Better to Give Than to Receive

St Paul said: “Yes, you yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me.  I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”  (Acts 20:34-35)

St Isaac of Nineveh comments:

“The one who does good to the poor will find God a provider.  And the one who suffers want for love of Him will find in God a great treasure.

God does not have need of anything, but He rejoices when one serves or honors his image (in man) for his sake.

If anyone asks something of you and you have it, do not say in your heart, ‘I will leave it for myself because I will be better served by it,’ or ‘I will let him depart now, God will provide for him through another; this I lay aside for myself.’  Do not say this!  For this is how unjust men think, and people who do not know God reckon [thus] and dwell on these thoughts.  However, a righteous person does not give his honor to another nor does he let an opportunity for doing good pass by.  By all means God will pour forth on that one in another way whenever He knows that he is afflicted.  For God does not abandon anyone.  But in that moment you have let God’s honor depart from you and thrust his grace from you.

But rejoice when you have [something], and give, and say: ‘Glory to you, O God, who have granted me also to be able to comfort someone!'”  (ON ASCETICAL LIFE, pp 87-88)

The First Day of the Week

Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.  .  .  .   Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed.  (Acts 20:7-11)

Road to Emmaus

“Justin Martyr in his First Apology written about the year 150 C.E., gives a detailed description of a Sunday worship service centered on Eucharist:

‘And on the day called Sunday (te tou Eliou legomene emera), all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.  Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability (hose dynamis auto), and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given [or: ‘of the eucharistic elements’], and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.

And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.  But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.

For he was crucified on the day before that of Saturn [Saturday]; and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to his apostles and disciples, he taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”  (Eugen Pentiuc, THE OLD TESTAMENT IN EASTERN ORTHODOX TRADITION, pp 204-205)

Into What Were You Baptized?

And it happened, while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus. And finding some disciples he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” So they said to him, “We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”  And he said to them, “Into what then were you baptized?” So they said, “Into John’s baptism.”  Then Paul said, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.”  When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.  And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.  Now the men were about twelve in all.  And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God.  (Acts 19:1-8)

Theodoret of  Cyrus, 5th Century theologian and bishop, noted that while baptism was known and practiced by Jews even before the time of Christ, Christianity held a very particular theology of baptism that was not shared by the Jews.

“Now, the apostle said this to teach the believers from Jews not to think all-holy baptism is like the Jewish baptisms: they did not wash away sins, but cleansed the body of apparent defilement – hence they were applied many times and frequently.  This baptism of ours, on the contrary, is one only, for the reason that it involves the type of the saving passion and resurrection, and prefigures for us the resurrection to come.”  ( COMMENTARY ON THE LETTERS OF  ST PAUL  Vol II, p 159)

We can get a sense of the theological meaning of Christian baptism in a more recent writing.  It is not an exaggeration to say that what is presented here is still but a drop from the ocean which is our theology of baptism.

“We can see a concrete example of … the importance of the material world in Christian worship, in the rite of baptism, the ‘mystery’ of formal initiation into the Church.  All too often, the many layers of meaning in this rite have been reduced to superstition.  Baptism is not some quaint, legalistic ceremony that magically washes away the stain of an original sinfulness.  This idea robs it of any real power to challenge and change the tired status quo of the human condition.  It also colossally misses the point.  Baptism is much more profound than a simple purification ceremony; it vividly symbolizes each person’s death and resurrection by joining them with Christ’s. It is an ancient, dramatic sign of radical change that initiates the baptized into the believing community, a public pledge of a new and deeper life.  It is a rite of personal passage, a passover and entry into this new ‘way.’  The words of the service make this clear.

When a priest blesses the baptismal water at the beginning of the service, he affirms the original purpose of the world.  Creation is good, and is to be used for the glory of God, which creation proclaims by its very existence.  When he breathes on the water, invoking the Spirit of God that hovered over the original waters of creation, the priest draws our attention back to what ‘water’ was in the beginning: grace-filled and blessed by God, to be valued and used by us wisely in order to grow and prosper in body, mind, and spirit.

Water, the primal element of creation, along with the entire physical world, is meant to be the very support, context, and even vehicle of our communion with God.  Throughout history, however, many have overlooked this.  They have seen creation as an obstacle to God, an impediment, rather than the way to learn about him more deeply.  This has resulted not only in a split within us, but also in our estrangement from the external physical environment.

Such a view and the way of life that flows from it is a dead end.  Wise Christian teaching correctly sees nature as the primary means through which we come to know God, and through which we express our love of God.”  (Monks of New Skete,IN THE SPIRIT OF HAPPINESS, pp 184-185)

Ascension 2020

Not parted from the Father’s bosom, O sweetest Jesus, and having lived among those on earth as man, today You have been taken up in glory from the Mount of Olives, and in Your compassion exalting our fallen nature, You have seated it with the Father. Therefore the heavenly ranks of the Bodiless Powers were amazed at the wonder, and beside themselves with fear; and seized with trembling, they magnified Your love for mankind. (From the Vespers of Ascension)

One aspect of the mystery of salvation is that Jesus is fully God and fully human.  As the hymns of Ascension point out, even when Christ walked on earth, He was never separated from the Father.  In other words, He remained fully divine even though incarnate as a human.  Christ overcame that separation which sin had caused – it was sin that built the great wall of separation between humans and God.  But Christ walked on earth fully united to God the Father, fully One of the Holy Trinity.  God walked on earth with us sharing in time and occupying space.  The Elder Aimilianos muses: 

Even though we were separated from God – covering ourselves with fig leaves, not realizing that these would become a wall separating us from God – He did not cease to love us, and broke down those walls and gave us the possibility to draw near to Him, to embrace Him, and be united to Him. Let us rejoice in this freedom that He has given us, and for the greatness of which He has deemed us worthy, that is of His love. (Archiimandrite Aimilianos, THE MYSTICAL MARRIAGE, p 24)

And when Christ ascended to heaven, he was not separated from his humanity and ours.  The hymns of the Feast point out the dismay and distress of the Apostles when Christ parted from them ascending into heaven.  They hymns point out their feelings – being orphaned, being abandoned and left alone in this world.  What they didn’t yet understand was that by ascending bodily into heaven, Christ was guaranteeing that we humans will never be separated from Him as our Savior or from the divine life.   When He walked bodily on earth, Christ was not separated from His divinity, and when He ascended to heaven, He was not separated from His humanity.

The Feast of the Ascension is not a Feast to celebrate a biographical event in the life of Christ, but one which celebrates the salvation of the human race.  Biographically, Jesus departed from us into heaven, apparently leaving us behind and alone.  Theologically, Christ remains united to our humanity and thus to us.  His life enthroned in the Kingdom, means humanity has been restored to union with God – sharing the divine life.  The Feast of the Ascension is a theological reminder that our beginnings and our destiny are both in God.  Our life on earth opens to us the potential of experiencing that life now, not just in some distant heaven at the end of the universe.

The nature of Adam, which had descended to the nethermost parts of the earth, You renewed in Yourself, O God, and today, You took it up above every Principality and Power, for as You loved it, so You seated it with Yourself; and having compassion on it, You united it with Yourself; and united with it, You suffered with it; and You Who are passionless have glorified it with Yourself. But the Bodiless Powers were asking: “Who is this Man of beauty? Not man only, but both God and man, the two natures together made manifest.  (From the Vespers of Ascension)

The Righteousness from Faith

The Lord commanded Moses to say to the people of Israel: “For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.“ (Deuteronomy 30:11)

The Righteous from Faith says: … (Romans 10:6)

Scripture Scholar Richard Hays writes:

“The apostle Paul introduces as spokesman for his gospel a character named The Righteousness from Faith, who repeats lines penned long before in Israel’s Scripture:

Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven? . . . or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ . . . The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. (Rom 10:6-8)

The words echo Deut. 30:11-14, a passage in which Moses exhorts Israel to keep the commandments of the Law. Moses’ point is that the Law is near: the commandments of God are neither esoteric nor impossible to obey, for they have been graciously given to Israel in ‘this book of the Law.’  In Romans 10, however, a puzzling shift occurs: as Paul interprets these words, they refer not to the Law but to ‘the word of faith which we preach‘ (Rom 10:8b). Indeed, while claiming Moses’ words from Deuteronomy, The Righteousness from Faith now appears to speak as Moses’ adversary. Through a series of parenthetical interpretive comments, Paul takes possession of Moses’ exhortation and transforms its sense so that Moses is made to bear witness to the Gospel. (ECHOES OF SCRIPTURE IN THE LETTERS OF PAUL, p 1)

For St Paul the real hero of the Jewish Scriptures is Abraham more than Moses. Moses was the giver of the law. Abraham, the Man of Faith, is the Father of all those believe – not just Jews but Gentiles too because he is the Man of Faith.   Abraham foreshadows Jesus, another Man of Faith.  It is through the faith (faithfulness) of Jesus that we all are saved.  As Abraham is father of all the faithful, Jesus is our brother in the faith, as well as the Lord we believe in.

However, Moses as a prophet bears witness to Jesus Christ. So, St Paul is willing to take a text attributed to Moses (in this case from Deuteronomy) and use it to bear witness to the Gospel and to Jesus as Messiah. St Paul reads other texts of the Jewish Scriptures in similar fashion, seeing in all of them a revelation of Christ.  The Jewish Scriptures clothe Christ – give Him some reality in our world, so that we can begin to see and know Him.  But these same Scriptures which clothe Christ (make Him, a spiritual being, partially visible), also veil or cover Him so that we cannot see Him completely.  For St Paul the coming of the Christ in the flesh opens all of the mysteries of the Scriptures so that we can see them, experience them and understand them. No more mystery or shadow, now the Scriptures are both revealed and alive in Jesus Christ. The Law (Torah) was not meant to be a set of rules to distinguish Jew from Gentile. As it turns out the Law’s purpose was to reveal the Gospel and the Christ. The meaning of all Scripture is found in Christ. It is the crucified and resurrected Christ who both fulfills all the Scriptures and reveals their meaning to us.  

Rebuilding the Temple of His Body

St James, the Apostolic head of the Church in Jerusalem in the time immediately after Christ’s resurrection, gives a speech at the first recorded council of the Apostles and early church elders (Acts 15) in which in accepting the Gentiles into the Church he notes this is in accordance with what the prophets wrote:

‘After this I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the LORD, even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the LORD who does all these things.’  Known to God from eternity are all His works. (Acts 15:16-18)

St James uses the quote to justify accepting Gentiles into the communion of the faithful.  James connects the rebuilding of the tabernacle with the acceptance of the Gentiles into the Faith.  The tabernacle has taken on a spiritual meaning for St James – he is not just envisioning the physical building in Jerusalem.  The walls of the temple were meant to keep Gentiles out – and their having broken down would usually be a bad sign that the Gentiles had successfully invaded the temple (see for example Jeremiah 52:12-14).   The walls stood as a sign of the separation between Jew and Gentile.

What James understands the prophets to say is that when God rebuilds the temple walls, they will no longer serve the same old purpose.  Now God will rebuild the collapsed walls to enclose and incorporate the Gentiles into the family of faith.  The temple is rebuilt precisely to allow the Gentiles – and all mankind as we sing in the Liturgy – to seek the Lord.  St. James understands this to be the message of the prophets, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  The death of Christ is being related to the destruction of the temple, and His resurrection to the rebuilding of the temple.  James bases this in part on his understanding of  Amos 9:11-12 :

“On that day I will raise up [Greek: anasteso, resurrect] the tabernacle [tent, Greek: ten skenen] of David that is fallen and raise up its destruction, and rebuild its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that those remaining of humans and all the nations upon whom my name has been called might seek out me, says the Lord who does these things.

The Amos text in the Septuagint makes a clear connection between the rebuilding of the tabernacle and the resurrection  by the Greek word it uses to “raise up” (anasteso).  The prophecy connects the joining of all humans to the Lord (not just Jews but Gentiles as well).  I found his quote and comment interesting because it reminded me of the Gospel lesson in which the Lord Jesus identifies his own body with the temple.

The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.  (John 2:18-22)

Apparently St James remembers Christ’s words when he quotes Amos in defending the entry of the Gentiles into the people of God.

Don’t Panic

May 25 is Towel Day, a fictitious holiday made up in recent years by the cult fans of author Douglas Adams who wrote a series of comic science fiction books which involve journeys across the entire cosmos with both the most mundane and fantastic creatures THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.  I admit that I enjoyed the series and Adams’ sense of humor.

The cosmic hitchhiker’s theme  is “Don’t Panic.”  No matter what is happening in whatever world you occupy, don’t panic.  That is the catch phrase on the cover of the fictional book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Good advice for most occasions – keep your head on so you can wisely respond to events.

So as we continue to be stressed by the coronavirus, the sagging economy, and a presidential election year.  We will help our hearts and minds cope with events by heeding the advice: Don’t panic!  It may be very hard to do.  The political parties seem intent on widening the political divide because they care more for maintaining their power than for the good of the country or the good of democracy.  Both sides try to turn natural disasters into political fodder to shore up their power and appeal to their base.  Partisans on both sides of the extremes really want a one party system – they would do away with the creative differences which have allowed America to be so inventive, so capable of solving intractable problems because we were able to see issues from different perspectives.  The president is willing to put on a face that guarantees another ugly presidential campaign.  His partisans and opponents seem quite willing to once again go after each other in dehumanizing ways.  None seem willing to admit that “the other side” has valid concerns, perspectives or solutions.  Yet it is this mix and interaction of differing ideas which allows for creative solutions to emerge because they take into account differing perspectives.

I’m reminded of some words from the Crosby, Stills and Nash song, “For What It’s Worth“, which were sung in a different time yet are applicable today because partisan divide is part of our American history:

There’s battle lines being drawn again
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong again

…

Think it’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field day for the heat
A thousand people standing in the street
Singing songs and carrying the signs, oh no
They mostly say “hooray for our side”

Words we would not hear Christ say: “Me First!”  Nothing godly can come from such an attitude – not on any level of our human existence.

Giving Sight to the Man Born Blind

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.  (John 9:1-7)

Whereas many people are attracted to the miracles of Christ because they themselves hope for some miracle in their own life, the Evangelist John treats all the miracles to be signs of the Kingdom of God breaking into this world.  In and of themselves the miracles are not all that significant – except to the few who experienced them.  It is what the miracles represent – what they mean – that tells us their true power and what they reveal to us.

Dr Daniel Hinshaw writes about how the miracles reveal the relationship between the material and spiritual worlds.  The spiritual and material are two parts of the same created reality that we all live in.  In Christ all things come together – heaven and earth, material and spiritual, divinity and humanity, Creator and creation, angels and humans, the living and the dead, humanity and the entire cosmos including all other living organisms.

“The healing of the man born blind highlights an essential and very practical implication of the incarnation.  God is pure spirit.  But when God the Word united himself with his material creation, the spiritual acquired materiality, and conversely, the material was infused with the spiritual.  This truth is at the heart of the lived experience of the mysteries of the Church.  … Physical elements are central to all of the mysteries.  They make it possible for each believer to be literally touched  by the divine, the spiritual reality hidden within the physical elements of the mystery.   Thus, for example, each believer is illuminated through washing with the waters of baptism, just as the man born blind was illuminated after washing with the waters of Siloam.  The early Christians were not only enjoined to pray for the sick, but also the presbyters of the Church were called to anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the lord (Jas 5:14).”   (TOUCH AND THE HEALING OF THE WORLD, p 41)

Christ is able to save, to restore, to redeem, to heal, to create all things new because He is God incarnate.  Christ created all things in the beginning with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  As a human, He unites divinity to humanity again, as was intended by God before humans chose to separate themselves from God through their own sinful choices. The miracle, in this case of the man born blind, is the revelation of who Jesus is.  He can heal because of who He is.  He heals the man born blind by creating his eyes so that he can see – Jesus brings to completion that part of creation which was stunted by the fallen world.

St Ephrem the Syrian comments:

He renewed the earth that had grown old because of Adam.  A new creation came to be by His spittle, and the All-sufficient set straight bodies and minds.  Come, you blind, and without money receive sight. . . .  The Son of the Creator is He Whose treasures are full of all benefits.  Let the one who needs eyes come to Him.  He will make clay and transform it.  He will make flesh.  He will enlighten eyes.  With a little clay He showed that by His hand our dust was formed.  The soul of the dead man also witnessed that the human soul was breathed in by Him.   [Footnote: Ephrem interprets John 9:6 in relation to Genesis 2:7; the healing shows that Christ is the same One Who created the first human being. (HYMNS, p 156)

You Are Gods

The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”  Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’’?  If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?  (John 10:33-36)

While Christ’s  interlocutors are shocked that Jesus, the incarnate God, makes Himself to be God, Jesus offers in rebuttal an even more shocking notion – you all are gods as it says in the Scripture!  That humanity was created by God from the beginning capable of being united to God is a major theological point of Christianity from the very beginning of the Christian movement.

St Athanasius (d. 373AD), On the Incarnation 57: ‘For he was incarnate that we might be made god’ (PPS 44a:167).  The Discourse [of St Gregory of Nyssa – d. 384AD] was directly influenced by this work, but the same thought was expressed earlier and often in the tradition, e.g., by St Irenaeus (d. 202AD) (‘the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ… did, through His transcendent love, become what we are , that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself’ (Against Heresies 5, preface [ANF 1:526] and Clement of Alexandria  (d. 212AD) (‘the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how many may become God’ – Exhortation to the Heathen, 1 [ANF 2:174].” (St Gregory of Nyssa, CATECHETICAL DISCOURSE, note page 117)

The sense in which we participate in the divine life is clearly present in many different authors of the early Patristic era.  This idea of participating in the divine life is thought to be the very idea of salvation.  For sin had separated us from God.  Christ reunites us to our Creator to the full extent that God always intended for us His human creatures.  The Church Fathers understood this to be the great mystery of God’s plan of salvation.

“The orbit within which they [the Church Fathers] worked was quite different, being marked out by the ideas of participation  in the divine nature, rebirth through the power of the Spirit, adoption as sons, new creation through Christ – all leading to the concept of deification (theopoiesis).  Their attitude is illustrated by the statement attributed to Athanasius, ‘The Son of God became son of man so that the sons of men, that is, of Adam, might become sons of God . . . partakers of the life of God . . .  Thus He is Son of God by nature, and we by grace.’   Cyril of Alexandria  [d. 444AD] made the same point: ‘We are made partakers of the divine nature and are said to be sons of God, nay we are actually called divine, not only because we are exalted by grace to supernatural glory, but also because we have God dwelling in us.”  (JND Kelly, EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, p 352)

In this thinking we can understand why the Church Fathers would have seen the modern Christian idea that we die and go to heaven to be a total reduction of salvation to some distant, pie-in-the-sky heaven at the end of time.  The Fathers on the other hand understood that we now in this life already participate in the Divine.  We become united to Christ, not just in a heavenly afterlife, but in our lifetime we already participate in what Christ is revealing to us about both God and humanity.  We each are capable of becoming both God’s temple on earth – the place where God dwells with humans – as well as heaven – the very dwelling place of God.

Christ is risen!

 

Being Sheep

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.  And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.  (John 10:27-28)

Know that the LORD is God! It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name!  (Psalms 100:3-4)

Throughout the Bible, we find references to our being sheep in God’s flock.  Sheep are considered by many farmers as being rather stupid animals.  The Church embraces that we are sheep but sometimes in the church hymns we are referred to as ‘rational’ sheep to indicate we have some intelligence as well as self-initiative and free will.  Sheep are perceived of as being gentle animals who fail to take even the most basic steps to protect or help themselves and so are savaged by wolves.  This is why shepherds are needed – to help protect these creatures which do nothing to protect themselves.  Still it is interesting that God sees us as the sheep of His pasture – what does that tell us about how we are to live and behave in this world?

“As long as we continue to behave as sheep, we are victorious.  Even if ten thousand wolves surround us, we conquer and are victorious.  But the moment we become wolves, we are conquered, for we lose the help of the shepherd.  He is the shepherd of sheep, not of wolves… Jesus says, “My way makes you more glorious and proclaims my power …  My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  This is the way I made you.”  (St John Chrysostom quoted in SEEKING JESUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, p 25)

Sheep do not seek vengeance, do not engage in violent resistance nor do they practice self-preservation.  The imagery of us as God’s flock of sheep also reminds us of our dependence on the Good Shepherd to save us.  That is the imagery Chrysostom calls upon in the quote above.  We are always to be sheep, never wolves.  We conquer as Christians by remaining sheep and turning to the Good Shepherd in all times of affliction for His help.  St Gregory Palamas also reminds us of the good virtues we can observe in sheep: meek and gentle.  These are not traits we humans always admire or wish to emulate.  We often prefer warrior champions as our models of humans.  God however chooses sheep as the image for His people.

“The Holy Gospel says, in accordance with this, that in those days, ‘before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats‘ (Matt 25:32).  He calls the righteous sheep because they are meek and gentle, walk the level path of the virtues that He trod, and are like Him.  For he was Himself called a lamb by the Forerunner and Baptist who said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world‘ (John 1:29).  The sinners He calls goats because they are audacious and unruly, and rush down the precipices of sin.”  (St Gregory Palamas, THE HOMILIES, p 28)

In the book of Revelation, it is the Lamb of God who conquers and sits on the throne with the Father.  “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”   (Revelation 7:17)  Again, an interesting metaphor for our Lord, the conqueror of hell.  He is a lamb, not a dragon, not a wolf.  We like the image of Christ Pantocrator enthroned in power in the heavens.  His throne is the cross for there he reveals to us the nature of God – a lamb.