and live: grant repentance to me, wretched and unworthy. Snatch me from the jaws of the consuming serpent, its mouth opened to devour me and take me down to hell alive. …

Canon of Repentance

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

When the thrones will be set up for the dread Judgment, the deeds of all men will be recalled. Alas for the sinners who will be sent to torment! Knowing this, my soul, repent of your evil deeds!

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

The righteous shall rejoice, but sinners shall lament. No one will be able to help us at that moment—our deeds will condemn us! Before the end comes, repent of your evil deeds!

…

Our present path is wide and conducive to pleasures, but bitter will the Last Day be when the soul will part from the body. O man, beware of those pleasures, for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

…

Contemplate, my soul, the bitter hour of death and the dread judgment of your Creator and God. Threatening angels will seize you, my soul, and lead you to eternal flames. Repent before your death, therefore, crying: O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!

…

Put not your hope in corruptible wealth, my soul, nor in things unjustly gathered. You do not know to whom you will leave it all. Instead, cry out: O Christ God, have mercy on me, the unworthy!

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

Remember, my soul, both the eternal life and the Heavenly Kingdom prepared for the saints and the outer darkness and divine wrath prepared for the wicked. Then cry out: O Christ God, have mercy on me, the unworthy!

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

How can I not weep when I think of death? I have seen my brother lying in the tomb without glory and without form. What can I expect? What can I hope? Only grant me, Lord, repentance before the end. (twice)

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

I believe that Thou wilt come to judge the living and the dead, and that everyone will stand in his rank: the old and the young; masters and princes; virgins and priests. Where will I find myself? Therefore, I cry out: grant me, Lord, repentance before the end.

…

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

I now turn to you, angels, archangels, and all the heavenly host who stand by the throne of God: pray to your Creator that He deliver my soul from eternal torments.

Have mercy on me. O God, have mercy on me!

I now weep before you, holy patriarchs, kings and prophets, apostles and hierarchs, and all the elect of Christ: help me at the Judgment, that my soul be saved from the strength of the Enemy.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!

I now lift up my hands to you, holy martyrs, desert-dwellers, virgins, righteous ones, and all saints who pray to the Lord for the whole world: may He have mercy on me at the hour of my death.

Most Holy Theotokos, save us!

Help me, Mother of God, for I have great hope in you! Pray to your Son, that when He sits to judge the living and the dead, He may place me at His right hand, even though I am unworthy.

Canon to the Guardian Angel

I think of the Dread Day and weep over my evil deeds. How shall I answer the immortal King? Or how shall a prodigal like me dare to look up at the judge? O compassionate Father, only-begotten Son, and Holy Spirit: have mercy on me!

PRAYERS IN PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION

1st Prayer, of Saint Basil the Great

O Lord Jesus Christ my God, may the communion of Thy most pure and life-creating mysteries not bring me into judgment, nor may I become weak in soul and body by partaking in an unworthy manner, but grant me to receive communion of Thy holy things without condemnation even to my very last breath, and by them to receive communion of the Holy Spirit, provision for the journey of eternal life, and an acceptable answer at Thy dread judgment seat; that I, together with all Thy chosen ones, may also be a partaker of the incorruptible blessings which Thou hast prepared for those who love thee, O Lord, in whom Thou art glorified forever. Amen.

…

3rd Prayer, of St. Simeon Metaphrastes

Through Thy glorious Ascension Thou didst deify the flesh which Thou didst assume, and placed it on the throne at the Father’s right hand. Grant me to receive a place at the right hand with the saved through communion of Thy holy mysteries…

Thou hast promised to come again to judge the world in righteousness. Grant that I may go to meet Thee in the clouds, my Judge and Creator, with all Thy saints; that I may glorify and praise Thee without end, together with Thy Father Who is without beginning, and Thy most holy and good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

5th Prayer, of St. Basil the Great

for the correction and grounding of my life, for the increase of virtue and perfection, for the fulfillment of Thy commandments, for the communion of the Holy Spirit, for the journey of eternal life, for a good and acceptable answer at Thy dread judgment, but not for judgment or condemnation. Amen.

Troparia

With love hast Thou drawn me, O Christ, and with Thy divine love hast Thou changed me. Burn away my sins with a spiritual fire and satisfy me with joy in Thee, that I may joyfully magnify Thy two comings, O Good One.

How shall I, who am unworthy, enter into the radiance of Thy saints? If I dare to enter the bridal-chamber, my garment accuses me, for it is not a wedding garment, and the angels will bind me and cast me out. Cleanse, O Lord, the filth of my soul and save me, for Thou lovest mankind.

And this prayer:

O Master Who lovest mankind! O Lord Jesus Christ my God! May these holy things not be to my condemnation, though I am unworthy of them. May they be for the cleansing and sanctification of my soul and body and a pledge of the life and Kingdom that are to come…

PRAYERS OF THANKSGIVING AFTER COMMUNION

Glory to Thee, O God! Glory to Thee, O God! Glory to Thee, O God!

… let them be for the healing of soul and body, the repelling of every adversary, the illumining of the eyes of my heart, the peace of my spiritual powers, a faith unashamed, a love unfeigned, the fulfilling of wisdom, the observing of Thy commandments, the receiving of Thy Divine Grace, and the attaining of Thy Kingdom. Preserved by them in Thy holiness, may I always remember Thy Grace and live not for myself alone, but for Thee, our Master and Benefactor. May I pass from this life in the hope of eternal life, and so attain to the everlasting rest, where the voice of those who feast is unceasing, and the gladness of those who behold the goodness of Thy countenance is unending. For Thou art the true desire and the ineffable joy of those who love Thee, O Christ our God, and all creation sings of Thy praise forever. Amen.

Another Prayer

O Lord Jesus Christ our God: let Thy holy Body be my eternal life; Thy precious Blood, my remission of sins. Let this Eucharist be my joy, health, and gladness. Make me, a sinner, worthy to stand on the right hand of Thy glory at Thine awesome second Coming, through the prayers of Thy most pure Mother and of all the saints.

Sacraments Etc.

St. Tikhon’s Monastery, trans., The Great Book of Needs: Expanded and Supplemented, vol. I.

Naming on the Eighth Day

…, and that he (she) may be perfected by the dread Mysteries of Thy Christ, so that, having lived according to Thy commandments, and having preserved the seal unbroken, he (she) may receive the blessedness of the Elect in Thy Kingdom: By the grace and love for mankind of Thine Only-begotten Son, with Whom Thou art blessed, together with Thy Most-holy, Good and Lifegiving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. ^[1]

Making of a Catachemen

Inscribe him (her) in Thy Book of Life, and unite him (her) to the flock of Thine inheritance

Exorcism

for He shall come, and shall not tarry, to judge all the earth; and He shall punish thee and thy cooperating host in the fiery Gehenna, consigning thee to outer darkness, where the worm ceases not and the fire is not quenched.

Baptism

… that, being planted in the likeness of Thy death through Baptism, he (she) may become a partaker of resurrection; and, preserving the gift of Thy Holy Spirit, and increasing the deposit of grace, he (she) may receive the prize of his (her) high calling, and be numbered with the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.

Chrismation

confirm him (her) in the Orthodox Faith; deliver him (her) from the evil one and all his devices; and preserve his (her) soul in purity and righteousness, through the saving fear of Thee, that, in every deed and word, being acceptable unto Thee, he (she) may become a son (daughter) and heir of Thy heavenly Kingdom.

After Prayer

… Yes, for now he (she) that is illumined by the rays of grace through spiritual birth, has been given into your arms by me, a sinner: that he (she) that was in darkness, after rebirth, will stand before the Heavenly Father in another age, as pure as today, and, in soul, whiter than snow, from the bath of regeneration. Thus, undefiled and unblemished by the action of the serpent which comes from the flesh, he (she) shall stand before the sincere Judge, Who will render to each according to his deeds. And clearly today, through your lips the cursed satan was cast out and all his activities; and God the Creator of all adopted him (her), who by grace acquired spiritual birth, and was clothed as a member of the Church of Christ with the confession of the True Christian Faith. Thus, all the days of his (her) life let him (her) remain in the One Faith without parting from the Church, and in the grace of adoption by the immutable God. Let him (her) never turn aside to the works of the evil satan, and let him (her) ever stand opposed to him. And, with the help of God he (she) shall be revealed as a mighty destroyer of all his snares, as a soldier of Christ, strengthened by the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit in the war against him. And after such God-pleasing struggles, he (she) shall receive from the Originator and Judge of struggles labor in the Heavenly Kingdom—the great blessedness of life eternal.

Confession (this is not generally read, but is part of the teaching)

…. But do not conceal even one sin, not even because of shame, for I also am a man subject to passions, able to fall into similar sins, and I have experience of the weakness of man. And when despising the shame which you shall expose to the One God, through me, you will not be accused of these sins before the Angels of God and before all men at the dread Judgement. But if you hide anything, before me, from the One God, then you will be accused before the universal assembly, and you shall not be delivered from eternal punishment…

Another exhortation for Confession

… But abiding in continual repentance for sins, strive to increase good deeds, that, through repentance, you not only be delivered of eternal torment, but also that you may be counted worthy, by God, of unending life for your good work, from whom will always come assistance to you for all your good beginnings, for the performing of good deeds, and mercy and blessing all the days of your life, and that you may be counted worthy to receive in the future age the gift of eternal life.

Weddings/Crowning

O God, our God, Who didst come to Cana of Galilee, and didst bless the marriage there: Do Thou bless also these Thy servants, who, by Thy providence, are joined together in the communion of marriage. Bless their comings in and their goings out, replenish their life with good things, and accept their crowns in Thy Kingdom, preserving them spotless, undefiled, and without reproach, unto the ages of ages.

The Office of Holy Oil/Annointing

… For Thou didst not create man for destruction, but for the keeping of Thy commandments, and for the inheritance of life incorruptible, and unto Thee do we send up glory, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Choir: Amen.

Funeral

St. Tikhon’s Monastery, trans., The Great Book of Needs: Expanded and Supplemented, vol. III

BEFORE THE PARTING OF THE SOUL FROM THE BODY  (comfort and protection against terror)

The rending of the bonds, the sundering of the natural law that holds the whole fleshly composition together, causes me anguish and unbearable necessity.

Glory.…

Do thou translate me, O Sovereign Lady, in the sacred and precious arms of the holy Angels, that sheltered by their wings, I not see the impious, foul and dark form of the demons.

Now and ever.…

O All-pure Chamber of God, count me worthy of the heavenly, supersensual Chamber, and kindle thou my smoldering and dimming light with the holy oil of thy mercy.

…

Do thou count me worthy to escape the hordes of bodiless barbarians, and rise through the aerial depths and enter into Heaven, that I may glorify thee unto the ages, O holy Theotokos.

O thou that gavest birth to the Lord Almighty, when I come to die, do thou banish far from me the commander of the bitter toll-gatherers and ruler of the earth, that I may glorify thee unto the ages, O holy Theotokos.

Let us bless the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord.

When the last great trumpet sounds at the fearful and dread resurrection of judgment unto all that shall arise, do thou remember me then, O holy Theotokos.

THE OFFICE AT THE DEPARTURE OF THE SOUL FROM THE BODY

[rest, forgiveness, bosom of Abraham, deliverance from death, eternal life, paradise vs hell]

We beseech Thee, O Unoriginate Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Cast not into the bottom of [Hell] the soul that was infected by the plague of the soul-corrupting world, and has passed over unto Thee, the Creator, O God, my Savior.

With the Saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant, where sickness is no more, neither sorrow nor sighing, but life everlasting.

In the nourishment of Paradise where the souls of the Righteous who served Thee abide [repeated often], do Thou, O Christ, join with them the soul of Thy servant who is singing: O God of our fathers, blessed art Thou.

… Deliver him (her) from eternal torment and the fire of Gehenna, and grant him (her) the participation and delight of Thine eternal good things prepared for them that love Thee...

Matins– rest, forgiveness, eternal life with the blessed

O God of spirits and of all flesh, Who hast trampled down death and overthrown the devil, and given life unto Thy world: Do Thou Thyself, O Lord, give rest unto the soul of Thy departed servant, N., in a place of brightness, in a place of green pasture, in a place of repose, whence sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away. As Thou art a good God and the Lover of Mankind, do Thou pardon every transgression that he (she) has committed, whether by word or deed or thought, for there is no man that lives yet does not sin. For Thou only art without sin; Thy righteousness is righteousness forever, and Thy word is truth.

I am an image of Thine ineffable glory, though I bear the wounds of sin. Take pity on Thy creature, O Master, and cleanse me by Thy loving-kindness. And grant me the desired fatherland, making me again a citizen of Paradise.

Refrain:           Blessed art Thou, O Lord; teach me Thy statutes.

O Thou Who of old didst fashion me out of nothingness and didst honor me with Thine Image divine, but when I transgressed Thy commandment, didst return me again unto the earth whence I was taken: Raise me up according to Thy Likeness, that I may be restored to my former beauty.

Refrain:           Blessed art Thou, O Lord; teach me Thy statutes.

Give rest, O God, to Thy servant and establish him (her) in Paradise, where the choirs of the Saints and the Righteous shine like the stars, O Lord. Give rest to Thy servant who has fallen asleep, overlooking all his (her) transgressions.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

(To the Holy Trinity) The threefold radiance of the one Godhead let us piously hymn, crying out: Holy art Thou, O Father Who hast no beginning, Co-unoriginate Son and Divine Spirit. Illumine us who serve Thee in faith, and snatch us from the fire eternal.

Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

(Theotokion) Rejoice, O pure One, who gavest birth to God in the flesh for the salvation of all, and through whom mankind has found salvation. Through thee may we find Paradise, O Theotokos pure and blessed.

In the dread day when Thou shalt come in Thine ineffable glory upon the clouds to judge the whole world, be Thou well-pleased, O Redeemer, that Thy faithful servant whom Thou hast received from the earth may meet thee with brightness.

May Christ give thee rest in the land of the living and open unto thee the gates of Paradise, and declare thee a citizen of the Kingdom. And may He grant thee forgiveness for those things wherein thou hast sinned in life, O thou who lovest Christ. …

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in Heaven.

Let us give ear unto what the Almighty saith: Woe unto them that seek to behold the terrible day of the Lord! For it is darkness; for all things shall be tried with fire.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians (Pericope 270—1 Thess. 4:13–17):

Brethren, I would not have you to be ignorant concerning those who are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so will God bring with Him those also who die in Jesus. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord: that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have died. For the Lord Himself, with a shout of command, with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet of God, shall come down from Heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The Gospel according to John (Pericope 16—John 5:24–30):

The Lord said to the Jews that came unto Him: “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that hears My Word and believes in Him that sent Me, has eternal life and shall not come into condemnation, but passes from death unto life. Verily, verily I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth—they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of Mine own Self do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, for I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father Who has sent Me.”

The Last Kiss.
When the soul is about to be carried away from the body with violence by dread Angels, it forgets all kinsmen and acquaintances and is troubled concerning standing before the tribunal that is to come, that shall pass judgment upon vain things and much-toiling flesh. Then, entreating the Judge, let us all pray that the Lord will forgive him (her) the things that he (she) has done.

Save them that put their trust in thee, O Mother of the Sun that setteth not, O Begetter of God. With thy prayers entreat the Most-good God, we pray, that He will give rest unto him (her) that now has been taken away, where the souls of the Righteous repose. Show him (her) to be an heir of divine good things, in the courts of the Righteous, unto memory eternal, O all-undefiled One.

Glory … (TONE 6):

Beholding me voiceless and deprived of breath, weep for me, O brethren and friends, kinsmen and acquaintances. For yesterday I conversed with you, and suddenly the dread hour of death came upon me. But come, all you that love me, and kiss me with the last kiss. For no more will I walk with you or converse with you. For I depart unto the Judge with Whom there is no respect of persons. For slave and master stand together before Him, king and warrior, rich and poor, in equal worthiness; for each, according to his deeds, is glorified or put to shame. But I beg and entreat you all, that you pray without ceasing unto Christ God for me, that I not be brought down unto the place of torment according to my sins, but that He will appoint me to the place where is the light of life.

9^th Hour (Final Prayer of St. Basil the Great)

Rescue us from the hand of the adversary, and forgive us our sins, and mortify our carnal mind; that, putting aside the old man, we may be clad with the new, and live for Thee, our Master and Benefactor; and that, so following after Thy commandments, we may attain unto rest eternal, where is the abode of all who rejoice.

Great Vespers

None – note that it does NOT include Octoechos and Menaion!

Orthros/Matins

Does NOT include Octoechos and Menaion.

Prayer of Light.  . Illumine in our hearts the true Sun of Your righteousness, enlighten our minds and guard all our senses, that, as in the day, walking nobly in the way of Your commandments, we may attain to life eternal, for with You is the fountain of life, and that we may be vouchsafed to come to the enjoyment of Your unapproachable light.

Evlogetaria.  Blessed art Thou, O Lord; teach me Thy statutes.

The company of the Angels was amazed, when they beheld Thee numbered among the dead, yet Thyself, O Savior, destroying the power of death, and with Thee raising up Adam and releasing all men from hades.

Tropar after Psalm 50.  Jesus, having risen from the grave as He foretold, hath given unto us life eternal and Great Mercy.

Divine Liturgy

Does NOT include Octoechos and Menaion

Creed.  …I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

Anaphora. 
… Thou it was who didst bring us from non- existence into being and, when we had fallen away, didst raise us up again and didst not cease to do all things until thou hadst brought us up to heaven and hadst endowed us with thy kingdom which is to come…

… Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the cross, the grave, the third-day resurrection, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious coming:

Thine own of thine own…

… That to those who shall partake thereof they may be unto vigilance of soul, unto forgiveness of sins, unto the communion of thy Holy Spirit, unto the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven and unto boldness toward thee, not unto judgment nor unto condemnation…

Before Lord’s Prayer… Vouchsafe us to partake of thy heavenly and dread mysteries of this sacred and spiritual table, with a pure conscience, unto forgiveness of sins, unto pardon of transgressions, unto communion of the Holy Spirit, unto inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, unto boldness toward thee, and not unto judgment nor unto condemnation.

Lord’s Prayer.  ..thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven…

Communion Prayer.  …unto forgiveness of sins and unto life everlasting….

In this episode, we are taken through a teaching liturgy in its full length. Enjoy the show!

Before the service.
After attending the Divine Liturgy at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, emissaries of St. Volodymyr, the King of Kyivan-Rus’ reported: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. One thing we understood, was that God was in our midst!”  This is the experience that is available to all of us when we come to Divine Liturgy; but as with all things, this experience will be greater the more we prepare for it and the more we understand and open ourselves up to it.  The time of preparation is over – now is the time to grow in our understanding of it and to open ourselves up to it.

For the next hour or two you can relax, open yourself up, and be vulnerable; you can’t really do that at school or work; you may not even be able to do it with your friends.  You certainly can’t do it on social media.  But if you do it here, you open yourself up NOT to the risk of hurt or manipulation but to the love and transformational mercy of God.  The words, hymns, and actions of the Divine Liturgy are the way that God has chosen to work with us to accomplish His will that “all be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.”  Through these words, hymns, and actions, He will strengthen our hearts, heal our pain, and help us realize just how good it is to be alive.

Today’s Liturgy is a Teaching Liturgy; I will be taking time at various points in the service in order to explain what is going on. Right now, I encourage you to strap in and prepare yourself for the powerful way God has chosen to meet and help us, His children: the Divine Liturgy. 

After the First Antiphon
Right now, this may still look like a former medical center in downtown Anderson.  But it is not; it is now a place of power.  The barrier between earth and heaven has dissolved.  This is what is known in mythologies and fairy tales as a “thin place.”  But this is no mere story.  Our reality is being merged with the reality of the constant and eternal worship that surrounds God’s throne.  The beauty of the icons and altar, the music, the chanting, the vestments, the incense, the cloud of confessors, and the angels who came here with us; all these are part of the majesty of heavenly worship into which we are being drawn; this experience merging with that of the tens of thousands of angels, the thousands of archangels and the cherubim and seraphim who do this at the throne of God 24/7.  We are like the Prophet Isaiah, the Prophet Daniel, the Apostle Paul, or St. John the Theologian, allowed to live through things that the eye cannot see nor the mind comprehend.  If we open our hearts to this reality, we will be transformed by this mystical journey.

After the Second Antiphon.  
Why do we repeat things?  Because they are important.  Because they make us part of something greater.  They pattern our souls according to the logic of love.  When we pray, we are part of something magical: God working through us and with us to transform this world.  Our every moment throughout the preceding days has been transformed by prayer; this is the continuance and crowning of that prayer.

Before the Entrance
The Divine Liturgy did not always look exactly like it does now.  For one, there used to be a lot more movement.  Instead of singing the first antiphons in church, we would have sung them on the way to church.  The service would have begun as the Gospel was brought from the outside into the sanctuary.  Now the ritual of bringing the Gospel out of the altar to the people reminds us of something very important: that Christ God has come from heaven to be in our midst!  This is what we are celebrating and confirming when we kiss the Gospel and exchange the words; “Christ is in our midst – He is and shall be.”  God did not just take on flesh two thousand years ago, He lives in the Church and its voice is His voice.

After the “Holy God”, Before the Epistle
In conversations, especially in conversations with people wiser and more knowledgeable than us, we should spend more time listening than speaking.  Our liturgical dialogue with God is the same.  Up to this point, we have been doing most of the talking, sharing our litanies of concerns with Him and asking for His mercy.  Now it is time for us to stop talking and listen to His Word.  The Epistles and Gospel readings are like food for our hungry souls.  Before each reading, the deacon says; “Let us be attentive!”  This is not the time for us to let our minds wander or count the number of tiles in the ceiling but rather a time to ask what God is trying to say to us and think of how we can improve our lives by putting His words into practice.

After the Gospel Reading
For today’s homily, I want to address a common question that many of us have but are afraid to ask out loud: “Why do we do this every week?”  We sometimes forget that the central action of the Divine Liturgy is a ritualized “meal”, when we all eat the “Mystical Supper” together.  Meals need to be repeated regularly.  This isn’t just because our bodies need nourishment.  If this were the case we could just shove something into our mouths when our bodies started getting hungry.  That’s important, but meals are more than that.  Every evening when families sit down together to eat, they are affirming some very important things.  They aren’t just a collection of hungry people, satisfying their bodily needs – they are a family that gathers to share stories and remember who they are.  In fact, it is when they eat together that the family is most itself.  No matter how busy their schedules are, families have to set aside this time together to maintain their connection and shared identity.  I am convinced by observation and research that families that build their schedules around an evening meal are more resilient and that the children in such families are given a psychological boost that goes far beyond the nutrients they have been given. 

It can be a real drag to eat dinner together: we all have to set down our phones and pause our video games, leave the discord servers, and stop bingeing TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix!  But the benefits are clear and this sacrifice is worth making.  Even if it is the same thing pretty much every evening.

It’s the same for the Divine Liturgy.  There are always other things that seem more fun to do on Sunday mornings:  video games, doom-scrolling, movies, sports, and how about just sleeping in and going to Waffle House for breakfast?  But there is no better way to build resilience and a healthy identity – I mean to know who we are at the deepest level, even below ideology and whatever other attribute the world is trying to get us to obsess over at the moment – than to set all that stuff aside for a couple of hours and enjoy the meal that the Lord has set aside for us.

Just like it’s okay for us to rather be doing something else at dinner time, it’s okay that part of us would rather be doing something else on Sunday morning.  Part of growing up is learning to do what is good and right even when we’d rather be doing something fun and easy.  That’s commitment.  And commitment is both a critical component and a consequence of love.

Before the Great Entrance and the Cherubic Hymn
We are about to sing about how this is the time when we need to “Set aside our earthly cares” so that we can open ourselves up to something greater.  The King of All Creation, the Ruler of the Heavenly Hosts, the One Who Is is with us now.  We all know how crazy it is to see two people out on a date spending the whole time on their phones.  But that is what we would be like if we used this time to worry about all the crazy things going on in our lives.  At least for now, we need to let them go.  Our problems will still be there when this is over … and if we do this thing well, we’ll be able to meet them with newfound strength.  So let us lay aside all earthly cares as we ritualize the triumphant God in our midst.

Before the Creed: The Kiss of Peace
The Divine Liturgy would be a waste of time for us – an empty ritual – if we did not have love for one another and for God.  The priest reminds us of this right before we say the Creed when he says; “Let us love one another so that with one mind we may confess.” 

In the early Church, this would be the point in the service when everyone would greet one another with the “kiss of peace.”  We symbolically offer this kiss of peace to one another as the priest says “Christ is in our midst” and everyone responds “He is and shall be.”

After the Creed and before the Holy Anaphora
Through our participation in this worship, the grace of God has allowed us to enter into a very special psychological, spiritual, and communal state. There is only love within us.  There is only love among us.  There is no remembrance of past wrongs, no prejudice, no expectations; there is only the reality of the God who lives in us and draws us as one towards His peace and perfection.

This is not just some feeling that we cultivate – our salvation should never rely on something so unreliable as our feelings.  God is not with us like some kind of imaginary friend or even just as a spirit whose presence cannot be known with the senses.  He is actually with us.  We have heard His words and we have sung His praises.  Now we will do something that no mind can ever fully understand.  It is hard enough for us to accept that the uncontainable and all-powerful God became fully human to be with and save us; it is an even greater mystery to understand why and how He – the God-man – decided to continue His salvific ministry to us by giving us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink in the Eucharistic Communion.  This is how the God-man explained this to His followers back in the day;

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6: 53-55)

And St. John, a witness to these events, then describes that “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66)

Again, we cannot understand why or how the Lord has given us this method to accomplish our continuing transformation.  It alternately mystifies, frightens, and humbles us.  Without understanding, with the fear of God and with faith and love we join all of the saints from every place and age who have participated in this very same Communion – for there is only One Sacrifice.  It is a Sacrifice that exists at the center of all our time and of all our space, a singularity that draws us towards it and through it and then on into something greater. Further up and further in!

During the upcoming prayers, the priest will ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon all of us and on the gifts being offered.  God reliably answers this prayer, changing the bread and wine into Christ-God’s flesh and blood.  The miraculous transformation then continues as we follow His command – eating His flesh and drinking His blood.  For this is no ordinary meal but the medicine of immortality that transforms us into something better, something eternal, and something glorious.

So as to preserve the dignity of the Eucharistic Meal, I will not pause the service again until the end.  Let us now enter into these, the most powerful prayers we know.

Before the Dismissal
This has been a miraculous time.  God has come into our midst and then into our bodies through the Holy Eucharist.  This is not just so that we can become better people, taking it “for the remission of sins” but so that we be the instruments that God uses to heal, transform, and bring joy to this fallen world. 

Let me leave you with this final thought;

How would you react if you found out your Army instructor was a Medal of Honor winner, your coach had won the Olympic gold, your medical school lecturer was a Nobel Prize winner, or your business school teacher was a member of the Fortune 500 who did it all from scratch?  You’d pay more attention to their words.  You’d have more respect for them and everything they said.  You would not want to miss a single lesson.  And the beauty is that you would become better by your extra attentiveness.  Christ the Great Rabbi is here.  Among us. Teaching us. Preparing us for paradise.  We become better by attending to Him and all He teaches through His Church.

In today's epistle reading from 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, St. Paul calls for unity in the body of Christ. In his homily, Fr. Anthony tells us how, without Christ, division is our natural state; how, without Christ, our gifts become occasion for division. He explains that opinions should not divide those who profess and live in Christ, and reminds us that if we are becoming holy, we are becoming united. Enjoy the show!

In today's epistle reading from Romans 15:1-7, we are told to bear the burdens of those weaker than us for Christ's sake and God's glory. In his homily, Fr. Anthony expounds on the humility we must cultivate so we can carry the weak. He speaks of how we must set aside our ego to successfully bear with one another in patience - so that we may receive each other for God's glory. Enjoy the show!

Romans 12:6-14. In today's homily, Fr Anthony speaks on rules of engagement for living in community. He reflects on the importance of spiritual development in overcoming division, and discusses how continual repentance encourages fellowship. Enjoy the show!

For today's "Father Speak a Word", Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Gregory about the beauty and challenge of being Orthodox in a liberal (i.e. capitalist) democracy.  We use his substack essay "Magisterial Orthodox Social Teaching; Some preliminary thoughts."  This is the first essay in  a planned series triangulating off of the MP's "Social Doctrine" and the EP's "Social Ethos" to discuss Orthodox morality and ethics.  We look forward to your questions - enjoy the show!

Romans 10:1-10. Fr. Anthony continues his series on relationships, describing the grace that can abound when they are developed in Christ. He used St. John Chrysostom's homily as a guide (and perhaps should have followed it more closely). Enjoy the show!

St. Matthew 8:5-13.  Fr. Anthony waxes enthusiastic on the mystery and wonder of theology and love.  [He forgot to explain how it ties into the Gospel reading, but he was on a roll!]. Enjoy the show!

Sunday of the Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council.
Matthew 5:14-10.

Fr. Anthony continues his Summer sermon series on relationships, this time focusing on what healthy Christian relationships do do improve discernment.  Enjoy the show! 

In today's homily, Fr. Anthony gives a lesson on spiritual development (Conscience, Law, Grace) inspired by St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians (3:23-29; 4:1-5);
Brethren, before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.  Enjoy the show!

PS. The homily got the sisterly seal of approval!

In this homily offered on the Sunday of the Synaxis of the Holy Apostles (and All Saints!), Fr. Anthony talks about the need for all of us to cherish our loved ones (to include our bishops, the heirs of the Apostles!), noting that gossiping is antithetical to this.  Enjoy the show!

St. John 17:1-13.  Fr. Anthony continues his series of pithy homilies on relationships, this time describing how the sin of Arius (DON'T BE ARIUS!) destroys the possibility of healthy unity.  Enjoy the show!

Gospel: John 9:1-38.

Summer brings heat to Anderson SC... it also brings shorter homilies!  Fr. Anthony continues his summer homily series on relationships by looking at what the blind man can teach us about living with and loving one another.  Enjoy the show!  

In today's edition of "Father, Speak a Word," Fr. Gregory Jensen and Fr. Anthony Perkins talk about the temptation of betraying their own callings by idealizing a romantic vision of monasticism and either trying to impliment it in their parishes or "wagging their tales" after it.  They use Fr. Gregory's "Father, speak a word" substack article "Puppies Wagging Their Tales; Some thoughts about the lack of vocational fidelity" as a springboard. There's also some rank punditry towards the end that some listeners might find interesting.  Enjoy the show!

The Way of Ascetics; Tito Colliander
Chapter Twenty-Six: ON THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

... The narrow way has no end: its quality is eternity. There every moment is a moment of beginning-the present includes the future: the day of judgment; the present includes the past: creation; for Christ is timelessly present everywhere, both in hell and in heaven. With the coming of the One, plurality disappears, even in time and space. Everything happens simultaneously, now and here and everywhere, in the depths of your heart. There you meet what you sought: the depth and height and breadth of the Cross: the Saviour and salvation. ...

Recorded at Christ the Savior, Anderson SC.

Homily on the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt

Fr. Anthony compares the lives of the Theotokos and St. Mary of Egypt, noting that our path looks much more like that of the latter, especially given our culture's immersion in social media, consumerism, aggressive politics, and pornography.  Thank God that he has given us His Way of salvation despite all this!

In this edition of "Father, Speak a Word" Fr. Anthony Perkins and Fr. Gregory Jensen talk about the joy of evangelizing a world full of people seeking something real.  Enjoy the show!

Homily of the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder

Today Fr. Anthony riffed on this gem, found towards the beginning of The Ladder.  He describes the beautiful way of perfection in Christ planned for all those who do not live in monestaries.  

Step One: On Renunciation
21. Some people living carelessly in the world have asked me: ‘We have wives and are beset with social cares, and how can we lead the solitary life?’ 
I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; do not steal from anyone; do not lie to anyone; do not be arrogant towards anyone; do not hate anyone; be sure you go to church; be compassionate to the needy; do not offend anyone; do not wreck another man’s domestic happiness; 3 and be content with what your own wives can give you. If you behave in this way you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’

Way of Ascetics; Tito Colliander
Chapter Twenty-Five: ON THE JESUS PRAYER

...  Especially should the beginner beware of everything that has the slightest tendency to mysticism. The Jesus Prayer is an activity, a practical work and a means by which you enable yourself to receive and use the power called God's grace-constantly present, however hidden, within the baptized person-in order that it may bear fruit. Prayer fructifies this power in our soul; it has no other purpose. It is a hammer that crushes a shell: a hammer is hard and its stroke hurts. Abandon every thought of pleasantness, rapture, heavenly voices: there is only one way to the kingdom of God, and that is the way of the Cross. And to hang crucified on a tree is horrible torment. Expect nothing else.  ...

Recorded at Christ the Savior in Anderson SC.

Homily of the Sunday of the Cross

From Bishop Nicholas (DOMSE Newsletter):

The Church has placed the Cross in the middle of Great and Holy Lent, the third Sunday of the Fast, for a very specific reason! 

The Church has placed the Cross in the middle of Great and Holy Lent, the third Sunday of the Fast, for a very specific reason!  By the third Sunday of the Fast, most of us have been abstaining from eating prescribed sumptuous foods for three weeks, participating in many services each week at inconvenient times of the day after having worked long hours, expanding our prayer rules, and reading spiritual books. Having done ascetical deeds, some of us are weary, tired, and may feel unsettled.

Prior to Christ being crucified, the cross was a sign of disobedience, a sign of unlawful activity, a sign of damnation, and a sign of condemnation. Thieves and criminals died on the cross so that society was “cleansed.” Jesus was considered one of those unlawful people despite the fact He had healed the sick, raised the dead, and performed miracles that had not been done by anyone else prior to His incarnation. He did not fit their earthly expectations with His divine plan! Therefore, He was crucified.

But after His resurrection, the Disciples, who effectively became apostles at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-42), began to change the common perception of the Cross as they began preaching the resurrected Jesus Christ. Having received the Holy Spirit, Peter’s sermon (Acts 2:14-39) was emotionally moving and thought-provoking to the crowds. Thousands were baptized and started following Christ and His teachings through the words of the Apostles. The faithful’s view of the Cross began to change from a condemnation interpretation to a salvational reality, from a discouraging truth to an encouraging certainty, from a despair mentality to a hope mindset, and from a life destroying event to a life-giving actuality.

Such a change in demeanor toward the Cross urged the Church to utilize its power to inspire the faithful to take up the whole armor of God that they may be able to withstand in the evil day (Ephesians 6:13). That is why the Feast of the Cross has been celebrated on the third Sunday of Great and Holy Lent.

May God bless you and may the Holy Trinity protect you all!
+ Bishop Nicholas

Today we cover Chapter 24 of Way of Ascetics, "On an Interpretation of Zacchaeus."  It has some beautiful imagery.  This class was accompanied by Thai Tofu Fresh Rolls and Gypsy soup.  If you are ever in the Anderson area, come and visit!

Today Fr. Anthony wanted to share some ideas he's been playing with, resulting from his study of St. Gregory Palamas, theology (e.g. essence and energy), and relationships.  Enjoy the show!

Marriage as a Metaphor for Orthodoxy
Homily of St. Gregory Palamas

Today we celebrate the life and teachings of someone who really got it? St. Gregory Palamas; he experienced God's love for him in a real and tangible way, and he reflected that love back at God and on all those around him.

That's what we are to do, as well. To open ourselves up to the deifying warmth and light of God; and then to send our thanksgiving and praise back up to Him and to use the energy of His grace to serve those around us.

The Good News of the Gospel is that this is made possible and real through the life, death, and resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ.

Although this Gospel really is simple, it has been elaborated with so many words and celebrated, confirmed, and taught (if not gilded) with so many rituals and denied by so many lies that it is understandable if we sometimes end up misunderstanding, judging, and even venerating the cup rather than that which it holds.

Perhaps a metaphor will help.

I have met at least two sets of people who think they understand the joy and transformation that marriage can bring.

One set thinks they know it because, while not married, they have their own version of it that seems to enjoy some of its benefits - most notably sex - without any institutional commitment.  The availability of internet porn means that this can even be done without the bother of having a partner.  No one can deny the reality of such experiences, but such experiences have precious little to do with the enduring joy of marriage.  Such people claim that they do not need to be married to experience the joy of sex - the physical part of "one-fleshedness"; but even when it comes to that (ie to sex), they have settled for something less satisfying than the real deal. And while intimacy is a powerful and even necessary part of marriage, it is hardly the primary source of the transformative joy that marriage brings. They think they understand things it well enough to do them their own way, but they don't, and their improper understanding leads them to accept something less than they should. Something that is actually counterproductive and harmful.

A second set which is equally troubling think they understand marriage because they have submitted themselves to the institution of marriage. They have had their ceremony, they wear their rings, and they share a house. But when you start speaking to them about the joy that comes from sharing a life with another person, you learn that their experience is quite different. Shallow.  Weak.  Joyless.  They are living the rituals of marriage, but they are missing the very thing those institutions are meant to hold and protect. They think they get it, but they don't, and their improper understanding leads them to accept something less than they should.

This is a great and wonderful mystery but, as with St. Paul, I speak not of marriage, but of the Church. (Ephesians 5:32)

St. Gregory Palamas fought against both of these misunderstandings about God.

On the one hand, there were people (like the Bogamils - basically medieval Pentecostals) who thought they could really experience God without the institution and sacraments of the Church. This is like having sex without marriage or even without a partner; it may be real in some sense, but it is not healthy nor is it real in the way that a committed sacramental relationship with God in Church is real.  These heretics thought they got it, but they didn't, and their improper understanding led them to accept something less than they should have.  Something that is actually counterproductive and harmful.

On the other hand, there were those (like Barlaam and the Churchians) who thought that the rituals and sacraments of the Church were the only way to know God. They did not believe that it was possible to experience God.  They believed that the teaching that we are to enjoy union with God through Christ was just a metaphor for belief. And they believed that the noetic experience of God that monastic ascetics had when they opened themselves up to the Divine Nature of God was just a simple emotion and not a metaphysical or supernatural reality. They thought they got it, but they didn't, and their improper understanding led them to accept something less than they should have.  It was a joyless religion, lacking the possibility of deeper union with God.

God is real and we were meant to become partakers of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). We are Orthodox Christians. We have not settled for something less than we should. We are not just going through the motions when we pray and participate in the rituals of the Church; we are opening ourselves up to God. We allow His grace to heal and transform us, and then we offer and share this transforming grace with the world.

Today, Fr. Anthony covers Chapter Twenty-Three: ON TIMES OF DARKNESS with the faithful of Christ the Savior in Anderson SC.  We changed the format a bit, having the class as we enjoyed our after-Presanctified collation of PB&J's, PB&B's, collard greens, and tobouli. Enjoy the show!

Chapter Twenty-Two: ON THE USE OF MATERIAL THINGS

WE are made up of soul and body; the two cannot be separated in our conduct. Let the physical therefore come to your aid: Christ knew our weakness and for our sake used words and gestures, spittle and earth as media. For our sake He let His power flow from the fringe of His garment (Matthew 9:20; 14:36), from the handkerchiefs or aprons that were carried away from the apostle Paul's body (Acts I9:I2), yes, from the shadow of the apostle Peter (Acts 5:I5).

Therefore use all that is of earth as a staff of remembrance on your troublesome wandering along the narrow way. May the whiteness of the snow and the blue of the heavens, the jewelled eye of the fly and the scorching of the flame, and all of creation that meets your senses, remind you of your Creator; but make use especially of what the Church offers you to help you yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness (Romans 6:19). First of all, the Lord's Holy Communion. But likewise the other mysteries, or sacraments, and the holy Scriptures. And the Church offers you also the holy icons of the Mother of God, the angels and the saints; and prayer before them, and candles and incense, holy water and the gleam of gold, and singing. Receive all this with gratitude and use it all for your upbuilding and encouragement, improvement and benefit as you travel further.

Give free outlet to your love for the generous Lord of love, kiss the Cross and the icons, adorn them with flowers; if only evil be crushed with silence, the good will be allowed to breathe freely. If what is given in love is received with love, the scope of love is increased and enlarged, and this is the aim of your work. The greater the river, the wider the delta.

Use your own body, too, as an aid in the struggle. Trim it down and make it independent of earthly whims. Let it share your trouble: you wish to learn humility, so let the body also be humble and bow to the ground. Fall on your knees with your face to the earth as often as you can in privacy, but get up at once, for after a fall follows restoration in Christ.

Make the sign of the Cross assiduously: it is a wordless prayer. In a brief moment, independent of sluggish words, it gives expression to your will to share Christ's life and crucify your flesh, and willingly, without grumbling, to receive all that the Holy Trinity sends. Moreover, the sign of the Cross is a weapon against evil spirits: use this weapon often and with reflection.

A house is never built until the scaffolding is raised. Only the strong man has no need of outward support. But are you strong? Are you not the weakest among the weak? Are you not a child?

Matthew 6:14-21
Romans 13:11-14:4

In today’s Gospel, the Lord tells us to lay up treasures in heaven, how do we do that?

It’s not hard. And it’s, it’s actually a lot easier than fully investing in your 401k. Because the amount of love that is available to your heart, to share with others, that will then compound back into your own heart has no limit – its source is unending. The problem is that we are so often closing our hearts.

One of the things that I study as a political scientist is polarization. And there is no doubt – the data are clear – that our society is plagued by polarization. We have lost the ability to see the good in people who do not think, look, or move like we do. This is a problem.

It’s not just a problem when we’re on-line or when we’re watching the news where so much of this feeds to our hearts. The problem is that we take in this spirit of the world; we take in the spirit of division. This spirit is diabolical.

And we bring it into our own hearts where it sows confusion. We bring it into our families. We let it affect our friendships. And heaven forbid, it even affects us here [in the Church]. That is not the way it should be.

It should go the other way. We should seek peace within our hearts. We should let go of all of the words the world has given for us to judge one another. And to justify ourselves, and demonize “them”. We [should let those words] go. And then we should live in the love … and let the grace of God transform our hearts. So that then when we relate to our family, when we relate to our friends … there’s something magical that happens; there’s a transformation that occurs.

People who have suffered from the divisions of the world then find healing. The grace that you have in Christ, you bring to them and there’s a resonance of your heart with theirs. And in that time, you remember who you are. And we remember who we are collectively. All of our lives, our friendships, our families, our parishes, then become an alternative to the world. They look at us and they say; “how is it that those people despite their differences, love one another.” And they will desire the same.

Every moment gives us so many opportunities to offer this way of abundant grace. One of the words that we use to describe the mechanisms of this process. Is patience. You cannot love people that are different than you without patience. 

And when we offer that patience to someone else. That’s grace. That’s God operating through you and blessing your relationship with someone else; and then when you receive that patience as a gift. I’m blessed every day with the patience of the people in my life.

Another one, though, is the one that we’re focusing on today. And relationships cannot endure without it. That is forgiveness. [I like to joke with the parishes that I serve that I just show them pretty quickly, how fallible I am. So that I can show them the ability and give them an opportunity to forgive.] So often our relationships are based on our ability to project perfection. As a priest, I convince everyone of my holiness and my ability to do everything perfectly. But it breaks down eventually; your relationship with your wife, your husband, your kids, your parents, cannot be based on that kind of artificial mask, because the mask will be shown to have no relationship to the broken person you need to allow to breath and speak in order for grace to abound. We have to allow people – people that we can trust - to see that we are vulnerable, let them see our brokenness. So that they can offer forgiveness and pour their love in. So the grace can grow. And then a mistake becomes an opportunity for God to manifest himself in this world, and for the world to become just a little bit better. Because when we forgive someone, we are acting in Christ; we are bringing his love and his way into it.

When on the other hand, we do as the world has taught us – and we see the very worst in everyone. And we focus on that and bring that up. The devil rejoices, division grows in the world a bit further, it grows; and we end up supporting the one we reject – that we ceremonially spit on and then turn around and commit to the way of patience of the forbearance of forgiveness, of looking for that good in the other, and allowing that to define our relationship. And then as they do that back towards us, we are both reminded whom we are in and in whom we live and love and life no longer becomes this drudgery of one bit of pain followed by the next with no promise of anything. And instead it becomes an opportunity to get this… [and it’s all] thanks to our own brokenness, of moving in love from grace to higher grace. This is the way that the Lord has established for us. Let us rejoice.

Bible Study – Job
Class Six: Job 8:1-11:1; 11:1-42:22  
From the Orthodox Study Bible. 

JOB 8: [Bildad’s nonsense]

TO THE EARS OF BILDAD, JOB’S SECOND RESPONDENT, a man even less tolerant than Eliphaz, the foregoing lament seems to be an attack on the justice of God and the entire moral order. Unlike Eliphaz, however, Bildad is able to make no argument on the basis of his own personal experience. He is obliged to argue, rather, solely from the moral tradition, which he does not understand very well. Indeed, Bildad treats the moral structure of the world in a nearly impersonal way. To the mind of Bildad, the effects of sin follow automatically, as the inevitable effects of a sufficient cause. The presence of the effect, that is, implies the presence of the cause.

If Eliphaz’s argument had been too personal, bordering on the purely subjective, the argument of Bildad may be called too objective, bordering on the purely mechanical. In the mind of Bildad the principle of retributive justice functions nearly as a law of nature, or what the religions of India call the Law of Karma.

Both Eliphaz and Job show signs of knowing God personally, but we discern nothing of this in Bildad. Between Bildad and Job, therefore, there is even less of a meeting of minds than there was between Eliphaz and Job.

We should remember, on the other hand, that Job himself has never raised the abstract question of the divine justice; he has shown no interest, so far, in the problems of theodicy. Up to this point in the story, Job has been concerned only with his own problems, and his lament has been entirely personal, not theoretical.

Bildad, for his part, does not demonstrate even the limited compassion of Eliphaz. We note, for example, his comments about Job’s now perished children. In the light of Job’s own concern for the moral wellbeing of those children early in the book (1:5), there is an especially cruel irony in Bildad’s speculation on their moral state: “If your sons have sinned against [God], He has cast them away for their transgression” (8:4). What a dreadful thing to say to a man who loved his sons as Job did!

Like Eliphaz before him, Bildad urges Job to repent (8:5–7), for such, he says, is the teaching of traditional morality (8:8–10).

Clearly, Bildad is unfamiliar with the God worshipped by Job, the God portrayed in the opening chapters of this book. Bildad knows nothing of a personal God who puts man to the test through the trial of his faith. Bildad’s divinity is, on the contrary, a nearly mechanistic adjudicator who functions entirely as a moral arbiter of human behavior, not a loving, redemptive God who shapes man’s destiny through His personal interest and intervention.

Nonetheless, in his comments about Job’s final lot Bildad speaks with an unintended irony, because in fact Job’s latter end will surpass his beginning (8:7), and “God will not cast away the blameless” (8:20—tam; cf. 1:1, 8; 2:3). On our first reading of the story, we do not know this yet, of course, because we do not know, on our first reading, how the story will end (for example 42:12).

So many comments made by Job’s friends, including these by Bildad in this chapter, are full of ironic, nearly prophetic meaning, which will become clear only at the story’s end, so the reader does not perceive this meaning on his first trip through the book. As Edgar Allen Poe argued in his review of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, the truly great stories cannot be understood on a single reading, because the entire narrative must be known before the deeper significance of the individual episodes can become manifest. As Poe remarked, we do not understand any great story well until our second reading of it. This insight is preeminently helpful in the case of the Book of Job.

JOB 11 [Zophar’s nonsense]

WE NOW COME TO THE FIRST SPEECH OF ZOPHAR, Job’s most strident critic, a man who can appeal to neither personal religious experience (as did Eliphaz) nor inherited moral tradition (as did Bildad). Possessed of neither resource, Zophar’s contribution is what we may call “third-hand.” He bases his criticism on his own theory of wisdom. Although he treats his theory as self-evidently true, we recognize it as only a personal bias.

Moreover, Zophar seems to identify his own personal perception of wisdom as the wisdom of God Himself. Whereas Bildad had endeavored to defend the divine justice, Zophar tries to glorify “divine” wisdom in Job’s case. If it is difficult to see justice verified in Job’s sufferings, however, it is even harder to see wisdom verified by those sufferings.

Like the two earlier speakers, Zophar calls on Job to repent in order to regain the divine favor. (This is a rather common misunderstanding that claims, “If things aren’t going well for you, you should go figure out how you have offended God, because He is obviously displeased with you.”)

Zophar also resorts to sarcasm. Although this particular rhetorical form is perfectly legitimate in some circumstances (and the prophets, beginning with Elijah, use it often), sarcasm becomes merely an instrument of cruelty when directed at someone who is suffering incomprehensible pain. In the present case, Job suffers in an extreme way, pushed to the very limits of his endurance. It is such a one that Zophar has the vile temerity to call a “man full of talk” (11:2), a liar (11:3), a vain man (11:11–12), and wicked (11:14, 20).

The final two verses (19–20) contain an implied warning against the “death wish” to which Job has several times given voice. This very sentiment, Zophar says, stands as evidence of Job’s wickedness.

The author of the Book of Job surely understands this extended criticism by Zophar as an exercise in irony. Though the context of his speech proves the speaker himself insensitive and nearly irrational in his personal cruelty, there is an undeniable eloquence in his description of the divine wisdom (11:7–9) and his assertion of the moral quality of human existence (11:10–12). Moreover, those very rewards that Zophar promises to Job in the event of his repentance (11:13–18) do, in fact, fall into Job’s life at the end of the book.

In this story of Job, men are not divided into those who have wisdom and those who don’t. In the Book of Job no one is really wise. There is no real wise man, as there is in, say, the Book of Proverbs. While wisdom is ever present in the plot of the story, no character in the story has a clear grasp of it. True wisdom will not stand manifest until God, near the end of the narrative, speaks for Himself. Even then God will not disclose to Job the particulars of His dealings with him throughout the story.

From St. Gregory the Great

Ver. 3. Doth God pervert judgment? Or doth the Almighty pervert justice?

xxxvi. 59. These things blessed Job had neither in speaking denied, nor yet was ignorant of them in holding his tongue. But all bold persons, as we have said, speak with big words even well known truths, that in telling of them they may appear to be learned. They scorn to hold their peace in a spirit of modesty, lest they should be thought to be silent from ignorance. But it is to be known that they then extol the rectitude of God’s justice, when security from ill uplifts themselves in joy, while blows are dealt to other men; when they see themselves enjoying prosperity in their affairs, and others harassed with adversity. For whilst they do wickedly, and yet believe themselves righteous, the benefit of prosperity attending them, they imagine to be due to their own merits; and they infer that God does not visit unjustly, in proportion as upon themselves, as being righteous, no cloud of misfortune falls. But if the power of correction from above touches their life but in the least degree, being struck they directly break loose against the policy of the Divine inquest, which a little while before, unharmed, they made much of in expressing admiration of it, and they deny that judgment to be just, which is at odds with their own ways; they canvass the equity of God’s dealings, they fly out in words of contradiction, and being chastened because they have done wrong, they do worse. Hence it is well spoken by the Psalmist against the confession of the sinner, He will confess to Thee, when Thou doest well to him. Ps. 49:18. For the voice of confession is disregarded, when it is shaped by the joyfulness of prosperity. But that confession alone possesses merit of much weight, which the force of pain has no power to part from the truth of the rule of right, and which adversity, the test of the heart, sharpens out even to the sentence of the lips. Therefore it is no wonder that Bildad commends the justice of God, in that he experiences no hurt therefrom.

60. Now whereas we have said that the friends of blessed Job bear the likeness of heretics, it is well for us to point out briefly, how the words of Bildad accord with the wheedling ways of heretics. For whilst in their own idea they see the Holy Church corrected with temporal visitations, they swell the bolder in the bigness of their perverted preaching, and putting forward the righteousness of the Divine probation, they maintain that they prosper by virtue of their merits; but they avouch that she is rewarded with deserved chastisements, and thereupon without delay they seek by beguiling words a way to steal upon her, in the midst of her sorrows, and they strike a blow at the lives of some, by making the deaths of others a reproach, as if those were now visited with deserved death, who refused to hold worthy opinions concerning God.

We have heard what Job, his wife, and his three friends have to say.  They cycle through similar things several times.  Next week, we will briefly see what a new speaker, Elihuh has to say and spend most of the class – the last one before Great Lent – to look at God’s conversation with Job.  During Great Lent, we will work through chapters of Tito Coriander’s Way of Ascetics.

Scriptural review 

Mentioned historically as Jobab in Genesis (4), Joshua (1), and 1 Chronicles (5)

Ezekial 14:20. Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness. 

James 5:11. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

Liturgical review

Mentioned (through James) at Holy Unction; “You have heard of the patience of Job.”

From the Funeral for a Priest

Beatitudes: Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

  “Why do you lament me bitterly, O men? Why do you murmur in vain?” he that has been translated proclaims unto all. For death is rest for all. Therefore, let us listen to the voice of Job saying, “Death is rest unto man.” But give rest with Thy Saints, O God, unto him whom Thou hast received.

Ode Six:

  I remind you, O my brethren, my children, and my friends, that you forget me not when you pray to the Lord. I pray, I ask, and I make entreaty, that you remember these words, and weep for me, day and night. As said Job unto his friends, so I say unto you: Sit again and say: Alleluia.

  Forsaking all things, we depart, and naked and afflicted we become. For beauty withers like grass, but only we men delude ourselves. Thou wast born naked, O wretched one, and altogether naked shall you stand there. Dream not, O man, in this life, but only groan always with weeping: Alleluia.

  If thou, O man, hast been merciful to a man, he shall be merciful there unto thee. And if thou hast been compassionate to any orphan, he shall deliver you there from need. If in this life thou hast covered the naked, there he shall cover thee, and sing the psalm: Alleluia.

Triodion

Wednesday of Cheesfare Week; Matins Canticle Eight

Let us preserve these virtues: the fortitude of Job, the singlemindedness of Jacob, the faith of Abraham, the chastity of Joseph and the courage of David.

Saturday of Cheesefare Week; Matins; Canticle Two

… a second Job was Benjamin in his constancy …

Thursday of Clean Week (and Thursday of the Fifth Week); Great Canon Ode 4

Thou hast heard, O my soul, of Job justified on a dung-hill, but thou hast not imitated his fortitude. In all thine experiences and trials and temptations, thou hast not kept firmly to thy purpose but hast proved inconstant.

         Have mercy on me, Oh God, have mercy on me.

Once he sat upon a throne, but now he sits upon a dung-hill, naked and covered with sores. Once he was blessed with many children and admired by all, but suddenly he is childless and homeless. Yet he counted the dung-hill as a palace and his sores as pearls.

         Have mercy on me, Oh God, have mercy on me.

A man of great wealth and righteous, abounding in riches and cattle, clothed in royal dignity, in crown and purple robe, Job became suddenly a beggar, stripped of wealth, glory and kingship.

         Have mercy on me, Oh God, have mercy on me.

If he who was righteous and blameless above all men did not escape the snares and pits of the deceiver, what wilt thou do, wretched and sin-loving soul, when some sudden misfortune befalls thee?

         Have mercy on me, Oh God, have mercy on me.

I have defiled my body, I have stained my spirit, and I am all covered with wounds: but as physician, O Christ, heal both body and spirit for me through repentance. Wash, purify and cleanse me, O my Saviour, and make me whiter than snow.

Read at Vespers/PSL on Monday of Holy Week: Job 1:1–12.

Read at Vespers/PSL on Tuesday of Holy Week: Job 1:13–22.

Read at Vespers/PSL on Wednesday of Holy Week: Job 2:1–10.

Read at Vespers/Vesperal Liturgy on Thursday of Holy Week: Job 38:1–21; 42:1–5.

Read at Vespers on Friday of Holy Week: Job 42:12–17 (LXX ending)

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Job 38  FROM FR. PATRICK REARDON

NOW THE LORD HIMSELF WILL SPEAK, for the first time since chapter 2. After all, Job has been asking for God to speak (cf. 13:22; 23:5; 30:20; 31:35), and now he will get a great deal more than he anticipated. With a mere gesture, as it were, God proceeds to brush aside all the theories and pseudoproblems of the preceding chapters.

… [Whirlwind, Lord] …

At this point, all philosophical discussion comes to an end. There are questions, to be sure, but the questions now come from the Lord. Indeed, we observe in this chapter that God does not answer Job’s earlier questions. The Lord does not so much as even notice those questions; He renders them hopelessly irrelevant. He has His own questions to put to Job.

The purpose of these questions is not merely to bewilder Job. These questions have to do, rather, with God’s providence over all things. The Lord is suggesting to Job that His providence over Job’s own life is even more subtle and majestic than these easier questions which God proposes and which Job cannot begin to answer, questions about the construction of the world (verses 4–15), the courses of the heavenly bodies (verses 31–38), the marvels of earth and sea (verses 16–30), and animal life (38:39–39:30). Utterly surrounded by things that he cannot understand, will Job still demand to know mysteries even more mysterious?

If the world itself contains creatures that seem improbable and bewildering to the human mind, should not man anticipate that there are even more improbable and bewildering aspects to the subtler forms of the divine providence? God will not be reduced simply to an answer to Job’s shallow questions. Indeed, the divine voice from the whirlwind never once deigns even to notice Job’s questions. They are implicitly subsumed into a mercy vaster and far richer.

Implicit in these questions to Job is the quiet reminder of the Lord’s affectionate provision for all His creatures. If God so cares for the birds of the air and the plants of the fields, how much more for Job!

39 - 41. On the Behemoth and the Leviathan

Both behemoth and Leviathan are God’s household pets, as it were, creatures that He cares for with gentle concern, His very playmates (compare Psalms 104[103]:26). God is pleased with them. Job cannot take the measure of these animals, but the Lord does.

What, then, do these considerations say to Job? Well, Job has been treading on some very dangerous ground through some of this book, and it is about time that he manifest a bit more deference before things he does not understand. Behemoth and Leviathan show that the endeavor to transgress the limits of human understanding is not merely futile. There is about it a strong element of danger. A man can be devoured by it.

It is remarkable that God’s last narrative to Job resembles nothing so much as a fairy tale, or at least that darker part of a fairy tale that deals with dragons. Instead of pleading His case with Job, as Job has often requested, the Lord deals with him as with a child. Job must return to his childhood’s sense of awe and wonder, so the Lord tells him a children’s story about a couple of unimaginably dangerous dragons. These dragons, nonetheless, are only pets in the hands of God. Job is left simply with the story. It is the Lord’s final word in the argument.

42.  Finale

THE TRIAL OF JOB IS OVER. This last chapter of this book contains (1) a statement of repentance by Job (verses 1–6), (2) the Lord’s reprimand of Eliphaz and his companions (verses 7–8), and (3) a final narrative section, at the end of which Job begins the second half of his life (verses 9–17). The book begins and ends, then, in narrative form.

First, one observes in Job’s repentance that he arrives at a new state of humility, not from a consideration of his own sins, but by an experience of God’s overwhelming power and glory. (Compare Peter in Luke 5:1–8.) When God finally reveals Himself to Job, the revelation is different from anything Job either sought or expected, but clearly he is not disappointed.

All through this book, Job has been proclaiming his personal integrity, but now this consideration is not even in the picture; he has forgotten all about any alleged personal integrity. It is no longer pertinent to his relationship to God (verse 6). Job is justified by faith, not by any claims to personal integrity. All that is in the past, and Job leaves it behind.

Second, the Lord then turns and deals with the three comforters who have failed so miserably in their task. Presuming to speak for the Almighty, they have fallen woefully short of the glory of God.

Consequently, Job is appointed to be the intercessor on their behalf. Ironically, the offering that God prescribes to be made on behalf of the three comforters (verse 8) is identical to that which Job had offered for his children out of fear that they might have cursed God (1:5). The Book of Job both begins and ends, then, with Job and worship and intercession. In just two verses (7–8) the Lord four times speaks of “My servant Job,” exactly as He had spoken of Job to Satan at the beginning of the book. But Job, for his part, must bear no grudge against his friends, and he is blessed by the Lord in the very act of his praying for them (verse 10).

Ezekiel, remembering Job’s prayer more than his patience, listed him with Noah and Daniel, all three of whom he took to be men endowed with singular powers of intercession before the Most High (Ezekiel 14:14–20).

The divine reprimand of Job’s counselors also implies that their many accusations against Job were groundless. Indeed, Job had earlier warned them of God’s impending anger with them in this matter (13:7–11), and now that warning is proved accurate (verse 7). Also, ironically, whereas Job’s friends fail utterly in their efforts to comfort him throughout almost the entire book, they succeed at the end (verse 11).

Third, in the closing narrative we learn that Job lives 140 years, exactly twice the normal span of a man’s life (cf. Psalm 90[89]:10). Each of his first seven sons and three daughters is replaced at the end of the story, and all of his original livestock is exactly doubled (Job 1:3; 42:12). St. John Chrysostom catches the sense of this final section of Job:

  His sufferings were the occasion of great benefit. His substance was doubled, his reward increased, his righteousness enlarged, his crown made more lustrous, his reward more glorious. He lost his children, but he received, not those restored, but others in their place, and even those he still held in assurance unto the Resurrection (Homilies on 2 Timothy 7).

___

Saint Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, vol. 1 (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1844), 83.

Robert Charles Hill.  St. John Chrysostom Commentaries on the Sages, Volume One – Commentary on Job.  Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

Patrick Henry Reardon, The Trial of Job: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Job (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2005), 22.

Manlio Simonetti and Marco Conti, eds., Job, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 4–5.

Orthodox Church, The Lenten Triodion, trans. Kallistos Ware with Mother Mary, The Service Books of the Orthodox Church (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 222.

Mother Mary, Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, trans., The Lenten Triodion: Supplementary Texts, The Service Books of the Orthodox Church (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2007), 60.

Orthodox Church, The Lenten Triodion, trans. Kallistos Ware with Mother Mary, The Service Books of the Orthodox Church (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 559.

St. Tikhon’s Monastery, trans., The Great Book of Needs: Expanded and Supplemented, vol. III (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 283.

Homily – Prejudice, Objectivity, and Grit
St. Matthew 15.21-28

Gospel: Then Jesus left and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried; “have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; for my daughter is severely possessed by a devil.” But Jesus did not answer her at all. So his disciples came and pleaded; “send her away, for she is crying after us.” Jesus replied; “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then she came and knelt before him saying; “Lord, help me.” And Jesus answered; “it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Then she said; “yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

Are we ashamed of the Christ? Should we be?

If you were not jarred by the language of this Gospel lesson, then I am not sure that you were paying attention. Did you hear what Jesus said to this poor woman? She came to him with a terrible problem, and how did he respond? First, he ignored her! Then, as if that was not bad enough, he told her that he did not come to help “her kind.” And then, to top it off, he pretty much called her a “dog” and told her that she was not worthy of his help! How can we deal with this? How are we to understand the rudeness that Christ exhibited to this brokenhearted and suffering mother?

It is a point of fact that when the Scriptures surprise or offend us (and it often does… or should!), that we should react with joy rather than sadness, anger, or disbelief – for we are about to have our understanding enlarged! That is certainly the case with today’s lesson. The fact that Christ’s words are so offensive is part of the point, part of the lesson. So what are we to learn from it?

Some theologians would explain that we have to look at the cultural context of the reading: Jesus was a Jew, and that this was how Jews thought about and treated the Gentiles. This is what some theologians say, but they are wrong. In charity, I should give them more credit: they are only mostly wrong. They are right in teaching that we should look at the cultural context of scripture, but they are completely wrong in believing that Jesus was shaped by it: Christ is utterly BEYOND culture. Remember: he was the Logos before time began. As a human, he was affected by his time and place, but as the source of wisdom he transcended the bigotries and prejudices of the world. Ironically, it was this very transcendence that led to his offensive treatment of the Canaanite woman. Let me explain.

Jesus recognized that there were aspects of worldly cultures that were literally demonic (e.g. Psalm 81; Psalm 95:5 1 Corinthians 10:20) and, as such, they were a serious obstacle to satisfying his desire that all men be saved. Through his language, he was awakening his audience to the absurdity of treating people based on their group rather than as unique persons in need of our love and attention. The disciples could not help but notice the huge gulf between what morality required and the way their prejudices would have them act. There is no room for prejudice or division in God’s love. Those who serve him must rise above their worldviews and see the world in the light of pure love and objectivity.

Again, Christ was using this encounter to teach his audience that love requires that we serve everyone who comes into our midst, regardless of the color of their skin, where they or their babas were born, or how much money they make.

So what about the poor woman? What if she had given up? Remember, we are not dealing with a common man here, but with the eternal God incarnate. He knew the woman’s heart in its entirety; not just the love she had for her daughter or the trust she had in the power of God to heal her, but also her grit. He knew that she would do anything within her power to save her daughter. She would persevere. She would overcome.

This is the second lesson I would have you learn today: the virtue of perseverance and grit.

On perseverance.

[Persistence – examples from regular life (including studies on the relative importance of “grit”)]

If perseverance matters for all these other parts of our lives, why shouldn’t we expect it to affect our spiritual life?

If we are persistent, if we persevere, then the changes we make in our lives – eating well, exercising, being more patient with our families, dealing properly with our addictions, praying and worshipping more, being more serious in our Orthodoxy – will become less about the goals we want to achieve and more an expression of who we are.

• We would no longer eat well because we wanted to become healthy, we would eat well because we WERE healthy.
• We would no longer exercise regularly because we wanted to become more fit, we would exercise regularly because we WERE fit.
• We would no longer be more patient and loving with our families because we wanted our family life to be more enjoyable, we would be patient and loving with our families because our family life WAS more enjoyable.
• We would no longer be more diligent in our prayer and worship life because we wanted to reduce stress and help others, but because we WERE LIVING stress-free and helpful lives.
• We would no longer be more serious in our Orthodoxy in order to get into heaven or to become more holy, but because, through Holy Orthodoxy, we WERE ALREADY BECOMING holy and more worthy of a place in heaven.

Then we will have been transformed:

• From dieters to health eaters.
• From out of shape to fit.
• From casualties of broken families to beneficiaries of healthy ones.
• From stressed out and powerless, to peaceful and powerful.
• From part-time Christians into saints.

While each of these begins with a single decision, a decision on its own is not enough. In order to change our habits we have to exhibit enough grit and determination to make our decisions real in our lives. People who are serious about making changes rededicate themselves to their decisions every morning, then take stock of their efforts every evening. Moreover, they constantly ask God for his strength and support and that he remove the stains their weakness has caused. This is true whether we are talking about food and exercise or the even more important decision to give our lives over to The Way Christ established for the healing and salvation of all his people; it takes grit to make it real. It takes determination.

A Warning

We have to be careful: the world is full of snake-oil salesmen who will try to sell us shortcuts to health and perfection, and our egos are the most convincing charlatans of the lot. But there are no shortcuts. A pill cannot make up for laziness. We cannot eat junk and lay around all the time and expect to be healthy. We cannot ignore your family and be a blessing to them. We cannot skip prayer and find lasting peace. We cannot forsake The Way of Orthodoxy and live a holy life. And we cannot do anything worth doing without grounding ourselves completely in Jesus Christ, the very source of all power and perfection. Anyone who tells us differently – to include our own egos or “consciences” – is setting us up for failure. We have to ignore them, roll up our sleeves, and get serious.

Conclusion

It takes a lot of effort to gain anything worthwhile. In his interaction with the Gentile woman in today’s Gospel, Christ was showing us that salvation and the qualities needed to obtain it are not limited to any race, class, or nationality. It is ours to take no matter the color of our skin or where we were born. Christ came to save us all. In him and his love – that is to say, in his Holy Orthodox Church – there are no Gentiles or Jews, no Americans or Syrians, no rich or poor. Only those who are alive in Christ. Remember, God is not a respecter of persons. He desires that all be saved. He is knocking at the door of every heart. We must all let him in. We must accept him as our Lord, God, and Savior. And this is more than a one time promise. We cannot just say a “sinners prayer” and expect to be saved. The kingdom of heaven is taken by force and we must constantly strive – dare I say “work!” for our salvation. But do not despair: through Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we all have access to the strength we need to persevere.

And the road that we must walk, the very “Way” that the persistent must follow is found in its fullness here at this parish and in this community of Christ the Savior in Anderson, SC.

Bible Study – Job
Class Five: Job 2:16-7:14
The trial of ideas begins. 

Homily on the Talents

Main point: What do we with the riches God has given us? Multiply them! How? By investing all those riches in spiritual activities that provide a strong return on investment and having enough self-discipline not to waste them on activities that cause spiritual harm.

There are many kinds of riches that the Bible and Tradition teach about; today we’ll talk about spiritual and monetary riches.

How to Get a Good Return on Spiritual Riches

•   Baptized Christians have all received riches (the grace of Baptism – a life in Christ!): what do we do with them?

•   We do not all start with the same – we all have abilities and weaknesses

•   But all are called to grow that which God has planted in our hearts

How do we grow them? It’s all about Orthopraxis. Discipleship. Evangelism. Everyone has to be involved in the ministries of the Church – and our parish must be set up to enable and encourage this.

How do we bury our talents? Not just by squandering them, but by refusing to develop and use them. By sitting on our hands. By seeking the minimum standard.

We need to grow the grace God has put into our hearts so that it overflows and brings comfort, joy, and healing to all those around us. We have to grow the investment of grace God made within our hearts. Orthodoxy is not about rules – Americans hate rules – it’s about getting a good return on the spiritual investment God made in us. Americans understand investments (and, while it may seem crass, it follows from the parable that Christ gave us). So…

•   Encouraging us to pray in the morning and evening and at every meal time is sound spiritual investment advice;

•   Encouraging us to come to services every Sunday and Feast Dayis sound spiritual investment advice;

•   Encouraging us to read scripture and edifying literature everyday is sound spiritual investment advice.

•   Encouraging every parish member should offer up their time in both worship AND ministry is sound spiritual investment advice.

•   Extolling the benefits of tithing is giving us sound spiritual advice.

•   Warning us that things like gossip, pornography, self-indulgence, hard-heartedness, and adultery are wicked sins and to be avoided, is sound spiritual investment advice.

Some people hear this – and I mean good people! – and they say “but Father… I don’t need to do all these things to be good. I’m nice. I already love people. I know that it is my duty to help my friends and my family and that is what I do. It comes naturally. I don’t need fasting and all that other stuff.” I LOVE hearing this! It is great to meet people who are born with such wonderful gifts. But being born with gifts doesn’t get them off the hook. My response to the way they rationalize their slothfulness goes something like this; “wonderful! God gave you FIVE TALENTS instead of just one or two – now you need to fast and do all that other stuff to invest those five and get five more!”

No one should mistake a naturally pleasant disposition or other natural attributes as some kind of grace they earned: these things are gifts from God and they must be developed. That’s what he is telling us today about getting into heaven. God expects more from those to whom He has given more – so get to work!

How to Get the Best (Spiritual Return) on Monetary Riches

But the Lord isn’t just teaching us about how to grow the grace He has given us. There is a lot to learn here and throughout the scriptures about what to do with our money. He tells us that everything that we have was given to us is for one purpose: growth in perfection. Growth in Christ. The healing of this world. The spreading of the Gospel. The increasing and superabundance of grace in our lives, our parish, and this world. As with spiritual gifts, not all of us are given the same gifts … but we are all called to grow what we have been given to the glory of God.

•   Ten talents: These people have the possibility/ability to give up all their money and possessions and follow Christ. (e.g. the holy disciples and apostles). Not everyone has the ability to do this. Not everyone is strong enough. Thank God that some are. The witness of monks.

•   Five talents: These people have too many God-blessed responsibilities to give up all their money and possessions, but they can offer up a large proportion of their income. Not everyone is strong enough to do this. This is only possible for people who have made a discipline of simplicity and budgeted towards giving and either have a large salary proportional to their needs or – much less likely - who have come into a windfall (joke about the lottery). Examples: Saint Joachim – 2/3; Zacheous: half plus; (and lest we think this is just for the rich) the widow’s mite.

•   One talent – done right!!!: “what must I do to be saved” Orthopraxis! Follow the law and live a life a love. Give proportionally according to your income. Make sacrifices for the Gospel. Offer what you can and grow that grace!

 Important caveat: for most of us, Orthodoxy requires balancing competing commitments. When it comes to money, it really comes down budgeting and making every dollar count. Family responsibilities and paying debts are Christian obligations.  Duty done well is done to the glory of God. Our God is not a God of irresponsibility. We have to find the balance – but in finding that balance, we need to let Christian morality – and not vices like laziness, self-indulgence, or fear – be our guides. Saint Paul makes this clear in his second letter to the Corinthians (8:8-12 & 9:6-9; glossed a bit):

Now I want to tell you what God in his grace has done for the churches in Macedonia. Though they have been going through much trouble and hard times, they have mixed their wonderful joy with their deep poverty, and the result has been an overflow of giving to others. They gave not only what they could afford but far more; and I can testify that they did it because they wanted to and not because of nagging on my part. They begged us to take the money so they could share in the joy of helping the Christians in Jerusalem. Best of all, they went beyond our highest hopes, for their first action was to dedicate themselves to the Lord and to us, for whatever directions God might give to them through us.

 [This reminds me of the statistics that show no correlations between wealth and the proportion that is given to charity – just look at the faithfulness of the people in “poor” churches!]

 The people in this other church were so enthusiastic about helping out through sacrificial giving that we have urged Titus, who encouraged your giving in the first place, to visit you and encourage you to complete your share in this same ministry of giving. You people there are leaders in so many ways—you have so much faith, so many good preachers, so much learning, so much enthusiasm, so much love… Now I want you to be leaders also in the spirit of cheerful giving.

 I am not giving you an order; I am not saying you must do it or how much you should give … But this is one way to show that your love and dedication is real, that it goes beyond mere words.

 You know how full of love and kindness our Lord Jesus was: though he was so very rich, yet to help you he became so very poor, so that by being poor he could make you rich.

You were enthusiastic when you started down this path. Now let your early enthusiasm be equaled by your realistic action now. But hear this: if you are really eager to give, then it isn’t important how much you have to give. God wants you to give what you have, not what you haven’t.

 But remember this—if you give little, you will get little. A farmer who plants just a few seeds will get only a small crop, but if he plants much, he will reap much. Everyone must make up his own mind as to how much he should give. Don’t force anyone to give more than he really wants to, for God loves the cheerful giver. God is able to make it up to you by giving you everything you need and more so that there will not only be enough for your own needs but plenty left over to give joyfully to others. It is as the Scriptures say: “The godly man gives generously to the poor. His good deeds will be an honor to him forever.”

God loves a cheerful giver, one who offers up gifts of his own free will – without compulsion. Our lives – and the life of our parish – have to be modeled around this fact. We don’t do dues.  Dues are compulsory, whether they are a few hundred dollars or an imposition of the more biblical tithe. The extortion of income is the work of highway robbers and governments – not the parish.  So while some of us have the ability, discipline, and JOY to budget around a tithe, not everyone can. The command is to offer up what you can to the glory of God and building up of joy in your life.

Let me conclude:

The point is that all we have been given – both our spiritual and material gifts – has been given to us one purpose: the one thing needful.

 If we invest all those things that have been put into our care: our time, our abilities, and yes, our monetary treasures, into the service of the Most High, then in the day when we are called to account for the way we lived lives here on earth, we will hear those words that we know so well, “well done good and faithful servant – receive now your crown!’

And if not? God cannot force us into paradise against our will. If we decided in our lifetime to follow the example of the servant who hid his talent, then we will receive the same reward he did.  That’s the Gospel.

No matter how much – or little - we have been entrusted with, we have a choice; it is the same choice all people of all places and times are given. Here is how Joshua put back in his day (Joshua 24:14-15; with glosses):

So revere the One True God and serve Him in sincerity and truth. Put away forever the idols of your ancestors. Worship the One True God and Him alone.  But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the false gods your ancestors served or the false gods of the land in which you now live. It is your choice. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

The Christian parish must be full of men and women – no matter their station, sinfulness, or abilities – who have made that same choice.  

 “As for me and my household – that is to say, as for me and all of you – I know that we will serve the Lord.”

In this episode of "Father, Speak a Word," Fr. Gregory Jensen, PhD and Fr. Anthony talk about why we should celebrate our shortcomings (as we repent of our sin).  The conversation is based on Fr. Gregory's substack article "It's Complicated; Thoughts On Falling Short of the Glory of God."  [The audio has been corrected.]

Bible Study – Job
Class Four: Job 1:13 – 2:15

From the Orthodox Study Bible.

Job Loses His Children and Property

13.  Now there was a day when Job’s sons and daughters were drinking wine in the house of their elder brother,

14.  and behold, a messenger came to Job and said, “The yokes of oxen were plowing, and the female donkeys were feeding beside them.

15.  Then raiders came and took them captive and killed the servants with the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

16.  While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said to Job, “Fire fell from heaven and burned up the sheep, and likewise consumed the shepherds; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

17.  While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “Horsemen formed three bands against us, surrounded the camels, took them captive, and killed the servants with the sword.  I alone have escaped to tell you!”

18.  While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “Your sone and daughters were eating and drinking wine with their elder brother,

19.  and suddenly a great wind came from the desert and struck the hour corners of the house; and it fell on your children, and they died; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

20.  Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved off the hair of his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped, saying,

21. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.  The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.  As it seemed good to the Lord, so also it came to pass.  Blessed by the name of the Lord.”

22.  In all these things that happened, Job did not sin against the Lord or charge God with folly.

Let’s break this down.

St. Gregory the Great.

On the compounding of affliction.
Lo again, lest any thing should be wanting to his grief for the adversity that came of man, he brings tidings that bands of the Chaldeans had broken in, and lest the calamity that came from above should strike him with too little force, he shews that wrath is repeated in the heavens…
He who is not laid low by one wound is in consequence stricken twice and thrice, that at one time or another he may be struck to the very core. Thus the blow from the Sabeans had been reported, the Divine visitation by fire from heaven had been reported, tidings are brought of the plundering of the camels, by man again, and of the slaughter of his servants, and the fury of God’s displeasure is repeated, in that a fierce wind is shewn to have smitten the corners of the house, and to have overwhelmed his children. For because it is certain that without the Sovereign dictate the elements can never be put in motion, it is covertly implied that He, Who let them be stirred, did Himself stir up the elements against him, though, when Satan has once received the power from the Lord, he is able even to put the elements into commotion to serve his wicked designs.

On the timing of the attacks
We ought to observe what times are suited for temptations; for the devil chose that as the time for tempting, when he found the sons of the blessed Job engaged in feasting; for the adversary does not only cast about what to do, but also when to do it. Then though he had gotten the power, yet he sought a fitting season to work his overthrow, to this end, that by God’s disposal it might be recorded for our benefit, that the delight of full enjoyment is the forerunner of woe.

On Job’s response.
But in that it is added that he worshipped, it is plainly shewn that even in the midst of pain, he did not break forth against the decree of the Smiter. He was not altogether unmoved, lest by his very insensibility he should shew a contempt of God; nor was he completely in commotion, lest by excess of grief he should commit sin. But because there are two commandments of love, i. e. the love of God, and of our neighbour; that he might discharge the love of our neighbour, he paid the debt of mourning to his sons; that he might not forego the love of God, he performed the office of prayer amidst his groans. There are some that use to love God in prosperity, but in adversity to abate their love of Him from whom the stroke comes. But blessed Job, by that sign which he outwardly shewed in his distress, proved that he acknowledged the correction of his Father, but herein, that he continued humbly worshipping, he shewed that even under pain he did not give over the love of that Father.

But be it observed, that our enemy strikes us with as many darts as he afflicts us with temptations; for it is in a field of battle that we stand every day, every day we receive the weapons of his temptations. But we ourselves too send our javelins against him, if, when pierced with woes, we answer humbly.

Christological Interpretation
When his sons were destroyed in the ruin of the house, Job arose, because when Judæa was lost in unbelief, and when the Preachers were fallen in the death of fear, the Redeemer of mankind raised Himself from the death of His carnal nature; He shewed in what judgment He abandoned His persecutors to themselves. For His rising is the shewing with what severity he forsakes sinners, just as His lying down is the patient endurance of ills inflicted. He rises then, when He executes the decrees of justice against the reprobate. And hence He is rightly described to have rent his mantle. For what stood as the mantle of the Lord, but the Synagogue, which by the preaching of the Prophets clung to the expectation of His Incarnation? For in the same way that He is now clothed with those by whom He is loved, as Paul is witness, who says, That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot nor wrinkle; (for that which is described as having neither spot or wrinkle; ALLEG. Eph. 5:27. is surely made appear as a spiritual robe; and at once clean in practice, and stretched in hope;) so when Judæa believed Him as yet to be made Incarnate, it was no less a garment through its clinging to Him.

Job Loses His Health

2.1.  Then again as it so happened another day, the angels of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the devil also came among them to present himself before the Lord.

2.  The Lord said to the devil, “Where did you come from?”  Then the devil said before the Lord, “I came here from walking around under heaven and going about all the earth.”

3.  Then the Lord said to the devil, “Have you considered my servant Job, since there is none like him on earth: an innocent, true, blameless, and God-fearing man, and one who abstains from every evil thing: Moreover he still holds fast to his integrity, though you told me to destroy his possessions without cause.”

4.  Then the devil answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin.  Whatever a man has he will pay in full for his life. 

5. Yet truly, stretch out Your hand and touch his bones and his flesh, and see if he will bless You to Your face.” 

6. So the Lord said to the devil, “Behold, I give him over to you; only spare his life.”

7. Thus the devil went out from the Lord and struck Job with malignant sores from head to foot.

8.  So he took a potsherd to scrape away the discharge and sat on a dunghill outside the city.

9.  When a period of time passed, his wife said to him, “How long will you hold out, saying,

10. ‘Behold, I will wait a little longer, looking for the hope of my salvation’?

11. Listen, your memory is wiped out from the earth; your sons and daughters, the pangs and pains of my womb, which I suffered in vain and with hardships.

12. You yourself are sitting down, spending the nights in the open air among the rottenness of worms;

13. and I go about. As a wanderer and a handmaid from place to place and from house to house waiting for the setting of the sun, so as to rest from my labors and pains that now beset me.

14. But say a word against the Lord and die!”

15.  Then Job looked at her and said, “You have spoken as one of the foolish women speaks.  If we accepted good things from the Lord’s hand, shall we not endure evil things?”  In all these things that happened to him, Job did not sin with his lips against God.

Let’s break this down.

St. John Chrysostom.  The angels.  Why does the author describe the angels in the act of presenting themselves daily before the Lord? He does so that we might learn no actual event is overlooked by God’s providence, and that the angels report what happens every day. Every day they are sent to settle some question, even though we ignore all this. That is the reason why they were created; that is their task, as the blessed Paul says, “They are sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” “And the devil,” the text says, “also came among them.” You know why the angels are present. But why is the devil present? The latter is present to tempt Job; the former, in order to regulate our matters. Why is the devil questioned again before the angels themselves? Because he had said before them, “He will curse you to your face.” What a shameless nature! He has dared come back!

St. John Chrysostom.  On the wife.  Notes that a long time passed, and she was not able to handle the temptations.  The devil hopes this will be like Eve. 

Fr. Patrick Reardon. 
Indeed, we do perceive a change in Job at this point. If he does not curse God, Job also does not explicitly bless God as he had done in his first affliction (1:21). Instead, he humbly submits to God’s will (2:10).  In each case, nonetheless, God’s confidence in Job is vindicated. Satan has done his worst to Job, but Job has not succumbed. Like Abraham in Genesis 22, Job has met the trial successfully. Having done his worst, Satan disappears and is never again mentioned in the book. The rest of the story concerns only God and human beings.

St. Gregory the Great.  On temptation.
The old adversary is wont to tempt mankind in two ways; viz. so as either to break the hearts of the steadfast by tribulation, or to melt them by persuasion. Against blessed Job then he strenuously exerted himself in both; for first upon the householder he brought loss of substance; the father he bereaved by the death of his children; the man that was in health he smote with putrid sores. But forasmuch as him, that was outwardly corrupt, he saw still to hold on sound within, and because he grudged him, whom he had stripped naked outwardly, to be inwardly enriched by the setting forth of his Maker’s praise, in his cunning he reflects and considers, that the champion of God is only raised up against him by the very means whereby he is pressed down, and being defeated he betakes himself to subtle appliances of temptations. For he has recourse again to his arts of ancient contrivance, and because he knows by what means Adam is prone to be deceived, he has recourse to Eve. For he saw that blessed Job amidst the repeated loss of his goods, the countless wounds of his strokes, stood unconquered, as it were, in a kind of fortress of virtues.

On the nature of evil.
See the enemy is every where broken, every where overcome, in all his appliances of temptation he has been brought to the ground, in that he has even lost that accustomed consolation which he derived from the woman. Amid these circumstances it is good to contemplate the holy man, without, void of goods, within, filled with God. When Paul viewed in himself the riches of internal wisdom, yet saw himself outwardly a corruptible body, he says, We have this treasure in earthen vessels. 2 Cor. 4:7. You see, the earthen vessel in blessed Job felt those gaping sores without, but this treasure remained entire within. For without he cracked in his wounds, but the treasure of wisdom unfailingly springing up within issued forth in words of holy instruction, saying, If we have received good at the hand of the Lord, shall we not receive evil? meaning by the good, either the temporal or the eternal gifts of God, and by the evil, denoting the strokes of the present time, of which the Lord saith by the Prophet, I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. Is. 45:6, 7. Not that evil, which does not subsist by its own nature, is created by the Lord, but the Lord shews Himself as creating evil, when He turns into a scourge the things that have been created good for us, upon our doing evil, that the very same things should at the same time both by the pain which they inflict be to transgressors evil, and yet good by the nature whereby they have their being.

On how the Church responds to both kinds of “evil”
Holy men, when fastened upon by the war of afflictions, when at one and the same moment they are exposed to this party dealing them blows and to that urging persuasions, present to the one sort the shield of patience, at the other they launch the darts of instruction, and lift themselves up to either mode of warfare with a wonderful skill in virtue, so that they should at the same time both instruct with wisdom the froward counsels within, and contemn with courage the adverse events without; that by their instructions they may amend the one sort, and by their endurance put down the other. For the assailing foes they contemn by bearing them, and the crippled citizens they recover to a state of soundness, by sympathizing with them. Those they resist, that they may not draw off others also; they alarm themselves for these, lest they should wholly lose the life of righteousness.

And more on this
Holy men, when fastened upon by the war of afflictions, when at one and the same moment they are exposed to this party dealing them blows and to that urging persuasions, present to the one sort the shield of patience, at the other they launch the darts of instruction, and lift themselves up to either mode of warfare with a wonderful skill in virtue, so that they should at the same time both instruct with wisdom the froward counsels within, and contemn with courage the adverse events without; that by their instructions they may amend the one sort, and by their endurance put down the other. For the assailing foes they contemn by bearing them, and the crippled citizens they recover to a state of soundness, by sympathizing with them. Those they resist, that they may not draw off others also; they alarm themselves for these, lest they should wholly lose the life of righteousness.

___

Saint Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, vol. 1 (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1844), 83.

Robert Charles Hill.  St. John Chrysostom Commentaries on the Sages, Volume One – Commentary on Job.  Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

Patrick Henry Reardon, The Trial of Job: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Job (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2005), 22.

Manlio Simonetti and Marco Conti, eds., Job, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 4–5.

What we will cover next week:

The trial of ideas begins.  Job 2:16-7:14

Homily Notes on Zacchaeus Sunday:
What makes a home?

Walk in – can you tell (that a place is a home)?

The feeling?

·       Feelings and intuition are unreliable; generally, they are the way the subconscious mind puts together other indicators

·       But to the sense our feelings are reliable, some places are haunted by memories of being home 

“The clutter?” There is something to this.

·       Imperfect indicator (museums have lots of stuff… & I hear there are homes with no clutter)

·       Points to something else that is often associated with clutter

The rituals? There is something to this, as well.

·       All homes do have rituals, but they are similar to clutter (they ARE clutters of habits… and these habits form character)

·       Imperfect indicator

*** A home is where love lives. ***

Zacchaeus had a nice house.

·       But it wasn’t until Christ came that it was a place of love

·       “Today salvation has come to this house”

·       From the blessing of homes after Theophany; “O GOD OUR SAVIOR, the True Light, who wast baptized in the Jordan by John to renew all men by the laver of regeneration, and who didst deign to enter under the roof of Zacchaeus, thereby bringing salvation to him and to all his house: do thou, the same Lord, keep safe from harm all who dwell here; grant them thy blessing, purification, and bodily health; grant all their petitions which are unto salvation and life everlasting. For blessed art thou, O Lord, together with thy Father who is without beginning, and thy most holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.” 

Lesson here

·       Love blesses all things when it is present; friendships, teachers and students, workplace relationships…

·       Why is this? Why aren’t the kind of relationships Zaccheaus had – ones based on exploitation – blessed?

·       Because the God who created the rules is the One who is the source and animator of all love.

·       This is why intentionally invoking Him in our relationships makes them so much stronger. Marriages, families, friendships… they are strengthened when they are done IN THE NAME OF CHRIST.

Most especially true of us here. This is THE place of power.

·       Let us continue to bask in it.

·       As Christ grows in our midst and remakes us into perfect bearers of that love.

Bible Study – Job
Class Two: Job 1: 6-12

From the Orthodox Study Bible.

Satan is Permitted to Test Job

6.  Then as it so happened one day that behold, the angels of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the devil also came with them. 

7. The Lord said to the devil, “Where did you come from?” So the devil answered the Lord and said, “I came here after going about the earth and walking around under heaven.”

8. Then the Lord said to him, “Have you yet considered my servant Job, since there is none like him on the earth: a blameless, true, and God-fearing man, and one who abstains from every evil thing?”

9. So the devil answered and said before the Lord, “Does Job worship the Lord for no reason?

10. Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side?  You have blessed the work of his hands, and his cattle have increased in the and. 

11.  But stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and see if he will bless You to Your face.”

12.  Then the Lord said to the devil, “Behold, whatever he has I give into your hand; but do not touch him.”  Thus the devil went out from the Lord.

Let’s break this down.

v. 6; why were the angels of God presenting themselves before the Lord?

Many angels surround Him continually;

·      Anaphora of St. John Chrsysostom.  For all these things we give thanks unto Thee, and to Thine only-begotten Son, and to Thy Holy Spirit; for all things of which we know and of which we know not, whether seen or unseen; and we thank Thee for this Liturgy which Thou hast willed to accept at our hands, though there stand by Thee thousands of archangels and hosts of angels (Daniel 7:10) the Cherubim and the Seraphim, six- winged (Isiah 6:2) many-eyed (Revelations 4:8) who soar aloft, borne on their wings:  Singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming, and saying: “Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory’. (Isaiah 6:3) Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest. (Mathew 21:9, Mark 11:9-10, Psalms 118:26)

·      Hebrews 12:22.  But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,

   Possibly – they are part of His Divine Council

·      Psalm 81:1-2a; “God stood in the assembly of gods; He judges in the midst of gods,”  

·      Psalm 88: 9-13 (89:6-8). “The heavens shall confess Your wonders, O Lord, and Your truth in the church of the saints.  For who in the clouds shall be compared to the Lord and who among the sons of God shall be compared to the Lord?”

More likely – they are ministering angels

·      Hebrews 1:14.  Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

·      Psalms 90:11.  For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;

·      Matthew 18:10.  “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Hesychius of Jerusalem (5th Century - not recognized as a saint): Was there ever a time when the angels did not stand before the Lord? Was it not written about them that “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him”? (Daniel 7:11)But this coming, in our opinion, is that of the angels who had been sent to serve human beings. Paul actually says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” HOMILIES ON JOB 2.1.6.

More on v.6: why was the devil with him?

Note – the problem is why God would be talking with the devil, and why the devil could even stand to be in His presence.

One way to resolve this is to note that there are other places in scripture when God talks to the devil and demons (temptation in the wilderness, demons at Gardenes).

Another way is to say that it wasn’t really “THE Devil”, it was “The Satan”, which is a job title, “The Adversary.”  This takes us back to the Divine Council.  As Michael Heiser writes;

Evidence for exactly the same structures in the Israelite council is tenuous. Despite the fact that popular Israelite religion may have understood Yahweh as having a wife, Asherah (see Hess), it cannot be sustained that the religion of the prophets and biblical writers contained this element or that the idea was permissible. There is also no real evidence for the craftsman tier. However, the role of the śāṭān (see Satan), the accuser who openly challenges God on the matter of Job’s spiritual resilience, is readily apparent (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6). In the divine council in Israelite religion Yahweh was the supreme authority over a divine bureaucracy that included a second tier of lesser ʾĕlōhîm (bĕnê ʾēlîm; bĕnê ʾĕlōhîm or bĕnê hāʾĕlōhîm) and a third tier of malʾākîm (“angels”). In the book of *Job some members of the council apparently have a mediatory role with respect to human beings (Job 5:1; 15:8; 16:19–21; cf. Heb 1:14).
M. S. Heiser, “Divine Council,” ed. Tremper Longman III and Peter Enns, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings (Downers Grove, IL; Nottingham, England: IVP Academic; Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), 114.

However, these are not the tacts that St. John Chrysostom took.  By his time, this Satan had been seen to be the same as the fallen angel in the garden etc.

·      He had a lot to say about how angels and demons are mixed together here on earth (even remarking on the headcover passage 1 Corinthians 11:10).  This has obvious implications for us and our spiritual lives!

·      He also said that there was no way the devil could talk to God in this way, and that this is written for the sake of the story (page 24).

Also his comment on being rich already putting Job into the arena. [NOTE: I was kidding/prodding about St. John being woke, but he was/is supremely concerned for the poor and the obligations of the rich. Before the term became altered and politicized, this made him a strong promoter of social justice.]

v. 7–8 Where Have You Come From?

St Gregory the Great: Satan’s “going to and fro on the earth” represents his exploring the hearts of the carnal. In this way he is seeking diligently for grounds of accusation against them. He “goes round about the earth,” for he surrounds human hearts in order to steal all that is good in them, that he may lodge evil in their minds, that he may occupy completely what he has taken over, that he may fully reign over what he has occupied, that he may possess the very lives of those he has perfected in sin. Note that he does not say he has been flying through the earth but that he has been “walking up and down it.” For in fact he is never easily dislodged from whomever he tempts. But where he finds a soft heart, he plants the foot of his wretched persuasion, so that by dwelling there, he may stamp the footprints of evil practice, and by a wickedness similar to his own he may render reprobate all whom he is able to overcome. But in spite of this, blessed Job is commended with these words, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” To him, whom divine inspiration strengthens to meet the enemy, God praises as it were even in the ears of Satan. For God’s praise of Job is the first evidence of Job’s virtues, so that they may be preserved when they are manifested. But the old enemy is enraged against the righteous the more he perceives that they are hedged around by the favor of God’s protection. MORALS ON THE BOOK OF JOB 2.65.66.

v. 1:9–10 Does Job Fear God for Nothing?

St. John Chrysostom: Do you see that Job’s wealth was a gift from God? Do you see that it was not the fruit of injustice? How Job had to suffer in order to demonstrate to people that his wealth was not the fruit of injustice! And behold, the devil himself bore witness to him from above and did not realize that he praised Job as well by saying that he had not acquired that wealth through illicit trading and through the oppression of others. Instead, Job owed his wealth to God’s blessing, and his security came from heaven. You would have not rejoiced if Job had not been virtuous. But the devil praised and covered him with laurels without realizing what he was doing. COMMENTARY ON JOB 1:10.

Manlio Simonetti and Marco Conti, eds., Job, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 4–5.

Robert Charles Hill.  St. John Chrysostom Commentaries on the Sages, Volume One – Commentary on Job.  Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

What we will cover next week:

Job loses his possessions, his children, and his health.  Job 1:7-22

Homily – Bringing Grace to a Messy World
St Luke 18:35-43.  The healing of the blind beggar.

Three points:

Jesus did not stay in one place.

Jesus Christ is and was God.  It is fitting that He reside in the throne room of God, surrounded by the cherubim and seraphim, with His holiness reflecting off all the angels and archangels around Him.  But as the being of perfect love, He had to act on behalf of his beloved children (US!).  So He took flesh and became man.

Some would have expected Him to take up residence in the Temple or in the Governor’s House.  But instead He lived among common men and women and, for the last three years of His life, went from town to town so that everyone would know the Good News of salvation.  His body was the temple and He took His holiness, His healing love, and the truth of the Gospel everywhere He went.

We must do the same.  God resides within us.  We are called to love others as God loves us.  We are more than just disciples, we are Christ to the world– we are members of His body, the Church.  Others expect us to keep the reason for our joy and hope here in this building, but that is not how to love!  Yes, we invite the world to be transformed by joining us here, but love requires that we share the reason for joy and hope in the world.  We don’t hide it under a bushel (no!) we let it shine!

The Lord was traveling in today’s lesson, and we give a glimpse at what happened as He did.  We see that it isn’t always neat.  

Jesus – and his disciples – encountered the messiness of the world.

The world is a messy place.  Look what happened in today’s lesson: Christ and His entourage are almost to Jericho, and a beggar disrupts their travel.  This comes on the heels of other messy encounters: people having the nerve to bring their children up to Him to be blessed … a Rich Young Man questioning Jesus, and now this beggar!  I am willing to guess that, in their weaker moments, the disciples would have preferred Jesus stay in a place where they could control Him.  Then He could teach them – and anyone else who knew how to behave and knew what kind of questions were appropriate. 

But that would have been a different God, the God of Ivan Karamazov’s “Grand Inquisitor”.  Life is messy.  People have real problems, questions, and needs that do not fit into neat little categories.  And God goes out to meet them where they are.  As with the Rich Man, He may not always tell them what they want to hear, but there is the real sense that love required meeting people where they are (out in the world)… and then leading them to the cross and, through that, to the Resurrection and life eternal. 

We have to recognize the way our desire to control and mediate grace is more often a result of our own totalitarian pathology than a genuine desire to do God’s will.  Yes, grace leads to harmony; but demanding harmony before offering grace is like withholding medicine until a patient is well enough to deserve it.   

Everyone glorified God.

My final point may seem obvious, but it demands attention.  How did the people respond to the blind man’s healing?  Did they attack Jesus (they did in other places, as when He healed on the Sabbath)?  Were they upset that He wasted His time and power on a simple beggar when He could have done something more important?  Were they upset that they did not get their fair share of Jesus’ miracles on their own body (I bet all of them suffered from something!)?

No,  the Gospel says; “And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.” 

This is the proper response to God’s love and power no matter how it matches our desires or expectations: glorification!  When we glorify God, we become more human, more happy, more resilient.  And when others see us glorifying God, not just here in the temple, but everywhere we see Him and His miraculous action in this world, they are naturally drawn to worship Him as well.

Yes, let’s continue to praise God and enjoy His miracles here within these walls, but let’s be like Jesus Himself and take the Good News out into the world and let our friends and neighbors – even our enemies – feel the healing grace that flows through our love for them.  Yes, it’s going to be messy and it may well mean that more unworthy beggars than kings feel the benefit of this grace; and it may end up meaning that we bring more grace to the lives of the people in communities of the upstate than to those in the great halls of Washington D.C. (that may seem to need it more).

But Christ cured the blindness of the beggar on the way to Jericho despite the all terrible things the powerful were doing in Rome.  Evangelism is local; it begins with the transformation of our hearts into overflowing fountains of grace that pour out to bless everyone we meet. May the Lord strengthen us as we spread His grace in a messy world.

Bible Study – Job
Class Two: Job 1: 1-5

From the Orthodox Study Bible.

1.  Faithful Job and His Children

1 There was a man in the land of Austis, whose name was Job.  That man was true, blameless, righteous, and God-fearing, and he abstained from every evil thing.

2 Now he had seven sons and three daughters,

3 and his cattle consisted of seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys in the pastures.  Moreover he possessed a very large number of house servants.  His works were also great on the earth, and that man was the most noble of all the men in the East.

4 His sons would visit one another and prepare a banquet every day, and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

5 When the days of their drinking were ended, Job sent and purified them; and he rose early in the morning and offered sacrifices for them according to their number, as well as one calf for the sins of their souls.  For Job said, “Lest my sons consider evil things in their mind against God.”  Therefore Job this continually.

From Fr. Patrick Reardon

The first chapter of Job describes him, in fact, as the embodiment of the ideals held out in the first psalm. Job “walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, / Nor stands in the path of sinners, / Nor sits in the seat of the scornful.” On the contrary, he is “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, / That brings forth its fruit in its season, / Whose leaf also shall not wither; / And whatever he does shall prosper.”

Whereas the “man” in the first psalm is clearly a Jew, whose “delight is in the law of the Lord,” Job is only a man—any just man, anywhere. St. John Chrysostom drew special attention to the fact that Job is only a man, not a Jew. That is to say, Job does not enjoy the benefits of the revelation made to God’s chosen people. The only revelation known to Job is that which is accorded to all men, namely, that God “is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

The first verse of Job introduces the narrative prologue (1:1–2:13) preceding the lengthy and complicated dialogue that forms the long central core of the book. This prologue contains six scenes:

(1) an account of Job’s life and prosperity in 1:1–5;

(2) the first discussion in heaven in 1:6–12;

(3) Job’s loss of his children and possessions in 1:13–22;

(4) the second discussion in heaven in 2:1–7;

(5) Job’s affliction of the flesh in 2:7–10;

(6) the arrival of Job’s three friends in 2:11–13.

Chapter 1, then, contains the first three of these six scenes.

In the first scene (1:1–5) [this is the one we are covering today] Job is called a devout man who feared God, a man who “shunned evil.” He thus enjoyed the prosperity promised to such folk in Israel’s wisdom literature. As we have reflected in our introduction to this book, Job is the very embodiment of the prosperous just man held up as a model in the Book of Proverbs.

From the Orthodox Study Bible footnote

Note that Job was “blameless” and “abstained from every evil thing.”  Does that mean he is perfect?

·      Ecclesiastes 2:20/21.  For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.

·  Hebrews 4:15.  For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

St. Gregory the Great (he does literal and then two allegoricals)

On the description of Job. But it is the custom of narrators, when a wrestling match is woven into the story, first to describe the limbs of the combatants, how broad and strong the chest, how sound, how full their muscles swelled, how the belly below neither clogged by its weight, nor weakened by its shrunken size, that when they have first shewn the limbs to be fit for the combat, they may then at length describe their bold and mighty strokes. Thus because our athlete was about to combat the devil, the writer of the sacred story, recounting as it were before the exhibition in the arena the spiritual merits in this athlete, describes the members of the soul1, saying, And that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil; that when the powerful setting of the limbs is known, from this very strength we may already prognosticate also the victory to follow.

On sacrifices for his children (literal).  This circumstance demands our discreet consideration, that, when the days of feasting were past, he has recourse to the purification of a holocaust for each day severally; for the holy man knew that there can scarcely be feasting without offence; he knew that the revelry of feasts must be cleansed away by much purification of sacrifices, and whatever stains the sons had contracted in their own persons at their feasts, the father wiped out by the offering of a sacrifice; for there are certain evils which it is either scarcely possible, or it may be said wholly impossible, to banish from feasting. Thus almost always voluptuousness is the accompaniment of entertainments; for when the body is relaxed in the delight of refreshment, the heart yields itself to the admission of an empty joy. Whence it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Exod. 32:6.

More on the sacrifices (allegorical).  For we rise up early in the morning, when being penetrated with the light of compunction we leave the night of our human state, and open the eyes of the mind to the beams of the true light, and we offer a burnt offering for each son, when we offer up the sacrifice of prayer for each virtue, lest wisdom may uplift; or understanding, while it runs nimbly, deviate from the right path; or counsel, while it multiplies itself, grow into confusion; that fortitude, while it gives confidence, may not lead to precipitation, lest knowledge, while it knows and yet has no love, may swell the mind; lest piety, while it bends itself out of the right line, may become distorted; and lest fear, while it is unduly alarmed, may plunge one into the pit of despair. When then we pour out our prayers to the Lord in behalf of each several virtue, that it be free from alloy, what else do we but according to the number of our sons offer a burnt offering for each? for an holocaust is rendered ‘the whole burnt.’ Therefore to pay a ‘holocaust’ is to light up the whole soul with the fire of compunction, that the heart may burn on the altar of love, and consume the defilements of our thoughts, like the sins of our own offspring.

Saint Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, vol. 1 (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1844), 34.

St. John Chrysostom

On wealth and temptation.  Do you not see that for people not on the alert wealth becomes the basis of falsehood.  This man was not like that, however, though: although he was wealthy, it was for you to learn that had wealth as an inclination towards evil, and that it is not wealth that is responsible [for sin] but free will.  [notes that later he also avoided the temptations of poverty].  Later, Job will explain how he came to be like this. 

On harmony.  Great harmony, the highest of goods; they were brought up to share their meals, keeping a common table, which makes no little contribution to good relations.  Do you see, dearly beloved, enjoyment accompanied by security?  Do you see family dining?  Do you see the well-knit group?

On the purification.  It was not from some bodily contamination, there being no Law by that stage, but from a mental one….: it was for sins that were hidden and not acknowledged [and he would certainly have done more if they were obvious]… This very process, in fact, became also instruction for his children, not only removal of their sins; people who are aware that punishment is God’s prerogative for both thoughts and sinful acts – their father, after all, would not have offered sacrifice if were not a sin he was anxious to cancel – and who constantly are instructed in this by sacrifices would be more hesitant if something like this happened in their case… Note how he gave them a lesson in harmony also in his sacrifice, offering one calf for them all as if for a single person… Which love in particular made him do it?  In my view, love for God and then love for his children.

Robert Charles Hill.  St. John Chrysostom Commentaries on the Sages, Volume One – Commentary on Job.  Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

What we will cover next week:

Satan is Permitted to Test Job; Job 1: 6-12.

On Gratitude (with thanks to St. Nicholai Velimirovich)
Luke 17: 12-19 (The Ten Lepers, only one of whom returned)

[Started with a meditation on the virtues of hard work and gratitude; hard work so that we can be proud of what we have done and foster an appreciation for the amount of effort that goes into the making and sustaining of things. This makes us grateful for what we have, and especially the amount of effort that goes into gifts that we receive from others. But what if these virtues break down? What if there was a society where hard work was not required and gratitude was neither expected nor offered? What if everything was both easy and taken for granted? Would this be a society comprised of real men and women, or of spoiled children? Would those who understood the need for virtue – and who cultivated it within their own lives – [would they] not weep when they saw the corruption that surrounded them?]

We are taught through small things, not always being able to understand big ones.

• If we cannot understand how our souls cannot live for a moment without God, we can see how our bodies cannot live for a moment without air.
• If we cannot understand how we suffer a spiritual death when we go without prayer and the doing of good deeds, we can see how we suffer and die when we go without water and food.
• If we cannot understand why it is that God expects our obedience, we can study why it is that commanders expect obedience from their soldiers and why architects expect it from their builders.

So it is with gratitude. If we do not understand why it is that God seeks our gratitude – and why He seeks it in both thought and action – we can look at why parents demand gratitude from their children.

• We do parents require that their children thank them for everything, both large and small, that they receive from their parents?
• Are parents enriched by the gratitude of their children?
• Are they made more powerful?
• Is it to feed their egos?
• Does it give them more influence or status in society?
• No, parents are not enriched by their children’s gratitude, and it takes time and effort to cultivate it in them. So parents spend time and effort on something that brings them no personal enrichment. Why do they do it?
• They do it for love. They do it for the good of their children, so that they will grow up to be civilized and a benefit to society and their own families.
• “A grateful man is valued wherever he goes; he is liked, he is welcomed, and he people are quick to help him.”

What would happen if parents stopped teaching their children gratitude? How would their children turn out? How would society turn out? Isn’t it every parent’s obligation, then to demand gratitude from their children?

And so it is with God. He does not need our thanks. There is no way to add to His infinite power. There is no way to add to his glory. He in no way benefits from the thanks that we give Him.

• And yet He demands that we thank Him every morning for getting us through the night.
• And yet He demands that we thank Him at every meal for the food on our tables.
• And yet He demands that we thank Him that we thank Him every Sunday for the gift of His Son.

It seems like a lot, right? Couldn’t we just skip it? No. Not if we want to be human. Not if we want to be good.

• It isn’t just about doing things to please God (He is what He is regardless of our actions),
• and it isn’t really about doing things because we need to follow God’s rules.
• It is about being (and becoming) good and doing what is right.

God desires that we be His children, through Christ, He has made this possible. Through our baptism and through our confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, we can join the ranks of the saints. This is not something to be taken for granted.

• We are like the lepers who encountered Christ in today’s Gospel
• Because of our disease, we are not fit to join the the saints and angels of God.
• But Jesus Christ has healed us of our disease. He has nailed our sins to the Cross. He has restored our fallen humanity to a state of grace.
• This is not something we have earned, nor is it something we deserve, nor is it something that Christ had to do.
• All ten of the lepers received the gift of health and their ability to walk once more with those who are well in a healthy community. Only one was grateful.
• Christ God suffered and died so that all of humanity could receive the gift of healing and eternal life, and the ability to live in everlasting joy with all the saints and angels.
• What is our response?

Are we like the spoiled child that expects everything he receives (and more), that believes that everything is his due? If so, what kind of life can we expect to have? How can it not be stunted and incomplete? What kind of families and communities can we expect to grow around us?

Or are we like the the child who grows into the virtuous adult, the one who everyone likes to have in their company, who brings out the best in those around him? If so, will our lives not be better? Will our community not thrive? Will we not have shown – through God’s grace – that we belong with the saints?

We are not worthy of the gifts that God has given us. We accept them with open arms. We offer our thanks for them. And we join the ranks of holy ones and angels that continually proclaim His glory.

Bible Study – Job
Introduction

Job is the first book of the Wisdom genre in the Orthodox Bible.  The others are The Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach.

Date and Authorship: Unknown, but Job lived during the time of the Patriarchs (about 1600 BC).

From Fr. Joseph Farley;

The story of Job is traditionally based on the life of Jobab, king of Edom, mentioned in Genesis 36:33. (This ascription is also reflected in the final verses of the book as found in the Septuagint.) The tale of Job contains some of the best poetry ever written, and it recounts the suffering of a man who suffers unjustly, though he is completely righteous. His acquaintances (famous proverbially as “Job’s comforters”) assume his great suffering proves he has committed a great sin, but Job continues to deny it and to insist on his innocence. At the end of the story, God appears on the scene in a whirlwind to confound the worldly “wisdom” of Job’s tormenting “comforters,” reveal His power, and show the folly of supposing human wisdom is adequate to question the providence of God. He then restores to Job all that he has lost. A Septuagintal addition to the Hebrew text adds, “It is written that he will rise with those whom the Lord resurrects” (Job 42:1–8 OSB). Suffering leads eventually to resurrection.

We read the story of Job as a model of the sufferings of Christ, a foreshadowing of His Passion and Resurrection. Like Job, Christ was innocent yet suffered greatly. Like Job, Christ was vindicated by God at His Resurrection. Along with the story of Joseph the patriarch, the tale of Job reveals that in this age God’s chosen ones suffer unjustly. That the Messiah, “the Righteous One,” would suffer on a cross does not defy historical precedent. A crucified Christ is not a contradiction in terms. God’s servants have always suffered unjustly and been misunderstood by their “pious” contemporaries before being vindicated by God. It is for this reason that the Book of Job is read in church at the Presanctified Liturgies during Holy Week.  (Lawrence R. Farley, The Christian Old Testament: Looking at the Hebrew Scriptures through Christian Eyes (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2012), 143–144.)

In Scripture

Genesis and the historical books (as Jobab).

Ezekiel 14:14.  Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God.

Ezekiel 14:20.  Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.

James 5:11.  Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

Liturgical Use

Holy Week.  Monday (PSL): Job 1:1-12; Tuesday (PSL): Job 1:13-22; Wednesday (PSL): Job 2:1-15; Thursday (VDL): Job 38:1b-21); Friday (Vespers) Job 42:12-21.  Up until then, we had been reading Proverbs in that place in the service (Exodus replaces Genesis and Ezekiel replaces Isaiah).

Great Canon of St. Andrew (Canticle Four; in between Esau and Christ).

Thou hast heard of Job, O my soul, who was justified on a dung heap; yet thou hast not imitated his courage nor hast thou shown any firmness of will in the face of thy trials and temptations but hast proved cowardly and weak. He that once sat upon a throne now lies naked on a dung heap, covered with his sores. He that had many children and was once admired by all is suddenly bereft of children and is left without a home; yet for him the dung heap is a palace, and his sores a chain of pearls.

Purpose:  Wisdom.

Resources for our study.

Orthodox Study Bible; St. John Chrystostom’s commentary; St. Gregory the Great’s Commentary; Fr. Patrick Reardon’s The Trial of Job.  Dictionary of Wisdom and the Psalms (IVP). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.

Some initial thoughts:

It is about suffering, but mostly about how to relate to God in suffering.  Losing faith in God is one of the biggest temptations that suffering can bring.

Parts of it are not easy to read (negativity; structure; poetry).  Not always clear what is being taught.

Fr. Patrick refers to is as a "trial".  That’s good.  But who is on trial?  Is it Job?

Three of his friends (pagan kings!), Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, present traditional religious ways of relating to God (or the gods) during suffering (suffering is retribution; requires appeasement).  You may end up sympathizing with some of what they say, but their understanding of God and how to relate to Him is flawed. 

Elihu, his fourth friend offers a more correct understanding of God, but his witness is tainted by His pride and by twisting the facts (even though he, unlike the others, wanted to present Job as righteous).  He does seem to act as a sort of (an imperfect) prophet to Yahweh (who speaks right after his speech) not just by describing God’s glory but by holding Job accountable for the arrogance of his previous appeal.    God condemns the other friends, but Elihuh is not mentioned.  However, his theology is not reliable (it is really a reformulation of the same retribution principle).

Job’s continual defense of himself is his righteousness.  He does end up needing to repent of his accusations against and doubts in God.

In the end, Job’s righteousness is affirmed, Job’s goods are restored, and God’s justice is confirmed.

Ephesians 4:7-13.  In this homily (hostage situation?), Fr. Anthony talks about the temptations new technology brings for getting ecclesiology wrong.  Noting that bad ecclesiology is bad theology, he offers to help everyone find their calling and develop their gifts, but warns that we need be careful to take our time and not fall into (or prey to!!!) prophecying, teaching, and preaching outside the blessing of the Church.   Enjoy the show.

The Banquet

St. Luke 14:16-24

·      Greatest tragedies in history

o   Separation from God

o   Separation from one another

·      Two of the great epidemics of our time resulted from this

o   Loneliness: we were made for community (yes, even introverts!)

o   Meaning:

§  We were made for a home, with a strong and enduring identity

§  We were made for a purpose, with an important part to play, and given the gifts and potential to play that part well.

§  Last week: when we have our community, we know our part and are developing our gifts, the result is a symphony or beautiful transformation.

o   Without community and a song, purpose, or being part of a plan, we are sure to suffer

·      This is our experience of sin.  We have missed the mark of our calling, of being part of the things for which we were made

·      So what is the solution?

o   A theological math problem, with the calculus of proper soteriology coming to rescue?

o   A juridical problem, with a proper understanding of God’s justice and the role of His Son’s sacrifice in appeasing it?

·      No, I framed the problem of sin the way I did so that we could approach it properly: we have a relationship problem.  We are separated from God and one another and thus suffer from loneliness and a lack of meaning.

·      Today’s Gospel flows naturally from this understanding, and it corrects some imperfections in some Western theology that compound the problem and make a proper diagnosis all but impossible. 

o   Some “Western” Christians might slip the mathematical and juridical approaches and recognize that the restoration of a relationship with God is central.  But their God is angry and even, dare I say it, capricious.  And like an abusive father or husband, the key to assuaging his wrath is to satisfy it with the death of His son.  This is a terrible theology, and Christ dismisses it with today’s description of the feast as the solution to the world’s pain.

·      The Kingdom of Heaven is a great meal to which we are all invited.

·      Are you lonely?

o   A meal!  Why is it so great?  At festal meals, we learn to leave aside all the petty things that have divided us.  Around a family table, we are reminded of who we are and what family we belong to and can relax into this.  When strangers come, there need be no awkwardness as the purpose is fixed and everyone is fed.  All of us have good things in common at the supper table.  We lay aside all of our pettiness to engage in this beautiful fellowship.

o   But it is also the meal of the king.  The invitation is the invitation to a restored relationship with Him.  And through accepting the invitation we restore our relations with one another. 

o   And because of the nature of the food that is offered, the restoration of the relationship grows and the problems of loneliness and meaning fade to nothing.  And neither exist at all in the great banquet which is to come.

·      This shows the love of our God and the beauty of True Theology.  Restoration comes not from solving theological math problems, getting the right lawyer, or creating a codependency with a wrathful God.

·      Restoration comes in accepting God’s invitation to a place at His Holy Table and to Feast at His Holy Supper.

·      Some chose not to come – and we pray that they repent and come to the table before it is too late.

·      But for us the way is clear, we have accepted the invitation, and thus we are being cured of the pain of sin and its separation.

Father Speak a Word.  Today Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Gregory Jensen, PhD, about his recent essay, "Friendship."  They cover the differences between friendships based on utility, pleasure, and virtue, noting that a virtuous friendship cannot be rushed, assumed, or coerced.  They also compare the virtuous friendship, which needs to be reciprocal, with the relationship between a priest and his parishioners (which should not be reciprocal in that way).  This leads to the basic truth that "priests need priests" (the theme of Fr. Anthony's now defunct AFR podcast, Good Guys Wear Black).  Enjoy the show!

ST. PAUL'S LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS 6:10-17

Brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

There is much evil in this world.  It causes so much suffering.  We know that something needs to be done.  But how can we confront it?  It has marched through the institutions – and so we find ourselves outnumbered and outgunned.  How are we supposed to win this war?  And then, in today’s epistle reading, we are reminded what is available to us:  the whole armor and weaponry of God.

Those of us who have come to Orthodoxy from outside often feel this most acutely, but we have all seen first-hand how inadequate heterodox theologies are to deal with the hideous strength of the powers of the world.  Becoming Orthodox can feel like getting a whole set of power-ups.  We gird up our loins – our passions – with the self-assurance of the truth and then up-armor with +5 Breastplate of Righteousness, the +5 Shield of Faith, the +5 Helmet of Salvation, and most especially the +5 Vorpal Sword of the Spirit.  Girded with this kit, we are finally ready to wade back into battle so that we can destroy the enemy and all his power and all his pride and all his pomp.

But who is that enemy and who do we actually end up fighting?

We all know that St. Paul begins this reading by reminding us that our true enemies are the demons, but is that how we act?  Do we let the Armor of God protect us from the flaming darts of the evil one so that we can withstand the evil day and bring healing to the victims of the demons’ war against mankind, moving among the fallen and exhausted to bring comfort and healing?  Or do we instead call anyone who has fallen under the sway and influence of the rulers of the present darkness “enemy” and fight them?  Do we see conversations with our alleged human enemies as opportunities for healing and growth or as opportunities for hand-to-hand combat with us playing the part of the Holy Warrior and the other the part of the evil incarnate?

The image of spiritual warfare is a powerful one, and the armor of God is a critical component of it.  But I’m not sure we are mature enough to benefit from this image.  Because the powers of the world have tricked pretty much everyone into framing pretty much everything of any importance in terms of war and violence, we end up fighting on its terms, doing its dirty work even as we us Orthodox words and memes to justify it.  There is great danger here.  Our alleged use of the armor and weapon of God becomes blasphemous when we use them against their true intent. We are so eager to wade into battle using our new kit that we forget that our Commission is to save, not destroy.  They are what allow us to abide in the shelter of the Most High, protected from the terror of the night and every other demonic assault so that we can go about sharing the light with those who live in darkness.

Again, the image of spiritual warfare resonates with us because we live in a world that has bought into the idea of warfare.  Unfortunately, it does not use this image in the way the Church does.  Instead of using it as a metaphor for spiritual struggle, it uses the images and emotions of warfare to provide justifications for self-righteousness, polarization, and the demonization of the other.  It uses it to increase division – the very goal of Satan, the Arch-heretic and Divider.  Real spiritual warfare requires love, but it’s hard for us to be and share love when are mobilized for this kind of war. 

The Armor of God can shield our hearts and protect its love against the pestilence that walks in darkness and the destruction that wastes at noonday, but what is there to protect when we have given our hearts over to hating and destroying the children of God?

And so I want to offer another image for this work we are called to do.  Today in this Archdiocese we celebrate our musicians.  So I am going to share St. Paul’s message in a musical key:

Put on the whole harmony of God.   

There is a lot of discord out in the world, and people suffer from it.  We see the damage and it breaks our hearts.  We abhor the noise and want something better for us, for our children, for everyone and everything.  God is the source of beauty and he has called us to share that beauty in a way that brings the crooked ways of discord into resolution.

Do we do this by just wading into the noise and playing louder?  Do you see how that would just add to the discord?  Moreover, do you see how it makes people less open to experiencing the beauty of the Gospel music?  How the negative emotions this approach creates make people unwilling to take us and our message seriously? 

It is also doubtful that someone who approaches the work of harmony in this way could even hold onto the idea and reality of beauty.  You can’t transform noise by making more of it, and trying to do so is more likely to make us deaf to both the harmony of the spheres and – here’s a new idea - any potential resonances in the music others are playing. 

You see, it isn’t “the world” that makes this noise, it’s people.  And because God made the structure of sound “good” and the people who use that sound “very good”, it is not possible to make music that is purely bad, music that is nothing but noise.  If we listen closely, we can find parts of it that – despite sin and heresy – we can hear as good and useful.  And if we have truly put on the harmony of God, we can grab onto those bits of logi and move with them in grace towards glory. 

Here I have in mind not the Christian who wanders into the middle of a bacchanalian mass-caucaphony of clanging symbols and off-key wailing. While the whole harmony of God will keep us sane in the midst of such things, I have in mind conversations with people whose idea of beauty and music have been informed by an exposure to a lifetime of siren songs, battle hymns, and riotous concerts. Look for the good that still remains in their music and harmonize with it. Gently find the wounds their song reveals and provide comfort.  The mere act of conversing with genuine attention and love allows space for grace, even if the words that the other is speaking are utter nonsense.  [to quote our funeral service] In such a moment, it is the connection -not the words - that is True and that can provide the opportunity to transform the funeral dirge of their demon-tainted or demon-inspired confusion into the hymn, “alleluia.”  This kind of duet is what makes the deserts bloom and the crooked straight, it is the way of bringing God’s beauty to bear on the ugliness of blight and make it bloom.  And this change can happen if we put on the whole harmony of God.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about this kind of transformation, but this message of resolving dissonance into glory isn’t just from the Silmarillion, it’s from the Gospel.

In order to do participate in this great work, we need to have immersed ourselves in worship, prayer, and charitable work; we must have submitted ourselves so completely to God’s will that His Love has transformed us into love and His Beauty has transformed us into beauty. 

It is then that we see within everything, even within the polemical battle hymns of our opponents, notes or themes that can be accented, valued, and moved through harmonic progressions towards and into the melody of the Gospel.

St. Paul did this with the unknown God at the Aeropagaus.  He was in the midst of a place dedicated to the worship of fallen gods.  Such a place is full of discordant tunes and distorted lyrics.  But in the midst of it, he found a note that he could focus on and use to evangelize.  St. Justin did the same with pagan mythologies. 

Do we have enough love, enough true harmony in us, to hear bits of beauty in the music of our enemies?  To see a desire for something good within their hearts?  If we can’t, we aren’t trying hard enough.  Its nobility, its virtue, may be misplaced, but that’s just the establishment of a relationship and the subsequent development of conversations – that is to say, it is just a sustained duet - away from being transformed from dissonance into beauty.  If St. Paul can do it with a demonic pantheon, we can do it with political ideologies, propaganda, and heterodox religions.

Yes, we can use the words of the Fathers to justify hatred and self-righteousness and win rhetorical battles.  Yes, we can play good music really loud in hopes of drowning out the bad – but neither solves the problems of the world’s pain. Quite the opposite.  That’s because neither approach is really Orthodox, even if the words we use and the music we play come straight from components of Orthodox Tradition.

However, when we love so much that we are able to see the good in others and nurture it using the good that God has grown within us, the world becomes a better place.

That’s the Harmony of God and it brings the melody of our salvation.

Father Speak a Word - Training the Youth

Today Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Gregory about his latest substack article; "When Adults Fail to Mentor Youth: A Lifetime of Failure for Graduation."  In the spirit of St. Paul, they spend most of the conversation talking about the natural endurance of the family and comparing it with the generational decline in commitment to parish life and rituals.  They also spend time talking about parenting and priesthood leadership styles.  Enjoy the show! 

Nativity Bible Study

The first Lord I Call verse from the Vespers of Nativity:

Come, let us greatly rejoice in the Lord, as we sing of this present mystery.
The wall which divided God from man has been destroyed. The flaming sword withdraws from Eden's gate;
The cherubim withdraw from the Tree of Life,
and I, who had been cast out through my disobedience, now feast on the delights of paradise:
For today the father's perfect image, marked with the stamp of His eternity, has taken the form of a servant.
Without undergoing change He is born from an unwedded mother; He was true God, and He remains the same,
but through His love for mankind,
He has become what He never was: true man! Come, O faithful, let us cry to Him:
O God, born of a virgin, have mercy on us!

The most concentrated alternation of scripture and hymnographic commentary occurs during the Royal Hours.

First Hour
Psalms: Psalm 5 (a morning psalm in its usual place), Psalm 44 (Messianic Psalm about the wedding; Hebrews 1:8 confirms; also used in vesting prayers and Proskomedia), Psalm 45 (Be still and know; God is with us). 
Prokimen:  Psalm 2: 7,8). The Lord said unto Me: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance.
Readings:  Micah 5:2–4 (Prophecy of Bethlehem), Hebrews:1:1-13 (St. Paul interprets the OT and explains the divinity of XC). St. Matthew 1:18-25 (Narrative: birth).
A Hymn:  Prepare, O Bethlehem, and let the manger make ready and the cave receive; for truth hath come, and shadow hath passed. And God hath appeared to mankind from the Virgin, taking our likeness and deifying our nature. Wherefore, Adam and Eve are made new, crying, Goodwill hath appeared on earth to save our race.
Third Hour
Psalms: Psalm 66 (a song of the Resurrection), Psalm 86 (A prophecy on the meaning of the Nativity and the uniting of the nations in the Church), Psalm 50 (usual Psalm).
Prokimen:  Isaiah 9:6. For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulder 
Readings: Baruch 3:35-4:4 (Wisdom appeared on earth and lived among mankind). Galatians 3:23-29 (we are one in Christ).  St. Luke 2:1-20 (narrative: shepherds).
A Hymn: Tell us, O Joseph, how it is that thou dost bring the Virgin whom thou didst receive from the holy places to Bethlehem great with child? And he replieth, saying, I have searched the Prophets, and it was revealed to me by the angel. Therefore, I am convinced that Mary shall give birth in an inexplicable manner to God, whom Magi from the east shall come to worship and to serve with precious gifts. Wherefore, O Thou who wast incarnate for our sakes, glory to Thee.
Sixth Hour
Psalms: Psalm 71 (prophesy of the Messiah; includes Magi/Kings), Psalm 131 (Messianic; also points to nations), Psalm 90 (usual Psalm).
Prokimen: Psalm 109:4,1. From the womb before the morning star I bore Thee. Said the Lord to my Lord: Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.  
Readings.  Isaiah 7:10-16; 8:1-4, 9-10 (Virgin birth; God is with us!).  Hebrews 1:10-2:3 (Christ is greater than the angels). St. Matthew 2:1-12 (Narrative: wise men)
A Hymn:  Listen, O heaven, and give ear, O earth. Let the foundations shake, and let trembling fall on all below the earth; for God hath dwelt in a creation of flesh; and He Who made creation with a precious hand is seen in the womb of a created one. O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out.
Ninth Hour
Psalms: Psalm 109 (Messianic; see above), Psalm 110 (a hymn of joyous praise), Psalm 85 (usual Psalm)
Prokimen:  Psalm 86:4-5.  And of the mother Zion, it shall be said, this and that man is born in her and the Highest Himself hath founded her. His foundations are in the holy mountains.
Readings:  Isaiah 9:6-7 (for unto us a child is born!), Hebrews 2:11-18 (Christ became a man), St. Matthew 2:13-23 (go to Egypt!)
A Hymn.  Verily, Herod was overtaken by astonishment when he saw the piety of the Magi. And having been overridden with wrath, he began to inquire of them about the time. He robbed the mothers of their children and ruthlessly reaped the tender bodies of the babes. And the breasts dried up, and the springs of milk failed. Great then was the calamity. Wherefore, being gathered, O believers, in true worship, let us adore the Nativity of Christ.

But wait there is more!

Jewish Expectations/Prophecies of the Messiah

The Messiah would be the “seed of a woman” come to destroy the work of the Devil. Not long after Creation, God prophesied to the serpent Satan, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). The implication was that Eve’s descendant would undo the damage that Satan had caused.  Huge impact on the Jewish mind and imagination. (1 John 3:8). (Also see: Hebrews 2:14; Revelation 20:10.)

A prophet like unto Moses. This was prophesied by Moses, himself:

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me: ‘What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him’.” (Deuteronomy 18:15-19, NKJV).

Like Moses, the Messiah would be a leader, a prophet, a lawgiver, a deliverer, a teacher, a priest, an anointed one, a mediator, a human and one of God’s chosen people (a Jew) performing the role of intermediary between God and man—speaking the words of God. Both Moses and Jesus performed many miracles validating their message. As infants, both their lives were threatened by evil kings, and both were supernaturally protected from harm. Both spent their early years in Egypt. Both taught new truths from God. Both cured lepers (Num 12:10-15; Matt. 8:2-3) and confronted demonic powers. Both were initially doubted in their roles by their siblings. Moses lifted up the brazen serpent to heal all his people who had faith; Jesus was lifted up on the cross to heal all who would have faith in Him. Moses appointed 70 elders to rule Israel (Num. 11:16-17); Jesus appointed 70 disciples to teach the nations (Luke 10:1, 17). And there are many other parallels between the lives of Moses and Jesus.

The Messiah would be a descendant of Noah’s son, Shem. Noah said, “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant (Gen. 9:26-27). Chapter 10 goes on list descendants of Shem, noting that he was ancestor of Eber (Heber: Luke 3:35), the founder of the Hebrew race.  Noah associated Shem especially with the worship of God, recognizing the dominantly spiritual motivations of Shem and thus implying that God’s promised Deliverer would ultimately come from Shem. The Semitic nations have included the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Persians, Syrians and other strongly religious-minded peoples.

More specifically, he would come from a descendant of Shem named Abraham ( Genesis 22:18; 12; 17; 22). Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1.

More specifically, he would be a descendant of Abraham’s son, Isaac, not Ishmael (Gen. 17; 21). Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1.
More specifically, he would be a descendant of Isaac’s son, Jacob, not Esau (Gen. 28; 35:10-12; Num. 24:17). Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1.

More specifically, he would be a descendant of Judah, not of the other eleven brothers of Jacob. Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1.

More specifically, he would be a descendant of the family of Jesse in the tribe of Judah (Isaiah 11:1-5). Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1 and Luke 3:23-38.

More specifically, he would be of the house of David (2 Samuel 7:12-16; Jeremiah 23:5; Psalm 89:3-4). Fulfilled: See Christ’s genealogy in Matthew 1; Luke 1:27, 32, 69. Note: Since the Jewish genealogical records were destroyed in 70 A.D., along with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, it would not be possible for a Messiah imposter who was born later to prove his lineage back to David and thus fulfill this prophecy.

He will be born in a small city called Bethlehem, specifically the one formerly known as Ephratah (Micah 5:2 – 1H). Fulfilled: Luke 2:4-20. Note: Christ’s birth in Bethlehem was apparently not by the choice of Mary and Joseph; it was forced upon them by Caesar Augustus’ taxation decree which required Joseph to leave his home in the city of Nazareth and return to his place of origin to pay the tax.

He will be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14- 6H). Fulfilled: Matthew 1; Luke 1.

He will be a priest after the order of Melchisedek (Melchisedec) (Psalm 110:4). Fulfilled: Hebrews 5:6

The scepter shall not pass from the tribe of Judah until the Messiah comes. In other words, He will come before Israel loses its right to judge her own people. The patriarch Jacob prophesied this:

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. (Genesis 49:10)

According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the Sanhedrin of Israel lost the right to truly judge its own people when it lost the right to pass death penalties in 11 A.D. (Josephus, Antiquities, Book 17, Chapter 13). Jesus Christ was certainly born before 11 A.D.

He will come while the Temple of Jerusalem is standing ( Malachi 3:1; Psalm 118:26; Daniel 9:26; Zechariah 11:13; Haggai 2:7-9). Fulfilled: Matthew 21:12, etc. (Note: The Temple did not exist at certain periods in Jewish history, and it was finally destroyed in 70 A.D.)

A worldly ruler.  Since the fall of the Davidic kingly dynasty, the expectation was that the Messiah would restore that dynasty so that he would rule as the human “son of God”. (Isaiah 9:6-7 – 9H)

He will be divine; the Son of Man. (Daniel 7:13; Isaiah 7:14- C)

He would be the revelation of God; God with us. (Baruch 4:4 – 3H; Isaiah 8:9)

Ephesians 5: 8 – 19

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says: “ Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

An Exposition on Today’s Epistle Lesson
We have chosen the light over the darkness – therefore we have to walk as children of the light; as St. Paul puts it, “finding out what is acceptable to the Lord”
What is acceptable to the Lord?  God does not hide this from us; nor do we have to search for it.  He reminds us every single day…  through the rituals He has prescribed for us through the Church.
The Psalm we recite in our morning prayers says that it is not burnt offerings, but rather a “broken and contrite heart” that God does not despise. Surely this is primal.  I say this not only because of the prominent place this Psalm has in our morning prayer, but the way this theme is reinforced by all the penitential prayers that accompany it.
Continual repentance is acceptable to the Lord – to use the imagery of today’s epistle, we must “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them”: repentance requires opening up all the hidden closets – all the secret dark places – to the Light of Christ. And as this Light exposes the things that lurk in these places, we pull them out and offer them to the Lord in confession by name.
As we do this, as we find, expose, and sacrifice all the dark secrets, sins, habits, and histories that have blighted our souls; we walk more surely as “children of the light”, enjoying the blessings and joy that God has promised to those who follow Him.
God reminds us of this every day not just to tell us how important it is, but also because He knows how hard it is for us.  Yes, it is hard for us to change bad habits and patterns of thought, but often it is hard for us to even recognize that we have a problem.  The Light of Christ is pure and illuminates all of our sins, but our vision is still clouded.  God is working with our faith to heal our vision, as in today’s Gospel, but in the meantime there are things in our lives that we just don’t see – or perhaps see but do not think are important.
This brings us to a difficult but vital part of today’s reading: we don’t just expose the darkness in our own lives, but the darkness in the lives of those with whom we share love and trust and are thus able to hear us.  As St. John Chrysostom puts it;
You call God, “Father”, and those whom you love “brother;” but then when you see your beloved committing unnumbered wickednesses, you care more about his feelings and what he thinks about you than what is good for him?  I beg you, don’t think this way.  The stronger the bond, the more we are obliged to speak about sin.
Are those you love at enmity with one another? Reconcile them. Did you see them being jealous or coveting? Call them on it. Did you see them wronged? Stand up in their defense. This is why the bonds of love and friendship exist: so that we may be of use one to another. A man will listen in a different spirit to a friend than to someone he doesn’t know. He may regard a stranger or someone he isn’t close to with suspicion; he may not even trust a teacher; but a friend?  A friend he may trust..
Today’s reading stops just short of making this even clearer when St. Paul writes; “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”  The relationship of mutual submission provides the mechanism of discernment and accountability.  The people who love us can help us see things that we need to work on and will share this information in a way that we can hear; without manipulation or aggression.  After the line on mutual submission, St. Paul provides marriage as the ideal setting for such a relationship and then points to marriage as a type, with the Church as its prototype.  
We need each other, but only to the extent we are willing to love and be loved.  Within such a relationship, figuring out what is acceptable to God is a natural part of the relationship.
In conclusion, God made the world good and made us to thrive in it. This can only happen if we dedicate ourselves to this cause – and do so with purpose and resolve. Practically, this means avoiding taking pleasure in those things that God despises: deceit, hatred, darkness, etc. and reveling in those things that He has given us for our enjoyment and edification (community, light, joy, selfless service, charity, pursuit of truth, dedication to honest craft and creation).
And listen to these words St. Paul finishes with today as he describes what the conversations look like between people who are in love with the light and despise the darkness; we speak “to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” 
Let all of our thoughts, all of our conversations, and all of our actions become hymns expressing our joy of being in and growing in the Love of Our Lord together.

Father Speak a Work - Ministry, Harmony, Resilience

Fr. Gregory Jensen, Ph.D., and Fr. Anthony talk about how important it is for priests to have balanced lives.  This means more than scheduling "self-care;" it means adjusting our activities and approaches so that a graceful harmony is maintained between our capabilities and resources and the needs of those whom we serve.  We should be at our best when we lead worship, preach, teach, and work with others.  This requires that we build adequate time in our schedules for surges (Fr. Gregory suggests 15 hours of unscheduled time for a 40-hour work week), recovery and recreation.  Enjoy the show!

[We're still having audio issues - the mic cut off half-way through.  I re-read the second half but you'll notice the change.  Thank you for your patience as we continue to work on this.]

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.  Ephesians 4:1-6

St. Paul was a great theologian.  He had trained the lowest part of his mind (instincts, gut) through his ascetic submission to the Law and working through the constant temptation of the “thorn in the flesh”; he had trained his intellect by training under great teachers before and after his conversion; and he had trained his nous or heart through direct and awesome encounters with God.

Most importantly, St. Paul was a pastor.  He lived according to the same standard that he taught: that all things be done so that some might be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. 

As St. John Chrysostom describes it;

It is the virtue of teachers not to try to win the praise or respect of those under their authority, but to do everything with the single objective of their salvation.  This is what makes them teachers rather than tyrants.  After all, God does not give them authority so that they could enjoy rewards for themselves, but so that they might disregard their own interests in order to build up the flock.  This is a teacher’s duty.  Such a one was the blessed Paul, a man who was free from all manner of vanity, and was contented to be not just as those whom he taught, but even as the very least even of them. It is for this reason that he even calls himself their servant, and so generally speaks in a tone of supplication. Observe how he writes nothing dictatorial, nothing imperious, but everything as one chastened and subdued.

Today we hear the first of such words that he was directing to his flock in Ephesus, a coastal town in what is now western Turkey, across the Aegean Sea from Greece. These words were directed to the Christians at Ephesus almost two thousand years ago, but they could just as easily have been written for us here in the Upstate.

St. Paul begins by describing himself, saying,

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord.”

St. John Chrysostom composed what most have been an entire hour-long homily on just this line. It is well worth reading, and I recommend it to you. The thing that I would like to bring out of it today is that he was reminding his readers that St. Paul had what is sometimes called “skin in the game.” He was not just someone who was giving the people he served good advice, he was someone who considered what he was telling them so important that he was willing to suffer for saying and living it. St. Paul was brilliant. He could have had a career doing anything involving knowledge or leadership, but he chose and stuck with being an evangelist even though it took him to prison and martyrdom.

Psychology shows that we take people more seriously when they have skin in the game. When leaders don’t have skin in the game, they come off as hypocrites and, even if their intentions are good, untrustworthy.

As St. John points out, St. Paul had skin in the game. We can trust him. He is not a hypocrite. He is worthy of our attention.

St. Paul goes on to say;

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,”

What is this calling to which we have been called? To tithe? To come to church? To give to the poor? To be nice to one another? These are all worth doing, but they are not our calling. As St. Paul writes in the very next chapter, our calling is much greater than these; we are called to be members of god’s holy council (Ephesians 2:22) and to reign with Him on high (Ephesians 2:6)! Could there be any higher a calling? No.

In this, we are raised up to live and serve with the very angels and all the hosts of heaven.

Knowing the magnitude of the calling, how can we walk worthily? By putting on airs? By acting as though we were deserving of so great an honor? By lording it over one another? Surely this is our temptation. Experiments have shown how power goes to people’s heads and changes them into monsters. Is this how we can walk worthily? No! St. Paul knew this temptation and he had mastered it in his own life. He saw it threatening his flock, so he shared the secret of “walking worthily”, juxtaposing it with both the honor we have been promised and the great temptation it brings.

How can this be done?  How can we avoid the temptation that brought even the greatest of all the created host of heaven – Lucifer to ruin? 

Answering this, St. Paul continues;

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness”

How can we be lowly when we have been raised up so high? Because we know that we are not worthy of it. We appreciate the difference between what we have earned and what we have been given. We recognize that we have been bought with a price, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Lowliness and gratitude work within our hearts to make us worthy through humility.

It is this that then leads us towards the next way that we walk worthily;

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness,”

Gentleness. How often are we gentle with one another? Is it a habit of our hearts, or is it something that we only do when we are in the mood for it and when others behave in a way that is worthy of our kindness?

I think we know the answer, and we should be heartbroken, repent, and walk this better way.

If we can gain enough humility to see and be grateful for all that God has done for us despite our sin, then the next step on this walk is to imitate His beneficence in our relations with others, no matter how much hellfire their wicked actions and evil hearts have earned from us [sic].

After all, you and I deserve the hellfire. We are certainly not worthy of God’s gentleness … and yet He is gentle and kind. Kind enough to do everything within His power to protect us from hell and all its torment.

But what about us?  Is this how we treat others?  Or do we instead create our own sort of hellfire and vengeance to inflict on those who dare to cross us? Again, is this how we walk worthily? Is this how we show that we truly belong in God’s grace and in His heavenly kingdom? Where is the love?  Where is the virtue? 

Do I even need to point out that the offenses others commit against us pale in comparison to those we inflict on God?  And that their offenses are inflated through the distorting lens of our own pride, if not created altogether out of whole cloth?  We must do better; we count the slights of others to justifications for vengeance. 

Rather we must do as St. Paul says, calling us to walk;

… with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,”

St. Paul tells us to put up with one another. Again, we are showing we belong with the Lord by imitating Him. He suffered persecution, the horrible passion, and death on the cross for us.

We walk worthily as God the Son’s brothers and sisters and as God the Father’s sons and daughters when we suffer for one another. And most often this suffering takes the form not of physical pain, but by offering patience and kindness when our instincts tell us someone deserves a rebuke.

We walk worthily when we are willing to suffer in silence when others seem – or may even be - worthy of actual suffering.

Do you see how this works? Do you see how much it goes against our fallen instincts?

But this really is the way of the Christian – it is our high calling.

And we should suffer “longly” not in weakness, but in strength. The Lord could have obliterated the Romans and Jews that attacked Him, but for their salvation, He held His power in check… knowing that the best use of His power was to willingly endure sacrifice so that they could be saved. He knew that the greatest victory did not come with winning the immediate battle with His oppressors, but by winning the war against all oppression through His lowliness, His gentleness, His longsufferingness, and His love.

We can and must do the same.

All these things require incredible strength. They require incredible courage.

But if we do them, they bring the reward of the places in the kingdom of heaven that God has set aside for all his saints and; to circle back – the reward of good teachers -  that of drawing others towards the same.

Father Speak a Work - Confession and the Holistic Art of Healing

In today's conversation on the priesthood, Fr. Gregory Jensen, Ph.D. talks with Fr. Anthony about why we can't get to holiness by maximizing our resistance to certain sins and why an approach based on virtue is bound to be more effective.  He also reminds us that it is best to think of confession as a process, with the confessor meeting the penitent where he/she is and helping (en-couraging!) them to grow from there.  Enjoy the show!  

Today's Bible Study on Genesis 13 and 14 covers Abram and Lot moving apart, the War of the Nine Kings, and the mysterious encounter with Melchizedek.  While Fr. Anthony relies primarily on St. John Chrysostom, he also draws from Fr. Patrick Reardon, St. Ambrose (numerology!), and academic research (via the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Old Testemant).  Enjoy the show!

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Abraham II
Fr. Anthony Perkins

Chapter 13.  Abram solves a problem and keeps everyone safe; the Lord makes a promise.

From Fr. Patrick Reardon

When Abram left Egypt, he and his family were very wealthy, because of Pharaoh’s generosity to someone he was trying to gain as a brother-in-law. Now Abram and Lot find that the sheer size of their flocks requires them to live apart (vv. 1–7). The story of their separation (vv. 8–13) demonstrates Abram’s humility in giving his younger relative the choice of the land (v. 9), while he himself takes what is left. This humble action of Abram illustrates the meaning of the Lord’s saying that the meek shall inherit the earth. Abraham’s descendants, not Lot’s, will inherit all this land. In this story we discern the non-assertive quality of Abram’s faith. He is not only meek; he is also a peacemaker. Meekness and peacemaking are qualities of the man of faith.

Lot serves in this story as a kind of foil to Abram. The meek and peaceful Abram takes what is left, whereas Lot, obviously having failed to do a proper survey of the neighborhood, chooses to live in Sodom. This was to prove one of the worst real estate choices in history.

The present chapter closes with God’s solemn asseveration to Abram, promising him the land and the “seed” (vv. 14–18). Unfortunately the rich ambivalence of this latter noun (zera‘ in Hebrew, sperma in Greek, semen in Latin) is lost in more recent translations that substitute the politically correct but entirely prosaic “descendants” for “seed” (vv. 15–16).

Besides Sodom, two other important Canaanite cities are introduced in this chapter, Bethel (still called Luz at this period—cf. 28:19) and Hebron. Both of these cities will be extremely important in subsequent biblical history, and Abram is credited with making each of them a place of worship (vv. 4, 18).

Patrick Henry Reardon, Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2008), 70–71.

St. John Chrysostom on the trip from Egypt.

(5) Do you see the extent of God’s providence? Abram left to find relief from famine, and came back not simply enjoying relief from famine but invested with great wealth and untold reputation, his identity well-known to everyone: now the inhabitants of Canaan gained a more precise idea of the good man’s virtue by seeing this sudden transformation that had taken place—the stranger who had gone down into Egypt as a refugee and vagabond now flush with so much wealth. Notice how he had not become less resolute or devoted under the influence of great prosperity or the abundance of wealth, but rather he pressed on once more to that place where he had formerly been before going down into Egypt. “He went into the desert,” the text says, “to the place where his tent had formerly been, to the place of the altar which he had made there in the beginning. He called on the name of the Lord God.”

St. John Chrysostom on Abram’s gift to Lot.

(15) “Abram stayed in the land of Canaan,” the text goes on, “whereas Lot settled in the cities of the region, pitching his tent in Sodom. Now, the people of Sodom were very wicked sinners in God’s sight.” Do you observe Lot having regard only for the nature of the land and not considering the wickedness of the inhabitants? What good, after all, is fertility of land and abundance of produce when the inhabitants are evil in their ways? On the other hand, what harm could come from solitude and a simple lifestyle when the inhabitants are more restrained? …
Lest we prolong the sermon to great length, however, let us terminate it at this point and postpone the sequel to next time while giving you this exhortation, to imitate the patriarch by never aspiring after the first places but rather heeding blessed Paul’s words, “outdoing one another in respect,” especially our superiors, and being anxious to take second place in everything. This, in fact, means filling first place, as Christ himself said, “ ‘Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’ ” So what could parallel this, when by ceding pride of place to others we ourselves enjoy greater esteem, and by showing them special honor we bring ourselves into the highest honor? …
This is enough talking, however, to encourage you and to show you that by giving alms, meager though they be, we receive great rewards from the Lord. By this stage, you see, the sermon has gone to an exhortation in almsgiving because, as you recall, we told you that the patriarch ceded part of the country to Lot, letting him have the most beautiful area in the region while taking the worst land for himself, and so he was accorded such generosity from God that the promise made him by God surpassed all thought and imagination.

St. Ambrose goes deeper.

“He was very rich,” as is natural for one who was not lacking in any good thing, who did not covet the goods of others, because he lacked nothing of what he would have wished to regard as his own. For this is what it means to be rich: to have what is sufficient to satisfy one’s own desires. Frugality has a measure. Richness does not. Its measure is in the will of the seeker. He was rich in cattle, in silver and gold. What does this mean? I do not think that the intention is to praise the riches of this world but the righteousness of this man. Thus I understand cattle to be the bodily senses, because they are irrational. Silver represents the word and gold the mind. Abraham was indeed rich, because he was in control of his irrational senses. Indeed, he tamed them and made them docile, so that they might participate in rationality. His word was radiant with the brightness of faith, purified by the grace of spiritual discipline. His mind was full of prudence. And this is why the good mind is compared with gold, because just as gold is more precious than other metals, so the good mind is the best part among those that make up the human substance. So the richness of the wise man consists in these three things: in sensation, in word and in mind. Their order establishes a gradation, as we read also in the apostle: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”4 The mind too, then, is the greatest, because it is the mind that grinds the spiritual grain to purify the senses and the word. The character of the wise man is preserved at every point.

So it is that through the simple facts of Abraham’s life great doctrines are expounded and illustrated. Rich indeed is the one who enriches even the arguments of the philosophers, who would formulate their precepts on the basis of his conduct. It was his riches, then, that Scripture had brought to light.

Chapter 14.  War and a Mysterious Priest

Background.  Chederloamer controlled the area north and east of Canaan., ruling over at many kings/kingdoms.  Five rulers in the south, including the kings of both Sodom and Gomorrah went into rebellion against him.  Chederloamer won and took possessions, food, and slaves, including Lot (whom they may have targeted).  Note from the Divine Council worldview: there were giants on both sides.  Jewish commentators even put Nimrod (as a loyal king) and Og (losing side – messenger to Abraham), but this is pure speculation (but the names of the tribes are associated with the Nephalim).

Abram, now looking like a warlord, takes mean and “smote them.”  The king of Sodom comes out of hiding and asks for his stuff.  Again showing his meekness, Abram keeps very little, except some for the allies who came with him.

St. John Chrysostom, On the battles;

Consider in this case, I ask you, dearly beloved, the greatness of heart exemplified in the just man’s virtue. Trusting in the power of God, he was not cowed by the force of the enemy when he learned of the rout they had caused, first by falling upon all the tribes and prevailing against the Amalekites and all the others, and then by engaging the Sodomites, putting them to flight and seizing all their property (?). The reason, you see, why sacred Scripture described all this to us ahead of time, as well as all they achieved through their bravery, was that you might learn that the patriarch prevailed against them not by physical strength but through faith in God. [He] achieved all this under the protection of help from on high, not by wielding weapons and arrows and spears or by drawing bows or raising shields but with a few retainers of his own household.

Note that St. Ambrose shows that the number 318 is the number of Chist’s crusifiction (T IH in Greek).

Now for the REAL FUN: Melchizedek (14:18-20)

Most important: type of Christ and the Eucharist.

The Christian interpretation of the story of Melchizedek begins with Hebrews 7, where Melchizedek is interpreted with the help of Psalm 109(110):4 as a figure of Christ the true high priest.

Psalm 109:1-4.
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send forth the rod of Thy power from Zion, and rule in the midst of Thine enemies.  With Thee is the beginning in the day of Thy power, in the brightness of Your holyones. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 7:1-3,15-17, 24-26 (quoted in Fr. Patrick Reardon).
“For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, … first being translated ‘king of righteousness,’ and then also king of Salem, meaning ‘king of peace,’ without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.… And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest who has come … according to the power of an endless life. For He testifies: ‘You are a priest forever / According to the order of Melchizedek.’ … But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens” (vv. 1–3, 15–17, 24–26).

Abraham’s encounter with the king of Sodom reveals God’s providence (CHRYSOSTOM). The offering of bread and wine, not mentioned by the author of Hebrews, is seen to increase the resemblance between Melchizedek and Christ (CYPRIAN). Melchizedek is also identified with Shem, the son of Noah, who had received the priesthood from his father (EPHREM). Melchizedek resembles Christ in that he had no family history (CHRYSOSTOM). With Melchi-zedek there first appeared the sacrifice now offered by Christians (AUGUSTINE). The fact that Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek shows that he was humble even in victory (AMBROSE).

Mark Sheridan, ed., Genesis 12–50, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 25.

And from the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible;
The very special interpretation of Gen 14 and Ps 110 presented [in Hebrews] cannot be understood without taking into account contemporaneous Melchizedek interpretations in Jewish sources, viz. (a) Josephus, (b) Philo, and (c) Qumran. Together with (d) Hebrews they present a very composite picture of Melchizedek."

According to Josephus, Melchizedek was the first one to build the temple and to act as priest of →God. In Ant. I 179–181 the story of Gen 14:18–20 is told with some minor embellishments. The name of Melchizedek is mentioned and again translated as ‘righteous king’. Josephus adds that by common consent this was what he was and that for that reason Melchizedek was made priest of God. In both places Melchizedek is described as king and priest.

In Philo’s perspective Melchizedek as a king and priest does not cease to be an historical person but at the same time serves as the embodiment of the divine orthos logos and transcends history.

In the Melchizedek text from Qumran cave 4, Melchizedek serves as the deliverer prophesied in Isaiah and Psalm 82 and a divine being assisted by the host of heaven.

J. Reiling, “Melchizedek,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 561.

Ephesians 2:14-22.  Fr. Anthony gives his brain a much needed break by reading the homily.  It's on his favorite theme - harmonious and joyful unity in Christ.  Enjoy the show! 

Homily – On Unity (Ephesians 2: 14-22)

The Reading from the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Ephesians. [2:14-22]: Christ is our peace, Who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, * by abolishing in His Flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, * and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. * And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; * for through Him we both have access in One Spirit to the Father. * So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, * built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, * in Whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; * in Whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

The mystery of unity.

Unity is one of the primary mysteries of the world. We yearn for it – the desire to be understood, to be recognized, to be loved, to be valued, to be needed – these are all dim reminders that we are called to a deep and enduring fellowship; a fellowship that nurtures us and allows us to nurture others so that we all grow towards God and perfection together.

This reality of unity is proclaimed throughout scripture (most powerfully in Christ’s High Priestly Prayer found in the Gospel according to St. John, chapter 17). It flows and emanates from the pre-existing foundational reality of the Trinity: three Persons united into one God. Today I want you to note how many times we refer to and pray this reality our liturgy – it permeates our prayers, empowers our Sacraments, and informs every aspect of our faith.

It is this unity that St. Paul is professing in today’s epistle reading. The specific case he is referring to is the unity of Jews and Gentiles, but this is a subset of a more generalized phenomenon. And it is this phenomenon that I want to address today.

If it (unity) really is the answer to so many of our deepest psychological and spiritual needs - to be understood, recognized, loved, needed, valued – needs that have thus far been poorly addressed and misdiagnosed, how is it to be achieved? How can we have the peace that St. Paul promises? The joy that God desires for us?  Three points.

1. Must be recreated.

Listen to St. John Chrysostom as he makes this point;

Observe thou, that it is not that the Gentile is become a Jew, but that both the one and the other are entered into another condition. It was not with a view of merely making this last other than he was, but rather, in order to create the two anew. And well does he on all occasions employ the word “create,” and does not say “change,” in order to point out the power of what was done, and that even though this creation is invisible, yet it is a real creation, and this must be our starting point….  (St. John Chrysostom, Homily V on Ephesians)

The goal is not to make all Americans into Syrians or Syrians into Greeks or Europeans into Africans or Asians into Persians: the point is to make all into something new and greater; a new man, a new woman, and new mankind. To create a new body, a new mind, a new soul. There is a name for this new man, this new Adam – we call him a Christian; and there is a name for the union of such new persons – we call it the Church.

2. Must go through the Cross. 

St. Paul makes it clear in today’s reading that the way to achieve reconciliation and peace is through the Cross. The Cross destroys the old man, the one that is selfish and small, the one who filters even the best concepts, such as love and charity, through the filter of his own ego. There can be no real union with someone who is only interested in what they get from the other person; who only wants to be a friend to puff themselves up; who only wants to be a lover in order to satisfy himself. This filter of egoism is deeply rooted – the science of psychology demonstrates how our pride affects (and contaminates) everything we do. The problem is that even actions that look good are counter-productive for purposes of true union if they are not done with the proper spirit. Politeness and pretty words may be enough to satisfy the needs of civility and cooperation, but not to achieve the kind of peace that we were made for – and for which we so deeply long. The only way to deal with this deep-rooted weed of pride is to pull it up and destroy it. The only way to fix this old man is to hang him on the cross. It will be painful, but the new man that is resurrected will be capable of so many beautiful things; things that the old man cannot even dream of. He will gain true meaning and lasting happiness.

At least, he will gain these things until that weed comes back and the old man rears his ugly head once again. Our first death and recreation take place at baptism – all the others take place at confession (the baptisms of tears) This dynamic of unity and crucifixion is a continual one – until the time when the fruit of the resurrection is enjoyed in its fullness.

3. All members of the union must do it

If not? Dysfunction. Lies. Despondency. We know this because we have seen dysfunctional relationships. We have seen the heartbreak it causes when both members of a marriage are not “all in”. We have seen how one spouse will enable the other spouse’s egoism in an attempt to make their union last; but unless there is change, unless both partners sacrifice themselves for their love, then this is a false union.  This is why the courting process is so important – and why it really should involve both time and the advice of wise and loving friends and family. We have seen how unequal yoking can destroy people and the institution of marriage itself – this is bad enough. But [as St. Paul points out] marriage is an icon of something even greater: the Church. And the damage done when all its members – and especially its leaders – are not “all in” is even greater.

Conclusion: falling in love – and staying there 

I fear that I have taken something beautiful and turned it into a bit of a bogeyman. Speaking about crosses can give the wrong idea. It’s not all about pain. It’s about connection. Not just the connection that comes from falling in love (which is fun), but the harmony that comes from staying there.  There is nothing more enjoyable because it is what we were made for. Christ has destroyed the wall of division.  Through Him we can harmony and holiness through fellowship.

So fall in love with Christ; give your heart to Him. Only through Him is such a blessed union possible. It is through Him that we are remade, free from the division and divisiveness of sin.  He was incarnate, suffered and died, and was resurrected for this very purpose. So open your heart to him and give him all your love, all your trust; your mind, your body, and your soul – and then learn to love your neighbor as yourself.  He will grant you peace in Him and with His saints. 

This is the joyful unity we are called to, and it is why we are here. Unity through Christ is the purpose of this parish and the reason for our membership in it.

Father Speak a Work - Preaching as a Job Interview for Confession

St. John of the Ladder writes "we ought first to question and examine, and even, so to speak, test our helmsman, so as not to mistake the sailor for the pilot, a sick man for a doctor, a passionate for a dispassionate man, the sea for a harbor, and so bring about the speedy shipwreck of our soul."  While he was writing for monastics, it is also important that non-monastic believers use discernment when selecting a spiritual father.  In this episode, Fr. Anthony talks with Fr. Gregory about this, starting with the idea that the way the priest preaches and interacts with people during coffee hour serves as a sort of job interview for selection as confessor.  Fr. Gregory is an ideal interlocutor on this, not just because he has a Ph.D. in Personality Theory and Religion, but because he has faced significant challenges during his priestly service and come through them stronger and, glory to God, wiser.  You can read Fr. Gregory's work at his substacks, Father Speak a Word (on the Desert Fathers) and Orthodox Social Thought, from Cruelty to Charity.  You can also follow him on X/Twitter at @frgregoryj.  He is the priest of Sts. Cyril and Methodius mission in Madison WI.  Enjoy the show! 

Genesis 11:22-12:20.  We start with a review of the latter part of Shem's genealogy, go through Abram's movement to Haran, his father's death, his movement to Canaan, and his time in Egypt (!).  The latter included a discussion of Abram and Sarai's deception (half-truth).  We rely primarily on St. John Chrysostom for our understanding.  Enjoy the show!

In today's Introduction to Orthodoxy class, Fr. Anthony follows up on Sdn. Scott's excellent class last week (alas, unrecorded!).  Whereas Sdn. Scott covered the theology and history of confession, Fr. Anthony gave practical advice on how to prepare and how confession is done at Christ the Savior in Anderson SC.  Enjoy the show!

Luke 10:25-37; 2 Corinthians 9:6-11.  "Some days it starts out chicken and ends up duck".  That was definitely the case today.  Fr. Anthony is planning on reading his homilies for a while to give his brain a much-needed break.  Enjoy the show! 

What happens when Fr. Anthony talks about his favorite subjects (the supernatural, the paranormal, the Scriptures, and Theology) without notes?  Well, it's a bit of a meandering mess of well-intentioned talk.  Enjoy the show!