'Stat crux dum volvitur orbis' - The Sunday of the Cross

Today, the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent, we celebrate the veneration of the precious and Life-giving Cross, about which the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world’ (Galatians 6:14). The hymnography for this Sunday refers to the Cross as ‘the fair paradise of the Church’ and the ‘Tree of incorruption that brings us the enjoyment of eternal glory’, ‘an invincible weapon, an unbroken stronghold’, the ‘unconquerable tropy of the true faith, door to Paradise, succour of the faithful, [and] rampart set about the Church.’ [1] 

It may seem curious to note that this commemoration is something distinct from the commemoration of ‘Good Friday’—that is, the commemoration of the Passion and Death of our Lord on the Cross. The two are, of course, directly connected though. The Cross does not have some kind of magical potency apart from its role as the instrument of our Lord’s Passion. As the Synaxarion for this Sunday states, ‘The Cross reminds us of the Passion of our Lord, and by presenting to us His example, it encourages us to follow Him in struggle and sacrifice, being refreshed, assured, and comforted.’ [2] 

Furthermore, it is not accidental that the Life-giving Cross is commemorated half-way through Lent. The Synaxarion tells us: 

As they who walk on a long and hard way and are bowed down by fatigue find great relief and strengthening under the cool shade of a leafy tree, so do we find comfort, refreshment, and rejuvenation under the Life-giving Cross, which our Holy Fathers “planted” on this Sunday. Thus, we are fortified and enabled to continue our Lenten journey with a light step, rested and encouraged. [3] 

It is important to note that this Cross in which we find comfort and refreshment is not merely an historical object or event, but something fundamental to the cosmos itself. I was struck several years ago by an observation in Fr John Behr’s profound little book, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death: 

Theologically speaking, creation and its history begins with the Passion of Christ and from this ‘once for all’ work looks backwards and forwards to see everything in this light, making everything new. Christian cosmology, elaborated as it must be from the perspective of the Cross, sees the Cross as impregnated in the very structure of creation: stat crux dum volvitur orbis—the Cross stands, while the earth revolves. [4] 

Fr John then quotes from the ‘Second Part’ of St Isaac the Syrian to support his point: 

We do not speak of a power in the Cross that is any different from that through which the worlds came into being, [a power] which is eternal and without beginning and which guides creation all the time without any break, in a divine way and beyond the understanding of all, in accordance with the will of his divinity. [5] 

Thus, it is no surprise that the Holy Fathers discover the Cross throughout all of Scripture, prefigured in the Old Testament and gazed back at in the Book of Revelation. Indeed, it can fairly be said that the pattern of the Cross, or what St Gregory Palamas calls ‘the mystery of the Cross’, is fundamental to patristic exegesis. [6] Thus, St Gregory begins his homily for this Sunday with the characteristic comment, ‘The Cross of Christ was mysteriously proclaimed in advance and foreshadowed from generations of old and no one was ever reconciled with God except by the power of the Cross.’ [7] As Fr Georges Florovsky has put it, ‘The mystery of the Cross begins in eternity, “in the sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, unapproachable for creatures.”’ [8] 

The Latin phrase Fr John qutoes above is the motto of the Roman Catholic ‘Carthusian’ Order, an order of semi-erimitic contemplative monks that originated in the mountains of France [9] whose symbol is a sphere surmounted by a Cross. The same symbol, whether a nod toward the Carthusians or not, forms the central image of G.K. Chesterton’s fascinating novel, The Ball & the Cross, where the ‘ball’ atop St Paul’s Cathedral in London is claimed by Lucifer as the symbol of rationalism, while the ‘cross’ is claimed by the old Bulgarian monk, Fr Michael as the symbol of Christianity. At one point, Fr Michael tells a ‘parable’ to illustrate the folly of Lucifer’s hatred of the cross: 

‘I once knew a man like you, Lucifer,’ he said, with a maddening monotony and slowness of articulation. ‘He took this----’

‘There is no man like me,’ cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the ship.

‘As I was observing,’ continued Michael, ‘this man also took the view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory of what happens to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars. Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of crosses. He was found in the river.’ [10] 

Interestingly, The Ball & the Cross turns up a bit unexpectedly in an Orthodox reflection on the Cross: in a 1977 article entitled ‘From the Perspective of the Cross’, Hieromonk Roman (Braga) talks about the very shape of the Cross as indicative of man’s place in the universe. It is worth quoting at some length: 

The cross is the axis of two coordinates that establishes man’s place in the universe. Man is at the point of intersection between the vertical plane, which is transcendent, and the horizontal one, which is limited, historic, inherent. 

Man is the theandric mode of existence in which God and nature must be combined in a harmonious synthesis. But at the same time, man’s being on the cross is a paradox, an enigma—not for the Creator, Who knew what He did when He created man, but for himself. 

If we think of the cross, this imaginary axis, as the intersection of two existential planes completely different from one another—matter and spirit, existence and nonexistence, God and nothingness—then surely at the intersection point, that is, in man, any kind of logic becomes impossible and absurd. Nevertheless, man is the only thinking reality in the world. Why? Because true thinking is in a way paradoxical; it is born of contradictory situations. Once G.K. Chesterton, looking at the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London where the cross is atop a sphere, made a remark that can be considered to be the foundation of the theology of the cross. He said that the sphere, which is the Greek symbol of perfection, is limited to itself. Traveling around the sphere, one reaches nowhere. This is the image of philosophy—it is a closed system, it cannot go out of its dogmatic antithesis. On the other hand, developing a mode of thinking in a cross-like manner gives the world an infinite freedom—on the one hand, growing in God, or ascending on the vertical plane, and on the other hand, the freedom of descending into the total abyss, into total negativism. [11] 

These are just a few thoughts about the centrality of the Cross to our faith. Unfortunately, time does not suffice for me to begin to delve into the coincidence of the Sunday of the Cross with the Feast of the Annunciation this year, so I shall simply conclude with the tenth stanza of St Ephraim the Syrian’s Hymn XII on Paradise: 

Because Adam touched the Tree
he had to run to the fig;
he became like the fig tree,
being clothed in its vesture:
Adam, like some tree,
blossomed with leaves.
Then he came to that glorious
tree of the Cross,
put on glory from it,
acquired radiance from it,
heard from it the truth
that he would return to Eden once more. [12] 

[1] From the Stichera in Tone Five at Lord, I have cried at Great Vespers, in The Lenten Triodion, tr. Mother Maria & Archimandrite [now Metropolitan] Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STOTS, 1994), pp. 334-335. 

[2] Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion & Pentecostarion, ed. Fr David (Kidd) & Mother Gabriella (Ursache) (Rives Junction, MI: HDM, 1999), p. 78. 

[3] Ibid., p. 79. 

[4] Fr John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2006), p. 90. 

[5] Qtd. in ibid., p. 90. 

[6] St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin, with The Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), p. 79. 

[7] Ibid., p. 74. 

[8] Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, Creation & Redemption, Vol. 3 in the Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), p. 100. 

[9] I’m not certain of the origin of the motto, however. 

[10] G.K. Chesterton, The Ball & the Cross (NY: Dover, 1995), p. 6. 

[11] Hieromonk Roman (Braga), ‘From the Perspective of the Cross’, Divine Ascent: A Journal of Orthodox Faith 1:2 (Exaltation of the Holy Cross 1997), pp. 69-70. I must admit that I am not completely certain of precisely to what passage in GKC Fr Roman is referring. His comments are reminiscent of the conversation between Lucifer and Fr Michael, but not an exact match.

For those unfamiliar with this 20th-c. Romanian confessor for the faith, I highly recommend this interview with him from PBS’s Frontline. 

[12] St Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, tr. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1990), p. 164.

'Quickly to Saint Elias'

Today, 20 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Prophet Elijah the Tishbite (believed to have lived in the 9th century BC). I did a full post on St Elijah way back in 2009 when I was still a relatively new blogger. This will not be a full post in the old Logismoi style, but merely a couple of things I thought of posting related to the Prophet. 

First of all, it has long been noted that St Elijah has been taken as a type of the Christian monk. William Harmless has, for instance, pointed out the Elijah typology in St Athanasius’s famous Vita Antonii (which David Hicks at the CiRCE conference called his favourite book by St Athanasius): 

The most significant biblical type for Antony is Elijah. Athanasius says that Antony ‘used to tell himself that from the career of the prophet Elijah, as from a mirror, the ascetic must always acquire knowledge of his own life’ (VA 7). [1] Like Elijah, Antony is called a ‘man of God’ (VA 70; cf. 1 Kgs 17:18; 2 Kgs 1:9-13). Like Elijah, he dwells in the desert and is described as ‘seated in his mountain’ (VA 59, 60, 66, 84, 93; cf. 2 Kgs 1:9). Like Elijah, he win [sic] duels against those who worship false gods and foretells the death of a military commander who comes out to the desert to seize him (VA 86; cf. 1 Kgs 18, 2 Kgs 1). In 2 Kings, Elijah hands down his cloak to his disciple Elisha; in the Life, Antony has two Elishas, so to speak, handing down one sheepskin and his cloak to Athanasius and the other sheepskin to Serapion (VA 91; cf. 2 Kgs 2:13 ff.). In the preface, Athanasius says that he learned all that he could of Antony from a longtime disciple who had ‘poured water over his hands’, an allusion to 2 Kgs 3:11, in which Elisha is described as pouring water into the hands of Elijah. This Elisha-like informant was, presumably, Serapion (VA praef.). [2] 

Somewhat along the lines of the comment Harmless cites from VA 7, St Macarius the Great seems to find a deeper significance to the connection between the Prophet Elijah and the monastic life than the external desert life per se. In Homily 6.2, St Macarius writes: 

It is not becoming a servant of God to live in a state of disturbance, but rather in all tranquility and wisdom as the Prophet said, ‘Unto whom shall I look but unto him that is meek and quiet and that trembles at my words?’ (Is 66:2). And in the times of Moses and Elijah we find that in the visions granted them, even though there was a great display of trumpets and powers before the majesty of the Lord, still, amidst all of these things, the coming of the Lord was discerned and he appeared in peace and tranquillity and quietness. For it says: ‘Lo, a still, silent voice and the Lord was in it’ (1 Kgs 19:12). This proves that the Lord’s rest is in peace and tranquillity. For whatever foundation a person lays and whatever beginning he makes, he will continue in that until the end. [3] 

So the experience of the Prophet Elijah on Mt Horeb is taken as a model of the contemplative (theoretic) life—indeed, of hesychia itself. 

It is interesting to note that in the West, the model of the Prophet Elijah eventually became connected especially with an order that—while it later became part of the movement of mendicant friars, along with Franciscans and Dominicans—was originally a collection of hermits living in the Holy Land on Mt Carmel itself during the Crusades. As Thomas Merton observes: 

The Carmelites were originally hermits. And of course their life was the traditional hermit life known to the East from the earliest centuries of the Church. They lived as the desert fathers had lived eight hundred years earlier....They were in fact simple laymen, living as solitaries in a loosely connected group, in caves and huts on the side of Mt Carmel. Their manner of life was not yet institutionalized, and even when [c. 1209-1214] they first asked for a Rule, from the hands of the [Latin] Patriarch of Jerusalem [Albert of Jerusalem], that Rule was, as we shall see, deliberately kept simple and uncomplicated....In the words of the Rule itself, [the purpose of the Carmelite life] was: ‘Let each one remain in his cell or near it, meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord, and vigilant in prayer, unless he is legitimately occupied in something else.’ [4] 

And on the connection with the Prophet Elijah, ‘the symbolic adoption by the Carmelites of the prophet Elias as their “Founder”’: 

It is quite true that the hermits living on the slopes of Mt Carmel, near the ‘spring of Elias’, where the prophet himself had prayed and dwelt alone, and where the ‘sons of the prophets’ had had a ‘school’, [5] could themselves claim to be descendants of the ancient prophets. It is quiet true that Elias, in a broad sense, was the ‘founder’ of this way of life since he had in fact been the inspiration of those countless generations that had lived there in the places hallowed by his memory and stamped with his indelible character. [6] 

Finally, Merton notes that the Carmelites too found a deep typology in the Prophet of what appears to an Orthodox reader as an almost hesychastic contemplative experience of their own: 

The author of that moving ancient text on the spirit of Carmelite prayer and contemplation, the Institution of the first Fathers, interprets the retirement of Elias in typical medieval style. To hide in the torrent of Carith (2 Kgs 17:3) is to embrace the ascetical life, which leads to the perfection of charity by one’s own efforts, aided by the grace of God. To drink of the torrent is to passively receive the secret light of contemplation from God and to be inwardly transformed by His wisdom: ‘...to taste, in a certain manner, in our heart, and to experience in our spirit the power of the divine presence and the sweetness of the glory from on high, not only after death but even in this mortal life. That is what is really meant by drinking from the torrent of the joy of God...’ [7] 

One wonders if these Latin pilgrims had perhaps learned something from Orthodox monks that may have been living in the area. 

Finally, to bring the consideration of St Elijah down to the level of the ordinary life of traditional Christian laymen, in her fascinating book, Cosmos, Life & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village, Juliet du Boulay writes: 

...there is a hint, in a poem to the Prophet Elias (Elijah) quoted later, that mountain tops are regarded as openings to the heavenly world. This prophet customarily has his churches on the tops of hills and mountains, so the invocation of Elias is the invocation of one who, as the inhabitant of the mountain peaks, lives at the point where earth meets heaven. [8] 

Eventually, du Boulay makes good on her promise to quote the poem, sung by young girls who perform a traditional folk ritual in traditional Greek villages on 1 May: 

Quickly, quickly,
Quickly to Saint Elias;
And Saint Elias to the sky
So that God will send rain
For the wheat, for the barley,
For all the grains of God.
Holes, holes for the wine,
Channels, channels for the water.
The farmer with his mattock
To stop the water running out. [9] 

In du Boulay’s words: 

The song takes the form of a call to the village to appeal to the Prophet Elias, previously noted as having his churches on mountain tops in reflection of his vision of God on Mt Horeb, so that he will intercede ‘for all the grains of God’, and its structure is parallel with a similar prayer made every week in the Divine Liturgy during the Litany of Peace: ‘For temperate weather, for abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful seasons, let us pray to the Lord.’ The structure in both is of an intercession made directly to a holy figure, and what is prayed for, translated as temperate weather (εὐκρασία ἀέρων), means precisely a good mixture or a good balance of the atmosphere, whose consequence is fruitfulness. Thus the symbolic language, which could be ambiguous on its own, is in the song and the mime that accompanies it made into a pattern of words and actions which is continuous with the pattern of prayer offered in church. [10] 

Although I’ve never witnessed this little ritual, I did have the good fortune once to attend a Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Prophet Elijah at one of these little hilltop churches du Boulay mentions. My chief memories are of a woolly Pontian priest whose Greek dialect I couldn’t understand at all, and of the lingering breakfast in the cool shade just outside of the church. 

[1] This remarkable comment is found on p. 37 of Robert Gregg’s translation—St Athanasius the Great, The Life of Antony & The Letter to Marcellinus, tr. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), p. 37. 

[2] William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 70. I've added the citations from VA and from Scripture to the text, whereas Harmless had them in endnotes. 

[3] St Macarius the Great, Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies & The Great Letter, tr. George A. Maloney (NY: Paulist, 1992), p. 76. 

[4] Thomas Merton, ‘The Primitive Carmelite Ideal’, Disputed Questions (NY: The New American Library, 1965), p. 168. 

[5] Merton notes here: ‘Schola not only in the sense of a place where one learns, but in the more original and etymological sense of a place of leisure, quiet and retirement, where one can think deeply’ (ibid., p. 169, n. 2). 

[6] Ibid., p. 169. 

[7] Ibid., p. 172. 

[8] Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Limni, Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2009), pp. 33-4. 

[9] Ibid., p. 88. 

[10] Ibid., p. 89.

'He Put No Difference Between Us'—Ss Peter & Paul in Radner & St Maximus

Last Thursday, 29 June on the Church’s calendar, we celebrated the memory of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. I had thought about doing an old-school Logismoi post for the Apostles, but unfortunately things were much too busy for the full treatment and I let it pass. A perusal of a borrowed book the other day, however, convinced me that I should at least do a post connecting back to their feastday, even if it wasn’t one of my traditional Saints’ posts. 

I have more than once, I am sure, mentioned my enthusiasm for John O’Keefe’s and R.R. Reno’s Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. Well, my tremendous esteem for the merits of the authors’ arguments and conclusions led me to reread with careful attention the preface to the volume, wherein they acknowledge the various influences and intellectual debts that contributed to the book. One passage that caught my attention was this: ‘The work of Ephrem Radner defies epitome, but the fabric of his many publications is woven with figural patterns of biblical interpretation. He is a rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art.’ [1] 

I don’t quite remember how it happened, but somehow or another I shortly afterward discovered the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, edited by Reno, which ‘advances upon the assumption that the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture’, and could be seen in some ways as a commentary attempting to carry out what O’Keefe and Reno present in Sanctified Vision. [2] I recalled having seen the series at our local evangelical megastore (which I was distressed to find no longer carries it, although the Christian romance section has certainly expanded), but I had never carefully examined it to discover its approach. Fortunately, my boss, the headmaster of our school, has what I take to be the entire series to date in his office, and I was surprised and excited to discover that the volume on Leviticus—surely a unique text for demonstrating the rich exegetical possibilities of the ‘Nicene tradition’—was written by that ‘rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art’, Ephraim Radner. 

I realise I’m taking the long route to get back to Ss Peter and Paul. What does Ephraim Radner’s commentary on Leviticus have to do with the two chiefs of the Apostles? It so happens that interpreting Leviticus as Christian Scripture provides a direct connection: St Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9-16, which presupposes the distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11: 

For I am the Lord who brought you up [ἀναγαγὼν ὑμᾶς] out of the land of Egypt to be your God; and ye shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy. This is the law concerning beasts and birds and every living creature [πάσης ψυχῆς] moving in the water, and every living creature creeping on the earth; to distinguish between the unclean and the clean [διαστεῖλαι ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ἀκαθάρτων καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν καθαρῶν]; and between those that bring forth alive, such as should be eaten, and those that bring forth alive, such as should not be eaten. (Lev. 11:45-7, LXX) 

Compare then, the vision of the Apostle Peter in Acts: 

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: and he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: where in were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.’ And the voice spake unto him again the second time, ‘What God hath cleansed that call not thou common.’ This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. (Authorised Version) 

Clearly, St Peter is professing his fidelity to the distinction outlined in Leviticus 11. Just as clearly, the same God who gave to the Israelites the category of ‘unclean’ in Leviticus, is telling St Peter that He Himself has ‘cleansed’ all things. The exhortation to ‘be holy’ is not negated, however, and indeed, St Peter himself quotes it in I Peter 1:16, but it is no longer tied to the observance of dietary laws. 

In his commentary on this chapter of Leviticus, Radner draws on the mediaeval Benedictine writer, Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075-1129), whom Jean Leclercq notes as an exemplar of the use of ‘Old Testament texts...for expressing the loftiest realities of the New Testament,’ in whom ‘we sense the shadow of the whole archaic Eastern [patristic] background’. [3] I shall quote Radner at length: 

For Rupert of Deutz (Patrologia latina 167.796-801), the pentecostal focus in Lev. 10 [he connects the fire that devours the sons of the Prophet Aaron in Lev. 10:2 with the tongues of fire of Pentecost] explicates the framework of Lev. 11 in terms of the mission to the Gentiles entrusted the church by God. That is, the outline of distinction that Aaron (and Moses) provide the people—in terms of animal life, food, and even the touching of carcasses—properly embraces the distinctions of the peoples and their place within the providential calling of God. From the perspective of the New Testament, this coordination of elements is almost natural. It is, after all, Peter himself, in the course of his calling by God to turn to the Gentiles with the church’s first deliberate Christian evangelistic effort in their direction, who is presented with a threefold divine vision treating specifically the question of clean and unclean foods (Acts 10:9-16)....Rather than seeing Peter’s vision as a simple nullification of the Levitical laws of distinction, Rupert of Deutz understands these laws as the reflection of this single providential goal, by which the whole of the world will be brought into right relationship with God, gathered into the heavenly sheet. The vision sets in motion Peter’s visit to the Gentile centurion Cornelius in Caesarea, who is baptized despite his fundamental nonadherence to the breadth of the Levitical laws. Hence the Levitical laws pertain to—they advance toward and present—this goal of Gentile baptism, both in terms of reference and object; they do not contradict it. [4] 

Thus, the taking up of the animals without distinction into the four-cornered sheet is a symbolic revelation of the taking up of the peoples of the earth without distinction into the Church, where ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galations 3:28). In the words of St Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘For the God who had distinguished through the law the pure food from the impure, that same God had cleansed the nations through the blood of his Son, and that is the God whom Cornelius worshiped.’ [5] 

I have not been reading Radner’s commentary through, and so it was a look at the index for Greek Fathers, particularly for St Maximus the Confessor, that led me to the chapter on Leviticus 11. Unfortunately, the great 7th-c. Father is only cited once by Radner—when the latter writes: 

The allegorical reading—both Jewish and Christian—by which the sacrificial animals of Leviticus refer to those beastly, irrational, or wild (Maximus the Confessor [in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware 1979-95: 2.273]) aspects of the self that require subjugation is in fact congruent with and perhaps even founded upon the presuppositions of this reality of distinction and offering. [6] 

A look at the text from the Philokalia which Radner cites is interesting. It is a Maximian anthology known as ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, & Virtue & Vice’. The part in question is numbered as the ‘Fifth Century’ of such texts in the English Philokalia, whereas it is the ‘Seventh Century’ in the Greek. The greater part of this century, including all of the chapters I will excerpt below, is taken from the treatise To Thalassios: On Various Questions relating to Holy Scripture. It is there that St Maximus dwells at length on what he calls ‘the spiritual contemplation [ἡ πνευματικὴ θεωρία] of...the written law’. [7] The simple statement—in chapter 50—of the allegorical reading of the animals as passions to which Radner is referring is believed to be the work of a 10th-c. scholiast. [8] St Maximus’s own comments in chapter 51, which the scholiast is presumably explaining, takes for granted the ‘passion’ reading: 

By spiritual sacrifices is meant not only the putting to death of the passions, slaughtered by ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Eph. 6:17), and the deliberate emptying out of all life in the flesh, as if it were blood; the term also signifies the offering up of the moral state we have gained through the practice of the virtues, together with all our natural powers, which we dedicate and offer [προσαγωγὴν ἀφιερουμένων] to God as whole burnt sacrifices, to be consumed by the fire of grace in the Spirit, so that they are filled with divine power. [9] 

The ‘fire of grace in the Spirit’, an obvious allusion to Pentecost, is only the second tie into Rupert’s connection of Leviticus with Pentecost. In chapter 49, the Confessor writes: 

The mystery of Pentecost is the direct union with providence of those things that are in its care. It is the union of nature with its principle, the Logos, under the guidance of providence; and in this union there is not the slightest trace of time or generation. Again, the Logos is our trumpet (cf. Lev. 23:24), summoning us with divine and hidden knowledge. He is our propitiation (cf. Lev. 25:9), since He expiates our offences in His own person by becoming like us, and divinizes our sinful nature by the gift of grace through the Spirit. He is our booth or tabernacle (cf. Lev. 23:42), since He is the realization of that immutability with which our inner being, conformed to God, is concentrated on the divine, and also the securing bond of our transformation into an immortal state. [10] 

Indeed, it is a shame that Radner does not make more use of St Maximus in his commentary. The Confessor comments specifically on St Peter’s vision itself in Questions & Doubts 116, where he responds to the question of what is signified by the sheet and the beasts that were on it: 

Since, according to the vision by the prophet Ezekiel, ‘their work was like a wheel within a wheel’, and through these a perceptible as well as an intelligible world are depicted as existing within one another—for the intelligible world is in the perceptible world by types, and the perceptible world is in the intelligible world by its logos—therefore, all of the perceptible world was shown to the Apostle. For the letting down by its four corners’ signifies the world composed of four elements, existing as clean in the intelligible world according to the logos that exists inherently in these things. And he heard, ‘rise up, kill, and eat,’ that is, ‘by (your) nous raise yourself up from that which is according sense, and “kill and eat”, which means by the distinction of reason divides sense perception, [11] and taking up these things spiritually make them your own.’ 

Or, it also signifies the church that is supported by the four foundations of the gospels or, again, by the four cardinal virtues. And the beasts and reptiles depict the different human customs which, from the Gentiles, are going to (change over to) the faith in Christ. And the ‘kill and eat’ shows ‘first, by the word of teaching, “kill” the evil in them and then “eat”, making their salvation your own just as the Lord also made it food for himself.’ [12] 

Of course, this post has been mostly taken up with St Peter, and for reasons of length I do not intend to devote equal space here to St Paul. But I will point out that St Peter’s experience of the vision, and his subsequent baptism of Cornelius, ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 2:16), connect him directly with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. ‘And’, in the words of Didymus the Blind, ‘through the figure shown by the linen cloth and through the granting of the grace of the Holy Spirit in like manner to the nations according to faith [cf. Acts 10:44-8], he [St Peter] made the case that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile.’ [13] 

St Paul of course makes himself a compliment to St Peter, ‘For He that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles’ (Gal. 2:8). But the baptism of Cornelius makes clear that the division in their duties is not a strict one, and St Peter at the Council of Jerusalem says to the apostles and elders: 

‘Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them [διέκρινε μεταξὺ ἡμῶν τε καὶ αὐτῶν], purifying their hearts by faith.’ (Acts 15:7-9) 

Once again, we see here that the erasure of difference between Jew and Gentile is signified by the erasure of difference between clean and unclean animals (the words of Acts 15:9 and Lev. 11:47 are not the same, but the phrases nevertheless echo one another). But if the separation of Jew and Gentile is abolished within the Church, how much more so that between these two holy Apostles? St Paul tells us ‘when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face’ (Gal. 2:11), but in the words of St John Chrysostom, ‘there was here a deep though hidden understanding between Paul and Peter’: 

Paul does not now say this to condemn Peter, but in the same spirit as when he said those who are ‘reputed to be something’ [in other words, St Paul does not in 2:9 deny that St Peter really is a ‘pillar’], he now says this too....And so Paul rebukes and Peter voluntarily gives way. It is like the master who when upbraided keeps silent, so that his disciples might more easily change their ways. [14] 

Thus, the witness of the Church to the spiritual unity of these two Apostles, testified to by their co-commemoration and the liturgical texts which praise them as ‘separated in body, united in the Spirit’, [15] is also expressed in the exegetical consensus of the Fathers. 

 [1] John J. O’Keefe & R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005), p. x. 

[2] R.R. Reno, ‘Series Preface’, Leviticus, by Ephraim Radner, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos-Baker, 2008), p. 11. 

[3] Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), pp. 102-16. 

[4] Radner, p. 107. 

[5] Francis Martin, ed., with Evan Smith, Acts, NT Vol. V in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 128. 

[6] Ibid., p. 110. 

[7] The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 267. 

[8] See ibid., p. 395. 

[9] Ibid., p. 273. 

[10] Ibid., pp. 272-3. 

[11] I’m not sure I understand the grammar of Prassas’s translation at this point. 

[12] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions & Doubts, tr. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois U, 2010), p. 103. 

[13] Martin, p. 125. 

[14] Mark J. Edwards, ed., Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, NT Vol. VIII in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), p. 26. 

[15] First sticheron at Lord I have cried, Tone 2, by St Andrew of Crete, from Great Vespers for the Feast; from the translation of Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), here.

'Stars of the Spiritual Firmament'—A Hymn for the Fathers of Nicæa

At the Vigil this evening I was struck by the Doxasticon at Lauds, by George of Nicomedia (I quote Archimandrite Ephrem’s translation):

The choir of holy Fathers, hurrying together from the ends of the inhabited world, taught the one essence and nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and clearly handed down to the Church the mystery of theology. As we praise them with faith, let us call them blessed as we say: O godly camp, inspired soldiers [note the Greek actually says ‘hoplites’!] of the Lord’s array; stars with many lights of the spiritual firmament; the indestructible towers of the mystical Sion; the sweet-scented flowers of Paradise; the all-golden mouths of the Word; Nicæa’s boast; adornment of the inhabited world, intercede unceasingly for our souls.

Τῶν ἁγίων Πατέρων ὁ χορός, ἐκ τῶν τῆς οἰκουμένης περάτων συνδραμών, Πατρός, καὶ Υἱοῦ, καὶ Πνεύματος ἁγίου, μίαν οὐσίαν ἐδογμάτισε καὶ φύσιν, καὶ τὸ μυστήριον τῆς θεολογίας, τρανῶς παρέδωκε τῇ Ἐκκλησίᾳ· οὓς εὐφημοῦντες ἐν πίστει, μακαρίσωμεν λέγοντες· Ὦ θεία παρεμβολή, θεηγόροι ὁπλῖται, παρατάξεως Κυρίου, ἀστέρες πολύφωτοι, τοῦ νοητοῦ στερεώματος, τῆς μυστικῆς Σιὼν οἱ ἀκαθαίρετοι πύργοι, τὰ μυρίπνοα ἄνθη τοῦ Παραδείσου, τὰ πάγχρυσα στόματα τοῦ Λόγου, Νικαίας τὸ καύχημα, οἰκουμένης ἀγλάϊσμα, ἐκτενῶς πρεσβεύσατε, ὑπὲρ τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

The imagery of the Church’s poetry is incomparably beautiful. In Orthodox Tradition, the Fathers are not doctrinal police, as the modern mindset seems to think, but ‘soldiers’, ‘stars’, ‘towers’, ‘flowers’ and ‘all-golden mouths’.

Let Us Set Out With Joy Upon the Season of the Fast

Yesterday we observed Forgiveness Sunday, when ‘we ask forgiveness from our brothers and sisters in Christ so that we may begin the race in the stadium of Great Lent unhindered by any animosity.’ [1] For that reason, as my dear friend Esteban Vázquez aptly put it in his helpful post of today (here), ‘Since I interact with some of you nearly as much as I interact with those physically closest to me, I would like to take this chance at the beginning of the Fast to say to each and all:

Forgive me for all the ways in which
I have undoubtedly grieved and offended you.’

I am consistently struck by the hymnography with which we embark upon the season of the Great Fast. Take for instance this sticheron in Tone 6 from the stichera at Lauds during Matins for the Sunday of Forgiveness:

Adam was driven out of Paradise, because in disobedience he had eaten food; but Moses was granted the vision of God, because he had cleansed the eyes of his soul by fasting. If then we long to dwell in Paradise, let us abstain from all needless food; and if we desire to see God, let us like Moses fast for forty days. With sincerity let us persevere in prayer and intercession; let us still the passions of our soul; let us subdue the rebellious instincts of the flesh. With light step let us set out upon the path to heaven, where the choirs of angels with never-silent voice sing the praises of the undivided Trinity; and there we shall behold the surpassing beauty of the Master. O Son of God, Giver of Life, in Thee we set our hope: count us worthy of a place there with the angelic hosts, at the intercessions of the Mother who bore Thee, O Christ, of the apostles and the martyrs and of all the saints. [2]

The direct reference to the possibility of the vision of God, while not uncommon in the prayers and hymns of the Church, never fails to catch my attention. If we do desire to see God, let us not miss this opportunity to follow Him.

One of the commenters on my Guardian article on Saturday (here) quoted ‘The Book Of Common Prayer, publ. 1769, the Gospel for Ash Wednesday, St Mathew 6.16[-21]’:

When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fasteth, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I’m not sure whether the commenter was simply adding some appropriate context for my remarks, in response to those who indirectly suggested I was a self-righteous hypocrite for extolling the virtues of fasting, or whether he was himself trying to make such a suggestion. At any rate, this Gospel is not of course read by Anglicans only, but—with the addition of verses 14 and 15—was read at Liturgy in every Orthodox church yesterday, Forgiveness Sunday. Furthermore, the spirit of these verses can be clearly discerned in the hymnography surrounding the beginning of the Fast. Consider two examples. The first is a sticheron in Tone 2 at ‘Lord, I have cried’ at Vespers on Sunday Evening (yesterday):

Let us set out with joy upon the season of the Fast, and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. Let us purify our soul and cleanse our flesh; and as we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. Rejoicing in the virtues of the Spirit may we persevere with love, and so be counted worthy to see the solemn Passion of Christ our God, and with great spiritual gladness to behold His holy Passover. [3]

The second is a sessional hymn in Tone Two at Matins today, Monday in the First Week:

Let us joyfully begin the all-hallowed season of abstinence; and let us shine with the bright radiance of the holy commandments of Christ our God, with the brightness of love and the splendour of prayer, with the purity of holiness and the strength of good courage. So, clothed in raiment of light, let us hasten to the Holy Resurrection on the third day, that shines upon the world with the glory of eternal life. [4]

As will be noticed, both of these hymns begin with an exhortation that we conduct ourselves with joy, even as we go about the business of repentance and abstinence. Furthermore, I would almost read the references to shining with the ‘radiance’ of the commandments, ‘the brightness of love and the splendour of prayer’, as a spiritual gloss on Christ’s instructions that we anoint our heads and wash our faces—the physical effect of which is a natural brightening of the countenance. This would seem to be supported by the following troparia from Ode 8 of the second canon at Matins for today:

O ye faithful, with joy let us enter upon the beginning of the Fast. Let us not be of sad countenance but let us wash our faces in the water of dispassion; and let us bless and exalt Christ above all for ever.

Let us anoint the head of our soul with the oil of loving compassion, and let us not use vain repetitions when praying to our Father in heaven; and let us bless and exalt Him above all for ever. [5]

Despite this Clean Monday post, which I felt was obligatory, I intend to follow my practice of last year throughout Lent and continue to focus on the Menology here at Logismoi. I may occasionally post passages from or reflections on the Triodion at this blog, which a friend of mine started, and there may be occasional references to the Lenten fast here at Logismoi, but I feel my first calling here is the Saints and Feasts that we commemorate in the Menaion.


[1]Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion & Pentecostarion, ed. Fr David (Kidd) & Mother Gabriella (Ursache) (Rives Junction, MI: HDM, 1999), p. 50.

[2] The Lenten Triodion, tr. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1994), p. 179.

[3] Ibid., p. 181.

[4] Ibid., p. 190.

[5] Ibid., pp. 192-3.

'A bright sadness'—My Secular Press Debut

I was surprised, upon returning Sunday night from the Louisville conference, to discover an e-mail from David Shariatmadari, commissioning editor for the feature ‘Comment is free—Belief’ at the UK Newspaper, The Guardian, asking if I could write a 600-word op-ed on Orthodox Lent. Although this sort of thing is not really my bailywick, I agreed, and in a bit of a rush completed something that satisfied David. Although I’m not completely happy with the finished product myself and did not intend to advertise it too much, somehow or another my chief propagandist, Owen White, came across it and posted a link. As I get more readers from him than from any other source, the proverbial cat is now quite out of the bag. So here, dear readers, is my repost of the article. Feel free to comment here, but I could probably use even more support in the comments thread for the article itself.

A season of bright sadness
For Orthodox Christians, the penitential season of Lent means much more than fasting

Aaron Taylor
The Guardian, Saturday 13 February 2010

Many Christians in the West, Catholic and Protestant, are familiar with the penitential season preceding Easter which is known as ‘Lent’. But the observance of this season is unusually elabourate among the Orthodox Christians of the East, and unfamiliar to most outsiders.

In the Orthodox Church, Lent is first and foremost a liturgical period. In other words, its most important component is the liturgical texts and services that are sung throughout the season. The collection of Lenten liturgical material is known as the Triodion, and it is actually first brought out and used three weeks prior to Lent proper.

Having completed these three weeks of preparation, Orthodox Lent begins, not on an ‘Ash Wednesday’, but on a Monday, known as ‘Clean Monday’. On Clean Monday, observant Orthodox Christians begin the most obvious part of the Lenten season—fasting. An Orthodox fast consists of abstinence from meat, eggs, dairy products, fish, wine, and oil. It is a diet that Orthodox should be accustomed to, as it is also kept on most Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year, and during Advent and other liturgical seasons.

The Lenten fast, however, must never become a source of pride on the one hand, or something oppressive on the other. It is a measuring-stick for our individual practice. If we keep it faithfully, we must say, ‘We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do’ (Lk 17:10). If we fall short of the standard for any reason, we must reproach ourselves and try to do better. Fasting is primarily about obedience, and thus, humility. But it also creates a sense of need and sobriety. It teaches us to seek our consolation in things of the spirit rather than of the flesh.

For fasting, even undertaken in the right spirit of humility, is merely a physical accompaniment to the real heart and joy of Lent: the prayer and worship that are intensified during this season, with some churches holding several services throughout the week. The centuries-old texts of the Triodion, full of poetry, meditation, and profound truth, are one of the greatest treasures of the Orthodox Church. It is here that we encounter what the influential theologian Fr Alexander Schmemann has called the ‘atmosphere’, the ‘state of mind, soul, and spirit’ which is to permeate our lives and which he calls ‘bright sadness’—a poetic translation of the ‘joy-making mourning’ recommended by St John Climacus in his Ladder of Divine Ascent.

The Triodion reminds us that we have fallen short, that we are not the people we should be, that we have become entirely focused on aggrandising and sating ourselves, and thereby these ancient services engender a sense of sorrow. But the sense of freedom we experience as we relinquish this terrible self-centredness begets joy in our hearts. If we do not to some extent attain to this joy-through-mourning, we have entirely missed the point of Lent.

Orthodox have not only this truth to offer their fellow men, but a concrete, indeed a beautiful means of actualising it in our lives. But even if not all are able to come and participate in the enacting of the ‘bright sadness’ of Orthodox Lent, surely this is a time of year for all to ponder its wisdom. As long as there is evil in the world, we can be sure that some of it still lies hidden in our hearts. And as long as we are able to shed tears over our condition, there remains hope that we will one day see the glorious day of Resurrection.

'The Water Washd by Washing In't'—Holy Theophany

Today, 6 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the Holy Theophany of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the prayer of St Sophronius of Jerusalem at the Great Blessing of the Waters, we read, ‘In the preceding feast we saw Thee as a child, while in the present we behold Thee full-grown, our God made manifest perfect God from perfect God.’ [1] In the words of Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo, ‘And here, for these past days, the Holy Church has been calling us to the shores of the Jordan, and today, on the day of the Baptism of the Lord, she reveals to us a great mystery—the Manifestation of God.’ [2] St Diadochus of Photiki teaches that ‘the holy Logos of God took flesh and, being God, He bestowed on us through His own baptism the water of salvation, so that we might be reborn.’ [3] Here is the reading from the Prologue for today’s Feast:

When the Lord Jesus had lived for thirty years from His birth in the flesh, He began His teaching and saving work. He marked this very beginning of the beginning by His Baptism in the Jordan. St Cyril of Jerusalem says: ‘The beginning of the world—water; the beginning of the Gospel—the Jordan.’ At the Baptism of the Lord in the water, that mystery was revealed to the world that was predicted in the Old Testament and fabled in ancient Egypt and India—the mystery of the Holy Trinity of God. The Father revealed Himself to the sense of hearing, the Spirit to the sense of sight and the Son, further beyond these, to the sense of touch. The Father gave His testimony of the Son, the Son was baptised in the waters and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, hovered over the waters. And when John the Baptist bore witness of Christ and said: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’ (Jn. 1:29), and when he immersed the Lord in the Jordan and baptised Him, there were thus revealed both the mission of Christ in the world and the path of our salvation. That is to say: Christ takes upon Himself the sin of the whole human race. He dies under it (the immersion) and rises again (the coming up out of the water), and we must die to the old, sinful man and rise again, cleansed, renewed and re-born. Here is the Saviour and here is the way of salvation. The Feast of the Theophany is also called the Illuminating, for in the Jordan there is given to us an illumining, revealing God to us as Trinity, consubstantial and undivided. That is one thing. And the other is that each of us baptised in the water is illumined by the Father of lights, through the merits of the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. [4]

Archbishop Andrei’s emphasis on ‘the Manifestation of God’, the literal meaning of ‘Theophany’, and St Nicholas’s reference to the revelation of ‘the mystery of the Holy Trinity of God’ both get to the very heart of this feast as expressed in the festal Troparion:

When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest. For the voice of the Father bore witness unto Thee, calling Thee the beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed His word as sure and steadfast. O Christ our God who hast appeared and enlightened the world, glory to Thee. [5]

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos comments on this understanding of the Feast as a revelation of the Trinity:

During Christ’s Baptism the Holy Trinity appeared. One of the purposes of the divine incarnation, as well as of the Baptism of Christ was the revelation of the Trinitarian God, that although God has one essence and nature, yet He is off three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So the voice of the Father is heard witnessing and giving assurance that He who is in the Jordan at that moment is His Son, while the Holy Spirit also appears ‘like a dove’, as a dove. [6]

Furthermore, as God Himself it is not Christ who is blessed by the waters of Baptism, but rather the waters are blessed by Him. For, as the Venerable Bede says, ‘He deigned to be washed in the waters of the Jordan although he was clean of all stains, so that he might sanctify the flowing of water for the washing away of the stains of all of our wicked deeds.’ [7] Richard Crashaw has treated this in one of his ‘Divine Epigrams’:

On the water of our Lord’s Baptism.

Each blest drop, on each blest limb,
Is washt itself, in washing him:
’Tis a Gem while it stays here,
While it falls hence ’tis a Tear. [8]

Similarly, Giles Fletcher says in some lines to accompany an engraving of Christ’s Baptism, ‘I see the water wa[s]hd by washing in’t.’ [9]

Indeed, many of the liturgical texts for the Feast emphasise the fear of the waters before Christ and speak of them ‘turning back’ before Him. Psalm 76:17 is used as a Prokeimenon verse in the Royal Hours on the Eve of the Feast: ‘The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee and were afraid.’ [10] Similarly, Psalm 113:3 is used in the first Antiphon at the Liturgy for the Feast: ‘The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back.’ [11] A number of the hymns comment and elabourate upon these verses, such as this sticheron in Tone 8 from the Great Blessing of the Waters: ‘Today the nature of the waters is sanctified, and the Jordan is parted in two; it holds back the stream of its own waters, seeing the Master wash Himself.’ [12] Lest this be thought a ‘mere’ poetic image, see this post by Fr Milovan Katanić giving testimony of a recurring miracle which repeats this response of the creation to its Creator.

For more theological, historical, and literary reflection on the significance of the Feast, see:

My post of last year, in which I discuss the ‘crushing of the heads of dragons’ motif

This post by Brigit at Under the Oak on ‘Irish High Crosses & the Baptism of Christ’

This homily of St John Chrysostom on the Theophany

This explanation of the blessing of homes by Fr David Moser

This documentary on ‘the true site of Jesus’s Baptism’

And this poem by the inimitable Fr Jonathan Tobias

In conclusion, here is Hymn IX on the Epiphany by St Ephraim the Syrian (from the NPNF series, here):

Hymn IX.

(Resp., Blessed is He Who came down, and sanctified water for the remission of the sins of the children of Adam!)

1. O John, who sawest the Spirit,—that abode on the head of the Son,—to show how the Head of the Highest—went down and was baptized—and came up to be Head on earth!—Children of the Spirit ye have thus become,—and Christ has become for you the Head:—ye also have become His members.

2. Consider and see how exalted ye are;—how instead of the river Jordan—ye have glorious Baptism, wherein is peace;—spreading her wings to shade your bodies.—In the wilderness John baptized:—in Her pure flood of Baptism,—purely are ye baptized therein.

3. Infants think when they see its glory,—that by its pomp its might is enhanced.—But it is the same, and within itself—is not divided.—But the might which never waxes less or greater—in us is little or again great;—and he in whom is great understanding,—great in him is Baptism.

4. A man’s knowledge, if it be exalted,—exalted also is his degree above his brethren;—and he whose faith is great,—so also is his promise;—and as is his wisdom, so also his crowning.—As is the light, which though it be all goodly—and equal all of it with itself,—yet goodlier is one eye than another.

5. Jesus mingled His might in the water:—put ye Him on my brethren as discerning men!—For there are that in the water merely—perceive that they are washed. With our body be our soul washed!—The manifest water let the body perceive,—and the soul the secret might;—that both to the manifest and to the secret ye may be made like!

6. How beautiful is Baptism—in the eye of the heart; come, let us gaze on it!—Like as by a seal ye have been moulded;—receive ye its image,—that nought may be lacking to us of our image!—For the sheep that are white of heart—gaze on the glory that is in the water:—in your souls reflect ye it!

7. Water is by nature as a mirror,—for one who in it examines himself.—Stir up thy soul, thou that discernest,—and be like unto it!—For it in its midst reflects thy image;—from it, on it, find an example;—gaze in it on Baptism,—and put on the beauty that is hidden therein!

8. What profits it him that hears—a voice and knows not its significance?—Whoso hears a voice and is devoid—of the understanding thereof,—his ear is filled but his soul is empty.—Lo! since the gift is abundant,—with discernment receive ye it.

9. Baptism that is with understanding—is the conjunction of two lights,—and rich are the fountains of its rays.—……—And the darkness that is on the mind departs,—and the soul beholds Him in beauty,—the hidden Christ of glory,—and grieves when the glory fails.

10. Baptism without understanding—is a treasure full yet empty;—since he that receives it is poor in it,—for he understands not—how great are its riches into which he enters and dwells.—For great is the gift within it,—though the mean man perceives not—that he is exalted even as it.

11. Open wide your minds and see, my brethren,—the secret column in the air, whose base is fixed from the midst of the water—unto the door of the Highest Place, like the ladder that Jacob saw.—Lo! by it came down the light unto Baptism,—and by it the soul goes up to Heaven,—that in one love we may be mingled.

12. Our Lord when he was baptized by John—sent forth twelve fountains;—and they issued forth and cleansed by their streams—the defilement of the peoples.—His worshippers are made white like His garments,—the garments in Tabor and the body in the water.—Instead of the garments the peoples are made white,—and have become for Him a clothing of glory.

13. From your garments learn, my brethren,—how your members should be kept.—For if the garment, which ever so many times—may be made clean,—is duly kept for the sake of its comeliness,—the body which has but one baptism—manifold more exceeding is the care of its keeping,—for manifold are its dangers.

14. Again the sun in a house that is strait,—is straitened therein though he be great:—but in a house that is goodly and large,—when he rises thereon—far and wide in it he spreads his rays;—and though the sun is one and the same in his nature,—in divers houses he undergoes changes:—Even so our Lord in divers men. [13]

[1] The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1998), p. 354.

[2] Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo, The One Thing Needful (Liberty, TN: St John of Kronstadt, 1991), p. 21.

[3] The Philokalia, Vol. 1, trans. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 280.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 31.

[5] Menaion, p. 363.

[6] Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the Twelve Feasts & Orthodox Christology, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Gr.: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2003), p. 105.

[7] St Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels, Book 1: Advent to Lent, trans. Lawrence T. Martin & David Hurst, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), p. 114.

[8] The Verse in English of Richard Crashaw (NY: Grove, 1949), p. 39.

[9] William B. Hunter, Jr., ed., The English Spenserians: The Poetry of Giles Fletcher, George Wither, Michael Drayton, Phineas Fletcher & Henry More (Salt Lake City: U of Utah, 1977), p. 48.

[10] Menaion, p. 316.

[11] Ibid., p. 384.

[12] Ibid., p. 348.

'A Pretty Babe All Burning Bright'—The Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ

Today, 25 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrated the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Concerning the Incarnation of Christ, St Maximus the Confessor teaches:

For not as God in His essence and as coessential with God the Father was the only-begotten Son given to us; only inasmuch as by virtue of God’s providential dispensation He became man by nature and, for our sakes made coessential with us, He was given to us who have need of such grace. [1]

Archimandrite Justin (Popović) writes, ‘Therefore Nativity, the day of the birth of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the greatest and most important day in the history of all the worlds in which man moves and lives.’ [2] And Metropolitan Hierotheos observes, ‘All the other feasts of the Lord—Epiphany, the Transfiguration, the Passion, the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ—follow from the Nativity.’ [3] Here is the account of our Lord’s Nativity in the Prologue:

‘And when the fullness of time was come, God sent His only-begotten Son’ (Gal. 4:4), to save the human race. And when the ninth month had come after the archangel Gabriel appeared to the most holy Virgin in Nazareth, saying: ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured . . . thou shalt conceive and bear a son’—at that time a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire be taxed. In accordance with this decree, everyone had to go to his own town and there be inscribed. Therefore righteous Joseph came with the most holy Virgin to Bethlehem, the city of David, for they were both of the royal House of David. But, there being a great many people in that small city for the census, Joseph and Mary could not find a lodging in any house, and found shelter in a cave which the shepherds used as a sheepfold. In this cave the most holy Virgin gave birth to the Saviour of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bearing Him without pain, as He was conceived without sin of the Holy Spirit and not of man, she herself wrapped Him in swaddling bands, worshipped Him as God and laid Him in a manger. Then righteous Joseph drew near and worshipped Him as the divine Fruit of a virgin womb. Then the shepherds came in from the fields, directed by an angel of God, and worshipped Him as Messiah and Saviour. The shepherds had heard a multitude of angels singing: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men’ (Luke 2:14). At that time there also came wise men from the East, led by a wonderful star, bearing their gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh, and worshipped Him as King of kings, offering Him their gifts (Matt. 2:11). Thus He came into the world Whose coming had been foretold by the prophets and Who was born in the way that they had prophesied: of the most holy Virgin, in the city of Bethlehem, of the lineage of David according to the flesh, at the time when there was no longer in Jerusalem a king of the tribe of Judah, but Herod the stranger was on the throne. After many types and prefigurings, messengers and heralds, prophets and righteous men, wise men and kings, finally He appeared, the Lord of the world and King of kings, to perform the work of the salvation of mankind that could not be performed by His servants. May His be eternal glory and praise! Amen. [4]

The last troparion of the Second Ode of the second Canon of the Feast, written by St John of Damascus in iambic verse, beautifully summarises the wonder of Christ’s Incarnation:

He who rules the heights of heaven, in His compassion,
Has become such as we are, born of a Maiden who has not known man.
The Word who before was wholly outside matter, in these last times
Has assumed the material substance of the flesh
That so He might draw unto Himself fallen Adam, the first-formed man. [5]

Similarly, in his homily on the Nativity, the Venerable Bede tells us, ‘Hence, dearly beloved brothers, we who today recall in yearly devotion the human nativity of our Redeemer, must always embrace the divine nature as well as his human nature with a love that is not yearly, but continual . . . .’ [6] Furthermore, referring to the Epistle from today’s Liturgy—Gal. 4:4-7: ‘. . . God sent forth His Son . . . that we might receive the adoption of sons’—Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo exhorts us in his homily for the feast:

Let this Holy Day become the Holy Day of the consecration of our heart, of the acceptance of adoption, in order to perform for us this spiritual endeavor: the beginning of that which Christ gives. ‘Prepare, O Bethlehem . . . Christ shall be born to raise the image that fell of old.’ [7]

But of course, this consecration of our heart entails an interior reenacting of the Nativity, as St Maximus the Confessor teaches, ‘The divine Logos, who once for all was born in the flesh, always in His compassion desires to be born in spirit in those who desire Him. He becomes an infant and moulds Himself in them through the virtues.’ [8]

A couple of points about the calendar date of this Feast: first, all Anglophile Orthodox will of course recall that on this date, that is, specifically on the Old Calendar, the Glastonbury Thorn of St Joseph of Arimathea has traditionally bloomed. As Tennyson writes, at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset:

. . . the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. [9]

And one 17th-c. booklet on ‘The History of that Holy Disciple Joseph of Arimathea’ in the Abbey Library tells us that ‘at Glastenbury in Somersetshire . . . is still growing that noted White-Thorn, which buds every Christmas-Day in the Morning, blossoms at Noon, and fades at Night, on the Place where he pitched his Staff in the Ground.’ [10]

But another point worth noting is a Slavic term relating to Christmas. In a note at the beginning of his short story, ‘The Night Before Christmas’, Nikolai Gogol writes:

Among us [that is, Ukrainians], to go caroling [koliadovat] means to sing songs called koliadki under the windows on Christmas Eve. The master or mistress of the house, or anyone staying at home, always drops into the carolers’ sack some sausage or bread or a copper coin, whatever bounty they have. They say there used to be an idol named Koliada who was thought to be a god, and that is where the koliadki came from. Who knows? It’s not for us simple people to discuss it. Last year Father Osip forbade going caroling around the farmsteads, saying folk were pleasing Satan by it. However, to tell the truth, there’s not a word in the koliadki about Koliada. They often sing of the nativity of Christ; and in the end they wish health to the master, the mistress, the children, and the whole household. (The Beekeeper’s note.) [11]

But, noting a similar term—and similar customs—in Bulgaria, Thomas Butler doesn’t even mention a god ‘Koliada’, but offers another suggestion:

The festival of koleda (Christmas) seems to trace its origins to a pagan Roman ritual (calendae). Koledni or koledarski pesni (‘Christmas songs’) are sung by groups of village boys who go from house to house on Christmas Eve (bŭdni večer). They have a leader (tsar or vodač) who knows a large repertory of songs or refrains, many of which are designed for individual members of the household (child, wife, husband, grown son, marriageable daughter). The following song seems to be an amalgam of both pre-Christian and Christian elements, with the young God representing both the New Year and Christ.

‘The Christening of the Young God’

The Mother of God labored
From Ignatius’s Day to Christmas [Koleda]
To give birth to the young God.
Everyone came by
To have a look at the young God.
They invited Saint John
To baptize the young God.
Saint John murmured:
—But how can I baptize,
Baptize the young God?
I am the chaff—he is the fire.
The young God murmured back:
—Come here, come here, Saint John,
And fulfill God’s law.—
Saint John brightened up,
Then he rolled up his white sleeves
And tucked his silk skirts,
His silk skirts inside his belt
And he made three candles.
He took the candles in his left hand
And in his right—the young God.
The young God glows with beauty
Saint John with joy;
His hands turned to silver
His skirts to gold
His beard became golden as well.
We sing to you, we praise God.
May God grant you much health!
May the health in this house be abundant
As geraniums on the mountainside—
In this house, in this company.
O Christmas, my Christmas! [12]

H.J. Rose notes that in the Empire, Kalends gift-giving at least was not abolished until Leo I in 458. [13]

Next, I have just a few online recommendations for the Nativity:

St John Chrysostom’s Homily.

St Leo the Great’s Homilies.

St Theodore the Studite’s Catechesis.

Bishop Theophilos of Campania on the Incarnation.

Another beautiful Serbian video.

Article on Father Christmas & the Christmas Spirit.

Article on the date of Christmas.

Obviously, more than one of these is from John Sanidopoulos’s blog, Mystagogy, which consistently features fascinating posts.

In conclusion, I offer another great lyric from the golden age of English poetry: Robert Southwell’s, ‘The Burning Babe’.

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear.
Who scorchèd with exceeding heat such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench his flames with what His tears were fed;
Alas, quoth He, but newly born in fiery heats of fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defilèd souls;
For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood:
With this He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas day. [14]

[1] The Philokalia, Vol. 2, trans. G.E.H. Palmer et al. (London: Faber, 1990), pp. 156-7.

[2] Archimandrite Justin (Popović), ‘Perfect God & Perfect Man: A Nativity Epistle’, trans. Rev. Todor Mika & Rev. Stevan Scott, Man & the God-Man (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2009), p. 10.

[3] Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the Twelve Feasts & Orthodox Christology, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Gr.: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2003), p. 39.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), pp. 369-70.

[5] The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1998), p. 272.

[6] St Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels, Book 1: Advent to Lent, trans. Lawrence T. Martin & David Hurst, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), p. 82.

[7] Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo, The One Thing Needful (Liberty, TN: St John of Kronstadt, 1991), p. 14.

[8] Philokalia 2, pp. 165-6.

[9] Jerome H. Buckley, ed., Poems of Tennyson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 390.

[10] F. Vere Hodge, Glastonbury Gleanings (Norwich: The Canterbury, 1991), p. 5.

[11] Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky, trans. & annot., The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (NY: Pantheon, 1998), p. 19.

[12] Thomas Butler, Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the 9th to the 19th Centuries (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic, 2004), pp. 476, 479.

[13] H.J. Rose, Ancient Greek & Roman Religion, Two Volumes in One: Vol. 2 (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), p. 148.

[14] H.C. Beeching, ed., A Book of Christmas Verse, illust. Walter C. Crane (NY: Bonanza,1986), pp. 27-8.

'A Holiday Can Be Celebrated Without Extravagant Festivity'—Comments on Saturnalia

When, in my post on Saturn, I quoted Charles Huttar’s observation that C.S. Lewis was alluding to the Roman Saturnalia festival in his poem ‘The Turn of the Tide’, I had intended to add another thing or two on that subject, but unfortunately I forgot.

Catullus famously described the Saturnalia as ‘our day of days’ (14.15). [1] H.J. Rose claims that it fell ‘originally on December 17th, but later extended to three, four, five or even seven days’. [2] But according to one site, citing Macrobius's work, Saturnalia:

Originally, it was celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January (December 19). With the Julian reform of the calendar, however, two days were added to December, and the Saturnalia was celebrated sixteen days before the Kalends (December 17), ‘with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage—the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one’ (I.10.2).

Rose explains how the holiday was observed:

. . . [The Saturnalia] to begin with resembled the Greek harvest-feast of the Kronia, for during it there were no social distinctions, slaves had a holiday and feasted like their masters, and all restrictions were relaxed, one being the prohibition on gambling with dice, which was supposed to be in force at other times of the year. It was, however, a more thoroughgoing season of jollity than the Kronia, at least in historical times, ‘the best of all days’, says Martial. Civilians and soldiers alike celebrated it, it was usual to choose by lot a Lord of Misrule (Saturnalicius princes, ‘leading man of the Saturnalia’), and gifts were exchanged. [3]

But the most interesting thing to me concerning Saturnalia is Seneca’s comments on it in his 18th Letter to Lucilius. There the great Stoic seems to anticipate to a striking degree Christian teaching on the proper celebration of Christmas:

It is the month of December, and yet the whole city is in a sweat! Festivity at state expense is given unrestricted license. Everywhere there echoes the noise of preparations on a massive scale. It all suggests that the Saturnalia holidays are different from the ordinary working day, when the difference is really non-existent—so much so in fact that the man who said that December used to be a month but is now a year was, in my opinion, not far wide of the mark!

If I had you with me I should enjoy consulting you and finding out what course you think we should follow: should we make no alteration in our daily habits, or should we take off our togas—time was when a change from formal wear would come about only during periods of grave political upheaval, whereas with us it happens for holidays’ and pleasure’s sake!—and have dinner parties with a note of gaiety about them, to avoid giving the impression that we disagree with the ways of those around us? If I know you as well as I think I do and you had to give a decision in the matter, you would say that we should be neither altogether like nor altogether unlike the festive-hatted crowd. But perhaps this is the very season when we should be keeping the soul under strict control, making it unique in abstaining from pleasure just when the crowd are all on pleasure bent. If the soul succeeds in avoiding either heading or being carried away in the direction of the temptations that lead people into extravagant living, no surer proof of its strength of purpose can be vouchsafed it. Remaining dry and sober takes a good deal more strength of will when everyone about one is puking drunk [vomitante populo]; [4] it takes a more developed sense of fitness, on the other hand, not to make of oneself a person apart, to be neither indistinguishable from those about one nor conspicuous by one’s difference, to do the same things but not in quite the same manner. For a holiday can be celebrated without extravagant festivity. [5]

[1] Roy Arthur Swanson, trans., Odi et Amo: The Complete Poetry of Catullus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), p. 15.

[2] H.J. Rose, Ancient Greek & Roman Religion, Two Volumes in One: Vol. 2 (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), p. 77.

[3] Ibid., p. 77.

[4] Walter C. Summers, ed., Select Letters of Seneca (London: Macmillan, 1962), p. 19.

[5] Seneca, Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, trans. Robin Campbell (London: Penguin, 1969), pp. 66-7.