God Does Not Read Labels

I think it is a temptation for the Orthodox Christian to spend time during Lent in grocery stores reading labels. Fr. Patrick Reardon says that reading labels is not something the Orthodox Christian should be doing during  the Lenten fast.   I also remember Fr. Seraphim Rose saying something about this as well. Listen to Fr. Patrick’s podcast on Forgiveness, Alms and Fasting for a better understanding of the Orthodox fast.

Concerning Predestination

Romans 8:28-39: In this section Paul brings to a close—and to something of a climax—the second part of the Epistle to the Romans (chapters 5-8), on the theme of the Christian existence of those who have been justified in Christ.

In verse 28 there is a textual problem respecting the word “God,” because the extant manuscripts vary on the matter. Depending on which manuscripts are followed (and sheer antiquity is not an adequate guide here, because the manuscripts come from various ancient Christian churches, and some textural mistakes seem to have been introduced rather early), the meaning of the passage is either “in everything God works for good with those who love Him,” or “God makes everything work together for the good of those who love Him,” or “everything works together for the good of those who love God.” All of these readings testify to God’s providential control of events in the lives of those who love Him.

That is to say, this verse introduces the theme of Divine Providence, by which God brings mysterious influences to bear on the direction of history. Paul now inaugurates this theme. He will continue it through the rest of this chapter, and then in chapters 9-11 he will apply it directly to the historical situation that the early Christians were facing—namely, the rejection of the larger masses of the Jewish people with respect to the Gospel. Why did that happen? Paul’s response will be: Because God had in mind some greater good that would ensue. God is the Lord of history. He knows everything ahead of time. Knowing everything ahead of time, He quietly and mysteriously arranges and prearranges circumstances in order to bring about the greater good.

Thus, Paul will continue the ancient theme of God’s providential ability to bring good out of evil. This thesis, which will form the substance of his argument in chapters 9-11, is a common one in the Old Testament. It is obvious, for instance, in the stories of Joseph. Paul will appeal to its presence in the stories of Esau and Pharaoh.

God’s knowledge of the future is the basis on which He is able to arrange for those circumstances that will influence the course of events. The English biblical word for this divine activity is “predestination,” which in context means “adjusting things ahead of time.” In Holy Scripture this category always refers to God’s historical adjustment (the word is chosen with some trepidation, for we have no idea how the Lord does these things), based on the divine foreknowledge. It never means an eternal decree that imposes itself on history. The latter concept, which is quite unbiblical, did not appear until fairly late in Christian history, and it is has been the source of endless theological confusion.

Those who love God (or however else verse 28 is to be interpreted, as we saw above) are the “predestined” (verse 29), “those who are called according to His purpose” (verse 28). These “predestined and called” are not a separate category of Christians. The terms refer to the body of those who constitute the Church, the Christians who have responded to God’s initiatory love and call (1:6; 1 Corinthians 1:12).

This statement of Paul has nothing to do with anyone’s alleged predestination to heaven or hell. It is not a statement of theodicy. Although God certainly knows all things ahead of time, including each person’s eternal destiny, He does not predetermine those actions that lie within the realm of human freedom. Men make their own choices, for which they alone are held responsible. God foreknows these actions, but He does not predetermine them.

We do not understand how God influences the activities of history, but we do know that He never acts in such a way as to remove man’s freedom of choice. In the words of John of Damascus, “We should understand that while God knows all things beforehand, He does not predetermine all things. For He knows beforehand those things that are in our power, but He does not predetermine them. For it is not His will that wickedness should exist, nor does He choose to compel virtue” (De Fide Orthodoxa 2.30).

What, then, does Holy Scripture mean when it asserts that God “predestines”? The verb itself, proorizo, means “to arrange ahead of time. In the biblical context, where this verb appears with “foreknow” (proginosko, “to know ahead of time”), the verb signifies the providential arrangements by which He brings people to the grace of the Gospel. That is to say, predestination embraces the mysterious influences that God brings to bear on history, so that all things work together for the good of those who love Him.

This is very clear in the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. God made use of the sins of Joseph’s brothers to predestine—to arrange for—the deliverance of Joseph’s family: “And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. . . . But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 45:7-8; 50:20).

“To predestine,” as understood in the Bible (where, in fact, the noun never appears) has no reference to any alleged divine decree whereby some people are consigned to heavenly life and others to everlasting damnation. On the contrary, God wills all men to be saved. Indeed, in the Bible, predestination does not refer to any divine decree at all. It is a description, rather, of God’s providential activity in history, working to bring good out of evil.

Nowhere, therefore, does Holy Scripture hint even faintly at a person’s “predestination to hell.” In fact, this repulsive idea does violence to the Bible, in which predestination is always a category of grace, never of punishment. Predestination pertains invariably to the divine call, not the rejection of that call. It is always a description of the divine favor, not disfavor. It certainly does not include God’s arrangements to have someone damned.

In His providential guidance of history, God makes use of man’s sins. He never “prearranges” those sins nor wills those sins; He does not, that is to say, predestine men to sin. Even less does God predestine anyone’s damnation. Damnation was never God’s idea, and the majestic sovereignty of God receives no glory from anyone’s eternal loss.

Moreover, the Bible never speaks of predestination except in relationship to Christ’s relationship to the Church. The foreknowledge and predestination of God is Paul’s way of describing the priority of divine grace in redemption and justification. The initiative is God’s, not ours. We foreknew nothing; we prearranged nothing. God has done it all. He knows and He determines, ahead of time, what form His work in history (including the history of each of us) will take.

Those who truly experience His grace are aware of themselves as known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3; 13:12), loved by God (1 John 4:19), chosen by God. When he speaks of predestination, Paul is describing the experience of life in the Christian Church. That is to say, it is an existential concept. It pertains to spiritual experience.

Consequently, it has no dogmatic content. One cannot say, “I am saved” the same sense he can say, “Jesus is Lord!” The latter is a dogmatic statement representing an absolute truth. The experience of being “predestined,” however, pertains only to the existential order. It cannot be an object of faith, and therefore it does not have the certainty of faith.

Christians, then, are “predestined to be conformed (symmorphous) to the image (eikon or icon) of His Son.” That is to say, believers are summoned to share in Christ’s own relationship to the Father, so that Christ “might be the firstborn among many brethren.” By divine grace—the infinite favor of God—they participate in the Son’s knowledge and love of the Father (Matthew 11:27), who regards them as His children, the younger brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ (John 2:17).

It is because these justified Christians have become, by virtue of their justification, “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) that they can, in utter truth, look into the face of God and say, “Our Father.” They partake, already, of the divine glory (verse 30).

The purpose of these reflections, Paul says, is to bring hope and reassurance into our hearts. God will never back away from His grace and His call. For this reason, there is no force in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ (verses 31-39). God is permanently on our side. He will never betray us.

Moreover, if God has already given us His beloved Son, He will certainly give us everything else we need (verse 32; 1 Corinthians 3:22-23; Philippians 3:21). Paul has heard accusations brought against his Gentile converts, because the latter did not observe the works of the Mosaic Law. Paul will tolerate none of this criticism. These Christians have been justified through the grace of God received in faith, he says. Who dares to bring an accusation against them? (verses 33-34) And Paul’s defiance here includes Satan, that ancient accuser of the brethren.

Even less, then, will believers be accused by Christ Himself, whose blood purchased their redemption from the slavery of sin and death. Here Paul briefly mentions the Lord’s exaltation to the heavenly sanctuary, where He abides as our mediator and intercessor forever (verse 34; Hebrews 7:25; 9:24; 1 John 2:1; Revelation 5).

Likewise, those sufferings that Christians must sustain in the maintenance of their faith (verse 36) will not separate them from the love of Christ. Paul’s tone here is exhortatory as well as declaratory. That is to say, he declares that God will never be unfaithful to us, and he gently exhorts that we be never unfaithful to God.

The situation of the justified Christian may be likened to that of a man in a poker game, who has been dealt the royal flush. He did nothing to gain the royal flush. He did not work for it. It was freely given. He received it on the deal. He holds it in his hand. As long as he holds on to those cards, he cannot possibly lose, for no hand is greater than the royal flush. The one thing he must never do is to discard. All he must do is sit tight and keep a firm grip on those cards. No one, in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, can take them away from him.-From Daily Reflections by Fr. Patrick Reardon

Why Did God Test Abraham?

Father Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings
The Eve of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple February 1, 2009

“Readers of Genesis 22—from Sirach to Kierkegaard—have pondered long what thoughts may have intruded themselves into the struggling mind of Abraham when the Lord required him to offer his son Isaac in sacrifice.

Perhaps the most insuperable problem was one of logic: How did Abraham reconcile in his thought the imminent loss of his son with the Lord’s earlier promise that this same son would be the father of many people? Just how could he resolve the contradiction between God’s promise, which he completely believed, and God’s command, which he was completely resolved to obey?

In fact, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the earliest Christian commentary on this story, explicitly cited God’s earlier promise—”in Isaac your seed shall be called”—in the context of the command that Isaac was to be sacrificed (Hebrews 11:18). How was it possible to reconcile God’s promise with God’s command? Abraham had three days to think about it.

The author of Hebrews reflected that Abraham, in order to resolve that contradiction, must have introduced into his reasoning process one further consideration—to wit, God’s power: “He reasoned that God . . . was able”—logisamenos hoti…dynatos ho Theos.

The wording of this argument is quite precise. In speaking of God, the author of Hebrews uses the adjective dynatos instead of the verb dynatei (”was able” instead of “could”). He thereby indicated he was thinking of an abiding quality of God—His power.

Abraham had already experienced God’s power in the conception of Isaac, when he and Sarah, for all practical purposes, were as good as dead: “And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb” (Romans 4:19).

In other words, Abraham reasoned that God’s power had already overcome the forces of death in the very circumstances of Isaac’s conception. And if God had overcome death once, He was always able. Thus, with regard to Isaac, says Hebrews, Abraham “considered that God was able [dynatos] to raise from the dead.”

When the Sadducees challenged Jesus about the resurrection from the dead, He likewise appealed to the power of God. “Are you not therefore mistaken,” He asked, “because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power [dynamis] of God?” (Mark 12:24). And it is passing curious that Jesus spoke of both Abraham and Isaac in that context of the resurrection: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” By way of explaining the reference, Jesus concluded, “He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living” (12:26-27).

For the author of Hebrews, the mind of ancient Abraham raced ahead in prophecy to the doctrine of the resurrection—it was an experienced inference from what he already knew of God. From the very temptation he endured, Abraham arrived at a new understanding of God—namely, that He is powerful to raise the dead to life. This was a true prophetic revelation granted to the struggling mind of His servant.

St. Augustine was much impressed by this story. “The pious father,” he wrote, “faithfully clinging to this promise—because it had to be fulfilled by the one whom God commanded him to kill—did not doubt that this son, whom he had had no hope of being given to him, could be restored to him after his immolation [sibi reddi poterat immolatus].”

For the author of Hebrews, the restoration of Isaac was enacted “in parable” (en parabole—Hebrews 11:19). St. Augustine, translating “parable” here as similitudo, correctly understood it to refer to the Resurrection of Christ, when God’s Son was restored to Him after His immolation on the Cross. There was a “likeness”—similitudo—between God and Abraham, revealed in the mystery of the Resurrection (The City of God 16.32).

Why did God test Abraham? In order to reveal an essential aspect of Himself: His power over death. Abraham arrived this truth through the furnace of his mind, as he struggled to reconcile God’s promise with His command. God’s power over death was not an abstract truth of theology, available to abstract thought; it was learned on the pounding pulse of an ancient Mesopotamian, as he assumed a personal likeness to the very God who put him to the trial. “

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and a Senior Editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.

If you would like to receive Pastoral Ponderings every week then sign up here.

Home Bible School

I found the following article in the archives at Touchstone Magazine.  I think Fr. Patrick does an excellent job of relating what goes on in our Orthodox homes to the greater Orthodox Tradition by using the story of St. Timothy.

“Before he ever met the Apostle Paul, the life of young Timothy was already full of blessings. Indeed, Paul himself, among the last lines he wrote on this earth, reminded Timothy of those blessings: “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14–15).

Both Paul and Timothy knew who were the latter’s first teachers of Holy Scripture. Paul wrote earlier in this same epistle, “I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also” (1:5).

These two women, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, had raised him, not only in the faith but also in the study of the Sacred Writings, ta hiera grammata—sacred grammar. It was this early study of Sacred Letters, carried on in the home, that grounded the soul of young Timothy and prepared him to become, in due course, an apostle of the Church and the bishop of Ephesus. The whole Church, for the past 2,000 years, owes to these two women an immense and unpayable debt of gratitude.

When, as a child, Timothy was taught the grammar of Holy Scripture, what did he learn from Lois and Eunice? Many things, to be sure, but let us consider three benefits to be ascribed to that early instruction in God’s Word.

First, Timothy learned to take possession of his heart. The rich and varied stories enabled him to make sense of his heart. Placing his young soul under the authoritative guidance of Sacred Grammar, Timothy learned who he was, his place in this world, what God expected of him, and what he could expect, both during his life and at the end of it.

The stories of the Bible, assimilated in the context of his family, gave shape to Timothy’s moral imagination, conferring on his conscience a narrative moral sense. These biblical stories gave imaginative organization to his mind. He was enabled to inform his personal life from the stories of the Bible. From these stories, learned especially in the setting of his home, Timothy was educated in the habits of the heart. He was, in the full, rich sense of that word, indoctrinated, sacred doctrine being placed in the heart and mind, giving formation to his character.

Timothy learned, from inside, the Bible’s perspective on the world. He slowly became versed in the narratives, poetry, and maxims that would enable him to organize his own heart, give structure to his soul, and imaginative, rational formation to his conscience. All of this is to say that Timothy was the blessed recipient of a biblical culture.

Second, the study of the Bible, for Timothy, was not a private thing. Thanks to the two older generations that instructed him, Timothy was enabled to read Holy Scripture through the eyes of the living Sacred Tradition, in which alone the Bible is properly understood.

After all, there is no such thing as a private culture. All culture is traditional culture. It is not a commodity that can be purchased. By definition, a culture can only be inherited. All culture is necessarily transgenerational.

This is true of biblical culture as well. It is social. Timothy’s study of Holy Scripture was a great socializing agent in the formation of his character. By it he became one with his own history, including his family’s history, where he assimilated the organizing influences of a biblical worldview.

In Timothy’s case, the transmission of this biblical culture was a difficult task. Timothy’s father was apparently not a believer (Acts 16:1), so the young man did not enjoy in his home the benefit of what the behavioral sciences today call a “male role model.” Timothy learned his faith and Sacred Grammar from the women in the household, and the experience seems not to have hurt him at all.

Third, from Eunice and Lois, Timothy learned to take his place in the continuance of biblical history. After all, the Bible not only records history, it also creates history. By this I mean that the Bible, as written down, read, and proclaimed in the ongoing community of faith, influences and directs the course of history. The Bible changes history by changing the lives of those who come under its transforming power—both Timothy and ourselves.

Thanks to two wise women, a godly mother and a devout grandmother, this was also Timothy’s history.” -Touchstone Magazine, March 2007

The Prophets Point to Christmas

“During the weeks prior to Christmas, Holy Church stresses the Old Testament’s expectation of the Messiah, a theme that She develops in the readings, the hymnography, and the selection of feast days observed during that season. Pursuing this intention, the Church chooses the first three days of December to send us to the late seventh century before Christ, by observing the feasts of three prophets of that time: Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Among the events that made the late seventh century a time of great upheaval in the lands associated with the Bible, it is not difficult to make the case that the fall of the Assyrian Empire was the most momentous. The corresponding rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, of course, also made that period very significant. One thinks of other developments as well, such as the Scythian invasion of the Fertile Crescent and the reigns of Psammetichus I and Neco II in Egypt. Thoughtful people at the time doubtless pondered the significance of those things. From inscriptions left by Nebuchadnezzar II, for example, we know that he ascribed his success to the help of his Babylonian gods, “my lords Nebo and Marduk.” For the most part, nonetheless, we are obliged to guess at what Assyrian, Babylon, Scythian, and Egyptian wise men thought about the gravity and import of those days, because their considerations have not come down to us. That is to say, the reflections of those men—on the significance of the events in which their people played the major roles—were not assumed into history itself. Whatever their ideas on the doings of their time, those ideas utterly perished from memory, and memory is essential to history. Whatever those men thought, surely none of them thought much about the insignificant kingdom of Judah. Nor had they a reason to know anything of three poets of Judah who wrote about the world-changing events of those days. Yet, leaving aside Jeremiah, who dealt far more extensively with that period, the writings of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah provide history’s clearest and most compelling interpretation of that era. Unlike the reflections of thinkers in Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, those religious poets in Judah left interpretive writings that went on to contour the further transmission of history. Because Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah were “on the side of history,” what they wrote about the events of their time became part of the ongoing life of history. There is a great irony here, inasmuch as the prominent actors on the political
stage in the seventh century were not—in any ultimate sense—giving shape to history. They imagined they were, of course, but hardly more than mere traces of their accomplishments have endured. They are as though they had never been. Israel’s God alone was the Lord who gave significance to the events of the late seventh century, and to those three prophets He revealed His historical purpose. Consequently, it is through their eyes that those events have been seen in all subsequent generations of the ongoing community of faith. These generations are “on the side of history” and constitute that ongoing Israel which boasts, “God is our King from before the ages” (Psalms 73 [74]:12). God’s kingship over His people is, in fact, the key to their understanding of history. Zephaniah indicated this when he declared to Jerusalem, “the King of Israel, the Lord, is in the midst of thee” (3:15). God’s presence in the midst of Israel, whether in judgment or salvation, is what put Israel on the side of history (Nahum 2:2; Habakkuk 1:12; 2:1-4,20; 3:17-19; Zephaniah 1:7; 2:3; 3:14-20). Later on, Nathanael used Zephaniah’s title for God, “King of Israel,” to address Jesus, when first he met our Lord (John 1:49). It was his way of affirming what Philip had told him: “We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write” (1:45). He saw in Jesus the object of their historical expectations. At each Divine Liturgy Jesus our Lord is addressed by this same title: “You are seated on the throne of the Cherubim, the Lord of the Seraphim, and the King of Israel. You alone are holy and dwell among Your saints.” It is this abiding presence of the King of Israel in our midst that causes us to stand—with Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah—on the side of history.”
©2008 Patrick Henry Reardon

Fr. Patrick on The Mind of St. Paul

“Theology should be personal–even biographical–in the sense that a man’s reflection on the things of God is preferably of a piece with the rest of his life. Obviously, this attribute is easiest to trace in those theologians whose writings include correspondence or other autobiographical elements. One thinks of Justin, Basil, and particularly Augustine, and, in more recent times, Bonhoeffer and Schmemann.
The earliest models of this feature of theology, I suppose, were those eighth century prophets whose messages were explicitly rooted in their personal experience: Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. And in varying degrees, we find this true of later prophets, as well, notably Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
It was St. Paul, however, that established the standard of this trait, because we know an unusual amount about his life, education, and personal experience–certainly more than any other New Testament writer. Moreover, the nature of this information is such that we can even speak of “sources” and “influences” in the structure, content, and development of Paul’s thought. I suggest that we may distinguish five influences that especially shaped the mind of the Apostle in ways easy to discern in his writings and helpful in their interpretation.
First, there was Paul’s early training in rabbinic studies, to which he referred in Galatians 1:14 and Philippians 3:5-6. His companion Luke provided further details on this subject (Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:4-5).
I suggest that one fruit of this education was Paul’s preference for the deeper, subtler, less obvious, perhaps even unsuspected lessons of Holy Scripture. To cite but one outstanding example, we observe how Paul shaped a single verse of Habakkuk–”the just shall live by his faith” (2:4)–into a hermeneutic key by which to unlock the whole of salvation history (cf. Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). His letters abound with examples of this rabbinic approach to biblical interpretation, and largely through Paul’s example it has remained a trait of Christian theology to the present day.
Second, there was Paul’s inherited Hellenic culture, primarily manifest in his habit of citing the Bible in the Septuagint version. Greek was his native language. Though he pursued his rabbinic studies in Jerusalem, Paul had been raised in the pagan city of Tarsus, where he learned to be at home just about anywhere in the Mediterranean world, particularly in such cultural centers as Damascus, Antioch, Ephesus, and Athens.
Paul’s imagery and points of reference, which reflect the urban culture of the Hellenic world, are readily contrasted with the agrarian and village atmosphere characteristic of the teaching of Jesus. This merging of rabbinic and Hellenic backgrounds made Paul an essential link in the Gospel’s transmission across these two cultures.
Third, there was Paul’s adult experience of conversion, which gave his theological thought a very strong impression of contrasts–of then and now, of before and after. Unlike so many theologians of later times, Paul did not inherit a Christian worldview. His vocation, rather, was to create such a thing from his own experience. For this reason, Paul’s thought ever remains the Church’s sharp blade, the biting edge of her apologetics and evangelism.
Fourth, Paul’s theological mind was essentially formed by the doctrine he inherited from the Christian Tradition. Failing to notice he spent a decade or so living among other Christian teachers before his first missionary journey, and rooting his theology solely in his conversion, many of Paul’s readers (starting with Marcion) have isolated his thought from its native ecclesiological context. This sense of continuity, however, in which theology is always an ecclesiological effort, has marked the thinking of the Church ever since.
Fifth and finally, several aspects of Paul’s theology developed from specific problems and questions he encountered in the practical labor of his ministry. The schismatic dispositions at Corinth, for instance, prompted his deeper reflections on the nature of love. The Galatian controversy, too, planted the seed of Paul’s theology of dialectical history, which eventually appears in the Epistle to the Romans. And so forth. It can be said that the organic relationship between theology and pastoral labor in Paul’s life laid the foundation for much of the theological enterprise during the rest of Christian history.”
©2008 Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon

Reflections on the Incarnation

Daily Reflections with Fr. Patrick Reardon gives us some things to contemplate concerning our Lord’s incarnation using the book of Hebrews, Irenaeus and Athanasius of Alexandria This is some good stuff!

“In addressing this question, he followed the same theological line as the author of Hebrews, but he adorned it by introducing the Pauline contrast between Christ and Adam. According to Irenaeus the Word’s assumption of the flesh was required for our salvation because Adam’s sin had been committed in the flesh. Sin in the flesh required salvation in the flesh. He explained, “So the Word was made flesh in order that sin, destroyed by means of that same flesh through which it had gained mastery and taken hold and lorded it, should no longer be in us,” and “that so He might join battle on behalf of our forefathers and vanquish through Adam what had stricken us through Adam” (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 31).

As I noted, Irenaeus here is clearly the heir to St. Paul, who contrasted Christ and Adam in terms of “disobedience unto death” and “obedience unto life” (Romans 5:12–19).

In his treatment of salvation, however, Irenaeus stresses the Resurrection much more explicitly than is obvious in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and this in turn colors his approach to the Incarnation. Thus, he writes of “our Lord’s birth, which the Word of God underwent for our sake, to be made flesh, that He might reveal the resurrection of the flesh and take the lead of all in heaven.” In this way, explains Irenaeus, Christ becomes “the first-born of the dead, the head and source of the life unto God” (op.cit, 39). ” -Daily Reflections (12-21-07 thru 12-28-07)

The Laughter of Isaac

“Isaac is one of the most engaging figures in Holy Scripture, probably because he is the most associated with the exuberance of laughter. Isaac was named for laughter, in fact, because that name, formed from the verbal root shq, literally means “he will laugh.” It is ever a marvel and a grace, for sure, to hear a little infant laugh, and I confess, for my part, a preference for the view that babies, when they come to earth, bring along with them the laughter of the angels.

In the birth of Isaac, however, the circumstances attendant on his unexpected appearance in this world afforded an even ampler ground for mirth. No one felt this better than his mother, Sarah, who conceived him at the age of 89, and the happy laconism that she delivered, right after delivering her son, was smartly to the point: “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6)…….

According to the full, Christian understanding of the Holy Scriptures, the joy of Abraham and Sarah at the promised birth of Isaac was burdened with the gold of prophecy, for his miraculous begetting foretold a later conception more miraculous still. Isaac was, in truth, a type and pledge of “Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). And Mary, mother of this Newer Isaac, having conceived him in virginity just days before, made perfect her responding song of praise by remembering the mercy that God “spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever” (Luke 1:55).

Did not Abraham himself anticipate with joy the later coming of that more distant Seed? Surely so, for even our Newer Isaac proclaimed, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Like Moses (5:46), Isaiah (12:41), and David (Matthew 22:43), Abraham was gifted to behold, in mystic vision, the final fulfillment of that primeval word, “But my covenant will I establish with Isaac” (Genesis 17:21).

In the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons expressed thus the mystery inherent in the figure of Isaac: “Abraham, knowing the Father through the Word, who made heaven and earth, confessed him as God, and taught by a vision that the Son of God would become a Man among men, by whose arrival his seed would be as the stars of heaven, he longed to see that day, so that he too might embrace Christ, as it were; and beholding him in the Spirit of prophecy, he rejoiced” (Against the Heresies 4.7.1).”- Fr. Patrick Reardon in the Nov. 2003 issue of Touchstone Magazine.

It is Not Christmas Yet

The Second Sunday of Advent: In the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches of the West, the several weeks prior to Christmas are known as Advent, from a Latin word meaning “coming.” It happens that the beginning of Advent always falls on the Sunday closest to November 30, the ancient feast day (in both East and West) of the Apostle Andrew. Among Christians in the West this preparatory season, which tends to be less rigorous than Lent and often involves no special fasting at all, always begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Thus, from year to year it will vary in length between 3 and 4 weeks, but always with four Sundays.

The observance of the season of Advent is fairly late. One finds no sermons for Advent, for instance, among the liturgical homilies of St. Leo the Great in the mid-fifth century. About that time, however, the observance was already emerging in Spain and Gaul. A thousand years later, the time of the Reformation, Advent was preserved among the liturgical customs of the Anglicans and Lutherans in more recent years, other Protestant groups have informally begun to restore it, pretty much as it originally started—one congregation at a time.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the corresponding penitential season of preparation for Christmas always begins on November 15, the day after the Feast of the Apostle Philip. For this reason it is popularly known as St. Philip’s Fast. A simple count of the days between November 15 and December 25 shows that this special period lasts exactly 40 days, the same as Lent.

Other features of Advent deserve some comment:

First, in the West the First Sunday of Advent is treated as the beginning of the liturgical year. (In the East, the liturgical year does not begin with Advent but on September 1, which bears the traditional title, “Crown of the Year.” Its historical relationship to the Jewish feast of Rosh Hashanah is obvious.)

Second, during the twentieth century there arose the lovely custom of the Advent wreath, both in church buildings and in homes. This wreath lies horizontally and is adorned with four candles. The latter, symbolic of the four millennia covered in Old Testament history, are lit one at a time on each Saturday evening preceding the four Sundays of Advent, by way of marking the stages in the season until Christmas.

Third, because of the emphasis on repentance, Advent is a season of great seriousness, not a time proper for festivity, much less of partying and secular concerns. Advent is not part of the “Christmas holidays,” and Christians of earlier times would be shocked at the current habit of treating this as a period of jolly good times and “Christmas cheer,” complete with throwing office parties, trimming of Christmas trees and other domestic adornments, exchanging of gifts, caroling, and even the singing of Christmas music in church.

All of these festive things are part of the celebration of Christmas itself, which lasts the 12 days from December 25 to January 6. Anticipating these properly Christmas activities in advance of Christmas itself considerably lessens the chance of our being properly prepared, by repentance, for the grace of that greater season; it also heightens the likelihood that we will fall prey to the worldly spirit that the commercial world would encourage during this time. Daily Reflections by Fr. Patrick Reardon

Note- Fr. Pat is presently going through the book of Revelation in his Daily Reflections. One can learn a lot concerning the book of Revelation from Fr. Pat.

Vigilance

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11: In this passage Paul deals with, among other subjects, the theme of vigilance. This was not a theme peculiar to Paul, but part of he common catechetical inheritance of the Church, going back to Jesus Himself (Mark 13:33-37). Being common, it is found in other New Testament writers as well (1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 3:2-3). When Paul speaks on this subject, therefore, he is saying something that Christians generally expected him to say (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:13; Colossians 3:2).

The life in Christ includes a vigilant, heightened consciousness, a stimulated awareness, a certain kind of mindfulness, clear and sharp thinking, intelligent questioning. This vigilance will have some trouble with the general sense of stupor common in contemporary culture, where pipe-in music prevent a person from hearing his own thoughts, and great efforts are made in the advertising world to prevent us from seeing the complications of things. Every single project, from the offering of new deodorant on the market to the construction of anew bridge or road, involves an underlying philosophy and a set of metaphysical presuppositions. The alert mind will search out these things, for the simple reason that his adversary, the devil, goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (From Daily Reflections by Fr. Patrick Reardon, 11-12-07).