The Great Doxology

“First of all every holy rite begins with the doxology:  ‘Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ Intercourse with God consists of thanksgiving, doxology, confession, and petition.  The first of these is doxology, because when grateful servants approach their Master it is fitting that they should begin not by pushing their own affairs into the foreground, but should concentrate on those of their Master.  Such is the nature of doxology.

In petitioning we have in mind the advancement of our own interests.  In confession we seek to be delivered from evils, and accuse ourselves.  In giving thanks we clearly rejoice in the good things which we enjoy.  But in doxology we lay aside ourselves and all our interests and glorify the Lord for his own sake, for his power and his glory.  And so the very nature and the appropriateness of the act demand that the doxology should come first.  Immediately we approach God we recognize the inaccessibility and force and grandeur of his glory, and are filled with wonder and awe and similar feelings.  This is indeed doxology.  We go on to recognize this goodness and love for mankind, and this gives rise to thanksgiving.

Then we consider his exceeding goodness and the liberality of his love for mankind, counting our own wickedness as the first and sufficient proof of that generosity and liberality, for whatever our shortcomings he continues to crown us with blessings.  This is something which is near at hand within us, before our very eyes, and it proves to us more than anything else how much God loves mankind.  And so we remember our sins before God, and this is called confession.  The fourth element is petition.  It follows that we can be confident that our requests for our needs will be granted, for we have just learned something of God’s goodness and his love for mankind.

He who has been good to those who were still sinners will surely be more so to those who have repented, and have become righteous by avowing their sins, according to the words of the prophet: ‘First confess yours sins in order that you may be justified.”  (St Nicholas Cabasilas, A COMMENTARY ON THE DIVINE LITURGY,  pp 43-44)

Blessed is THE LORD Who is to Be Blessed

“Blessed be you, YHWH, our God, king of the universe, who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates all things:

Who in mercy gives light to the earth and to them that dwell thereon and in his goodness renews the creation every day continually.

How manifold are your works, JHWH.  In wisdom have you made them all, the earth is full of your possessions.  . . .

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS JHWH OF HOSTS; THE WHOLE EARTH IS FULL OF HIS GLORY.”  (Jewish prayer of blessing – Yozer – adapted from Louis Bouyer’s EUCHARIST, p 62)

‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabbaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory: Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest’. (from the Divine Liturgy)

The Maker of Heaven and Earth

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made..  (Nicene Creed, emphases added)

In the Nicene Creed we profess a belief that God created everything and everyone.  St John Chrysostom says this fact has an implication for all of us and how we approach the created world we live in (as stewards entrusted with God’s property gifted to us) and how we approach all the people we encounter (as fellow neighbors sharing God’s earth).  For Chrysostom there is only one thing we really own – our good deeds.  Our deeds are our only true possession and the only thing we really can offer to God.

“… Chrysostom … felt that there was but one owner of all things in the world – God Himself, the Maker of all.  Strictly speaking, no private property should exist at all.  Everything belongs to God.  Everything is loaned rather than given by God in trust to man, for God’s purposes.  Chrysostom would add: Everything is God’s except the good deeds of man – it is the only thing that man can own.

As everything belongs to God, our common master, everything is given for common use.  Is it not true even of worldly things? Cities, market-places, streets – are they not a common possession?  God’s economy is  of the same kind.  Water, air sun and moon, and the rest of creation, are intended for common use.  Quarrels begin usually when people attempt to appropriate things which, by their very nature, were not intended for the private possession of some, to the exclusion of others. …

Chrysostom was after justice in defense of human dignity.  Was not every man created in God’s image?  Did God not wish salvation and conversion of every single man, regardless of his position in life, and even regardless of his behavior in the past?  All are called to repentance, and all can repent.  There was, however, no neglect of material things in his preaching.  Material goods come also from God, and they are not bad in themselves.  What is bad, is only the unjust use of goods, to the profit of some, while others are left starving.  The answer is love. Love is not selfish, ‘is not ambitious, is not self-seeking.‘ ” (Georges Florovsky, ASPECTS OF CHURCH HISTORY Vol 4, pp 84-85)

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Paragons of Virtue: Women of the Old Testament

Sometimes the behavior of the chosen people in the Old Testament appears to be of questionable moral character.  One day, about 40 years ago, a parent told me he had decided to begin reading the Bible, and as with many people started with Genesis.  As he read through the scriptural stories, he was troubled by both the nature of many stories in the Old Testament and by the seeming lack of moral conscience on the part of some of the Bible’s main characters.  He told me that he could not recommend to his two teenage children to read the Bible because he didn’t think his children would learn good moral behavior from some of the characters.

There is truth in what he says.  There are a number of characters and a number of situations in the Old Testament where the chosen saints act in a less than moral fashion.  This obvious truth was commented on even in Patristic times.  Early Christians had to worry that Hellenic readers of the Old Testament might not see good moral examples in the people of the Bible.  Consequently, they began to point to truth that was beyond the literal reading of the text and which required a more sophisticated or nuanced reading of scripture.  If the Bible was to be seen as divinely inspired scripture, it had to be shown that it had a divine message and was far more than a mere human story or history.

Jacob of Serugh (d. 521AD) reflecting on the behavior of various women in the Old Testament, notes that if their behaviors seem incomprehensible or even immoral it is only because we are reading the Old Testament text too literally.  If we are only reading to learn about historical events, we are missing the focus of the Old Testament.   Only when we understand that the heroes of the Old Testament were actually seeking Christ, can we appreciate their lives and purpose in the Scriptures.  He mentions specifically Leah, Rachel and Ruth, all who (in his reading at least) had too great an interest in sex (whereas virginity was more associated with virtue).  He praises them as women of virtue and integrity because they were seeking Christ and could not find their spiritual fulfillment in the world.  They are praised for seeking Christ even if they didn’t fully understand what the object of their desire really was.   Jacob says in the literal reading of the Old Testament we come to doubt the ethics of some of the leading characters and certainly don’t want to emulate them as they literally are not paragons of (monastic) virtue.   For Jacob, we are troubled by what we read in scripture only because we aren’t seeing the stories of the Old Testament as having to do with finding Christ.  He emphases that these women who appear to be running after men, are important because of their relationship to Christ, not because of the few behaviors they engaged in as described in the Bible.

“When and how have women so run after men

as these women who contended over the Medicine of Life?

The divine plan, mistress of mysteries, incited these women

with love of the Only-Begotten before He had ever come.

It was because of Him that they acted without restraint and schemed,

putting on the outward guise of wanton women,

despising female modesty and nobility,

not being ashamed as they panted for men.

Someone who wants to get hold of a treasure, if he could,

would perform a murder in order to gain the gold he so desired.

These women, while running after men,

were yearning for the Son of God’s great Epiphany,

and they struggled for the seed of the House of Abraham,

since they had learnt that in it the People of the earth would be blessed.” (TREASURE-HOUSE OF MYSTERIES, p 90)

Jacob like other Patristic writers commenting on the Song of Songs believes if you read the Bible like a soap opera, all you see is a lot of sex, violence and selfish actions.  But for him, the Bible is a text about divinity and about Christ.  We have to read the narrative looking for God and not just to read about how humans behave or misbehave.  Jacob doesn’t advocate getting rid of some biblical texts because they are difficult to understand and stumbling blocks for the faithful.  He doesn’t think the Bible is less valuable as a divine text because the ‘saints’ sometimes sin.  Rather, he advocates for seeing the text for what it is – a mystery both hiding and revealing Christ.

Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.  (Galatians 4:21-26)

Winter and Life

“For the mood of the winter sea, read Joseph Conrad‘s description:

‘The greyness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as though it had been created before light itself.’

But the symbols of hope are not lacking even in the grayness and bleakness of the winter sea.  On land we know that the apparent lifelessness of winter is an illusion.  Look closely at the bare branches of a tree, on which not the palest gleam of green can be discerned.  Yet, spaced along each branch are the leaf buds, all the spring’s magic of swelling green concealed and safely preserved under the insulating, overlapping layers. 

Pick off a piece of the rough bark of the trunk; there you will find hibernating insects.  Dig down through the snow into the earth.  There are the eggs of next summer’s grasshoppers; there are the dormant seeds from which will come the grass, the herb, the oak tree.”  (Rachel Carson, THE OXFORD BOOK OF MODERN SCIENCE WRITING, pp 136-137)

Christians, Strangers and Hospitality

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  (Hebrews 13:1-2)

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)

“Moreover, Christians’ sense of cultural alienation was often expressed through identification with exiles and refugees.  Because Christians were at times under threat from civil authorities, the act of harboring refugees who were brothers and sisters in Christ became imperative.  Sheltering strangers was essential to the survival of Christianity in a hostile empire.  Christians became well-known within the larger culture for their practices of hospitality and were often cited as examples of morality on this account.  … It is not a far step from understanding oneself to be a stranger in the world to identifying with other political, economic and social strangers, and vice versa.”   (Amy Oden in ANCIENT AND POSTMODERN CHRISTIANITY, p 43).

“For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. … They live in their own countries, but only as nonresidents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign.”  (Letter to Diognetus)

The Canaanite Woman Cries Out and Is Heard

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:21-28)

Elder Epiphanius says: “The Canaanite woman cries out and is heard [Mt 15.22]; the woman with an issue of blood keeps silent and is blessed [Mt 9:20].  The Pharisee calls out and is condemned; the publican doe not even open his mouth and he is heard” (Lk 18:10-14)”  (GIVE ME A WORD, p 96)

Sin is a Crime Against Love

“Sin is always a crime against the Father’s love.  Sin occurs when we distance ourselves from God and incline towards the passions.” (St Sophrony, WE SHALL SEE HIM AS HE IS, p 20)

Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.

(Psalms 51:4)

God Created the Human Body to Be His Dwelling Place

“For as God created the sky and the earth as a dwelling place for man, so he also created man’s body and soul as a fit dwelling for himself to dwell in and take pleasure in the body, having for a beautiful bride the beloved soul, made according to his own image.” (PSEUDO-MACARIUS: THE 50 SPIRITUAL HOMILIES, p 243)

The monk known as Pseudo-Macarius writes in the 4th Century, however the idea that God created the human in order to dwell or tabernacle in humanity is well attested in the First Century.  In the Didache, we find this as part of the Eucharistic prayer:

“And after you are filled, give thanks thus:

We give you thanks, Holy Father, for your holy name, which you made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge, faith and immortality which you have made known to us through your servant Jesus.”  (Louis Bouyer, EUCHARIST, p 116)

Neighbors

But the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”   (Luke 10:29)

Jesus asked: Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”  (Luke 10:36-37)

“Neighbors, as Jesus knew. Can be a not insignificant challenge to anyone’s Christianity.”  (Niall Williams. THIS IS HAPPINESS. P 92)