Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 7: Marriage

The focus of this chapter is the wedding service and its connection to the Eucharist in the divine liturgy. In Ephesians, the holy apostle Paul teaches that marriage is “a great mystery” in its image on earth and in its spiritual meaning that points to the kingdom of God. Marriage wasn’t exclusively a liturgical event in Paul’s times. But the wedding was considered a sacrament of the Church because it directly reflected the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and God’s unity with the Church as the Bride of Christ. 

The holy scriptures give us more insight into the meaning of the wedding service in Genesis. Mankind isn’t an “individual,” not he, she, or it. But we are “they,” Metropolitan Hilarion teaches. Man is “dual” in nature. The first man came from the Breath of God and created earth, woman came from man’s body in his sleep, and children come from a woman’s body through marital union, and so the begetting of our race is followed like this. That way of giving birth shows us the love of the Holy Trinity, since God is three persons in one. Likewise, man, woman, and child are three persons, but one in essence or human nature. So, the “fullness of mankind” is seen in marriage since our image is found in the Holy Trinity’s divine love.  Christ was sent from his Father in heaven, from his home to be betrothed and wedded to the Church and humanity itself. The attraction given to us by God leads us to “leave father and mother” and be united to a “wife.” The marital union itself – the bodily joining of man and woman – is trinitarian. That’s the first meaning that Metropolitan Hilarion draws out in this chapter. The next meaning is the begetting of children as the flow of the trinitarian image within us. Love breeds life. The book of Genesis gave the commandment to be fruitful and multiply before the Fall of Mankind and the temptation and trick for false life. The battle for how to build up life had begun. The lying Serpent came against this divine fruitfulness, the holy harvesting, and the growth of grace. It seems that the Liar wanted to persuade Adam and Eve to take their gaze away from each other’s love and the first commandment from God that was given to us to make love. Adam and Eve were commanded to be sexually united with each other, not food or spiritual authority or divine knowledge, and bring about a deeper unity with God. But they only fulfill that command after the fall when they see that their children are not growing toward righteousness and the fullness of unity with God, and food has become a burden of mankind and not a way of living forever. We want to multiply like God or not multiply at all by taking some short-cut by eating the fruit instead of being fruitful with our bodies and souls through the first marital union. And Christ’s first miracle brings us back to that very same point in humanity: marriage and sex and communion with God. It was God’s will that we become fruitful and grow so that we fill up the earth with God’s grace as He also fills up the universe and creation. So, the first sin was committed, as it seems, in a state of bodily virginity. But our first father and mother had not grown into a state of chastity in which sexual union was blessed. Christ blessed that union between spouses in the first miracle at the Wedding at Cana. The Serpent’s plan targeted marriage’s meaning as defined by God in the book of Genesis. The Devil sought to throw down that very trinitarian image in our body and soul by undoing the divine unity that God keeps together by grace so that humanity doesn’t carry out the mystery of salvation to be fruitful, bountiful, and grow in Christ Jesus toward a fuller union with the Holy Trinity who fills all things.

Marriage has been marred by sin and death, and that’s evident in how many cultures have expressed and governed marital relations and family. Howbeit, God still uses his pre-eternal plan to bring about the mystery of salvation through the Messiah and the Jewish people where the culmination of fruitfulness, righteousness, and love is found in the Holy Theotokos who gives birth to the Godman Jesus Christ. The meaning of marriage is fulfilled and revealed. Christians replenish the earth and bring love and blessings to all people. Metropolitan Hilarion focuses on this deeper teaching of Orthodoxy and says that “the welfare of spouses” was not the most sought-after ideal according to the Levirate Law in Deuteronomy and Matthew 22. Rather the Jews looked to the reproduction of children as a divine commandment that they took seriously. The icon of the Descent into Hades teaches that Christ is victorious over the prison of death and sin where unions are separated. The Serpent tempted Adam and Eve to cause a divorce between not only man and woman, but between God and man. Christ also brings victory for marriage as the mystical union of man and God, and the kind of love we ought to have within us. The poetic book of the Song of Songs is the Hebrew and Orthodox view of love that explicitly points out the physical aspects of marital love in the context of divine love for God. Against that, the widespread Greco-Roman view on love wasn’t as romantic or sensitive. The Mediterranean civilizations during apostolic times saw marriage generally as cohabitation for offspring, the continuation of male inheritance and honor, and a contractual relationship. It wasn’t a very erotic view of married love. Often Greek and Roman free men had children strictly with their legal wife while they fulfilled lusts with concubines and servants – both male and female ones. Very much like our current secularism in the United States, the Roman law nuptias non concuppitus sed consensus facit meant that consent alone was enough for a nuptial ceremony to be legalized and considered socially acceptable. Consent makes any expression of sexuality good is the common practice in our culture. Marriage mostly in the Roman mind was about consent to legal ramifications rather than the fulfillment of love as the divine image of God found in the holy scriptures. 

Zeno of Verona and John Chrysostom called sex the mystery. Whereas other cultures focused on the wealth, consent, legality, social status, and parties of marriage, Christians simply focused on the sex itself and its spiritual meaning as something greatly to be admired. This great mystery is seen in the Sunday of the Prodigal Son who left his home and didn’t find a wife or marriage but harlots and debauchery. But when he returned to the father’s house in repentance, he was loved, given a ring, expensive clothes, and a fatted calf. Everything appears to be a wedding feast in this image of love and repentance.

The order of the wedding service has a betrothal and a crowning. Crowns symbolize victory over sin, martyrdom, and glory as well as intelligence and wisdom. Crowns were often used as gravestone markers in the Roman catacombs. The connection between marriage and the eucharist wasn’t separate in the 9th c. But they gradually grew apart due to political and historical circumstances. Theodore the Studite taught that “before all people the rite was performed with the Eucharist.” Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the Eucharist is “the celebrated marriage by which the most holy Bridegroom espouses the Church.” God’s love is shown fully in the Eucharist so that all the mysteries of the Church are connected to this divine thanksgiving in the Body and Blood of Christ, and the Eucharist is the “ideal of Christian marriage.” In the 10th c., emperor Leo VI of Byzantium taught that marriage not blessed by the Church is not a marriage. That idea along with the growing number of Christians in the empire created a situation where the Church had to deal with citizens who dissolved and divorced rather than the state. But Orthodoxy has always seen the end of the Christian wedding service in the couple both receiving holy communion together. The link is so close that the structure of the Eucharistic liturgy and the marriage rite look alike in many ways. 

 Our betrothal of God is like the journey of Pascha, the passing over into the next world. It's noteworthy that like Pascha – having both a crucifixion pascha and a resurrection pascha – marriage is both a call to self-sacrifice and struggle as well as a merry-making mystery of joy and oneness of mind. Metropolitan Hilarion shows that the patriarchs of the Old Testament found their wives because God ordained it to be so. The prayers of the betrothal service, then, teach that God is “the arranger of the marriage.” Whether we think our parents and culture choose our spouse or choose a spouse on our own, for Orthodox Christians, God plans a marriage. Betrothal is about the pledge of God’s fidelity and our faithfulness in response. The crowning rite points to the Cross while at the same time it points to the Resurrection. There is a “bright sadness” in accepting marriage as primarily a way of martyrdom, and the liturgical service and order reveal that self-sacrificial meaning. The cross is a symbol of joy and suffering. So, the service speaks of St. Elena who found the Holy Cross and St. Sebaste the Soldier and the Forty Women Martyrs. That Orthodox teaching is directly contrary to the idea that marriage is keeping abreast with the world, the fulfillment of personal desires, the cumulation of wealth and influence. Marriage is a preparation for letting go of our will, changing our hearts, and dying to ourselves so that we can be dead to the world. Marriage is death to the world by dying to our desires. The crowns of marriage do not symbolize the hope that worldly success will always flow, but that the married couple will win crowns of martyrdom in this life. In his Letters 232, Gregory the Theologian teaches that “water to wine” meant that something and someone becomes better. Marriage ought to make us better like baptism, chrism, unction, confession, and the Eucharist. The Martyr Precopius urged young Christian women taken under persecution to “go to your death as to a [wedding] feast.” This is the Orthodox Christian attitude toward marriage. There are many paths to martyrdom, and some may not become married to another person here on earth. The next chapter discusses the monastic tonsure service and its many similarities to the mystery of wedded life.  All the mysteries of the Orthodox Church are rooted in the Eucharist, and the monastic tonsure is also a sacrament found with eucharistic and marital themes. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 6: Unction (Holy Oil)

Metropolitan Hilarion discusses the history and liturgical meaning of the mystery of holy unction. All the mysteries of the Church restore our humanness to the Holy Trinity. Oil has been an image of medicine, healing, compassion, forgiveness, food, anointing with the Spirit, and joy since the history of the Jewish people. The apostles received the gift of healing and governing so that they fulfill the Old Testament types or images in the Orthodox Church. Healing is a ministry from the Holy Spirit and the holy apostles. Faith is always an important component of receiving healing, and both the Old and New Testaments confirm this teaching. Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann speaks of food as dead without God’s power to bless it in Great Lent. So, the clergy bless the oil in a service and apply it to the body of the person who receives it. At times it was done in the home, if the person was very ill. It was also common to serve the holy oil at church led by the clergy present there. The prayers of the service ask on behalf of the sick or dying that the Holy Spirit come and heal the person presented, and to bless the oil that stands for the healing not only of the body due to our fallen state but also for the restoration of our souls wounded by sins and desires. In a commentary on the Gospel of Mark 6, Priest Victor of Antioch in the 5th c. taught, “… for it is manifest to anyone that prayer brings about everything.” Without the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us and the creation we bless to help us, everything remains symbolic. But we have the reality, the antitype, the living presence of the Holy Spirit to make us whole again. Like the eucharist and confession and baptism, holy oil forgives sins and helps us to repent. Our holy fathers in the faith connected the unction service and the holy oil to forgiveness of and remission of sins as well as further strength in our struggle for fuller repentance. “God has the power” this chapter emphasizes in outlining the meaning and practice of unction.

While the West tended to view unction as exclusively for the dying and not for the penitent at heart, the East viewed the holy oil as the power to repent and remit sins from our fallen Adamic nature that will help us become holier. That difference is rooted in an understanding of what the Holy Apostle James teaches and the Orthodox understanding of our common need for healing the soul and body together. Humans have a defective unity between soul and body that negatively affects our development of human and divine relationships. So, rather than being exclusively a service of “last rites,” it’s a service for bringing our human nature back to the kingdom of God that is always “at hand,” around the corner of our earthily life. Those in old age, in danger of death, psychological illness, diseased, close to death and really anyone else, even the departed, can receive the holy oil for the repair of our brokenness. That unction can reach beyond the grave is uniquely Orthodox and hopeful. The healing of the soul is just as important as healing the body. After we depart, we can receive help. Dcn. Barna and Mrs. Barna have discussed this topic of Orthodox traditional burial and theology in their book, A Christian Ending, in which they describe how the body of an Orthodox Christian is lathered in holy oil. That process mystically transfers to our souls, since our human nature is dual, not single. We are part of both the unseen, spiritual world and we are in the physical realm with the animals, trees, the waters, and the earth – all the elements as well as oil. We are healed by divine food as we were originally wounded by dead food through the serpent’s lies. So, sin, death, and suffering are linked to our common colds, our pain, and our loved ones who we have lost to disease and illness. To heal a sickness, a remission of sins must happen too. And our Protestant neighbors will say how can that be so, if Christ has already died on the Cross for our sins? We must fulfill Christ’s Cross by participating in our healing through His work and grace. Since we are not yet departed from this world, we are sojourning through it so that we need spiritual and physical help along the way in the holy mysteries to be prepared to live in the kingdom of God. Everything in the Church is preparation and recognition that we need God’s help – not just symbolically or individually. We need to participate publicly, physically for own sake and through orderly governance and distribution of God’s grace to His people. It’s curious that St. John the Forerunner (the Baptist) inaugurates the kingdom of God and Christ’s coming with the famous divine words, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” and repentance is so often a theme in the Bible, yet many Christians do not want to view repentance in connection with our real earthily struggle and preparation through the sacraments that clearly point to the fulfillment and meaning of Old Testament types. 

Metropolitan Hilarion touches on the question of why some aren’t healed physically in the unction service. He says first that everyone can walk away with healing, since it is not restricted to physical but spiritual renewal here and now – the forgiveness of sins and the ability to walk a new life. To the Orthodox, unction always works for the faithful. He explains that glorification in fallen humanity is seen in the healing and in the illness itself because God is in all things. It’s God’s will that “all should be saved” and St. Silouan the Athonite taught to focus our thoughts on that teaching. It’s possible now that God can be glorified within us and in any bad situation, which we find ourselves, taught St. Cyril of Alexandria. Barsanuphius and John of Gaza taught that, “Illness may come from negligence and disorder … It is up to you to be neglectful or prodigal and to fall into those, until you reach the point of correction” (Letters, 521). It’s worth noting again in passing that the New Testament and modern Greek term for “eternal hell” is kolasis, which means correction. Unction might be considered from an eastern perspective a form of fatherly correction for sins committed and in need of a physician’s oil. But maybe not. Symeon the New Theologian taught that illness is the result of corruption because of sin – not believing in God and keeping the divine fast for all life, for more life in Paradise. So, by healing “the inner man” and becoming a new, good person, we begin to reverse everything corruptible in our bodies and soul in the resurrection. We are made aware again that we are corrupt and separated from ourselves, our body and soul fight each other, and we are blind to God. But unction restores those inward realities, which is called the “true health and strength.” The tax collectors, the Galileans, the Samaritan woman, the Centurion, the harlot and the thief all realized their need for inner healing unlike the Pharisees and the rich. The scribes seemed to have viewed physical healing as a means to an end –  the storing up of extra food, wealth, and power on earth – which is what Satan first used to tempt Christ during his forty days in the desert.

The oil has powerful imagery in the New Testament. It’s especially connected when the harlot poured out ointment over the Master’s feet and washed him with her hair. We see in this story that blessed oil touches both Christ and the sinful person, and it is connected to becoming a good, whole person and humility. Metropolitan Hilarion shows us that all things can become the opportunity for transfiguration and repentance. He teaches, “[I]n Christ suffering is not [always] removed; it is transformed into victory,” and “The defeat itself become the victory.” All suffering can have meaning and can become our personal proclamation and entrance into the kingdom of God, to inaugurate our victory in Christ. The unction service itself contains Epistle and Gospel readings. The healing of the Canaanite woman’s possessed daughter and Good Samaritan are images that connect holy oil to the spiritual realities that help us to become aware of our need for forgiveness of sins. 

Metropolitan Hilarion teaches that “…every sacrament is linked with the Eucharist.” The gifts of the mysteries make both the priest and the people holy, and the mysteries are important in drawing us together into one body or community – a communion of people in Christ. When we are healed, we become communal people, and we are healed in the community of the faithful. Without the mysteries there is no lasting community or substantial communion. The next chapter discusses marriage and the service of matrimony more specifically – a sacrament like the others that forms parishes, cities, and communities. Marriage is one of the deepest of mysteries that is made holy in the Eucharist. Love is the greatest of gifts, and it requires at least two people to exist. It is not good to be alone because there is no love in self-love or isolation from all communal activities, but it’s only found in other persons.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 5: Holy Orders (Ordination)

Metropolitan Hilarion focuses on the mystery of holy ordination, of which there are several ranks, and its history. Three basic sacred rites exist in Orthodoxy: the deaconate or servers, the priesthood, or the presbyters (elders), and the bishops who overseer a local church. There are a handful of other important ordinations also discussed in this chapter. One of the major criteria for determining if a church is authentic or apostolic in succession is to look at its ordination history from the Old Testament through the successive Church.

The Jewish people practiced the “laying on of hands” (Gen.48, Num.27, Deut. 34, Num. 8). The Orthodox Church has been fulfilling this covenant as “a gesture of healing” and it is how the Holy Spirit is imparted to holy men who are given the power to heal, pray, and forgive sins as we learned in the previous chapter. Like a procession, God the Father sent His Son and His Holy Spirit, and He sent his disciples as apostles, and the apostles sent priests, bishops, deacons to us in the Church for our benefit. This spiritual power isn’t bought or sold like a company. Holy ordination isn’t exactly like the worldly institutions that many people criticize. One of the earliest forms of ordination was mentioned in the Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus of Rome who said that they were “elected by all the people.” The laity were involved as well as other positions of responsibility in the Church. It continues, “when his candidacy has been declared and accepted by all, he must come to the church on a Sunday together with the attending bishops and presbyters.” Because the Church operates out of love, consensus and agreement are key marks of expressing unity, while maintaining that there still exists a level of seniority that is wise to observe to maintain order – another expression of spiritual unity and love. It’s popular in some conservative circles to say that “the Church is monarchy, not a democracy.” But the Church operates in the system of the mysteries. Worldly rulers use fear and ideology; they use rationalism or individual sentiments. The situation wasn’t exactly an absolute monarchy since the candidates for ordination are also “named and approved” by “the whole people.” Then, the assembly would give their agreement to the candidate for ordination. The laity’s amen was required at that time and that was the situation in the 4th c. AD. 

Metropolitan Hilarion points out that the prayers of the Church read by the holy orders speak of the Holy Spirit coming to purify, give the next generation of hierarchs “exact knowledge of things” and unity with the brother of bishops. The Holy Spirit comes in the Orthodox Church to fulfill authority to heal, forgive, power to change, to fulfill unity of mankind, and to rule over the evil creatures. He mentions that the priesthood is a divine calling, not that someone approaches “by one’s own favor.” Holy ordination is a divine institution of the ministry of opposing the oppressing forces of evil. The brotherhood of the clergy is a ministry that is based on love for each other and the people. 

There are other appointed ranks such as reader and subdeacon. The reader is the keeper of “sacred books and lighting oil lamps.” This rank was usually put in charge of teaching and catechetical functions, and the bishop appointed him also with the cheirotonia (the laying on of hands). So, the liturgical functions and responsibilities as well as the history of the hierarchy in Orthodoxy isn’t merely passed on by books, by word of mouth, or empty customs but by the physical touch of hands and the power of the Holy Spirit comes, which ought to cause Pentecostals and transcendentalists intense envy because of the confidence and blessings we have in such divine rites. What’s the reason for hierarchy? At the ordination of the rank of bishop, the pray read, “… the Grace Divine, which always health that which is infirm, and supplieth that which is wanting …” If God doesn’t act directly through our actions in faith, who could rightly claim to have the truth? The Holy Spirit gives us the abilities and endurance we need to accomplish our pilgrimage to paradise. The rite of tonsure is done to ordain a reader, and it’s a sign of spiritual service. Another rank that literally means “service” in Greek is the deaconate. Like the bishops and priests, deacons too are ordained inside the altar. Their ordination takes one of the greatest mysteries of the Church – holy marriage. They become “betrothed to the Church” and they become Christ’s bride. Men are called to love and serve first the women in integrity, fidelity, dedication, and martyrdom. This is the love of the apostles and of Christ. So, all authority is ministry, all of this is founded on the rock of Christ and His sacrifice. 

There is a “naming rite” in the ordination of bishop and presbyter as well as a hierarchical oath that is taken that harken to a time when the people used to be more involved in elections. This naming is important because it tied a bishop to a specific city that is also named. Every church is linked to a city or place of habitation. That is another wise gift from the Holy Trinity that each bishop has its own area of service and focuses on ministering to one’s own people to avoid disunity and strife, but also so that each place can receive the attention and care that they need with some level of human stability to gain spiritual nourishment. The Holy Spirit is again intimately involved in the ordination of the clergy. The prayers of ordination read, “Blessed are thou, … sending down upon them thy Holy Spirit, and thereby catching the universe as in a net.” The Orthodox Church fulfills the Old Testament promise that all nations will be gathered under God’s blessings and that the confusion of tongues will be reversed by calling all nations to unity under one the authority of the Church through the bishops’ inter-communal love. The hierarchy of the Orthodox Church transmits the mysteries to the world, and it’s an office and ministry that is like the soul of the world who loves the body of the world. Many today in our culture search for transcendence. Some call it more traditionally mother earth, the world soul, and scientists are now calling it the universal mind or consciousness. Orthodox Christians and the clergy are the mind, heart, and body of the Holy Spirit working in the world toward a new creation. The incarnation makes ordination supernatural every time it happens. The next mystery to be discussed that takes hands on application is called Holy Unction that can heal the pain and the penitent of heart in these times. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 4: Repentance (Confession)

Repentance is also known as the mystery of holy confession. English uses penance, reconciliation, and confession to signify repentance. None of them directly imply a “change” like the Koine Greek term metanoia, which means literally to change one’s mind or heart. Penance and repentance are the Latin words for legal punishment, feelings of sorrow, and pain from the verb poenitire. Penitent could have been related to the pain of sin, the penalty that weighs heavily on the soul, and its consequences. That sin ought to make us feel some sorrow isn’t a topic that Metropolitan Hilarion emphasizes here. But turning your mind toward a desire, a goal, and a new life with purpose and determination is another aspect of repentance, since sadness can be easily turned into despair, dejection, and sloth that blocks change. The word reconciliation that is often used by Roman Catholics today means to restore. Our confession is most like exomologesis. It indicated that a Christian confessed one’s sins before a priest or bishop or earlier in the assembly before baptism. It’s the term that the New Testament and the fathers of the Church who wrote in Greek used for this sacrament. Tertullian, who wrote in Latin, still used the term exomologesis, and he refers to this confession of sins to a priest as “the handmaiden of repentance.” There are many forms of repenting. Confession of sins helps us to become humble before the Name of God who secretly knows all our faults and sins already. His name heals our wounds and weaknesses from sin. It would seem unhelpful to view confession as sacrament only needed once in a lifetime. It would also seem harmful to view it as a complete restoration without also partaking of the other mysteries that cleanse us. Baptism removes sins, the Eucharist is purifying fire and light, and confession helps to restore us by humbling us back into our Adamic nature lost in Paradise. God gave us speech, words, language to communicate the hidden spiritual reality under our bodily image of God. And this expression of humility helps us to receive the Eucharist and the Eucharist helps us to change, and to turn our minds back to God, which is what our original nature is supposed to do – to understand with reason this material world but to live beyond it in our noetic home with the Holy Trinity. All will make a confession at the end of time at the universal resurrection. Whether we acknowledge God’s Name in joy and love, or, in sadness and pain is a spiritual work we must engage in completing during our earthily existence. In his writing On Repentance, Tertullian teaches that “the craters of volcanoes” vent in the habitation of our heart, where we ultimately confess His Name. He teaches that out of the heart blasts fiery passions. But since angels are not creatures with a physical body like ours, nor do we have a purely spiritual nature like theirs, the Hell for them might be different from the hell for humans who suffer from “repenting in vain” as some fathers taught. The fathers teach that the demonic creatures have immediate access to doing what they think unlike humans who live in time, space, and earthily bodies. 

 In the Old Testament, there is plenty of typology linking confession to the Orthodox mystery. The evil Babylonian King makes exomologesis and then he is restored. The parting of the Red Sea is a type of confession, and this tragic rejection of it is reflected in the event when the waves destroyed and collapsed on the pursuing Egyptians. The liturgical texts teach that, “Adam, restored by his confession to his own paradise, is not silent.” On the Day of Atonement, there was a confession of sins that the Jewish people made, “We have sinned.” The scapegoat was driven into the wilderness who bore the sins of Israel. If Christ is the scapegoat, the antitype to the type or the image of the reality, and Christ died for our sins, it would follow that we would need to confess our sins as much as we need to be cleansed by baptism. Protestants only view baptism as the required rite of entrance, however, they lack the full means of repentance during a lifetime. Metropolitan Hilarion writes that “the entire spiritual system” of repentance is found in the mysteries of baptism-chrismation and the eucharist. If the types of baptism are recognized by our brothers and sisters outside the Church, why wouldn’t confession and the Eucharist and holy orders also be equally recognizable? To prove that there isn’t anything “extra biblical” about Orthodox mysteries, we find it in Numbers 5:6-8, 2 Samuel 11-12, Psalm 51/50, and Isaiah 1:11-18. If we use the type without the reality (antitype), then there is no use of the type for one’s benefit. 

 The starting point of repentance is a change of mind, of confessing one’s brokenness and the loss of home, gifts, and the blessings of God. The preparation for Pascha is about focusing on exercising “the art form of repentance” and how to desire to “return to the Father’s house” — Alexander Schememann teaches. We do not merely admit we sin, but we confess that we need to change continually until our departure from this life. The Didache mentions confessing sins in church, and many New Testament passages speak of it as well (Matt. 3:6, Acts 19:18, 1 John 1:9, Luke 3:8-14). Some think that Christ’s Cross somehow replaces our need for confessing our sins and being remitted of them. The remission of sins is a sign of spiritual authority that was given as a gift to the apostles and then given to the elders and bishops to govern the Church and to heal us as well as “to bind and loose” that includes the remission of sins. God forgives the sins; the priests and bishops are witnesses to our confession directly to God. In the Six Books on the Priesthood, it teaches that “What priests do on earth, God ratifies above. The Master confirms the decision of his slaves.” God gives the power to forgive, and “they who have the Spirit of God … remit and retain sins.” To eliminate the mysteries of chrism, eucharist, holy orders and confession would be a denial that these types have been fulfilled in Christ, that the Old Testament types have failed to become a reality in our life through the Holy Spirit given to the apostles, given to the hierarchy, given to the people.  

He outlines several layers of confession in the Church over the course of its history. Is confession required before receiving each communion? Metropolitan Hilarion notes that the 2nd - 3rd c. texts or later do not provide us with the view that it would be required or mandatory before each communion. We know that a “general confession” of prayers read by a priest preceded the Eucharist. It’s not a personal confession of what is committed in the heart or public denials of the Church. We know that there was a confession made at the “public assembly” before the bishops at baptism or after apostasy and other “serious sins.” This form seems to have existed when numbers of Christians hadn’t reached the same capacity as did under the Roman empire in Constantinople and the Mediterranean world. We also know that there was a “secret confession” that was revealed privately to a priest who had the authority and power of forgiveness to “absolve sins.” It is practical too because we ought to only tell trustworthy people our sins to protect ourselves and continue to seek healing. We know that sometimes “transgressors” would be summoned to a “tribunal of several presbyters [priests] or a bishop sitting in the presence of the presbyters.” So, there was general confession in liturgical prayers said regularly, public confession at baptism, private confession to reveal one’s thoughts and become healed before entering the new creation at our death, and tribunal confession that handled public, serious sins like apostasy, adultery, murder, extortion, heresy, etc. A rite or established, instituted order of confession probably didn’t yet form until later. But the typology has clearly existed in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church’s history. 

In the 3rd c. AD, many Christians apostatized under the persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius. When these Christians desired to be restored to the faith and confess their apostasy, the Church helped them by establishing “the office of penitentiary presbyter” for those who “fell after baptism.” Sozomenus teaches that “impeccability is a divine attribute, and belongs not to human nature; therefore, God has decreed that pardon should be extended to the penitent, even after many transgressions ….” The Church has shown itself to be loving and practical when it comes to confession. It realizes that we sin and need to make amends for it, we need humility, and that complete negligence and the forgetting our need to confess sins leads to a form of pride that the Orthodox ascetics constantly stress. Some priests were appointed to hearing confessions and helping Christians mend their life. Public confession became “irksome” with the growth of Christianity in the East. Over time it even caused scandals and divisions publicly. General confession through the reading of prayers by the priest wasn’t considered adequate for full healing of one’s private thoughts and sins. In Orthodoxy, repentance is about the change of heart. The revealing of one’s true self, who is the worldly pagan, the thief, the tax collector, the greedy money maker, the harlot, the exiled murderer, the unclean that lives within all of us, that needs to come out before God for our sake, but not for the sake of the priest’s power, not for our ego, and not for God’s obsession with our sins.

Orthodoxy usually does not focus on categorizing sins into “mortal and venial.” The former is required to be confessed before holy communion while the latter does not bar one from holy communion in modern Roman Catholicism. St. John Cassian, not mentioned in this chapter, reflecting the mindset of the Desert Fathers teaches that anger over small actions and situations and obsession over small amounts of possessions isn’t better than worrying over the larger matters, since one still has not gotten rid of the same attachments of the heart. Of course, it’s worth noting that there are references to grouping sins according to “smaller sins” versus “offenses” like apostasy, adultery, murder, sorcery, and extortion. So, private confession seems to have been for the revealing of “smaller sins” that are “nearly unavoidable” while the “office of penitentiary presbyter” was a kind of confession that helped restore Christians after certain serious, public lapses in faith. The last section of this chapter deals with the relationship between God, holy orders, and the power of forgiveness in the mystery of holy confession. The prayers of the Church are firm that “Christ Himself receives confession” while the priesthood witnesses our confession to God just as we do not baptize ourselves and the baptizer doesn’t own the power of the cleansing waters, but we trust in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to work within us a spiritual change. Another major reason we need an ordered, regular confession to a priest or spiritual father is because we ought not to try to evaluate our spiritual progress objectively, the priest Alexander Elchaninov teaches. The next chapter discusses the mystery of holy orders also called the hierarchy, since there is also great treasures and mystical meaning in the ordination of service to the Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 3: Eucharist (Communion)

This chapter focuses on the theological meaning of the Eucharist and the practices of preparation for this mystery. The Eucharist is more ancient than the New Testament. Attempts to reject this mystery based on biblical scholarship and interpretation will not hold up to the evidence in support of this mystery. Since the Church came from Christ who is the Eucharist, Orthodoxy has a “eucharistic ecclesiology” that is reflected in the communion of bishops from apostolic succession. So, the hierarchical structure, canons, dogmas, practices, traditions of the Church come from this eucharistic source. Bread and wine were types in the Old Testament connected to the priesthood, to the blessedness of life, symbols of plenty and creativity, symbols of joy and gifts from the Creator. Melchizedek in Genesis is a type of Christ who began his ministry by supplying and drinking wine at the wedding at Cana. 

The holy fathers of the 2nd c. have taken much of their theology of the eucharist from Christ’s discourse “on the bread of life” to his disciples, and they understood typology and allegory as evidence for the eucharistic life of Christians. St. Ignatius the God-bearer spoke to the Ephesians about the giving thanks to God – meaning the Eucharist. He also taught that heretics abstained from the eucharistic altar, since they didn’t believe that the bread and wine truly became the Body and Blood of Christ. Christians have also always emphasized that they share “one eucharist.” The principle isn’t that there must be “one bishop” over other bishops to celebrate “one eucharist” but that “one eucharist” is celebrated by each bishop under the unity of the Eucharist Itself, which makes everyone in communion with each other. Other forms of authority or unity developed in other Christian groups haven’t accepted this form of eucharistic ecclesiology in practice or theology. 

St. Ignatius the God-bearer writes to the Romans saying, “I desire his blood for my drink, which is incorruptible love.” Love is the single driving force behind Orthodox Christianity and the impetus for all practices and traditions that help us discover again our “desire” for the eternal love of God and love for all people. In a brief discourse on the Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, Alexander Schmemann taught that man’s negative spiritual condition is “unable to see the light and to desire it.” Many psychologists and neuroscience researchers, like Marc Lewis, who has studied brain addictions, have understood that our basic human problem is that we all tend to go for the low-hanging fruit; we desire the drug, the fix, the crave of life’s pleasures because they are easy to grab in the manner of the animal kingdom. But sadly, we get stuck and learn to run in a cycle of sinful passions that we call bad habits that result in the loss of the sensitivity to see spiritually, to love others, and desire what is good for us. The Eucharist is the heavenly food we really wanted, and God is giving it to us now and forever. So, our deeply broken world isn’t rooted primarily in a problem of “the brain” but something deeper that the Church has called the heart, the noetic realm where we store up all our longings and memories and learning. The Eucharist rewires our desires and heals the brain too. The Eucharist also dogmatically “pledges to us the universal resurrection,” says Metropolitan Hilarion in line with the patristic teaching on holy communion. In Against Heresies section 5.2.3, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Gaul taught that, “… as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of man, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ, so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time …” Historically, there really isn’t any “church fathers” that Christians can say didn’t believe in the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood of Christ. Any reading of church history must confront this reality of the Eucharist as taught and practiced by Orthodox Christianity. St. John Chrysostom taught that Christians must receive Christ “with burning hearts, all fervent, all aroused.” Desire makes people do things beyond their ability and act crazy for what is wanted. He taught that would be the worthiest way to receive Christ in the Eucharist, with a “trembling awareness” and “ardent love.” The holy fathers also teach that our beauty is being restored through the eucharistic liturgy. St. John Chrysostom also taught, “Consider that we taste of that Body that sits above, that is adored by Angels, that is next to the Power that is incorruptible …” We are not only joined to Christ who is surrounded with the angelic ranks and the Most-Holy Theotokos, but we are joined with each other. The “Christian race” is not just a metaphor, but we literally become one blood and form a new “kinsfolk” with Christ. So, matter isn’t neutral or inert like scientists assume. But the flesh is nourished by the Spirit, as St. John the Apostle teaches. Bread and wine are not common elements in the Eucharist, although we see it physically. St. John Chrysostom taught that “to these materials substances, however, he united his divine nature, that through them we might be joined to the Divinity.” The Eucharist isn’t an image, type, or mere symbol. The Eucharist is Christ’s deified body, and we rise to what is supernatural through the natural, out of “human weakness.” We do not partake of God’s essence. But we do partake of the Eucharist that is likened to light and fire. Sin is a spiritual problem as much as a body problem. Through eating sin entered the world, and through eating sin is washed away and we are made whole. The struggle for wholeness is also found in the mystery called holy confession that helps us repent and return to the lost home and the lost peace of the Father. The next chapter discusses what repentance is when it’s lived within the mysteries. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 2: Baptism and Christmation

The Epistle to Diognetus is an ancient Christian and poetic text. The author distinguishes the worship of the Jews and Gentiles with the way of the Christians by teaching and practice. History shows that Christians are to the world as the soul is to the body of a person. The soul loves the flesh, but the flesh hates the soul. Christians, then, too are despised by the world while at the same time they show great love and heartfelt yearning for the salvation of the world. The incarnation makes it possible to reunite the body and soul since Christ became the perfect man and God. History “seeks to persuade, not to compel us” as God has done by allowing historical patterns of typology and actual events of the antitypes to be set before every generation because God is all-loving. He doesn’t need to come in pomp, but He willed to come in humility to convince us that He is the true God and the Savior and the Lover of Mankind so that we can arrive at faith in the Word made Flesh. History and typology help us to see our lost home and our lost beauty that is only in the kingdom of the God. When we can experience that and come to this conclusion, we begin to enter baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist with our own“bright sadness.”

Metropolitan Hilarion introduces an important term to the discussion of the baptismal cycle and mysteries of the Church. The holy the fathers of the Church used a term not found, even despised, by the classical Greek philosophers. They referred to the type as the image or the first image (prototype) and the antitype as the reality or what represents the type. So, the fathers speak of Christ as the antitype of Adam, or the Eucharist as the antitype (the reality) of the Mannah from heaven. Both were miracles from God. Metropolitan Hilarion translates antitype as “sacramental representation.” That description doesn’t convey merely symbolism but the symbol in the source just as Christ became Man – the image united and brought back to the divine and spiritually infused life that was lost. To view the liturgical life of the Church and its rites as lacking efficacy on the spiritual condition of its members is to return to a Judaizing worldview, the Gentile path of science and philosophy, and the old fallen world of symbols – just idols without power. The mysteries point to the Old Testament types that specifically followed an image of inner spiritual renewal, not just symbolic acts, and rituals. Speaking of types and antitypes isn’t a comparison between real and not real. It belongs to a continuous reality and fuller, brighter meaning when we live in the mysteries. St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught that, “… and all things happen to you in images, since you are the images of Christ.” Typology and antitypes form the language of how to speak about communion and mystical indwelling and rejuvenation of the universe through the work of the All-powerful Creator. The communion of type and antitype – God and man – is what we can do in the mysteries of the Orthodox Church. The type is the beginning, and the antitype is the completion. So, the new creation must have a beginning and completion forever. St. Hippolytus of Rome taught that “the action is done on the body, the effect is spiritual.”One of the best illustrations of type and antitype is the relationship between St. John the Forerunner who baptized with water for repentance of sins and the baptism of Our Lord and Master whose baptism will be “in fire and in the Spirit” for the remission of sins and repentance, which begins the formulation of the historical order of the service of baptism and chrismation. These mysteries and typologies are fundamental in understanding how we enter the Church and remain living. It’s worth noting that many Jewish people accepted baptism by John, but many of the religious scribes did not repent and accept John’s baptism that was a type prefiguring both the Old Testament washing of sins and Christ’s baptism that would be given as a command to the apostles. 

These mysteries help prepare us to live in the kingdom of God where we will see Christ as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. Catechesis was a learning process that preceded and continued after baptism in Christianity. The Epistle of Diognetus taught in Chapter XII that “For neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure without life.” Seeking instruction in the mysteries and repentance and virtue is an ongoing struggle, since we have “declared war” at our baptism to fight against a cynical Evil creature and his darkened followers. The war begins within our own members, and it continues to radiate in the web of interrelationships. A regular time for focusing on catechesis became customary during Great Lent, but anytime could have become an opportunity for learning. St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught that there is some instruction before baptism that is useful, but that the Holy Spirit enlightens us to understand the mysteries after baptism. Knowledge is important, but it must not have been criterion for entering the Church. What was expected of catechumens was to lead as best they could a moral life of struggle, as St. Hippolytus of Rome taught in the 3rd c. AD. The mysteries give us knowledge. St. Justin the Philosopher taught that, “So that we should not remain children of necessity and ignorance, but become sons of free choice and knowledge, and obtain remission of the sins we have already committed, there is named at the water, over him who has chosen to be born again and has repented of his sinful acts, the name of God the Father and Master of all.” This washing or baptism is called “illumination” and “initiation.” A longer catechesis is also mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions for baptism those who will be, “instructed …in the knowledge of the unbegotten God.” Instruction included the New Testament teaching on Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension. In the apostolic period, catechetical instruction didn’t end but increased after baptism. The important place of catechesis begs the question of why it isn’t considered a rank or mystery of the Church as well. Teachers are mentioned in the New Testament. No rite or laying on of hands seems to exist for this ministry in the Church. Catechetical discourse like Christ’s discourses seems also to be the natural way that Christians educate each other and grow together in spiritual knowledge and faith. Other forms of religious education include didacticism, most often seen in the preaching and biblical scholarship of the Protestant worldview or the Classical Greek period in Hesiod. Another kind is the dialectical method that belongs to the scholastic tradition of Medieval and modern Roman Catholicism and is linked also to the common Greek philosophical tradition of disputation. Orthodox Christianity doesn’t seem to rely on either didacticism like that of the sola scriptura and Protestant bible study or the dialectical method, which requires two opposing viewpoints to arrive at the truth — a legacy also of the Enlightenment in our times. The New Testament only uses Greek terms for “discourse” and “narrative,” not language that belongs to the realm of dialectic or didactic methods. 

Naming is an important ritual that happens before baptism. Names are like the divine because God created the world through the Word, and we are also endowed with words, and we are given names to identify our personality that represent our “mystical symbol.” We do not use names out of vanity, magic, or superstition. Metropolitan Hilarion quotes the scriptures, “as his name is, so is he” in 1 Samuel 25:25. Naming meant changing allegiance, a closer relationship, being subject to God. We are name-receivers and God is the name-changer. Worldly aspirations that aren’t pleasing to God are described in the Old Testament as people who desire “to make a name for themselves,” who wish to find transcendence without God’s strength. In Orthodox tradition, there are saints who watch and are chosen on behalf of the whole family, and they celebrate his or her name day by a feast with offerings of bread and wine in the nave. 

If there were an Orthodox approach to studying the humanities and philosophy of the West, it might be what Metropolitan Hilarion refers to as the recovering of our “humanness” in receiving the mysteries of the Church and carefully reading liturgical and hagiographic texts as well as the discourses our holy fathers have left to us. The effect of the mystical life is the renewal of our image and nature to loveliness and an aurora-like light. The Eucharist is the thanksgiving for such a transformation of our body and soul. The next chapter discusses the mystery of holy communion.