View
0
Download
0
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
Pascha and Bright Week 2013
Keeping the Agape Feast Posted on May 4, 2013 by Fr. Ted
Pascha! The Pascha of the Lord! For all who will
celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, a
blessed Feast! And a reminder from St. Athanasius
the Great (d. 373AD) to keep the Feast spiritually!
“But let us not be like the heathen, for the heathen
thinks the accomplishment of the feast is in the
abundance of food. […] Let us eat the Passover of
the Lord, Who, by ordaining His holy laws, guided us
towards virtue, and counseled the abstinence of this
feast. For the Passover is
indeed abstinence from evil for exercise of virtue,
and a departure from death unto life. We fast
meditating on death, that we may be able to live; and we watch, not as mourners, but as they that wait
for the Lord, so that we may contend with each other in the triumph, hastening to announce the sign of
victory over death.” (Selected Easter Letters , OLOGOS PUBLICATION, pg. 11)
Pascha 2013 Posted on May 5, 2013 by Fr. Ted
My Dear Fellow Orthodox,
Every year we Orthodox undertake the sojourn we call Great Lent. For some of us that Lenten journey is
long and puts us to the test, spiritually and physically. We forgive, ask forgiveness, we repent, we fast,
we pray, we give charitably to those in need, we aim to gain control of our passions, to resist our
temptations, and to overcome the power of sin in our lives. It is how we obey Christ’s command to deny
ourselves and to take up our cross to follow Him (Mark 8:34).
If we haven’t treated the past 7 weeks of Lent
as a scenic bus ride on which we are tourists
riding in the comfort of a luxury coach in which
we can just lay back and let others do the work
while we enjoy the carefree life – we arrive at
Pascha tired, hungry, a bit frazzled, having
been spiritually, physically and mindfully
challenged by the demands of the fast and
self-denial. We will have been changed by the
arduous sojourn.
Our view of things will have changed. We
won’t be looking back to the time before Lent began – to that time when we could eat anything, could
pursue our self-satisfying interests, could live, think and act like any fellow American who is secular
minded or agnostic. Rather Lent will have made our lives, our hearts and minds oriented in a new
direction: toward the Kingdom of God. As our parish Patron Saint Paul says:
“… forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the
goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)
And so we arrive at Pascha: The Resurrection of Christ, a new beginning for creation and for ourselves.
We hear the Good News of Pascha from John’s Gospel, in many languages, but the same words and
message:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
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 anything
made that was made. In him was life, and the
life was the light of men.”
The long, Lenten journey takes us to the beginning, to
God. We now can begin anew.
Christ is Risen! Indeed He is risen!
Fr. Ted
I recommend to all to view the beautiful Serbian Orthodox Paschal music video. You don’t have to
understand Serbian to appreciate the total Christian joy and beauty of the video.
Christ Destroys Death by Death Posted on May 6, 2013 by Fr. Ted
Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
As we continue throughout Bright Week to continue our praise of the Holy Trinity for our salvation
through Jesus Christ’s triumph over death, we continue to think about the human condition and God’s
effort to save us. St. Theodoret of Cyrus (d. 457AD) wrote that even if we haven’t committed the same
kind of sin that Adam did, we nevertheless have sinned in our ways against our loving Creator. Thus we
all fell under the power of death. Christ came destroying the power of death by His own death and
resurrection:
“Death reigned, however, even over those who
did not sin in a manner similar to the
transgression of Adam. After all, even if they
did not break the commandment, they still
committed other lawlessness. Now, he referred
to Adam as a type of Christ, whom he call the
one to come on this reasoning, that just as
that first human being by sinning fell under the
norm of death, and the whole race followed
the firstparent, so Christ the Lord by fulfilling
the utmost righteousness destroyed the power of death, and being the first to rise from the dead
he led the whole human race back to life.” (Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Letters of
St. Paul: Volume 1, pg. 73)
Father Alexander Men, a Russian Orthodox priest, wrote before his death, that Christ’s own death
ended the corruption that death brings to the physical body as well as bringing eternal life to us all:
“Paul’s expression ‘spiritual body’ is clearly critical to an understanding
of the Passover mystery. It means that in Joseph of Arimathea’s garden a
singular victory of the Spirit took place, which, rather than destroying the
flesh, gave it a new, higher form of existence. The stone was only pushed
aside so that the disciples could see that the tomb was empty, that the
Resurrected no longer knew boundaries. Passing through agony and
death, He obtained, in a manner incomprehensible to us, a new, spiritual
corporality. The Apostle spoke of it as a stage in existence, one which
awaits all people, but at that moment God-Man was the first to
anticipate this general transformation.” (Son of Man, pg. 207)
Sermon Notes 5 May 5, 2013 Vespers of Pascha Posted on May 6, 2013 by Fr. Ted
Throughout Great Lent we read the narrative of God’s people in Genesis and Exodus, and through the
Prophet Isaiah. Holy Saturday’s 15 Old Testament readings give us more of the sense of the spiritual life
as a sojourn. Israel’s journey is a type of the spiritual journey of each believer and also of the believers
collectively – both of ancient Israel and of the Church in its history. All of these stories find their
fulfillment in Christ, and all of them
help us make sense of our own
spiritual experiences.
At Pascha, we celebrate the
Resurrection of Christ and
experience the sojourn from death
to life and from earth to heaven on
which Christ our God has led us.
Great Lent from beginning to end is
designed to be a spiritual journey:
we are the sojourners not just
through Great Lent but in life
itself. Repentance can only occur if
there is movement and change.
And our Christian experience of Holy Week and Pascha is based in and prefigured by the Passover and
Exodus story – God calling Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt through 40 years of
wandering in the desert until they finally reach the Promised Land. And it is today that I want us to
remember Moses and think about the sojourn which he undertook at God’s bequest.
Remember Moses was not happy when God called him to lead the
Israelites. Most of us think we would want God to speak directly to us
and call us to do something for Him. But Moses, who the scriptures say
was the meekest man alive (Numbers 12:3), did not want to be such a
leader and he begged God to send someone else. But God had not
made a mistake in His choice of the man to lead His people, and God
persisted and Moses acquiesced.
And the man who did not want to be the leader of the Israelites found
the Israelites were not very interested in having him be their leader and
they resisted Moses and rebelled against him and made his life
miserable. Moses the humble man remained faithful to God and carried
out his mission, but the people exasperated him and provoked him to anger. Yet, when God wanted to
destroy the miserable Israelites for their endless complaining and rebellion, it was “meek” Moses who
stepped forward to intercede for them and stopped God from destroying them. (see my other blogs
about Moses: Why Do You Cry to Me? And Reflections from the Holy Saturday Scripture Readings)
But because of his experiences with these rebellious people, Moses ultimately disobeys God and God
tells Moses he will pay a price for his lack of faithfulness.
So we read in Deuteronomy 31:22-30 :
When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book, to the very end, Moses
commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, “Take this book of the
law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there
for a witness against you. For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are; behold, while I am yet
alive with you, today you have been rebellious against the LORD; how much more after my
death! Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these
words in their ears and call heaven and earth to witness against them. For I know that after my
death you will surely act corruptly, and turn aside from the way which I
have commanded you; and in the days to come evil will befall you, because
you will do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger
through the work of your hands.”
Moses had worked with and the led these people for 40 years and knew them
well, and he saw them as rebellious and stubborn, and could foresee that if the
people wouldn’t listen to him when he was alive, then surely they wouldn’t obey
what he taught after he died. Moses the meek man, offers no wonderful ‘eulogy’
of this people as he comes close to his own death. The people knew God spoke to
Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Still they rebelled against Moses
and God. And Moses sadly realizes that despite their being the chosen people of
God, their salvation and their ability to attain the Promised Land was deeply at risk
because of their sinful stubbornness.
The Deuteronomy narrative continues (Deuteronomy 32:45-52) :
And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Lay to
heart all the words which I enjoin upon you this day, that you may command them to your
children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no trifle for you, but it is
your life, and thereby you shall live long in the land which you are going over the Jordan to
possess.” And the LORD said to Moses that very day, “Ascend this mountain of the Abarim,
Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho; and view the land of Canaan, which
I give to the people of Israel for a possession; and die on the mountain which you ascend, and be
gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died in Mount Hor and was gathered to his
people; because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of
Meribathkadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you did not revere me as holy in the midst of
the people of Israel. For you shall see the land before you; but you shall not go there, into the
land which I give to the people of Israel.”
Moses hears the bad news: he is not going to be permitted to enter into the promised land. The very
thing he had been called to do some 40 years earlier and despite incredible perseverance in the face of
unimaginable opposition and rebellion, he would not attain the goal. Moses was not going to be the
one to lead Israel into the promised land. God would allow Moses to see the chosen land, from a
distance, but Moses would die short of his goal and never set foot there.
As it says in Hebrews 11:39-40:
“And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God
had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they
should not be made perfect.”
That spiritual sojourn which Israel was on figuratively, spiritually
and really was not completed or fulfilled by the greatest heroes of
the Old Testament. And in fact in the narrative of Moses’ sojourn
one realizes it really is because of these stubborn people whom
Moses was leading that Moses lost both his temper and his chance
to enter into the Promised Land. This people Moses had served for
40 years were to become the very reason he was not allowed to
enter the Promised Land.
The Moses narrative continues (Deuteronomy 34:1-6) :
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is
opposite Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the
land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and
the Plain, that is, the valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. And the LORD said to
him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to your
descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.” So Moses the
servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he
buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Bethpeor; but no man knows the place of
his burial to this day.
Moses dies never having reached the promised land. He perhaps was comforted in being allowed to see
the land at a distance. For at least he knew it was real, attainable, even if still some distance off. Many
of us would be comforted if God would allow us to catch such a glimpse of the future Kingdom of
heaven, so we might know it is real.
But the spiritual and physical sojourn of ancient Israel, like that of Moses, fell short of the goal.
But my long commentary now also has this caveat – that though Moses’ life ends short of the goal, short
of the promised land, even that is not the end of the story. It is during the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ that the Moses story and sojourn continues. It is now during our own sojourn through Holy
Week and Pascha that we join Christ and Moses in this continued spiritual journey. For Christ comes
into the world and descends into Sheol, into that place of the dead, and calls Moses with all those dead
residing in Hades to come forth with himself to new life.
Deuteronomy tells us that Moses was buried in some foreign land, a stranger on
earth, and worse nobody knows where he was buried. Completely forgotten, or so
it is according to Deuteronomy. God had not forgotten Moses among the dead,
nor was Moses left a stranger to God. For Jesus finds Moses in Sheol and takes
Moses and all the rest on the journey from death to life and earth to Heaven. And
that is what we celebrate at Pascha. We have joined that spiritual odyssey and
that holy procession from earth to heaven. We have joined the great Moses, the
friend of God, in the continued migration toward’s God’s resting place.
But Moses’ story doesn’t end there. His earthly sojourn ended, but his life
continued. His story is taken up again in the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord. Moses is alive in
Sheol. God is the Lord of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is the God of the living (Matthew 22:32), and
Moses is numbered among them.
And in the end Christ’s saving of all the dead in Hades shows that for Moses God’s love is victorious. For
Moses may have been denied access to the Promised Land, Moses may have been buried in some spot
that nobody even remembers anymore, but God’s anger against Him was not permanent, as we hear in
the Psalms (Psalms 103:7-14):
The Lord made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The LORD is merciful
and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will
he keep his anger for ever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us
according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast
love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our
transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him. For
he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
God forgives Moses who disappointed the Lord, and now at
Pascha allows Moses to finish that sojourn, and takes Moses not
just to a promised land on earth where sickness, sorrow and
sighing continue, but to the Kingdom of Heaven where sickness,
suffering and sorrow have fled away.
In our great icon of the resurrection Christ is raising not just Adam
and Eve but Moses and all those folk as well. Pascha is the
celebration of the victory of God over every human error and sin,
over evil and death itself. God forgives sinners and complete
failures and Himself lifts us from hell and leads us to His eternal
kingdom. God’s anger does not last forever – He forgives and
leads His children to the Kingdom and allows them to enter,
forgiven of their failures and misdeeds.
Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
The Resurrection of the Body Posted on May 7, 2013 by Fr. Ted
Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
As we continue on our Paschal journey, joyously keeping the festival of
Christ’s resurrection, we are reminded of the very fundamentals of the
Christian faith. Fr. Alexander Schmemann was wonderfully gifted in
finding the right words to express the deeply profound truths of
Christianity in the basic things we do as Christians to worship the Holy
Trinity. The resurrection of Christ – the cornerstone of the New Testament
writings – is sometimes overlooked by those who have other philosophies
and ideologies overriding their understanding of the Gospel.
“The resurrection of Christ constitutes the very heart of the Christian faith, of the Christian ‘glad
tidings’. And yet, in the real life of the contemporary
Christianity and Christians, faith in the resurrection has very
little place, however strange this may sound. This faith has
become clouded, so that today’s Christian, unaware that this is
happening and without denying the resurrection, manages
somehow to avoid it; he has ceased to live by the resurrection
as the early Christians did. Yes, if he goes to church he of course
hears the triumphantly joyful affirmations ringing out in
Christian worship: ‘trampling down death by death’, ‘ death is
swallowed up in victory’, ‘life reigns’, and ‘not one dead
remains in the grave.’ But ask him what he really thinks about
death, and often—alas, all too often– you will hear some pre-
Christian idea about the immortality of the soul and its life in
some sort of world beyond the grave. And that is at best…At worst there is simply confusion and
ignorance: ‘You know, I somehow never really thought about it.’ Yet to think about ‘it’ is
absolutely essential, since all of Christianity hinges upon belief or unbelief not merely in the
‘immortality of the soul,’ but precisely in resurrection, the resurrection of Christ and our own
‘universal resurrection’ at the end of time. If Christ is not risen, then the Gospel is a deception,
the most terrible of all deceptions; but if indeed Christ is risen, then all of our pre-Christian
explanations and beliefs about ‘the immortality of the soul’ must be radically revised, or rather,
they must simply be dropped. The whole question of death is then placed in a radically different
light. For resurrection, first of all, presupposes an awareness of death, an understanding of death
which is profoundly different from the common religious views, and in some sense is the very
antithesis of these views.” (Alexander Schmemann, Celebrations of Faith: Sermons—Volume 1, I
Believe, pgs. 90-91)
We can find this basic Christian message which Orthodox
Christianity has proclaimed for two millennium and celebrated
at Pascha every year also in recent times being embraced by
modern Christian writers. Anglican biblical scholar and retired
Bishop N.T. Wright says:
“Despite what many people think, within the Christian family
and outside it, the point of Christianity isn’t ‘to go to heaven
when you die.’
The New Testament picks up from the Old the theme that God
intends, in the end, to put the whole creation to rights. Earth
and heaven were made to overlap with one another, not fitfully,
mysteriously, and partially as they do at the moment, but
completely, gloriously, and utterly. “The earth shall be filled with
the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.’ That is the
promise which resonates throughout the bible story, from Isaiah
(and behind him, by implication from Genesis itself) all the way
through to Paul’s greatest visionary moments and the final
chapters of the book of Revelation. The great drama will end,
not with ‘saved souls’ being snatched up into heaven, away from
the wicked earth and the mortal bodies which have dragged
them down into sin, but with the New Jerusalem coming down
from heaven to earth, so that ‘the dwelling of God is with
humans’ (Revelation 21:3). … But one day the veil will be lifted;
earth and heaven will be one; Jesus will be personally present,
and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God’s new
world will at last be in place, full of new prospects and possibilities. This is what the Christ vision of
salvation … is all about.” (SIMPLY CHRISTIAN , pp 217, 219)
Finding Yourself in Christ’s Resurrection Narrative Posted on May 9, 2013 by Fr. Ted
One means many Patristic writers use to read and interpret Scripture narratives is to see
each of the characters in the biblical stories as either someone to emulate or as someone
whose behavior one should avoid. St. Andrew of Crete (d. ca 712AD) in his famous
Lenten Canon of Repentance is a very good example of reading the scripture narratives
in this manner. Each person of the bible models either good or bad behavior in each
situation they are in - by reading them situation by situation we see the reality of life
that people, including saints, engage in both good and bad behavior in a lifetime. One
can read the Gospels in this same way. St. Gregory Nazianzus (d. 391AD) also applies this
method in his Paschal sermons, an
example of which is below.
“If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up the Cross and
follow. If you arecrucified with Him as a robber,
acknowledge God as a penitent robber. If even He was
numbered among the transgressors for you and your
sin, do you become law abiding for His sake. Worship
Him Who was hanged for you, even if you yourself are
hanging; make some gain even from your wickedness;
purchase salvation by your death; enter with Jesus into
Paradise, so that you may learn from what you have fallen. Contemplate the glories that are
there. If you be a Joseph of Arimathea, beg the Body from him that crucified Him, make your own
that which cleanses the world. If you be aNicodemus, the worshiper of God by night, bury Him
with spices. If you be aMary, or another Mary, or a Salome, or a Joanna, weep in the early
morning. Be first to see the stone taken away, and perhaps you will see the Angels and Jesus
Himself.
Keep the feast of the Resurrection; come to the aid
of Eve who was first to fall of Her who first
embraced the Christ, and made Him known to the
disciples. Be a Peter or a John; hasten to the
Sepulchre, running together. And if, like aThomas,
you were left out when the disciples were
assembled to whom Christ showed Himself, when
you do see Him be not faithless; and if you do not
believe, then believe those who tell you; and if you
cannot believe them either, then have confidence in
the prints of the nails.” (Easter Orations, OLOGOS Publication, pgs. 10-11)
Recommended