'Let Us Cry Out to Christ Like the Canaanite Woman' - A Homily

At last, I have a new homily to post. This was based on the BCP readings for the second Sunday in Lent: I Thessalonians 4:1-8 and St Matthew 15:21-28. I was a little worried about frightening some of the kids with the talk about child sacrifice, but I think it was the best received so far.

‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Epistle, St Paul writes, ‘[E]very one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour’ (I Thess. 4:4). This is something that the people of Tyre and Sidon, the country of the ‘Canaanite woman’ in today’s Gospel historically failed to do. Indeed, the pagan worship of the Phoenician cities is still well known for its ‘licentiousness’. [1]

But it is worse than that. Actually, it surprises me little that the ‘woman of Canaan’ would complain of a daughter ‘grievously vexed with a devil’ (St Matt. 15:23). Ps. 96:5 says ‘all the gods of the nations’—or Gentiles, like the Phoenicians—‘are mere idols’: but according to both the Greek and Latin translations of the Old Testament, ‘all the gods of the nations are demons’ (Ps. 96:5 LXX). Next week’s Gospel mentions ‘Beelzebub’, or ‘Lord of Flies’, the demonic god of the Philistine city of Ekron, who is referred to there as ‘the chief of devils’ (St Luke 11:14-28).

The latter passage reminds us that Ps. 96:5 is true par excellence of the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, whose deities are variously known as Baal or Moloch, and who were known to sacrifice their children in the fiery mouths of their great bronze idols. Such sacrifices are mentioned in Lev. 18:21, and there are terrifying, vivid descriptions of them in a scholium to Plato’s Republic as well as in Plutarch.

Thus, it seems a fitting punishment for people known in the Mediterranean world for sacrificing children to demons for their children to be ‘badly demonized’, according to a literal translation of the woman’s words. Surely the burners of human beings to demonic gods fall under St Paul’s condemnation when he writes in today’s Epistle, ‘He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God’ (I Thess. 4:8). Confronted with the same Moloch-worshipping Phoenicians in their colony of Carthage, G.K. Chesterton tells us the Romans saw ‘faces of sneering men; and hated the hateful soul of Carthage’. [2]

But, as St Augustine happily observes in The City of God, ‘[M]en, though erring, incredulous, and averse from the worship and service of the gods, are nevertheless beyond doubt better than the demons whom they themselves have evoked’ (De civ. Dei 8.24). [3] This is wonderfully demonstrated by the woman in today’s Gospel. She recognised her error, repented, and came to Christ in humble supplication, and this humility is the dominant note of today’s lesson. It begins with a simple plea for mercy, like the prayer of the Publican, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner’ (Lk 18:13). Then, we see the recognition that the Messiah of the Hebrews is the true ‘Baal’, or ‘Lord’, when the woman says ‘O Lord’.

St Gregory Palamas, the Archbishop of Thessalonica in the 14th c., preached a beautiful homily on today’s Gospel in the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Thessalonica (not the big famous Hagia Sophia, but a smaller one). [4] I will be quoting frequently from St Gregory through the rest of this homily. Commenting on the Canaanite woman’s address to Christ, St Gregory points out that ‘no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost’ (I Cor. 12:3). Thus, in his words, ‘In fact the Canaanite woman did not merely come out from those heathen coasts, but sprang up from the valleys like a sacred lily, exhaling with her words the fragrance of the divine Spirit from her mouth.’ [5]

So, we have already a model of enormous self-abasement, but our Lord ‘wanted her faith and virtue to be demonstrated even more clearly’. First, He ‘answered her not a word’ (15:23), then, when the disciples pleaded with Him to send her away, He said, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (15:24).

Now, we might think that the humble response to such a rebuff would be to accept it and withdraw—but this would be pride, not humility. When she needs help, the humble woman begs for it. Thus, woman of Canaan worships Christ, that is, she falls down before Him in prostration, and supplicates Him in even simpler words: ‘Lord, help me’ (15:25).

How does Christ respond to this self-abasement? We are astonished to find that He responds with an insult: ‘It is not meet to take the children’s bread [that is, the salvation belonging to Israel], and to cast it to dogs [the Phoenician Baal-worshippers]’ (15:26). But while we may be shocked by Christ calling a woman a ‘dog’, however fitting a moral description of her people it may be, He who knows all things knew her heart, saw her humility, and wanted to test her to reveal her amazing virtue before all for centuries to come.

For how does she respond? She is not insulted. According to St Gregory, ‘[W]hen she was treated with contempt and heard herself called not just an irrational animal, but a dirty and fierce one, whose voice was a dog’s bark rather than human speech worth listening to, she agreed and joined in ridiculing herself, but did not cease to entreat Christ.’ [6]

The Fathers teach us that when we are insulted, we absolutely must NOT respond with insults, but, they say, it is even better not to become angry, and best of all to admit the truth in the insult. One Father of the Egyptian desert, Abba Isaiah, says insults are good for us because they teach us humility, and that one who ‘bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day’ (Isaiah 1). [7] Another Desert Father, Abba Xanthius, points out a dog is better than we, ‘for he has love & he does not judge’ (Xanthius 3). [8]

So the Canaanite woman follows this highest path: ‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table’ (15:27). St Gregory writes:

Let us learn from this teacher with how much patience, humility and contrition we must persevere in our prayers. Even if we are unworthy, and even if we are sent away because we are soiled with sins, let us learn not to turn back, but to keep humbly asking from our soul. We shall receive our requests from God. [9]

The exhortation ‘not to turn back, but to keep humbly asking from our soul’ reminds us of the Parable of the Unjust Judge in Luke 18:1-8, which, incidentally, is the proper Second Lesson for Evening Prayer to follow this morning’s readings. In this parable, a widow comes to a judge ‘which feared not God, neither regarded man’ (18:2), pleading for justice against her adversary (and in interpreting this it is helpful to recall that in I Peter 5:8 the ‘adversary’ is the devil). The judge complains to himself, ‘Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me’ (18:5), to which the Lord says, ‘Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily?’ (18:6-8)

(By the way, in this parable, Christ is drawing from an old Hebrew schoolbook called ‘The Book of Ben Sirach’, where we find the lovely line: ‘The prayer of the humble pierceth the clouds: and till it come nigh, he will not be comforted; and will not depart, till the most High shall behold to judge righteously, and execute judgment’ (Ecclesiasticus 35:17).)

Like the widow, the Canaanite woman pleads to be avenged against her adversary—who in this case is quite clearly the devil—and is rewarded for her perseverance in prayer. So we too must persevere in prayer, but while St Gregory says that in this way ‘We will receive our requests from God’, I’m afraid we often spend too much time requesting frivolities, things that we want to get from God, rather than requesting deliverance from the devil who keeps us captive through our sinful thoughts and habits.

As we see, the Canaanite woman’s words are, as St Gregory says, ‘truly wise’, but they are also beautiful imagery, they are eloquent, poetic. Indeed, St Ephraim the Syrian (4th c.), whom one scholar calls ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age and perhaps the only theologian-poet to rank beside Dante’, [10] loves the Canaanite woman’s image of dogs eating crumbs from the master’s table. In his humility, St Ephraim often speaks of himself eating ‘crumbs’ from heaven:

And if none who is defiled can enter that place, then allow me to live by its enclosure, residing in its shade. Since Paradise resembles that table, let me, through Your grace, eat of the ‘crumbs’ of its fruit which fall outside, so that I too may join those dogs who had their fill from the crumbs of their masters’ tables. (Hymns on Paradise 7.26) [11]

Humility, however, is not merely nice but absolutely necessary for our salvation. Christ says that unless we humble ourselves we ‘shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:3). Another Desert Father, Abba Longinus, said:

I reckon that just as pride is the greatest of the passions, since it was able to cast various beings down from Heaven, so also is humility the greatest of all the virtues. For it has the power to raise a man up from those dark abysses, even if he is a sinner like the Devil. This is why the Lord called the poor in spirit, that is, the humble, blessed above all others (Matt. 5:3). [12]

This is wonderfully illustrated in a beautiful passage of Crime & Punishment, by the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov is a despicable man, an alcoholic who lets his family starve while he spends their money on booze, but he weeps over his own sins even while committing them. In one of my favourite passages of one of my favourite books, when the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, goes to find him in a St Petersburg bar, Marmeladov describes the Last Judgement:

And when He has finished with everyone, then He will say unto us, too, ‘You, too, come forth!’ He will say. ‘Come forth, my drunk ones, my weak ones, my shameless ones!’ And we will all come forth, without being ashamed, and stand there. And He will say, ‘Swine you are! Of the image of the beast and of his seal’ but come, you, too!’ And the wise and the reasonable will say unto Him, ‘Lord, why do you receive such as these?’ And He will say, ‘I receive them, my wise and reasonable ones, forasmuch as not one of them considered himself worthy of this thing . . .’ And He will stretch out His arms to us, and we will fall at His feet . . . and weep . . . and understand everything! Then we will understand everything! . . . and everyone will understand . . . […] Lord, Thy kingdom come! [13]

I shall conclude with St Gregory Palamas’s words:

Let us humble ourselves of our own free will, brethren, that we may demonstrate our faith in Christ and also be exalted by Him. Or rather, may we acknowledge our innate lowliness, and the fact that the misleading thoughts which sometimes arise within us are from the demons. Then let us cry out to Christ like the Canaanite woman, fall down before Him and persevere in humble prayer, and we shall obtain the grace which is given to the humbleminded, and speedily ascend to divine heights. [14]

[1] See ‘Baal’, Peloubet’s Bible Dictionary, ed. F.N. Peloubet, asstd. by Alice D. Adams (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), p. 64.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (SF: Ignatius, 2008), p. 150.

[3] St Augustine, The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods (NY: Modern Library, 1950), p. 275.

[4] Homily 43; in St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), pp. 339-45.

[5] St Gregory, p. 340.

[6] Ibid., p. 341.

[7] Benedicta Ward, tr., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. 69.

[8] Ibid., p. 159.

[9] St Gregory, p. 341.

[10] Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1987), p. 30, citing Robert Murray, Catholic Dictionary of Theology, Vol. 2, ed. J.H. Crehan (London, 1967), p. 222.

[11] St Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns On Paradise, tr. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1990), p. 128.

[12] Archbishop Chrysostomos & Hieromonk Patapios, ed. & tr., The Evergetinos: A Complete Text—Book I (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), p. 384.

[13] Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (NY: Everyman, ), p. 23.

[14] St Gregory, p. 342.

Fr Alexis's Book & Logismoic Podcasts

I have been working on getting another homily ready to put up, but in the meantime I was asked by a friend to post a few links. I know I have mentioned before my friendship, dating back to my first visit to Greece in 2001, with Hieromonk Alexis (Trader) of Karakallou Monastery on the Holy Mountain (who is now residing off of the Mountain for health reasons). Well, as many readers may already know, Fr Alexis has recently published a dissertation—completed under the supervision of my own advisor, Anestis Keselopoulos—on the Neptic Fathers and the psychology of Aaron Beck, entitled Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds.

Unfortunately, it’s a European academic press, so the volume is quite expensive and is not receiving a great deal of publicity within the Orthodox market. So a mutual friend convinced Fr Alexis to do a series of four guest blog posts introducing this project. I myself would have been happy to host one of the guest posts, but I was afraid that with my infrequent and irregular posting over the last seven months it might not reach much of an audience here at Logismoi. So, here are the first three posts of the series (the third is to be posted on Kevin Edgecomb’s biblicalia this Thursday):

#1 at Mystagogy
#2 at Second Terrace
#3 at The Voice of Stefan

Also, excerpts from the book itself can be read here and here at the Orthodox Christian Information Center. I highly recommend that everybody take a look, and if you are at all able to do so, to support this project by purchasing a copy of the book. We are hoping that there will be enough interest to warrant the publication of a paperback edition.

In other news, my talk from the Climacus Conference (mentioned here), ‘“In Thy Law Will He Meditate Day & Night”: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education’, has been up at Ancient Faith Radio for some time. Those who have not yet heard it can find it here. I had a very good time hanging out with Bishop Savas of Troas, my koumbaros Symeon Branson, my baptisthidi Christopher Daugherity, Maximus Greeson, Andrew Kern, the various members of the Maddex/Sabourin clan, and the Wright family. Also, it was good as usual to see Joshua of Eighth Day Books manning the book table.

'If Thine Enemy Thirst, Give Him Drink'—A Homily for 24 January

Here’s my latest homily, delivered on 24 January, New Style. I’ll be doing them more frequently this semester—every three weeks instead of every four—and I’ll try to continue posting them here unless there are strenuous objections.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Romans 12:16-20
St John ii.1.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Epistle is a long list of exhortations—of St Paul telling us ‘Behave this way’, ‘Here’s how to follow Christ’—all of which have particular relevance to the kind of life we need to live as a school community.

In verse 16, he writes, ‘Be not wise in your own conceits.’ This is central to what we do as a school, for, according to the mediaeval manual of learning, Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon, humility is the basis of learning. [1] That is, we must recognise our ignorance in order to gain knowledge.

In verse 17, St Paul writes, ‘Recompense no man evil for evil.’ If another student is unkind to us, should we be unkind in return? No. And this applies to teachers too – if a parent doesn’t like something I do & slanders me, should I go around talking about them? Should I tell everyone, ‘They’re liars, or crazy, or a jerk, etc.?’ No.

In verse 18, St Paul writes, ‘Live peaceably with all men.’ This means we need to help and share with one another. We need to say kind things to build one another up.

In verse 19, St Paul writes, ‘Avenge not yourselves.’ This is very similar to verse 17, but here we get into something trickier because the Apostle goes on to quote Deuteronomy 32:35, ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, has used this as the epigraph for his novel, Anna Karenina.

It’s good because it tells us not to seek vengeance—not to try to ‘get someone back’. But it’s tempting to be excited because God says He will ‘repay’ – we want to see our enemy ‘zapped’ by God, don’t we? Many readers of Anna Karenina enjoy seeing Anna succumb to madness and suicide as a punishment for her adultery.

Because of this zeal for vengeance, even if it is vengeance dealt out by God, it is easy to read the next exhortation as a promise that our enemies will be ‘zapped’. In verse 20, St Paul writes, ‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ It’s easy to hear this and think, ‘I’m gonna be extra nice to this jerk to show him I’m better, or I’m gonna be nice so God will really get him!’

But is that what St Paul is telling? Is this what God wants?

I don’t think so – as St Augustine says, ‘For how can it be love to feed and nourish someone just in order to heap coals of fire on his head, assuming that “coals of fire” means some serious punishment?’ [2]

There’s a clue about this in today’s Gospel which, in my opinion, ought to change completely our perception of all of St Paul’s exhortations. Every time I preach, I try to find some sort of connection between the Epistle and Gospel readings. It was a little tricky this time. It took me a minute, but finally I came up with the line, ‘If he thirst, give him drink.’

Christ in the Gospel makes wine from water for thirsty wedding guests. Now, this story demonstrates a couple of things at the surface level. Our Lord’s presence at Cana shows that He blesses marriage. The provision of wine for the wedding party shows that He blesses fun and the enjoyment of earth’s gifts.

But more importantly, the Miracle at Cana prefigures the wine of the Eucharist, the ‘Blood of Christ’. In his long hymn ‘On the Marriage at Cana’, St Romanus the Melodist, a 6th-c. hymnographer from Syria, writes:

When Christ, as a sign of His power, clearly changed the water into wine, all the crowd rejoiced, for they considered the taste marvellous. Now we all at the banquet in the Church partake of Christ with holy joy from the wine changed into His blood, praising the great Bridegroom. [3]

But the recollection of Christ’s gift of His own divine Blood to quench our thirst reminds us of the context of St Paul’s exhortation: ‘if thine enemy…thirst’. This changes our reading of the exhortations in Romans 12.

We are Christ’s enemies, because our sins necessitated His sacrifice.

Every time we become ‘wise in our own conceits’ we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we pay back evil for evil we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we fail to live peaceably we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we try to avenge ourselves we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

But now back to the rest of verse 20: ‘for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’. As we’ve already noted, this doesn’t sound very loving, does it? St Augustine explains it thusly:

We must understand that ‘coals of fire’ means that we should provoke whoever does us harm to repentance by doing him a good turn. For the coals of fire serve to burn, i.e., to bring anguish to his spirit, which is like the head of the soul, in which all malice is burnt out when one is changed for the better through repentance. [4]

Similarly, the 5th-c. commentator Constantius writes:

In this passage Paul teahes that we ought to imitate God, who causes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, for by feeding our enemy and giving him something to drink we provoke him to peace or even to reconciliation. [5]

In the first place, Christ’s sacrifice heaps ‘coals of fire’ in the sense that we have repented and turned to Him in faith. But of course, we continue to sin (or at least I do!), and therefore we must have continual repentance, we must rekindle that proper ‘anguish of spirit’ that St Paul in 2 Cor. 7:10 calls the ‘godly sorrow’ that ‘worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of’.

This we attempt to do at Matins every day – we confess ourselves to be ‘miserable offenders’: as C.S. Lewis says, this means ‘that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity’. [6]

But, in the second place, remember that by accepting food and drink in the Eucharist, in the Lord’s Supper, we risk heaping ‘coals of fire’ on ourselves in a more obvious sense. St Paul writes in I Cor. 11:29: ‘For he that eatheth and drinketh unworthily, eateth & drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.’

These are strong words, and we would do well to recall them before we approach to receive communion.

In James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, even Stephen Dedalus, who has lost his faith, cannot forget St Paul’s words, and will not succumb to the social pressure to take communion because he ‘feels and fears’ the ‘body and blood of the son of God’. [7] As believing Christians, how much more discerning must we be of ‘the Lord’s body’!

Commenting on the passage in I Corinthians, St Chrysostom writes:

Since if even that kind of banquet which the senses take cognizance of cannot be partaken of by us when feverish and full of bad humors, without risk of perishing [in other words…]: much more is it unlawful for us to touch this Table with profane lusts, which are more grievous than fevers. Now when I say profane lusts, I mean both those of the body, and of money, and of anger, and of malice, and, in a word, all that are profane. And it becomes him that approacheth, first to empty himself of all these things and so to touch that pure sacrifice. [8]

He goes on to say:

What sayest thou, tell me? Is this Table which is the cause of so many blessings and teeming with life, become judgment? Not from its own nature, saith he, but from the will of him that approaches. For as His presence, which conveyed to us those great and unutterable blessings, condemned the more them that received it not: so also the Mysteries become provisions of greater punishment to such as partake unworthily.

But why doth he eat judgment to himself? ‘Not discerning the Lord’s body’: i.e., not searching, not bearing in mind, as he ought, the greatness of the things set before him; not estimating the weight of the gift. For if thou shouldest come to know accurately Who it is that lies before thee, and Who He is that gives Himself, and to whom, thou wilt need no other argument, but this is enough for thee to use all vigilance; unless thou shouldest be altogether fallen. [9]

We can see a beautiful example of what it means to ‘know accurately Who it is that lies before’ us, in the lovely poem, ‘The Holy Communion’, by the 17th-c. English priest, George Herbert. I would like to read a few stanzas of this lyric:

NOT in rich furniture, or fine array,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who for me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep’st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshy hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.

Onely thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms:
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
Dispatches from their friend. [10]

May we too know that ‘grace, which with these elements comes, / . . . / Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms’.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


[1] Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996), p. 15.

[2] Gerald Bray, ed., Romans, Vol. VI of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1998), p. 322.

[3] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 485, n. 63.

[4] Bray, p. 322.

[5] Ibid., p. 322.

[6] C.S. Lewis, ‘“Miserable Offenders”: An Interpretation of Prayer Book Language’, God in the Dock, in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis (NY: Inspirational, 1996), p. 381.

[7] James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (NY: Bantam, 1992), p. 237.

[8] St John Chrysostom, ‘Homily XXVIII on 1st Corinthians’, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf112.iv.xxix.html

[9] Ibid.

[10] George Herbert, The Works of George Herbert in Prose & Verse, ed. Robert Aris Willmott (NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1857), pp. 45-6.

Climacus Conference, 2011

One reader expressed some interest in my reference in the last post to this year's Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY. I am pleased to announce that the homepage for the conference is up and running (here), and that the roster of speakers and subjects looks very interesting indeed. The two heavyweights in my book are Vigen Guroian, whose talk is entitled, 'On the Real Meaning of Mentor: Readings in Great Literature', and David Bradshaw, whose talk is entitled, 'What is Faith? Plato, Nietzsche, & Christ'. Yours truly will also be giving a talk, with the title, 'In Thy Law Will He Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education'. I have included a two-sentence summary on the homepage which reads as follows:

This talk will draw on scholarly studies of enduring 'oral' qualities in Western literary habits to show how such qualities have traditionally marked Christian 'study' of the Bible, particularly in the monastic milieu. The contemporary relevance of these oral qualities will be emphasized, especially insofar as they dovetail with the methods and aims of Christian classical education.

My friend, Bishop Savas of Troas, tells me he intends to go, and I know that not only Eighth Day Books, merchants attendant at last year's conference, but also the fathers of Holy Cross Hermitage in West Virginia will be setting up tables with their wares this year. I hope to see at least a few Logismoi readers there!

At Last, a Short Book Update

While some of my recent book acquisitions have inspired me to write a good old-fashioned ‘book update’, it has been so long since the last ‘update’, that I scarcely know where to begin and am certainly unable to cover everything. I shall confine myself therefore to a few of the most recent and most significant acquisitions.

Today, for example, a trip to Half Price Books yielded the first volume (containing Books I-VIII) of the Loeb Classical edition of St Augustine’s Confessions, tr. William Watts [1] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1999)—a steal at $5.38. A look inside the mailbox revealed William A. Graham’s Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1993). [2]

On another HPB trip a few weeks ago, I discovered William Griffin’s [3] fascinatingly colloquial translations of St Augustine—Sermons to the People: Advent, Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany, tr. & ed. William Griffin (NY: Image, 2002). On the first day of the new year, I used a 50%-off coupon from Borders to purchase The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, & Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 2010), a fascinating reference work on the continuity of the classical tradition in Western civilisation. At some point, I also received via post a copy of St Gregory Palamas’s Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009). The latter is a review copy sent to me by one of the editors of Orthodox Life, the former blogger known as ‘Felix Culpa’. Look for my review to be published, potentially, in the March-April issue.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, I’ve received a few books from a fellow by the name of Dennis Lackner. It’s a long story, but in this post back in 2009 I quoted from a fascinating paper of his on the Camaldolese that I had found in a limited preview on Google Books. He came across the post and we swapped a few e-mails, in one of which he sent me a pdf of the full paper. Fast-forward to Friday, 31 December 2010, and while randomly looking through old e-mails for unprinted pdfs, I discovered his and started rereading it, thinking that I might contact him with some thoughts I had about a few points. That very night, I received a mass New Year’s Eve greeting from the man himself—an interesting coincidence, I thought.

Well, the very next day, I received a personal e-mail from Dennis, asking whether I would be willing to read his entire doctoral dissertation on the Camaldolese, which he is hoping to publish, and to make editorial comments and suggestions on it. It turns out he has been keeping up with Logismoi, and had recently purchased Fr Nicholas Loudovikos’s Eucharistic Ontology at my behest. He therefore offered in return for my help to send me a copy of this book. Needless to say, I readily agreed, and was eagerly anticipating its arrival. I did not anticipate, however, the concomitant arrival of Charles Williams’s The Place of the Lion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972) and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian Daley, SJ (SF: Ignatius, 2003). Rest assured, there was much rejoicing. Thank you sincerely, Den! С Рождеством Христовым!


[1] I’m not sure whether there is any relation to Victor Watts, translator of Boethius.

[2] I ordered this book myself to help prepare for a talk I plan to give at the Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY, next month, entitled ‘In Thy Law He Will Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education’.

[3] Thus bringing the total of Williams to three in as many paragraphs.

Homily on Advent & St Nicholas

At last, here is my lone Advent homily, preached on Monday, 6 December. I’ve been lacking in much enthusiasm to post it because that week was a bad one in many ways, and I received a quite discouraging response to the homily from one parent. But here it is anyway, and readers can judge for themselves whether I have, as was alleged, claimed that ‘Santa Claus’ doesn’t exist.

Second Sunday in Advent

Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
Gospel: St Luke 21:25-33

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope (ἵνα διὰ τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ διὰ τῆς παρακλήσεως).

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is particularly fitting at this time of year that in today’s Epistle we are reminded of things ‘written aforetime’, for it is of course the season of Advent – a period when we frequently think back to the ancient prophecies of Christ’s coming. Likewise, it is meet and right that we ask ourselves what is the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ of which St Paul speaks, and what is the ‘hope’ we have through them.

The answer to the first question is suggested by the very next verse – where St Paul refers to the ‘God of patience and consolation’ (θεὸς τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ τῆς παρακλήσεως). ‘Consolation’ here is the KJV translation of ‘paraclesis’: the same word that is used in verse 4 and there translated ‘comfort’. Elsewhere, Christ refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Paraclete’, ‘the Comforter’ – in other words, God Himself is the comfort of the Scriptures. The ‘God of patience and comfort’ is also the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’.

This is further confirmed when we note the patristic teaching that before the Incarnation, Christ became ‘incarnate’ in Scripture. The 7th-c. Byzantine theologian, St Maximus the Confessor, for example, writes:

The Logos [or Word] of God is called flesh not only inasmuch as He became incarnate, but in another sense as well. . . . [W]hen he draws near to men who cannot with the naked mind come into contact with noetic realities in their naked state, He selects things which are familiar to them, combining together various stories, symbols, parables and dark sayings; and in this way He becomes flesh. Thus at the first encounter our mind comes into contact not with the naked Logos but with the incarnate Logos, that is, with [the] various sayings and stories [of Scripture]. [1]

So the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ gave to the righteous men of the Old Testament the hope that the Word of God incarnate in those Scriptures would one day become incarnate as a Man. This was the Advent which they so eagerly anticipated, as when the Psalmist says, ‘O God of hosts, return again; and look down from heaven and behold, and visit this vineyard, and perfect that which Thy right hand hath planted’ (79:15-16 LXX). Thus, it is appropriate that during the season of Advent we recall their longing.

But – having ‘received the promise’ – we are now able to receive the Second Advent: the coming of Christ into our hearts and souls. A mediaeval French Cistercian, Guerric D’Igny, writes:

Assuredly He comes to us [in our hearts] now to ensure that His first coming will not have been in vain, and to avoid having to meet us at the last [coming] in wrath. In this middle advent He is intent on reforming our spirit of pride and patterning us anew on the humility He showed forth at His first coming . . . This personal visitation, which imparts to us the grace of the first advent and holds promise of the glory of the last, should be the object of our heart’s desire, the goal of all our striving. [2]

Thus, it is through the ‘patience and comfort’ of Christ dwelling in our hearts and of our continual prayer before Him there, that the great hope of His Third Advent is kindled within us. For Guerric’s words also serve as an excellent reminder of today’s Gospel. In this passage of Luke 21, Christ speaks of His third and final Advent, that is, His return to judge the quick and the dead. Incarnate in Scripture, Christ’s voice is humble and quiet – we must read attentively if we are to recognise Him there. Similarly, incarnate as a Babe in the manger, as the Man of Many Sorrows, Christ is again humble and quiet – we must have Faith to recognise who He is and to understand God’s revelation in His Son. But commenting on Christ’s words, ‘[T]hen shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’, Bl Theophylact writes:

All shall see Him, both those who believe and those who do not believe. . . . [A]nd both He and His Cross will shine more brightly than the sun and will be recognized by all. [3]

Thus, of those who did not attend to the two Incarnations – in Scripture and in the flesh – St Gregory the Great writes, ‘They are going to see in power and majesty Him Whom they chose not to hear in a state of humility.’ And, as if thinking himself of the reference in today’s Epistle to ‘the patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ and ‘the God of patience and comfort’, St Gregory writes, ‘To the extent that they do not now submit their hearts to His patience, they will then experience His power more exactingly.’ [4]

That this be not so with us, as Guerric of Igny says, let us welcome Him into our hearts today, and attend with eagerness to His words and example for us as we prepare to celebrate His wondrous Nativity according to the flesh. For, in Guerric’s words, ‘just as, at His Second Coming, we shall run towards Him with physical energy and joy, so do we hasten to Bethlehem with jubilant heart and spirit.’ [5]

We are helped by the Church to do this on this day in particular, which on the Gregorian calendar is dedicated to the memory of St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Bishop of Myra, later known as ‘Santa Claus’. Of St Nicholas, one modern Benedictine writer has noted:

At the outset of Advent, a season that speaks to us deeply of hope because ‘the Lord is near’, as the Liturgy announces, we celebrate the feast of St Nicholas. His feast is an important pause on our Advent journey, for his life is an example of Gospel living for Christians of all times and places. [6]

Perhaps the most famous illustration of this is the very first story ever told about St Nicholas giving gifts in secret at night. A once wealthy man had lost his fortune and was soon going to have to sell his three daughters as slaves so that they would be taken care of. Hearing of this, St Nicholas went through the dark streets of Myra, and secretly left a bag of gold inside the man’s house. He did this two more times, and on the third occasion, the man waited up and found the compassionate Bishop hurrying away so he would not be seen. But this is only one instance among many of St Nicholas’s devotion to Christ’s words and example. As St Demetrius of Rostov says in his Menology:

For the character of the saint was as a child-loving father, and his countenance shone with Divine grace like an angel of God. From his face, as from the face of Moses, emanated a bright ray, and to him who only looked at him there was great benefit. For him who was burdened with some kind of passion or affliction of soul, it was enough to fix his gaze on the saint in order to receive consolation in his sorrow; and he who conversed with him already improved in good. [7]

Of course, in our day St Nicholas has been largely transformed into a cartoonish figure with little connection to the historical Bishop of Myra, much less to the Christian faith. But as Christians we must not forget that the great Wonderworker, as great a figure as he is, only desires to point us toward Christ, whose Incarnation he proclaims. May we prepare for the Feast with sobriety and celebrate it with joy.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


[1] St Maximus the Confessor, ‘Second Century on Theology’ [§60], The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, ed. St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain & St Macarius of Corinth, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 151.

[2] Guerric of Igny, ‘The Second Sermon for Advent’, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the 12th Century, tr. & ed. Pauline Matarasso (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 131.

[3] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 274.

[4] I got these comments from the notes appended to this passage in Vol. 2 of The Orthodox New Testament published by Holy Apostles Convent. I shall add the exact reference when I return to school and have my copy of this book in front of me.

[5] Guerric, p. 130.

[6] Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, OSB, A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery (Dallas: Taylor, 1996), p. 12.

[7] Service, Akathist, Life & Miracles of St Nicholas the Wonderworker (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996), p. 83.

Eucharistic Ontology: An Addendum on Fr Nicholas Loudovikos in English

In this post from the Spring of 2009, I strongly recommended the theology of Protopresbyter Nicholas Loudovikos of the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki. At that time, I wrote that ‘none of Fr Loudovikos’s work has, to my knowledge, yet been published in English’, but added, ‘If I remember correctly, an English translation of another book, Η Ευχαριστιακή Οντολογία (Athens: Domos, 1992), is in the works...’ I’m afraid I must admit that around the time that I wrote the original post, at least one of Fr Nicholas’s articles—a fine critique of some of the theological positions of his former teacher, the renowned Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon—was already being published in English under the title, ‘Person Instead of Grace & Dictated Otherness: John Zizioulas’ Final Theological Position’, The Heythrop Journal XLVIII (2009), pp. 1-16. I should have noted this and at least written an addendum to the original post some time ago.

Well, as many of you may know already, the second statement has proved to be correct, and the said translation having been completed, the first statement is now doubly if not triply untrue. Holy Cross Press has published this book, which when I talked with him in 2007 Fr Nicholas spoke of often as one of his more important, under the title, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2010). Here is Fr Andrew Louth’s blurb about the book as posted on Amazon:

In this remarkable book, Fr Nikolaos Loudovikos brings his profound knowledge of the greatest of Byzantine theologians, St Maximus the Confessor, into dialogue with the recent currents of philosophy and theology in the West. This in itself is rare enough, but his central claim—that who we really are is disclosed in our final destiny in God—is one that he shows is rooted in our participation in the Eucharist. This is an intellectually demanding work, but in it Fr Loudovikos never loses sight of the fact that what he has to say bears directly on how we understand what it is to live as a Christian in the twenty-first century.

I myself have not yet read the book in Greek, much less English (though if there remain any generous readers out there willing to help a brother out, I would be delighted to find a copy in the mail!), but I have little doubt that it will prove to be very much worthwhile. The title may sound a bit unwieldy and pretentious, though it doesn’t strike me as nearly so bad in Greek, but Fr Loudovikos is a theologian who really must become better known in the English-speaking world. Order this book now!