....
By blood we live, the hot, the cold,
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.
And by Christ's blood are men made free,
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie,
Under the rough pelt of the sea;
Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight
the bones that cannot bear the light.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Saturday, April 18, 2020
from The Shattering of Loneliness, by Erik Varden:
Evil is illogical. I feel at such times like the wanderers to Emmaus, who succumbed to momentary paralysis: ‘they stood still, looking sad’ (Luke 24.17). Their story, though, goes on. The stranger in their midst pulls them along, draws them out. He listens, challenges, explains. Without the wanderers’ conscious knowledge, he subverts their grief. He invests it with sense. At table, he transubstantiates it. What seemed like loss turns out to have been gain; apparent defeat reveals its face as victory; loneliness thaws before a presence that sets hearts on fire. The two who, earlier, stood listless, leaden on the road, unable to go further, run to Jerusalem, bursting with new understanding, impatient to share it.
Evil is illogical. I feel at such times like the wanderers to Emmaus, who succumbed to momentary paralysis: ‘they stood still, looking sad’ (Luke 24.17). Their story, though, goes on. The stranger in their midst pulls them along, draws them out. He listens, challenges, explains. Without the wanderers’ conscious knowledge, he subverts their grief. He invests it with sense. At table, he transubstantiates it. What seemed like loss turns out to have been gain; apparent defeat reveals its face as victory; loneliness thaws before a presence that sets hearts on fire. The two who, earlier, stood listless, leaden on the road, unable to go further, run to Jerusalem, bursting with new understanding, impatient to share it.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
So what St. John and St. Theodore and the other defenders of the holy icons claimed is that Jesus reveals God through his humanity. He doesn’t conceal God; he reveals God. God is made known through his human flesh, and therefore can be seen and heard and tasted and touched and smelled; that God really is with us in Jesus....
Then when he was speaking openly, the Apostle Philip says to him... “Ah, now you are speaking openly, no longer in parables. But one thing still is lacking.” He said, “Show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.” And Jesus said to Philip, with some exasperation; he said, “Philip, have I been with you so long and you still do not understand? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
So we Christians believe that he who sees Jesus sees the Father in him. The Father’s invisible, but he becomes visible in his Son, who is his word, who is his image, who is his wisdom, who is his truth, who is his peace, who is his light, who is his life. He actually becomes flesh and becomes visible. Therefore, when you have an image of Jesus, you have an image of God becoming visible; that in the humanity of Jesus, you are given insight into the invisible character of God. As St. John of Damascus said, if a person wants to know what a Christian believes, just show them an icon, because the icon testifies to the incarnation of the Son of God, the real incarnation of the Son of God; that God really became a human being whose image can be depicted.
So the event of his birth can be depicted, his crucifixion can be depicted, the activities of his human life could be depicted, his ascension into heaven can be depicted. Then there developed a whole language of how to do these depictions, how to make an icon....
And when you depict a saint, you show that saint as a real human being. Already early on, Paul and Peter and John the Baptist and Andrew were painted in certain ways that you could identify them. All through history they are painted, from England all the way to India, looking pretty much the same way so that you know who they are. But when they are painted, they are also painted as saints, filled with grace, holy, sanctified, deified, illumined, enlightened. They’re shown really as human beings, but human beings who have been made divine by grace, who have been made holy. So the icon is a testimony to the Gospel. It’s a testimony to the reality of the Christian faith, and therefore the making of icons is totally proper. It’s a testimony; it’s a witness. And then venerating them is totally proper.
- Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko
Then when he was speaking openly, the Apostle Philip says to him... “Ah, now you are speaking openly, no longer in parables. But one thing still is lacking.” He said, “Show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.” And Jesus said to Philip, with some exasperation; he said, “Philip, have I been with you so long and you still do not understand? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
So we Christians believe that he who sees Jesus sees the Father in him. The Father’s invisible, but he becomes visible in his Son, who is his word, who is his image, who is his wisdom, who is his truth, who is his peace, who is his light, who is his life. He actually becomes flesh and becomes visible. Therefore, when you have an image of Jesus, you have an image of God becoming visible; that in the humanity of Jesus, you are given insight into the invisible character of God. As St. John of Damascus said, if a person wants to know what a Christian believes, just show them an icon, because the icon testifies to the incarnation of the Son of God, the real incarnation of the Son of God; that God really became a human being whose image can be depicted.
So the event of his birth can be depicted, his crucifixion can be depicted, the activities of his human life could be depicted, his ascension into heaven can be depicted. Then there developed a whole language of how to do these depictions, how to make an icon....
And when you depict a saint, you show that saint as a real human being. Already early on, Paul and Peter and John the Baptist and Andrew were painted in certain ways that you could identify them. All through history they are painted, from England all the way to India, looking pretty much the same way so that you know who they are. But when they are painted, they are also painted as saints, filled with grace, holy, sanctified, deified, illumined, enlightened. They’re shown really as human beings, but human beings who have been made divine by grace, who have been made holy. So the icon is a testimony to the Gospel. It’s a testimony to the reality of the Christian faith, and therefore the making of icons is totally proper. It’s a testimony; it’s a witness. And then venerating them is totally proper.
- Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko
Monday, January 27, 2020
... our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender
When the divine enters the world, we may often look in vain for immediate evidence. Violence and suffering still occur, human beings continue to perpetuate atrocities on each other and on the world in which we live. The difference before God enters human reality and after is so subtle as to often be unnoticeable. But as a wise person once told me, this is not a God who intervenes. This is a God who indwells.
In his lengthy Christmas poem “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” W. H. Auden expresses this sentiment through Simeon, the old man who gets to see the infant Jesus just before he dies.
And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore, at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.
Anxiety and fear are natural human responses to evil and suffering. But we do well to remember one of the promised names of the infant to come—Immanuel—means “God is with us.” We will look far and wide for reminders of Herod’s massacre of the Innocents in nativity sets in houses and front yards this Christmas season, but maybe such reminders should be there. They are just as much of the story as angels singing to shepherds.
In the darkest depths of despair, the promise is that God is with us, choosing to become part of the mess and transform it from within rather than impose solutions from the outside. As I heard someone say this morning, “we need to stop listening to fear and calling it wisdom.” At the heart of the Incarnation story is, as Winston Churchill might have described it, “a mystery wrapped in an enigma.” A baby in a manger, as well as the dead babies in the streets of Bethlehem, call us to embrace hope when things are darkest. We are not alone.
In his lengthy Christmas poem “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” W. H. Auden expresses this sentiment through Simeon, the old man who gets to see the infant Jesus just before he dies.
And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore, at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.
Anxiety and fear are natural human responses to evil and suffering. But we do well to remember one of the promised names of the infant to come—Immanuel—means “God is with us.” We will look far and wide for reminders of Herod’s massacre of the Innocents in nativity sets in houses and front yards this Christmas season, but maybe such reminders should be there. They are just as much of the story as angels singing to shepherds.
In the darkest depths of despair, the promise is that God is with us, choosing to become part of the mess and transform it from within rather than impose solutions from the outside. As I heard someone say this morning, “we need to stop listening to fear and calling it wisdom.” At the heart of the Incarnation story is, as Winston Churchill might have described it, “a mystery wrapped in an enigma.” A baby in a manger, as well as the dead babies in the streets of Bethlehem, call us to embrace hope when things are darkest. We are not alone.
- Vance Morgan
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