Repentance (Confession) (Vol V, Ch 4)

To be taught Nov 30.

From Michael Ruse:

Is the confession of a Christian’s sins an ancient Church practice? It was connected to baptism and it was connected to bringing individual Christians back into communion with the Church itself. It was exactly what Jesus did with many of his miracles on earth, and so too it can be said forgiveness in confession and repentance that follows is a miracle. Confession was a matter of personal salvation and unity with the entire Orthodox Church and everyone in the local church community. 

Metanoia is the Greek New Testament word for repentance. It means more concretely a turning of one’s mind. Repentance is a mind-changer. Metropolitan Hilarion brings together two concepts that are very closely related, but not always accepted in certain individuals or religious Christians. That repentance and the literal confession of one’s sins to Christ before a priest in the Church as a witness go together.  The idea that we have to do something physical, confession, parallels the topics covered on baptism and the use of chrismation oil. Our whole body and soul are involved in salvation. Most Christians don’t take issue with “repentance,” in itself as an idea but many do have various beliefs about practicing the confession of sins. 

There are not a few ancient Christian sources that illuminate for us how confession was done and what was expected come from Scripture itself, the Didache, the Psalms, Church Fathers like St. Cyril of Alexandria, and the Apostolic Constitutions. 

Metropolitan Hilarion brings up an important point that seems to go counterclockwise from our common American, Protestant culture. He says that the beginning of our repentance happens when we confess our sins (expectedly more than once in a lifetime), and with those confessions Jesus Christ continues to purify and bring us to new life. 

Other more practical questions are addressed as well. For instance, how often and how much detail should I include in a confession? How should I organize my confession? One way of organizing one’s confession mentioned in the chapter is to follow the Ten Commandments, which came from God. The order of confession is a rich section of the chapter because it includes the prayers that go along with our confession and help open our heart to the powerful cures that Jesus Christ has given to his Apostles, bishops, and priests in His Church for our healing. Just as Jesus healed the body of many people during his ministry, so too he has given this power of forgiveness to us who confess them before Christ Himself. 

The Eucharist (Vol V, Ch 3)

For the class on 11/23

From Michael Ruse:

When we are thankful, we are full of life and joy, as Metropolitan Hilarion explains in the opening pages of Chapter 3 on the Eucharist. The Greek word, eucharistia, means thankfulness. It’s the basis of our spiritual growth in the Orthodox Church. The eucharist brings us into communion with God. That union happens between us as physically as the elements of food and drink that we incorporate to keep our bodies and brains working everyday. 

 According to the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, this divine food unifies us with the bishop, the Church, and with Jesus Christ. Unity is in terrible doubt nowadays, but this kind of divine unity stretch beyond medical science and research, political boundaries, and cultural ties. Cultures sometimes develop and become invested in what they eat, or not eat, as one of the important identifiers of cultural belonging. In the eucharist, we actually become Jesus Christ’s “kinfolk," although Metropolitan Hilarion does not identify Orthodoxy as a culture among others. There is a striking difference between how we normally view food, nutrition and life in comparison to holy communion in the liturgy. We do not change the bread and wine, “the deified flesh of Christ,” into our blood like normal digestion, but in reverse, the body and blood of Christ changes us completely into Himself. With the voice of the Orthodox Church, John Chrysostom reminds us that Jesus Christ’s body and blood has “curative” powers and only He can give the life. That life is found in nothing else and in no one else is a foundational concept in the Orthodox Church. Some divine effects, since it is a reality, of receiving communion include: unity with the Trinity, driving away demonic influences, angels come near to us, our souls shine a little brighter, and our understanding becomes clearer. 

If you’ve ever wondered what our Church Fathers taught about the Eucharist, how often can we receive communion, what are preparation rules for communion, or if you want to gain more understanding of the deep symbolic and unifying reality of the Eucharist, then this chapter will surely enrich you. 

There are clear ways for us to become prepared to receive such an awesome change of our own body and soul. Some of these daily and weekly preparations are prayer, fasting, confession, and attending services. The Fathers of the Church discussed who is “worthy” to approach communion and how often, which is a practical question to ask. The ancient Church assumed all would approach communion, but if needed, there was some preparation. Because receiving communion has “a purifying effect on a person,” the best practice is to be ready in the moment to always receive Jesus Christ in the liturgy. In this way, there is nothing we can hold in our own power to reach God because He has already come down to us in divine bread and wine to give us all of His Life. The eucharist in the Orthodox Church, then, has many, huge impacts on the customs and ordinary beliefs we hold about unity, life, and health. Join us this Saturday at 4:00 p.m. to discuss how to prepare best, according to the Orthodox Church, for the only food that satisfies the soul and heals the body. 

Baptism and Chrismation (Vol V, Ch 2)

Class scheduled for Nov 16, 2019

From Michael Ruse:

Alexander Schmemann in Of Water and Spirit, said, “When the real fight begins the bright and colorful uniform is of no use and is replaced with battle fatigues.” What does baptism and battle have in common? Metropolitan Hilarion quotes him to explain that the fight for our own soul begins with baptism and chrismation. 

In St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures, he exhorts catechumens to take confidence in the sacraments, “the devils tremble and angels recognize the seal of the Holy Spirit’s saving seal.” In the Orthodox understanding of baptism and chrismation, these entry sacraments into the Church require the body, physical elements like water and oil, and also a believing heart of the newly illumined Christian. Why do we have to use water and oil? St. Cyril of Jerusalem says in anticipation that water purifies the body and the Holy Spirit the soul. We are saved body and soul, since God made both of them to be unified. 

The Fathers of the Church understood water’s symbolism well. It was a “noble elements” of the world along with earth, wind and fire. It is also rich in symbolism when the Scriptures are read in line with Orthodox Christian services of baptism and chrismation. Genesis and the Holy Spirit, Elijah and his river crossing, the Red Sea, and the Jordan all contain water as a washing and new, good beginning, not to mention the ritual washing of clothing in Leviticus and Numbers. But baptism is also a Janus word, which has a dual meaning. It signifies both life and death. That’s what Christian baptism does: we die in Christ and we are given life in the Holy Spirit. 

In Greek, baptism means, a plunging or immersion. We’re plunged into death just as Christ Jesus was plunged into Hades and resurrected from the dead. We are dead to passions in baptism. Not only that, but we are also dead to a sinful way of looking at ourselves, the world and people. We’re then sealed in the Holy Spirit to live a spiritual life. But nowadays we might forget that we also have to denounce another way of life that is based on our former sinful life and the author of the first sin, the devil himself. This renunciation of Satan explains why we are exorcised at baptism and chrismation and when we become a catechumen. We have to know not only the good that we stand for but the evil that stands against us before and after baptism.  We also have to believe that “the mystical seal” will be recognized by the Master at the end of time. 

This chapter also explores other questions like, how many baptisms are there? Is it a good idea to delay baptism or baptize infants who do not intellectually understand baptism? Other forms of baptism are recognized: martyrdom by blood, repentance and the gift of tears, and by the Holy Spirit. 

Chrismation, Chrism and Christ are etymologically related to each other in the Greek language. We are anointed with holy oil called chrism and Christ means Anointed. The other topics of the chapter cover rituals and sacraments associated with baptism and chrismation such as formulae, order of the service, choosing a baptismal name, white robes, water blessing, immersion, anointing of the oil, baptismal procession, and the symbolism of the eighth day tonsure of the catechumen. Join us all this Saturday at 4:00p.m. and find out how to prepare and enter into the Church, into the battle, and into a new spiritual life that is as real as the elements of the world. 

Sacraments in the Orthodox Understanding (Vol V, Ch 1)

Class scheduled for 4pm Nov 9, 2019:

From Michael Ruse:

A 12th century German mystic, woman saint, and doctor of the Western Church wrote: 

The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it "the reflection of the living Light." And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.

This Western mystic from the Rhineland was the nun, Hildegard von Bingen. She called her experience an umbra viventis lucis (a shade of living light in Latin). Her vision not only sounds very much like the teaching on glorification and illumination spoken of by the Eastern Church Fathers and experienced by modern Orthodox saints, but it also gives us a way of looking at what sacraments are and how they work within us in the Orthodox Church. 

From the understanding of the Orthodox Church, we receive the sacraments as a “living light” that direct us toward becoming more like the Holy Trinity, as Metropolitan Hilarion explains at the end of this chapter. The difference between scholasticism and hesychasm or “the path of deification” is directional. Who is infusing who with what?  

This truth of becoming united with God is not easy to calculate or to analyze like weather patterns, personality tests, data charts or even advanced metaphysical inquiry. It is not only the truth of it, but also the beauty of Light that surpasses rational thought, although our minds too are integrated with Jesus Christ. Just as light passes through a small window of a church on a Sunday morning and children try to grab the single ray beaming down and keep it, so too is our own reasoning limited when we try to capture the sacraments into our own hands in this way. Often times the result of humanistic reasoning is to make pictures appear differently than what they are by manipulating and connecting points that are not meant to be connected. Our humanistic categories rearrange icons with different pigments, lines, and shadings with a goal toward unity. But what kind of icon would we create? All forms of sacraments, especially those outlined in the Great Book of Needs, connect us to the Holy Trinity and all the saints. 

The Eucharist gives birth to and connects to most of the sacraments. Metropolitan Hilarion reminds us of keeping the mindset that sacraments are interconnected, not isolated events. It’s preferable, overall, to be thankful and marvel at the mysteries rather than to dissect them with rigorous methods. The implication is that the long-term effects of such a scholastic or abstract mindset even in some Orthodox circles could have detrimental fallouts in the faith of Christians. In the development of the Western Church, there were scholarly men who tried to approach theology, including “sacramentals,” the cross, grace, salvation and Jesus Christ, the Godman from this kind of primarily metaphysical and rational explanation with sincere faith. The major scholastic characters in Europe were Anselm, Abelard, and Aquinas. The long-lasting scholastic approach of Latin theology, Metropolitan seems to suggest, is one of the reasons why the Byzantines did not make such distinctions between “sacramentals” and sacraments. 

But to draw some boundaries around what is and isn’t a sacrament is necessary and helpful for those in the Orthodox Church to discuss. The Orthodox Church understands that the mysteries are wide and many, like an umbrella of light that gives us strength in all points and needs of our daily life. Join us this Saturday at 4:00 p.m. to learn about the sacramental understanding of Orthodoxy.