Category: Adult Faith Formation

The Soul Saturday before Holy Pentecost

***Nota Bene: Divine Liturgy this morning at 9:00 a.m.

****Father will be praying for the souls (blessing the graves) this weekend at the cemeteries: All Saints this morning beginning at 11am and tomorrow at St Lawrence at 12:30pm.

On this day, the Saturday before Holy Pentecost, we celebrate a memorial for all those who have fallen asleep since the ages in true worship and in the hope of everlasting life. The Holy Fathers established that on this Saturday that precedes Holy Pentecost, we observe the memory of all people who throughout the centuries died in the right faith, just as they ordered that this be observed on the Saturday before Meatfare Sunday. They did this moved by their love for mankind, so that all who for whatever reason did not have the usual benefit of individual memorial services might be included in this common memorial. According to tradition, the Fathers of the Church received this injunction concerning the memorial services from the Apostles, who themselves taught that the memorials performed on behalf of the reposed bring great benefit to those who have fallen asleep. (See Apostolic Injunctions, 8.42)

The Holy Fathers specified that we perform them today, because tomorrow we shall welcome the All-Holy Spirit and shall fervently be entreating the Lord for ourselves, that He send us His All-Holy Spirit to illumine us and strengthen us in the fear of God and in keeping the commandments and to guide us in obtaining eternal life. We shall also be praying for the deceased, that He give them rest in His lovely and longed-for dwellings. In praying for the dead, on the one hand, we show our love for our deceased fathers and brothers, and, on the other hand, we become more keenly aware of the vanity of this world, and thus we receive great benefit to our souls.

For nothing rouses the slothful to repentance better than the recollection of death. And nothing else brings us the recollection of death as well as the memory of our loved ones who have slept the eternal sleep. O Master Christ, grant repose in the dwelling places of the righteous to the souls of those who have preceded us in slumber, and have mercy on us and save us, for You alone love mankind. Amen. (Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, edited by Fr. David (Kidd) and Mother Gabriella (Ursache), HDM Press, River Junction, Michigan, 1999, pp. 228-229.)

This may have been a “Christianization” of a pagan custom. Spring was a time of release of the souls of children or maidens who had committed suicide or met a violent death. During rusalki these spirits were treated with pity and wreaths of flowers were offered to them. This feast was called rosalia in Latin and anthesteria in Greek and became associated with Pentecost because it was a spring feast. (George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. I (Belmont, Massachusetts: Nordland Publishing Co.,1985), 18.)

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Sunday of the First Ecumenical Council: The Gospel of Unity

“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. (John 17:11)”

After the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his followers for forty days. He did not live with them on a day to day basis, as he did before his crucifixion and death, but he rose now into glory, giving us also the hope of resurrection to eternal life. His appearances had a particular goal, as he explained later in the Gospel of John, but in the same discourse we have heard today, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. (John 17:18): The Gospel today begins, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him” (John 17:1-2). In the Gospel of St. Matthew, as Jesus leaves his followers, he give them this commission, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18-19). After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is glorified, he has all power and authority, and he passes on his mission to us by giving us the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Some of the Fathers of the Church have asked the question: “Why didn’t our Lord stay with us in his risen glory and give us clear guidance in the building up of his kingdom? Why did he leave us and return to the Father, where as God he reigns with the Father eternally, and now sits at his right now also in the human nature that he took for our salvation?” We might muse – it certainly would make it easier for us if Jesus stayed visibly with us and would be the power of our faith in the world. He left us, though because of God’s wisdom. If he stayed with us, we might perceive him as a tyrant, but his whole earthly mission was exactly NOT to establish an earthly political kingdom, but to establish the Kingdom of God, which can exist only in an atmosphere of complete human freedom. In other words, it is now up to us, by loving God and our neighbor freely, by freely doing the will of God to build up this kingdom. At the same time, God did not leave us entirely on our own. He promised, I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:7)” We have received the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in our baptisms. The priest has anointed us with chrism, saying, “The gift of the Holy Spirit.” Again, St. John teaches, “As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him” (1 John 2:27). We cannot build up God’s kingdom by our own human strength, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit given to us.

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Sunday of the Man Born Blind

Hand of Jesus touching a blind man’s eye. Detail of “Two blind men cured.” Mosaic (6th century)

The story of the Man Born Blind is the third Sunday Gospel in Pascha about the mystery of baptism. This gospel is very clear, “Jesus spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his the blind man’s) eyes, and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed, and came back able to see. (John 9:6-7)” The clay represents the anointing we receive at baptism, making us “Anointed Ones,” (Christs, or Christians) and the washing represents the washing in the water of baptism.

The blind man can then see, he is “enlightened,” the name the Church gives to baptism. Two observations: to be truly enlightened, we need humility. We need to know that only God can give us the vision we need. To do that, we cannot rely on our own “opinions,” we must hear his Word in the gospel, we must worship him with his people, we must be attentive to the voice of his shepherds in the teaching of the Church. If we believe only in ourselves, we risk condemnation, as Jesus told the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains” (John 9:41). True knowledge comes only from the Holy Spirit, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things” (1 John 2:20).

The second observation is that in these three weeks, our Lord calls to baptism the most unlikely people: a friendless man lying lame by a pool, a shameless woman with serial husbands, and a blind man about whom the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus responds, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him (John 9:3), thus separating the wrath of God from the judgment of sin. God truly hates evil, which brings death and failure, but he loves the sinner with infinite divine love. If we suffer because of our sins, it is because that is the “wages” of sin (Romans 6:23). We see in these three Sundays that God is merciful and wishes the salvation of all. He calls us all to enlightenment in baptism, so that we can live in the Holy Spirit and profess with the formerly blind man, now enlightened, “I do believe, Lord!” (John 9:38).

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Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

The theme of baptism continues in this Sunday’s Gospel, re-affirming that Pascha is a feast of resurrection and of baptism, being born into eternal life. The center of Jesus’ conversation with this unnamed woman (the Church later gave her the name Photine, the “enlightened woman”) is about water. They met at Jacob’s well, a place of great tradition, a sign and a promise of God’s love and mercy for his people. Jacob’s well provided the riches of water to a desert place, the sign that God would always provide for and bless his people. However, the encounter with the woman reveals something more: Jesus is the Messiah to come, he is greater than the Patriarch Jacob. The water of Jacob’s well is only for this world, Jesus would give “the water that would become a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). This clearly refers to our baptisms, as it comes immediately after the comparison of Jesus with John the Baptist, and the baptisms done by Jesus’ disciples

We renew our baptism every time we receive Communion, and they are for life, for eternal life, from God, the giver of life. A couple of observations: as for Nathaniel, Jesus signs his ministry with intimate knowledge of the people he meets. He sees Nathaniel under the fig tree, and he tells the woman about her five husbands. In both cases, they become his disciple because of his knowledge of him. This is a theme of John’s Gospel, the shepherd knows his sheep and his sheep know him. Second, it should be to our wonder that Jesus always comes to the most underprivileged. To whom does he reveal the mystery of eternal life in baptism: to the paralytic who had no friends, to the woman who had led a shameful life, and came to the well at noon who no one else would be there, and to the blind man suspected of sin because of his blindness. And the disciples marvel that Jesus speaks to a woman! Not just any woman, but a heretical, decadent Samaritan woman! Are we humble enough to accept Jesus as our Messiah?

Meditation by Archpriest David Petras
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The Holy, Just, and Long-suffering Job

The Prophet Job’s feast on the Byzantine calendar is May 6 and the Latin Church’s calendar on May 10.

Job is the archetype of the just man. According to the re­ligious and ethical thought of his time, which viewed material prosperity as evidence of an upright life, Job was expected to be wealthy, and yet he was afflicted with suffering. Modern scholars point out that Job was not a historical person, but an ‘epic character.’ While this is no doubt the case of the Job of the first of the Wisdom books, the author probably based his work on the Job of ancient tradition, who was believed to have lived during the patriarchal age on the borders of Arabia and Edom.

The Book of Job is cast in dialogue form between Job and three friends who come to commiserate with him over his misfortunes. They insist that his condition is a punishment from God for his sins, but Job maintains that he is innocent. Near despair, he demands a hearing from God, and this he is granted. God speaks from a thunderstorm to expose as futile all the solutions of Job and his friends since God cannot be judged and his ways are inscrutable.

The Church uses the book of Job during Holy Week, where Job’s suffering innocence serves as a prophetic re­flection of the innocent suffering of Christ.

Meditation by the New Skete Communities
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Great and Holy Tuesday

The Troparion at Matins:

“Behold, the Bridegroom is coming in the middle of the night. Blessed is the servant he shall find awake. But the one he shall find neglectful will not be worthy of him. Beware, therefore, O my soul! Do not fall into a deep slumber, lest you be delivered to death and the door of the kingdom be closed to you. Watch instead, and cry out: Holy, holy, holy are you, O God. Through the intercession of the Theotokos, have mercy on us.”

This troparion is sung at the beginning of Matins on Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving these services the name of “Bridegroom Matins.” They have become the main service in the Greek and Melkite traditions. Here Holy Week preserves the most ancient traditions of the Divine Praises. In antiquity, the Matins was a middle of the night service, and therefore this troparion expressed the Christian need for constant watchfulness for the presence of God. In Holy Week the parable of the wise and neglectful virgins in read in the Gospel for the Presanctified Divine Liturgy. We must be aware that the Lord is coming. In every Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, when the presider begs the Father to send the Holy Spirit, he prays that the Spirit may be for a spirit of vigilance. St. Paul warns us: For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:5-6). This is especially important in Holy Week, where the disciples fail in watchfulness in Gethsemane: “When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test” (Matthew 26:40-41). Holy Week tests our spiritual awareness.

Indeed, the Matins Gospel has Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes and pharisees. “They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them …. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter” (Matthew 23:4.13). This is so often the clerical sin, to neglect the welfare of people for the sake of a prideful ideology. The Holy Week is a direct challenge to our spirituality— how have we failed to proclaim the gospel. Have we learned the lesson of love? The story of the Last Judgment, read at the evening gospel, tells us what we must do for one another, and especially to see the image of Christ in the other. In the long run, this is where “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus” leads us.

Great and Holy Monday

The Synaxarion discerns two themes in Great and Holy Monday:

1) A comparison between Jesus and Joseph, the son of Jacob:

“[Jesus] was sold by a disciple for thirty pieces of silver and was imprisoned in the dark and gloomy pit of the grave, whence He broke out by His own power, triumphing over Egypt, that is, over every sin. In His might He conquered it, and He reigns over all the world. In His love for mankind He redeemed us by a distribution of grain, inasmuch as He gave Himself up for us and He feeds us with Heavenly Bread, His own Life-bearing Flesh. For this reason, Joseph the All-comely is brought to mind at this time.”

2) the cursing of the fig tree. 

The Synaxarion said this was a cursing of the Jewish people, who did not bring forth the expected fruit. The gospel itself sees it as the power of prayer: ““Amen, I say to you, if you have faith and do not waver, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive. (Matthew 21:21-22)” 

Many of the texts of Holy Week can be interpreted in an anti-Jewish sense. The Synaxarion is more explicitly so. I think it is a problem. But did the Church formally condone persecution of the Jews. I don’t think so, but some pretty strong texts have led weak-minded and hateful people to interpret them so, causing a series of pogroms and culminating in the Nazi holocaust. In 1998 Pope St. John Paul II wrote: “We deeply regret the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the Church. We make our own what is said in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate, which unequivocally affirms: ‘The Church . . . mindful of her common patrimony with the Jewish and motivated by the Gospel’s spiritual love and by no political considerations, deplores the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and from any source’”

Conservative priests have upbraided me: the reality is that those who condemned Jesus were Jews, and we should not deny the historical truth. Yes, it is real that the mob that cried out “Crucify him,” were Jews, but then the apostles were Jews, the women at the foot of the cross were Jews and Jesus was a Jew.” He was not condemned by the Jewish nation, but by the pharisaical high priest (and pharisaism is an endemic disease of clerics of all religions) and by the mob misled by their leaders, and mobs are still with us. Hatred and suspicion of the other (racism) is a human disease. I remember when I was a boy, family gatherings almost always degenerated into hate sessions of “nig***s” and Jews. Racism continues to be an infection among Slavic peoples (and indeed any white race, and probably any human race, hatred of the “Other”) but it is an evil to be rooted out. We’re not doing a great job of that. At Jesus’ trial, it is recorded that the mob cried out, “His blood be upon us and our children.” This has been conceived as curse, but was it really a blessing? For we have all received redemption through drinking of the blood of the new covenant.

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Christ the King –Byzantine Styled

The Roman Church has a separate feast of Christ the King in 1925, with Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas. It was to counter the rise of secularism by proclaiming that Christ is the only true king of the believers. The original and ancient feast of Christ the King, however, is today, Palm Sunday. The Gospels record that Jesus is received in Jerusalem, imitating King David by riding into the city on a humble donkey. This is to become a central theme in Holy Week. The Sanhedrin will condemn Jesus for blasphemy, but will give him over to Pontius Pilate for execution for political reasons, that he set himself up as a rival king to the Emperor, a crime of treason. This is, in fact, the crime for which Pilate judges him, putting the accusation on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” The feast today is of immense spiritual importance, but, unfortunately, got tangled up with the concept of “king” that the people had. They wanted a political Messiah who would free them from Roman rule. Instead, Jesus tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and he forbids his followers to fight for him. The kingdom of God is not a kingdom of worldly power, but a kingdom of our hearts and minds given freely to Jesus, the Son of God, that we may live in peace with our neighbor and with the will of God, and may grow in wisdom and understanding. St. Paul describes what the kingdom of God is like in today’s epistle: “ … whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). 

We must question ourselves today, do we want a king like the mobs did, a political king who will validate our nationalism and support our ideologies, or do we want a king that deifies our souls and hearts and minds? Only the one, true, authentic King can be our redemption and spiritual glorification, in a kingdom established on love of God and love of neighbor. On Holy Saturday, then, we sing, “Let all mortal flesh keep silence and with fear and trembling stand … for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is coming to be sacrificed and to give himself as food for the faithful” (Cherubic Hymn, Paschal Vigil Liturgy).

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Too gentle?

“You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a swamp that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult and outrage and will shield your glowing hearts against all evil.”

— St Seraphim of Sarov

All Souls Saturday

Everlasting life, promised in Holy Communion, is a central teaching of our faith. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which we recite in every Divine Liturgy and also frequently in the Divine Praises, says, “I expect the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” It is interesting that here we say, “I expect” rather than “I believe.” This is because this life beyond death is not only a matter of faith but also a matter of hope. And both faith and hope are virtues beyond human power alone, but need also the grace of God. In a way, we do not understand this life beyond death, probably we can that just as a child in the womb does not understand what it is to live in the world.

Death is the breakdown of our secular time and space to eternity and boundlessness. We are as yet unable to comprehend or understand this. Jesus taught it would be different, “At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven. (Matthew 22:30), and St. Paul cautions us, “So also is the resurrection of the dead …. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42.44). We do have analogous ways of thinking about death, when we pray in the Liturgy, “Grant rest, O Lord, to the souls of your departed servants in a place of light, joy and peace where there is no pain, sorrow, nor mourning.” We must be humble in our concepts of death, but still live in hope, for Jesus also said, “‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:32). We also know that we will continue to be human, that is, have a body, as St. Paul says, a “spiritual body,” which we foresee already in our Lord’s resurrection. What is also undeniable is that we can pray for the dead, for no one of us dies already perfect, but we need to be purified of sin to be in the presence of the thrice-holy God.

The communion of saints tells us that we are one in Christ, and that we can pray for one another, and in this way not only help release our brothers and sisters in Christ but also ourselves from the bonds of sin. The souls of the faithful departed were always remembered on Saturday in our liturgical worship, because Saturday was the day that our Lord rested from all his works, after his death on the cross and before his glorious resurrection, for which we also hope.

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