Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 28: The Second Coming

There are two main appearances of Christ. First, his incarnation at Bethlehem. Second, his appearing again to gather the faithful of every age into the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ and his Kingdom are “at hand” or close to happening. The Greek word parousia, the second coming, means to be present in, to be near, to have arrived. The period between his incarnation and his parousia is called “Christian history;” it is the beginning of a new creation that will have its summit when Christ appears again on earth at the end of time. 

Eschatology is another Greek derived term that etymologically means endpoint, last, furthest, summit and crown. The ending of this age of history will close to begin another eternal existence; it will be the crown of Christ’s creation so to speak. Protopresbyter George Florovsky writes that the Kingdom of God and eschatology, the study of the last things, are interwoven into the liturgical practices and dogmata (house teachings), of the Church. Faith and the prophecy about Jesus the Christ have a kind of "persuasion" that is an inseparable system, writes Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann. When we hear a homily, it bears witness to us what we hold now and what we will hold soon. The Orthodox Church is a patient Christianity that lives in high expectation.  Many of the New Testament parables of Christ teach us how to live in this fading world now while we look out for the eternal kingdom. Harvest imagery abounds in the parables because there is a quality of prophecy that is now and yet to be; it is living the mystery. The interim age is for all kinds of people to enter into eternal bliss and to ripen ourselves with repentance. The basic response to the apocalypse and eschatology in the East has been to seek prayer as preparation and purification for paradise, the Light of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection. 

The prophecy and the promise of the Old Testament is still being fulfilled in the New Testament today. Abraham awaits the parousia with us and with future people. The pain and perplexities in this age are going to end “at but a moment.” Orthodox Christians, like the Apostles and early Christians, are called to live moment by moment in a watchful and sober manner. Revelation 22:20 contains another Orthodox response to the end of this world, Maranatha! Come Lord! But some Christians have taken a different route by focusing on figuring out the timing and detailed signs of apocalyptic events. Chilialism (1,000 years in Greek) is an idea that some Christians used to explain how long Christ’s reign will last on earth before he appears. But Christ’s reign is eternal, not limited. Just as Christ waits to be revealed to all people, so too the Evil One must be revealed to the whole world so that Christ can conquer what will be clear and apparent to every human. St. Hippolytus of Rome taught that the Deceiver to be revealed at the end of the age will combine spiritual and political power, and that Satan will use this man to seduce and deprive Christians materially and he is “already at work,” as 2 Thessalonians 2:7 teaches. This political leader will sit on the Jewish Temple, as some holy fathers have taught, and will cause people to compromise their faith by replacing commerce with communion with God. There has not been one definitive interpretation of the Book of Revelation among the the holy fathers regarding the details of events. But the main outline and sequence is consistent. Orthodoxy has understood the apocalypse as an anti-dualistic revelation, as opposed to many modern critics of Christianity. The truth of the end is that there will be no corruption, no suffering, no warring of good and evil that will last. Beauty, Spirit, and the Truth conquer. For this reason, Orthodox Christians view Christ not as the victim of tribulation violence, but the victor and “protagonist” of the end of time. Christ wants us to win crowns and to resurrect with our body and soul united in order to prove that this evil in the world cannot possibly continue. Whether we believe or not believe, Orthodoxy teaches that everyone will universally be resurrected. The next chapter discusses what is called “the general resurrection.” 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 27: Death as a Way to Eternity

Mortuary practices and our views on death affect how we treat this life. Anyone may “reject” the idea of an afterlife. But it’s impossible for humans to live without the assumption that everyone desires to live forever or live as if they will in the different forms that takes for individuals. Any general study of cultures throughout time, universally among pre-modern people, will find a belief in a kind of existence, whether intact or altered, after death. This age or eschaton in Greek biblical terminology doesn’t imply that Christians, at least in Orthodoxy, have a so-called “linear” view of time and reality, since the “coming Kingdom” is eternal so that the end of this age is actually the beginning of eternity. The many parables and teachings of Christ focus on this eternal Kingdom that is coming from heaven to earth and how to live in that realm here while awaiting the one who is coming to us, the Son of Man. The end of time and the end of our individual lives coincide now and will take place soon. Likewise, the study of eschatology involves both a “personal” and an “universal-historical” aspect. 

If each death of a person is not the end of one’s existence, then for the Christian there is not a never-ending tragedy or evil that we associate with such destruction in this world as mournful as it is. St. Isaac the Syrian calls death “falling asleep” because our body and bones wait for the return of the soul. In this way, grief can make us reflect on the hope we can have that our loved ones and our own bodies will some day reunite. But that hopeful view has not been the dominant philosophy of this age. Some question why death had to be introduced. St. Gregory of Nyssa explains death as providential and purificatory, since sin “flows away” at the separation of this dying body and soul so that a new creation can emerge without any “evil.” Death, suffering and evil, then, are not going to be allowed by God, as some people argue. The only charge against Him is the way that God conquers them. 

An important point that is overlooked in this narration of eternity is the role of the demons who enslave people to evil desires and forgetfulness of God and doing good to others. Death was often a deity or a frightening, uncontrollable force for many cultures in the past as it is today in its modern forms. But for Orthodox Christians, even the fear of this inevitable event has lost its power because the Lover of Mankind, the Creator will not let the eternal separation reign in the universe that He created. Christians have the most hopeful and truthful creation story among the nations of people. The real fear is not mending our lives before we depart, as St. Macarius of Egypt teaches his monastic brothers.  

The Orthodox Church teaches that those who die await the Last Judgment. This teaching is highlighted during the Synaxarion of Meatfare Saturday, which teaches that the dead are not judged now and may be helped by Christian prayer and ascetical offerings until that final day. The mentally ill, infants, even unbaptized ones as opposed to the Roman Catholic theological explanation of limbus puerorum or limbus infantum (limbo for infants/children), and youths who die early are not held liable for “retribution” because there wasn’t yet an intent to do evil or good. Often critics of Christianity blame God for death and corruption; there are questions about why He would allow it. But the real heading is that God is not going to allow for it all and His Son reversed it all, and His Son will come again to prevail.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 26: The Theotokos

In this last chapter of part 5, Metropolitan Hilarion sums up the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the Conciliarity and Catholicity of the Church, the Apostolicity and the Veneration of the Saints by surveying the place of the Mother of God, the Theotokos in the Church. There is no separate treatment of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in the Orthodox Church in contrast to the developed Marian dogmas in Western theology. Metropolitan Hilarion draws some distinctions between Orthodoxy’s integration of the Theotokos into the liturgical calendar and feasts, the hours and yearly cycle of prayer and the devotional aspects of iconography and the more set-apart, leading role and apparitional character of Mary in Roman Catholicism. In the former tradition of the East, She is a mediating Mother (Mediatrix) that protects and helps save all of Her Son’s children. In the latter tradition of Western Christianity, She is viewed more independently acting as a redeemer and savior of our souls (Co-Redemptrix), and though this teaching is respected among the pious, it is not a dogma in Roman Catholicism. In the second part of the Orthodox wording of the Hail Mary, Mary is described as She who “bore the Saviour of our souls” not equated to a Savior also of our souls. These two important Latin terms form two different ways of telling the origin of the Church and the Creation in Christianity, not merely a matter of semantics or sophistry. 

Christian tradition of the East and West have agreed with each other that the Protestant idea that the brothers were from the union of Mary and Joseph is incorrect. Justin Martyr wrote against Trypho the Jew in his Dialogue that outlined the Hebrew prophets and word play within the Scriptures to prove that Mary was the Mother of God and ever-virgin just as Origen wrote against Celsus, a Gentile hostile to Christianity. The prophetic role and typology of Mary is key to remember when the discussion of her virginity and place in the Church is questioned. If she was not ever virgin and fulfills the prophecy of giving birth to the Godman, then the prophecies about Christ too must be doubted. St John Damascene describes Mary as virgin even after Christ’s birth by appealing to the primal sense of sound when he says, “the conception, indeed, was through the sense of hearing …” Since hearing seems to be the deepest sense organ and since the Word created the world by the sound of His voice that was heard throughout heaven and earth, so too Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, as in the first creation, Christ Jesus. The recapitulation teaching also plays a prominent part in the Holy Virgin Mary’s free choice to bear Christ Jesus in her ever-virginal womb. Eve listened to the voice of the serpent and was opened to many sufferings and death. Mary was hidden from the Evil One and she listened to the Word who became Man, the Creator of the universe, Eve was in pain at childbirth, but Mary was pierced in the heart at the foot of the Cross, not in her God-bearing. The conception that was stainless refers to Christ’s birth, and not to Mary’s in Orthodoxy, unlike the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Roman Catholicism. Christ’s conception is our salvation and the prophetic reversal from death and corruption. With this kind of typology, Mary’s place in Orthodoxy is not as a “mere channel” of some inanimate “tool” as ancient and modern Christians have argued, but she is part of bringing about the new creation of mankind. All the mysteries of salvation can be summed up in the Theotokos, the Mother of God. She bore not a “deified man” as Nestorius wished to invent, but She bore the Word in flesh, God incarnate. Through Mary and the recapitulation, humanity was given the heavenly Father and God took up a Mother into the heavens. She remained sinless, although she had normal human emotions and weaknesses. Her holiness surpasses angels because the Devil came to reverse the order of man to serve angels instead of angels to serve man. What was haughty was humbled and what was humbled was raised to heights. 

Many of the old and new controversies around Christianity and within its schisms involve an uncomfortable connection between the human body and soul, and how God can and did “take up abode in our flesh.” When the Holy Virgin Mary agreed to the Angel Gabriel’s message from God, the Holy Spirit said to have “reposed and cleansed her and made her holy.” The hearing and believing of the Word is the same path all Christians strive to do just as the Most Holy Virgin Theotokos did. She was holy by “pre-election” and she kept herself from choosing evil at the same time. It is the beautiful synergy and harmony of sounds that She leads all of us to follow in her footsteps; She offered specifically her “will” and her “faith” when she heard God speaking to her through an angel. She offers us the perfect example of what freedom means for all people. The Annunciation shows us that God doesn’t force us to love him and work with him, but he does all he can to bring our desires into unity. The Serpent came with coercive, cunning words and seduction. The Savior came with calmness and a kind annunciation to Her. When Mary said to the angel, “let it be” she echoed the freeing and creative words of Genesis “let there be light.” The Word didn’t coerce any woman or Mary, but God “waits for her word” and her voice so that sound reverberates onto sound. This is the real Creation story of Christianity. Archpriest George Florovsky describes the leading up to the Nativity of Christ as the summation of all the Old Testament righteous and faithful. Like Mary, we strive to become a holy temple to bear Christ within our members. Metropolitan Hilarion points out that “every ode of a canon contains a Troparion dedicated to the Mother of God.” There is nothing like that in other Christian traditions, and Christ wants us to hear what she heard in her heart. The silence of Orthodox iconography calls us, such as the miraculous icons of the Theotokos of Kazan, Smolensk, Tikhvin and Serpukhov in Russia, to attend to God with our hearts and ears; icons call us to hear what the next world wants us to know and to hear the sounds of the “spiritual world.” The Most Holy Virgin Theotokos is our best model for holiness and deification at the end of the eschaton (age). 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 25: The Veneration of the Saints

The veneration of the saints has always been a part of the fabric of the Church. It involves our own salvation as deification, catholicity and apostolicity, all types of martyrdom, and the partaking of the Eucharist. In the Book of Acts, a martyr means to bear witness to Christ all the way to our deaths, whether by persecution or by professing Christ through our virtuous deeds and repentant actions throughout life. The basic questions about life and death are answered by cultivating a veneration of the saints and embodying their example into our own practice of following Christ in His Church. There are ancient saints like Noah, Abraham, Rahab and Judith in the Bible. There are New Testament saints like the Apostles Peter and Paul. There are recent saints like St. Silouan the Athonite and St. Herman of Alaska. Local churches did not coerce each other into accepting their own saints, but with the mark of catholicity and conciliarity, they would present a list that had to be mutually received into the diptychs of two churches before new saints could be venerated together as one Church. There was not always a systematized process of canonization in the Orthodox Church, neither in the West, which has developed a more rigorous process today in modern Roman Catholicism. In both East and West, there have been variations in how sainthood could be verified, usually through the laity’s prayers, a council and the abundant appearance of miracles through prayers by the faithful. The canonization of a saint involved the whole community, the bishop in communication with another bishop at the diocesan or metropolitan level. The eucharistic community led by one bishop in communion with his brother bishops was designed to produce saints and pass down sanctity. 

According to the tradition passed down through the grace-filled Apostles and episcopacy, the resurrection of Christ is the true prosperity Gospel. The examples of the saints were crucial in building up and passing down holiness to the next generation of Christians as well as correcting Churches who had gone astray into divisions, as St. Clement of Rome had done by writing letters to the Corinthian Church’s hierarchs around the 1st AD, and who is said to have met the Apostle Peter himself. Rather than appealing to a formula that the Church is equated to authority, St. Clement of Rome, one the earliest of bishops at Rome, like Peter and Paul in their letters who preached the foolishness of Christ, advise with brotherly love the Church “sojourning” at Corinth by recalling and explaining the saints from the Old Testament to the New Testament to their own time. 

The holy martyrs of every age reveal the reality of this world. That our desires are dead-ends, material goods and achievements fade. But spiritual gifts and the adornment of a virtuous life, which even pagans have praised, will endure in the resurrected life. All kinds of people of different rank and riches are remembered for their miracles, before and after their death. In Old Testament Law, the Jews were prohibited from touching or coming near to the dead or sick bodies because it would make them ritually unclean. But because of Christ’s resurrection and our participation in it through our deeds and in the Eucharist, the bodies of holy people today are now the opposite of disease and corruption. Their clothes, homes, belongings, images and even bringing up their names in prayer to God – all prayer and messages are addressed to and sent to God – have the power to heal and make us holy with them. Holiness, then, is not strictly an individual pursuit bound by the limits of this sojourning life. But intercessory prayer is a necessity to get a foretaste of paradise, deification and the life of the resurrection promised to us by God. Evidence of this belief and practice is found in the very earliest times of the Church. Christians celebrated the Eucharist in worship at places of martyrdom in and around the Roman Empire and universally pieces of the saint’s body were placed under the altars found in the dank catacombs of candle-lit liturgies in Italy. The Eucharist unites all Christians, whether in life or in departure of this world, whether in times of distance or closeness, persecution or secular peace. All holiness is in a sense foolishness to this fading secularism that exists in its own way in every age. But there is a unique category and tradition of saints called holy fools. Their lives can be so simple or so extraordinary that even the Church’s hierarchs need time to process their model, such as St. John of Kronstadt and St. Xenia of St. Petersburg in Russia. Holy fools may have started in Egypt and Syria, though rare in Byzantium. Yurodivy or the holy fool became an important example for Russian veneration. The veneration of the Most Holy Theotokos is the best example of a saint for all humanity. At the same time the Orthodox dogmas and feasts of the Hoy Virgin Mary may be one of the most difficult and misunderstood saints for other religions and Christian groups. The next chapter discusses why the Orthodox Church venerates Her as the Theotokos (God-bearing in birth). She is the fabric of the Orthodox Church.