Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Ch 9: Burial and Commemoration of the Dead

Metropolitan Hilarion discusses the topic of Christian burial and commemoration. Many Protestants would disagree with the practice of commemorating the departed by praying for them. But Christ Himself teaches us that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – that is He is the God of the living, not of the dead (†John Chrysostom). Whether we are alive here or departed there Christ still recognizes and arranges for our need of continual communion and prayer for the absolution of our sins through the Church supplications to God and virtue practiced for the dead. Unlike Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox Church prays for all people, whether Orthodox or not, whether holy or not. We just finished the Sunday of Pascha when we celebrate and sing that the iron gates, the bars, and the barriers of Hell are broken. St. Jerome teaches along with many holy fathers that the fires of Gehenna are quenched and the demons are in anguish. St. John Chrysostom’s paschal homily teaches that all can come to the feast no matter what hour they arrive, and that Hades has been embittered. Roman Catholicism at least since the scholastic period has divided hell (infernum makes no difference between hell and hades) into different parts: limbus patrum, limbus puerorum, purgatorium, and infernum. The Orthodox Church teaches that all of th need prayers for purification to move closer to God in rest. The Papal Office teaches that only those in purgatory can receive prayers that would alleviate them and in a sense absolve sins beyond the grave, since those in hell are already judged, and our prayers cannot help anyone there. Similarly to Protestantism, the Papal Office also by the same logic teaches that those in paradise don’t need our prayers because they are already saved. These differences between Western Christianity and the Orthodox Church is partly the result of the Council of Ferrara-Florence. In the 15th c. there was an attempt to discuss differences in belief and practice so that there might be a reunion. Interestingly, there isn’t a major distinction in Orthodox teaching between the Western Christian purgatory and hell. There isn’t, according to Metr. Hilarion, a separation between purifying fire, which is a related to theme constantly repeated through the entire scriptures recalling that God is fire, and the idea of eternal punishment for sinners. In fact, he shows that many of the prayers for the dead and the burial orders are founded on the teaching that people can be delivered from “eternal torment” by the prayers of the Church. So, his chapter begins with these foundational beliefs and some differences between Christians who aren’t in the Orthodox Church. A question that goes beyond the semantics of the word hell or hades is why have the Christians since the existence of the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire believed that fire was somehow purificatory for salvation at all? What we do know is that prayers are purificatory, and God’s word is a consuming fire. Metr. Hilarion returns to this theology near the end of the chapter. He refers to the teaching of Abba Macarius of Egypt from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, “Whenever you feel compassion for those in chastisement and pray for them they are a little relieved.”

Liturgical worship is commemorative, and the service books celebrate the feast days to saints and martyrs. Metr. Hilarion gives us many examples of prayers for the dead, and shows how they help us receive the forgiveness of sins after death. The basic concept of praying for the dead is apostolic and scriptural. 1 Timothy 2 teaches that we should pray “for all men.” St. Mark of Ephesus teaches that praying for the dead benefits all, and are meant for not only “the faithful” but for those who haven’t been in the faith. He says, “This is so even for those sinners confined in Hades, that they may obtain some relief” and that they may have a better stand at the judgment. St. Mark of Ephesus was involved at the Ferrara-Florence Council, which discussed certain aspects of purgatorial fire. He doesn’t seem to disagree that fire can be purifying in some way. How that works isn’t discussed. But he does argue against the idea that only the departed in purgatory need and can receive our prayers, and that there are some strictly separated parts of hell or hades that are limited by our prayers as taught in Roman Catholicism.

The ancient Church practiced commemoration of the dead by remembering them in prayers. The tombs of martyrs and saints are connected to the liturgy and the altar, and to the teaching of the resurrection, of which they are living proof, even after death. In Russia, during the persecutions, living priests would sometimes lie down and become the altar for a liturgy, when altars were absent. Christians have always remembered the dead. The Advesary has been planning to use persecutions, torments, setbacks, and martyrdom to traumatize us and trip us up. But Christ has literally made it our path to victory so that we can learn to deride these temptations of the Accuser and any temporary sufferings in hope of the resurrection. St. John Chrysostom teaches this many times. If we remember the martyrs, we can carry them with us everywhere, he says, and we can conquer all of our fears, especially the deepest one – death itself. St. Augustine of Hippo teaches that the eucharist is offered as a prayer. This mystery is a powerful way of receiving forgiveness when done to remember the departed. The liturgies of St. John Chrysostom and St. James have prayers for the dead and commemorations that “the Lord might show them forth worthy of remission of sins.” The liturgical worship of the Orthodox Church covers all kinds of sin: sins known and unknown, concealed out of shame, sins of ignorance, and transgressions. So important was praying for the dead to be forgiven by God that St. Dionysius the Areopagite called it a sacrament. It’s a way of practicing love and almsgiving.

The Book of Needs contains an order for the burial of the departed. It says, “Thou art the God who descended into Hell and loosed the bonds of the captives.” We pray that the departed receive “rest” in the sense that the freedom of passions and from the tyranny of the Serpent is the ultimate meaning of “free.” The resurrectional troparia and various psalms are sung. At the person’s coffin and after the last kiss, the words are sung, “eternal be thy memory, O our brother/sister, who are worthy of blessedness and ever-memorable.” The prayers after this are also sung for the departed who ask for our prayers. The Church anticipates this need and does it for us when we are no longer present here. There are orders for burial for monks and priests. Some of the major aspects of these prayers of burial and commemoration is remembrance and the forgiveness of our sins after death. The memory of the saints and martyrs outlasts anything on earth.

An important consideration is that none of the prayers for the dead in the Orthodox Church, as given in this chapter, presume that the departed, whether righteous or sinner, will reject these prayers based on their sins. Instead, it assumes that we will want forgiveness of sins and we will receive some benefit. It seems that “all men” will want freely to take these prayers after death, will need these prayers, and we hope confidently, will be forgiven by these prayers to God. The only creatures who are adamantly against forgiveness is the Enemy of all mankind, as it seems from these rites of burial and comemmoration. If the belief in Noah’s time was that no one will be saved from the flood, the whole world will perish, and all sinners will be destroyed, it would seem heretical to say that God would actually save mankind when Christ descended in Hades and preached to those waiting there since the flood. What we’ve learned through the years reading this five volume set and attending the divine services here is that whatever we deserve, whatever weaknesses we have and plots set against us the Holy Trinity can overturn that and renew us. Like in the Old Testament by water, we might wonder how the world could be saved when it’s destroyed by fire. These basic elements have an instructive value for us in the scriptures and these chapters that help us connect the mysteries, scriptures, and realities of the rituals of the Orthodox Church. Water has been worshipped, feared, studied, and given philosophical aspects. Water can represent death, but also life and cleansing just like fire. So, in the next chapter, we will outline the Blessing of Water.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 8: Monastic Tonsure

In our last table discussion on monasticism and the rite of tonsure, we discussed the difference between a rite and a sacrament, and the preparation of becoming a monk, what it means, and its similarities to the mystery of marriage. Metropolitan Hilarion puts theological and dogmatic teaching in context of the liturgical texts, its wording and meaning, and the overall structure of the services and its historical development. 

A rite, as we talked about, puts some emphasis on the outward way of performing a sacrament or blessing. Metropolitan Hilarion briefly explained what a rite is in chapter one. A sacred rite is a mystery of salvation where the Holy Spirit is beseeched and asked to be present within us and bless the outward world around such as water, oil, wine, and bread. It’s something that can be done once or repeatable in our lives. Tonsuring can happen once in a person’s life, but the rite of blessing water and oil is needed yearly in the life of Christians. 

Rites are not random ways of worshipping as some Christians might think. Rites also aren’t some magical ways of controlling God, since all the prayers are about beseeching and “asking” the saints, the Most-Holy Theotokos, and the Holy Trinity to help us. Some speak of religious rites as if they were modes of fashion and not important in the participation of the mysteries. But they are important in the understanding of typology and the local development of a church within a certain region or city. A sacrament can be a rite but not all rites are sacraments, according to some opinions. A rite is sacramental if the Holy Spirit is asked to be present and to help us. For example, the formulation of the service of orders for baptism, chrismation, eucharist, unction, and confession have both an Old Testament passage and New Testament application that is fulfilled in the mysteries of the Church. Likewise, marriage, holy orders and monastic tonsure have types that are fulfilled in the Church. The cutting of the hair of the monk and catechumen have symbolic and typological meaning in the Old Testament, and Christian monastics fulfill that ritual action by renouncing the world and entering a community of monastics for progress toward unification with the Holy Trinity. The prostrations that monastic candidates make represent humility and obedience – Christian virtues that we clothe ourselves spiritually and equip ourselves for spiritual warfare. So, monks and nuns wear specific clothing to fulfill and remind ourselves of who we are and what we are doing in the physical and spiritual worlds. Name change is another major Old Testament practice and type that is fulfilled by monks who receive a new name from their spiritual father and guide in repentance. 

A rite is not merely a man-made custom or religious observance in a certain culture. But some still think that rituals and rites are a part of “organized religion” controlled by huge, impersonal, and powerful institutions rather than communities and individuals that form an organized whole under the practice of Christian love. The different ranks and robes of monasticism have varied by custom, place, and time. But the inner calling of monastic tonsure is a way of life, love, and total freedom. While the Orthodox Church agrees with the seven sacraments decided on by Roman Catholicism, there is not only seven sacraments in Holy Orthodoxy. The numbering and way of coming to that conclusion is somewhat artificial. It limits the way in which our needs are really met by the holy mysteries and the Book of Needs, which contains many rites and orders of blessings and sacraments. 

 Typology connects with the sacred rites of the Orthodox Church. The word ritual conjures up Old Testament practices that we tend to think are no longer necessary. Or they are seen as dangerous, syncretistic influences from Roman paganism that have crept into the Church. The typology of monasticism can be found in the Old Testament and with St. John the Forerunner who preached repentance. He opened the way for people to come to Christ. Monastics do much of the same in the structure and way of life in solitary sketes, hermitages, and cenobitic communities. St. Dionysius the Areopagites and many other Church fathers have taught that monastic tonsure isn’t only a rite, but also sacred rite or mystery. It has many connections to being a sacrament. The rite involves baptismal-like renunciations unto death of one’s former life (celibacy, poverty, obedience, family), a betrothal to Christ, a eucharistic union with Christ during the service order, they are sealed in holy oil, and a monk or nun receives a new name like a Christian baptism from their abbot or abbottess. 

Instead of starting with the historical patterns of the period between the 4th c. – 5th c. in and around Egypt and Palestine as the starting point of monasticism, Metropolitan Hilarion begins from the inside-out by investigating the monastic spirit within the service order itself. But he touches on the historical aspects of monasticism and differences between East and West. The Parable of the Good Samaritan teaches that love is boundless. It is what we do and say right now with whoever is in front of us. It makes a person truly free in mind and spirit. It is a totally free and radical way of interacting with people who cross our paths. Only then does the monastic life become a beautiful, burning desire for love unlimited by national institutions, commerce, and politics. The modern philosopher Ivan Illich describes this philia kind of love for all people in a way like St. Silouan the Athonite. That all should be loved ought to be our only thought in whatever place and situation we have found ourselves. Even St. John Chrysostom criticized having hospitals too close to churches because these public institutions had taken the place of everyday Christian love for one another and limited our freedom to love, supposedly, anyone whom we wish. Contrary to the common complaint that we live in a “post-Christian world,” Ivan Illich viewed our times as apocalyptic and the unique time of Christianity’s illumination to the world. Modern institutions are all based on Christian ideas and originals, but they have become the corruptio quae optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst). The legalization of Christianity was a proof that the Cross of Christ was victorious. But the mystery of iniquity has been working since Christianity was born. This age is a revelation to the world that what we have created in our institutions that seek and claim to solve mankind’s problems and ills have turned out to be dangerous and sometimes outright evil. Politics, nationalism, the university system, ubiquitous technology, and medical practices are but a few examples of what has become the mystery of iniquity in our times. At the point of darkness, however, Christianity’s light beams all the brighter to the world in its love and true life, because life isn’t a resource or economic commodity, it isn’t an idol that we can make with our hands; life is a person that was preached to be Jesus Christ by the holy apostles and bishops and martyrs of the Church. Monasticism believes in the old Christian way of changing the world individually and within communities, not by imposing law or institutions on the people of the world to solve our problems. These institutions tend to betray what they seek to be. The modern funeral industry, for example, has completely taken over how Christians used to care for the departed person’s body and loved ones. Instead the modern embalming process does major disrespect and violence to the person’s body, and for those who choose cremation, there is nearly complete disintegration and disposal of the body like garbage down the drain. Orthodox Christians, like Jews and other eastern religions, take special care of the body of a Christian and pray for that person. They are arranged peacefully to return to the earth naturally and dignified. But today’s funeral home business doesn’t have to replace this ancient rite of Christian burial.

The artificiality of the Latin definition of seven sacraments with other rites placed under a non-sacramental category misleads Christians in an unintended way. Why don’t Orthodox agree exactly with Protestants and Catholics on the number, meaning and practice of the rites and mysteries? Between the 9th and the 12th c., western European Christianity began translating the works of Aristotle and other Hellenic writings from Jewish and Arab texts into Latin, and learning flourished among the western monastic communities where they wrote manuscripts at their scriptorium – a wonderful and beautiful flowering of Christianity. In western Europe, there was no complete, approved Latin Bible like the Septuagint in use until St. Jerome. He compiled the Latin Vulgate from various and separate local traditions and translations. Some translations came from the Septuagint. The Latin Vulgate became the official standard translation of Latin Christianity at the Council of Trent in the 16th c. Scholasticism is a method of finding the truth by applying a kind of dialectics. It opposes one view over another until you reach a conclusion. But more specifically western monks began applying Aristotelian principles and the Greek tradition of disputation and dialectics to the holy mysteries to make sense of contradictions. Scholastic training was a kind of schooling in Aristotelian grammar, logic, and natural philosophy. It was not so much a negative event that Greek philosophy was introduced into monasteries. But the way in which some of the monks of the West began to use this method began unintentionally to divide the heart and the mind. Monastics had always taught that the mind must live in the heart, and that is a scriptural teaching too. Rufinus and many other European monks visited Egypt and Palestine, collected their desert wisdom, and applied it back home. But instead of that monks began to be taught how to hold positions and argue for beliefs that they didn’t believe. In this way, mysticism in the West is generally separated from the mind. Scholasticism didn’t study poetry or hymnography, literature, or history very much. So, typology and the mystical, noetic, ascetical teaching of the East were exchanged for schooling and an increasingly institutionalization of all spiritual life. Typology seems to be more related to discourse, hymnography, and it incorporates a synthesis and harmonizing of the mysteries from the types into the antitypes – the reality in the sacraments. Scholastic monks created some of the most basic and enduring institutions that are still influencing the western world today. 

The university was an essential place of learning. It’s a place where scholasticism, humanism, and other Enlightenment philosophies flourished and fought with each other. The university seems to have replaced the original monastic institutions of sketes, cenobia (communities), and hermitages, and eventually the idea of the divinely ordered monarchic ruler. There were disputations between the Dominican and Franciscan monastics so tense that it shook the foundations of the Pope of Rome. The scholastic method followed this pattern. First, there was a lectio or lesson and reading of a text that had contradictions or disagreements with another text. They look for these discrepancies and called them sententiae. They collected these sententiae and ordered these contradictory statements so that the dialectical method could be applied. They meditated, called meditatio, on the contradictions. Already the word meditation means a something like a purely logical and mental exercise separated from the heart. Dialectics requires two opposing sides to argue until a resolution of contradictions is reached. Before arguments are presented, words are analyzed and arranged by the study of grammar, and the author’s intent is scrutinized. Aristotle’s Ten Categories begins with an analysis of grammar and then logic to be mastered. The result seems magnificent and the process beneficial. But this practice, if overemphasized, leads to a separation of the mind from the heart that is the one of the major goals of monastic life and renunciation, and really the goal of every Christian. This scholastic method was tragically and originally applied to trinitarian theology. The Orthodox Church already had a system and institution for dealing with “contradictions.” The Christian emperor or empress – whoever the legitimate ruler was – the clergy, the monastics, and the monastic clergy met and held a council, and they prayed, listened, spoke, and studied attentively, and sometimes vehemently disagreeing with each other. An example of resolving such conflicting theology is the Council of Nicea. Scholastic universities didn’t give us, as it seems, the Nicaean Creed or our definitions of the two united natures of Christ, or the dogmas of the Holy Trinity, and ecclesiology. Much of the learning of the Middle Ages seems to have been very much inspired by Aristotle and Neo-Platonists, as it happened also in Byzantium, but also by writers from the Middle East like Ibn Sina and Maimonedes. In central and eastern Europe around the 9th c. and 10th c. when scholastic learning began growing, Sts. Cyril and Methodius and St. Rostislav of Great Moravia (The Church of the Czech and Slovak Lands today) began to baptize all the Slavs of Europe. They served liturgies in Old Slavonic that was understandable to the Slavic peoples. The Glagolitic alphabet was used instead of Greek or Latin or Hebrew that led to the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet in use by many Slavic countries today. Martyrdom and manuscripts can work together, and they often do as in the case of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. 

 We discussed marriage as a path to martyrdom that was symbolized by the crowning and betrothal. Monks and nuns too are betrothed, and there are many similarities between the two sacraments in meaning and the service’s order. The layman and the monk share many similarities in their entrance into the life of a Christian. Here is a list of similarities in service order and content: 

1) The priest performs the eucharist that is the center of the service 

2) Both wear white clothing symbolizing death and renewal

3) There is a cutting of hair as an offering, profession of faith (no oath taking or swearing) 

4) Both renounce Satan, they receive a new name, church members are present 

5) The sign of the cross is made over the body 

6) The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit is given 

7) Obedience to clergy and Church, the bishops like a monk under an abbot 

8) We both enter spiritual warfare 

9) They wear crosses around neck, shoulder, or stitched in clothes was a custom 

10) Both seek a union with God and crowns for martyrdom for Christ

11) Both must come under no pressure or coercion, but in freedom and mutuality 

Metropolitan Hilarion also teaches that a monk must become like “children of malice.” A child before the of two years old doesn’t become angry or resentful when put down, a young child doesn’t become offended when insulted in an adult way. A child doesn’t become vainglorious or prideful when praised or honored. In understanding we ought to be like the angels of heaven close to God’s throne, but in the things of this world that are malicious and grown-up, monks seek a solitary, non-marital life like a child or like an angel. Very young children are humble and pure in soul and body; they can pray noetically. One of the other main reasons for such an ascetic renunciation of the world was rooted in the Syriac tradition of monasticism. The Syrians called Christian monks “mourners” which referred to their life dedicated to repentance — another proof of the victory of the Cross and the resurrection. For this reason, St. John the Forerunner, and his main message of “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” seems to be connected to the inspiration for monastic principles. In Great Lent’s “bright-sadness,” monasticism seeks to repent and mourn to find great love and joy. They are like children who mourn the loss of our eternal and divine parent, Our Father in heaven, the Holy Trinity’s warm embrace and kiss that we lost because we grabbed food that wasn’t fit for our bellies and souls. Every year, all lay Orthodox Christians take up a monastic or penitential life during Great Lent, and every week on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday morning by fasting and cultivating compunction throughout the entire ecclesial year. 

There are so-called “monastic vows” during the tonsuring part of the service with a question-and-answer format. But they answer questions directly. There aren’t any made-up vows or swearing or oaths on people or objects. The abbot “interrogates” the candidate, “Question: Of thine own willing mind and thine own free will comest thou unto the Lord? Answer: Yes, God helping me, reverend father. Question: Not by any necessity, or constraint? Answer: No, reverend father.” Just as Christ commanded, married and monastic let their yes be yes and their no be no. Christians do not swear on the Bible, by anyone or anything, since God alone can keep his word. The monastic service order also borrows a lot from the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.  It touches on both repentance and marriage. The service reads, “For with compunction I cry to thee, O Lord: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.” The monastic candidate is then “clothed in a long white shirt” just like catechumens are clothed in simple white clothing at their baptism. St. Isaac of Ninevah reminds us that a monk “is he who passes all the days of his life in hunger and thirst for the sake of his hope and future good things.” In Great Lent, every Christian makes himself mourn in secret, give away all in hiddenness, and make himself hungry and thirsty to receive Love and Life now and in the next world. The monastic calling is in a broad sense every Christian’s calling to avoid making “life” as we use the term today into an idol. Life isn’t a resource or a thing in itself; life is God became man from a woman – the Most Holy Theotokos. Life is the Holy Trinity. A monk, like every Orthodox Christian, seeks to avoid the “spectacles of the world” that come often from our ethnic customs and institutionalized morality, which are in our very own time becoming unveiled as the anti-Christian corruption of the best that has been given to us in the Church. St. Isaac of Nineveh in his Ascetical Homilies 22 teaches, “All the saints mourned …. He whose loved ones lie dead before him and who sees himself dead in sins” becomes aware of his own personal state of grief. He teaches also to “weep over your own soul that is precious and dead; look, your loved ones are dead in the grave where you too are now and will go into the earth.” Repentance may be the most natural way to grieve as a Christian. It is fitting to mourn to experience freedom and joy. The next chapter discusses burial and the commemoration of the dead. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 7: Marriage

The focus of this chapter is the wedding service and its connection to the Eucharist in the divine liturgy. In Ephesians, the holy apostle Paul teaches that marriage is “a great mystery” in its image on earth and in its spiritual meaning that points to the kingdom of God. Marriage wasn’t exclusively a liturgical event in Paul’s times. But the wedding was considered a sacrament of the Church because it directly reflected the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and God’s unity with the Church as the Bride of Christ. 

The holy scriptures give us more insight into the meaning of the wedding service in Genesis. Mankind isn’t an “individual,” not he, she, or it. But we are “they,” Metropolitan Hilarion teaches. Man is “dual” in nature. The first man came from the Breath of God and created earth, woman came from man’s body in his sleep, and children come from a woman’s body through marital union, and so the begetting of our race is followed like this. That way of giving birth shows us the love of the Holy Trinity, since God is three persons in one. Likewise, man, woman, and child are three persons, but one in essence or human nature. So, the “fullness of mankind” is seen in marriage since our image is found in the Holy Trinity’s divine love.  Christ was sent from his Father in heaven, from his home to be betrothed and wedded to the Church and humanity itself. The attraction given to us by God leads us to “leave father and mother” and be united to a “wife.” The marital union itself – the bodily joining of man and woman – is trinitarian. That’s the first meaning that Metropolitan Hilarion draws out in this chapter. The next meaning is the begetting of children as the flow of the trinitarian image within us. Love breeds life. The book of Genesis gave the commandment to be fruitful and multiply before the Fall of Mankind and the temptation and trick for false life. The battle for how to build up life had begun. The lying Serpent came against this divine fruitfulness, the holy harvesting, and the growth of grace. It seems that the Liar wanted to persuade Adam and Eve to take their gaze away from each other’s love and the first commandment from God that was given to us to make love. Adam and Eve were commanded to be sexually united with each other, not food or spiritual authority or divine knowledge, and bring about a deeper unity with God. But they only fulfill that command after the fall when they see that their children are not growing toward righteousness and the fullness of unity with God, and food has become a burden of mankind and not a way of living forever. We want to multiply like God or not multiply at all by taking some short-cut by eating the fruit instead of being fruitful with our bodies and souls through the first marital union. And Christ’s first miracle brings us back to that very same point in humanity: marriage and sex and communion with God. It was God’s will that we become fruitful and grow so that we fill up the earth with God’s grace as He also fills up the universe and creation. So, the first sin was committed, as it seems, in a state of bodily virginity. But our first father and mother had not grown into a state of chastity in which sexual union was blessed. Christ blessed that union between spouses in the first miracle at the Wedding at Cana. The Serpent’s plan targeted marriage’s meaning as defined by God in the book of Genesis. The Devil sought to throw down that very trinitarian image in our body and soul by undoing the divine unity that God keeps together by grace so that humanity doesn’t carry out the mystery of salvation to be fruitful, bountiful, and grow in Christ Jesus toward a fuller union with the Holy Trinity who fills all things.

Marriage has been marred by sin and death, and that’s evident in how many cultures have expressed and governed marital relations and family. Howbeit, God still uses his pre-eternal plan to bring about the mystery of salvation through the Messiah and the Jewish people where the culmination of fruitfulness, righteousness, and love is found in the Holy Theotokos who gives birth to the Godman Jesus Christ. The meaning of marriage is fulfilled and revealed. Christians replenish the earth and bring love and blessings to all people. Metropolitan Hilarion focuses on this deeper teaching of Orthodoxy and says that “the welfare of spouses” was not the most sought-after ideal according to the Levirate Law in Deuteronomy and Matthew 22. Rather the Jews looked to the reproduction of children as a divine commandment that they took seriously. The icon of the Descent into Hades teaches that Christ is victorious over the prison of death and sin where unions are separated. The Serpent tempted Adam and Eve to cause a divorce between not only man and woman, but between God and man. Christ also brings victory for marriage as the mystical union of man and God, and the kind of love we ought to have within us. The poetic book of the Song of Songs is the Hebrew and Orthodox view of love that explicitly points out the physical aspects of marital love in the context of divine love for God. Against that, the widespread Greco-Roman view on love wasn’t as romantic or sensitive. The Mediterranean civilizations during apostolic times saw marriage generally as cohabitation for offspring, the continuation of male inheritance and honor, and a contractual relationship. It wasn’t a very erotic view of married love. Often Greek and Roman free men had children strictly with their legal wife while they fulfilled lusts with concubines and servants – both male and female ones. Very much like our current secularism in the United States, the Roman law nuptias non concuppitus sed consensus facit meant that consent alone was enough for a nuptial ceremony to be legalized and considered socially acceptable. Consent makes any expression of sexuality good is the common practice in our culture. Marriage mostly in the Roman mind was about consent to legal ramifications rather than the fulfillment of love as the divine image of God found in the holy scriptures. 

Zeno of Verona and John Chrysostom called sex the mystery. Whereas other cultures focused on the wealth, consent, legality, social status, and parties of marriage, Christians simply focused on the sex itself and its spiritual meaning as something greatly to be admired. This great mystery is seen in the Sunday of the Prodigal Son who left his home and didn’t find a wife or marriage but harlots and debauchery. But when he returned to the father’s house in repentance, he was loved, given a ring, expensive clothes, and a fatted calf. Everything appears to be a wedding feast in this image of love and repentance.

The order of the wedding service has a betrothal and a crowning. Crowns symbolize victory over sin, martyrdom, and glory as well as intelligence and wisdom. Crowns were often used as gravestone markers in the Roman catacombs. The connection between marriage and the eucharist wasn’t separate in the 9th c. But they gradually grew apart due to political and historical circumstances. Theodore the Studite taught that “before all people the rite was performed with the Eucharist.” Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the Eucharist is “the celebrated marriage by which the most holy Bridegroom espouses the Church.” God’s love is shown fully in the Eucharist so that all the mysteries of the Church are connected to this divine thanksgiving in the Body and Blood of Christ, and the Eucharist is the “ideal of Christian marriage.” In the 10th c., emperor Leo VI of Byzantium taught that marriage not blessed by the Church is not a marriage. That idea along with the growing number of Christians in the empire created a situation where the Church had to deal with citizens who dissolved and divorced rather than the state. But Orthodoxy has always seen the end of the Christian wedding service in the couple both receiving holy communion together. The link is so close that the structure of the Eucharistic liturgy and the marriage rite look alike in many ways. 

 Our betrothal of God is like the journey of Pascha, the passing over into the next world. It's noteworthy that like Pascha – having both a crucifixion pascha and a resurrection pascha – marriage is both a call to self-sacrifice and struggle as well as a merry-making mystery of joy and oneness of mind. Metropolitan Hilarion shows that the patriarchs of the Old Testament found their wives because God ordained it to be so. The prayers of the betrothal service, then, teach that God is “the arranger of the marriage.” Whether we think our parents and culture choose our spouse or choose a spouse on our own, for Orthodox Christians, God plans a marriage. Betrothal is about the pledge of God’s fidelity and our faithfulness in response. The crowning rite points to the Cross while at the same time it points to the Resurrection. There is a “bright sadness” in accepting marriage as primarily a way of martyrdom, and the liturgical service and order reveal that self-sacrificial meaning. The cross is a symbol of joy and suffering. So, the service speaks of St. Elena who found the Holy Cross and St. Sebaste the Soldier and the Forty Women Martyrs. That Orthodox teaching is directly contrary to the idea that marriage is keeping abreast with the world, the fulfillment of personal desires, the cumulation of wealth and influence. Marriage is a preparation for letting go of our will, changing our hearts, and dying to ourselves so that we can be dead to the world. Marriage is death to the world by dying to our desires. The crowns of marriage do not symbolize the hope that worldly success will always flow, but that the married couple will win crowns of martyrdom in this life. In his Letters 232, Gregory the Theologian teaches that “water to wine” meant that something and someone becomes better. Marriage ought to make us better like baptism, chrism, unction, confession, and the Eucharist. The Martyr Precopius urged young Christian women taken under persecution to “go to your death as to a [wedding] feast.” This is the Orthodox Christian attitude toward marriage. There are many paths to martyrdom, and some may not become married to another person here on earth. The next chapter discusses the monastic tonsure service and its many similarities to the mystery of wedded life.  All the mysteries of the Orthodox Church are rooted in the Eucharist, and the monastic tonsure is also a sacrament found with eucharistic and marital themes. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 6: Unction (Holy Oil)

Metropolitan Hilarion discusses the history and liturgical meaning of the mystery of holy unction. All the mysteries of the Church restore our humanness to the Holy Trinity. Oil has been an image of medicine, healing, compassion, forgiveness, food, anointing with the Spirit, and joy since the history of the Jewish people. The apostles received the gift of healing and governing so that they fulfill the Old Testament types or images in the Orthodox Church. Healing is a ministry from the Holy Spirit and the holy apostles. Faith is always an important component of receiving healing, and both the Old and New Testaments confirm this teaching. Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann speaks of food as dead without God’s power to bless it in Great Lent. So, the clergy bless the oil in a service and apply it to the body of the person who receives it. At times it was done in the home, if the person was very ill. It was also common to serve the holy oil at church led by the clergy present there. The prayers of the service ask on behalf of the sick or dying that the Holy Spirit come and heal the person presented, and to bless the oil that stands for the healing not only of the body due to our fallen state but also for the restoration of our souls wounded by sins and desires. In a commentary on the Gospel of Mark 6, Priest Victor of Antioch in the 5th c. taught, “… for it is manifest to anyone that prayer brings about everything.” Without the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us and the creation we bless to help us, everything remains symbolic. But we have the reality, the antitype, the living presence of the Holy Spirit to make us whole again. Like the eucharist and confession and baptism, holy oil forgives sins and helps us to repent. Our holy fathers in the faith connected the unction service and the holy oil to forgiveness of and remission of sins as well as further strength in our struggle for fuller repentance. “God has the power” this chapter emphasizes in outlining the meaning and practice of unction.

While the West tended to view unction as exclusively for the dying and not for the penitent at heart, the East viewed the holy oil as the power to repent and remit sins from our fallen Adamic nature that will help us become holier. That difference is rooted in an understanding of what the Holy Apostle James teaches and the Orthodox understanding of our common need for healing the soul and body together. Humans have a defective unity between soul and body that negatively affects our development of human and divine relationships. So, rather than being exclusively a service of “last rites,” it’s a service for bringing our human nature back to the kingdom of God that is always “at hand,” around the corner of our earthily life. Those in old age, in danger of death, psychological illness, diseased, close to death and really anyone else, even the departed, can receive the holy oil for the repair of our brokenness. That unction can reach beyond the grave is uniquely Orthodox and hopeful. The healing of the soul is just as important as healing the body. After we depart, we can receive help. Dcn. Barna and Mrs. Barna have discussed this topic of Orthodox traditional burial and theology in their book, A Christian Ending, in which they describe how the body of an Orthodox Christian is lathered in holy oil. That process mystically transfers to our souls, since our human nature is dual, not single. We are part of both the unseen, spiritual world and we are in the physical realm with the animals, trees, the waters, and the earth – all the elements as well as oil. We are healed by divine food as we were originally wounded by dead food through the serpent’s lies. So, sin, death, and suffering are linked to our common colds, our pain, and our loved ones who we have lost to disease and illness. To heal a sickness, a remission of sins must happen too. And our Protestant neighbors will say how can that be so, if Christ has already died on the Cross for our sins? We must fulfill Christ’s Cross by participating in our healing through His work and grace. Since we are not yet departed from this world, we are sojourning through it so that we need spiritual and physical help along the way in the holy mysteries to be prepared to live in the kingdom of God. Everything in the Church is preparation and recognition that we need God’s help – not just symbolically or individually. We need to participate publicly, physically for own sake and through orderly governance and distribution of God’s grace to His people. It’s curious that St. John the Forerunner (the Baptist) inaugurates the kingdom of God and Christ’s coming with the famous divine words, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” and repentance is so often a theme in the Bible, yet many Christians do not want to view repentance in connection with our real earthily struggle and preparation through the sacraments that clearly point to the fulfillment and meaning of Old Testament types. 

Metropolitan Hilarion touches on the question of why some aren’t healed physically in the unction service. He says first that everyone can walk away with healing, since it is not restricted to physical but spiritual renewal here and now – the forgiveness of sins and the ability to walk a new life. To the Orthodox, unction always works for the faithful. He explains that glorification in fallen humanity is seen in the healing and in the illness itself because God is in all things. It’s God’s will that “all should be saved” and St. Silouan the Athonite taught to focus our thoughts on that teaching. It’s possible now that God can be glorified within us and in any bad situation, which we find ourselves, taught St. Cyril of Alexandria. Barsanuphius and John of Gaza taught that, “Illness may come from negligence and disorder … It is up to you to be neglectful or prodigal and to fall into those, until you reach the point of correction” (Letters, 521). It’s worth noting again in passing that the New Testament and modern Greek term for “eternal hell” is kolasis, which means correction. Unction might be considered from an eastern perspective a form of fatherly correction for sins committed and in need of a physician’s oil. But maybe not. Symeon the New Theologian taught that illness is the result of corruption because of sin – not believing in God and keeping the divine fast for all life, for more life in Paradise. So, by healing “the inner man” and becoming a new, good person, we begin to reverse everything corruptible in our bodies and soul in the resurrection. We are made aware again that we are corrupt and separated from ourselves, our body and soul fight each other, and we are blind to God. But unction restores those inward realities, which is called the “true health and strength.” The tax collectors, the Galileans, the Samaritan woman, the Centurion, the harlot and the thief all realized their need for inner healing unlike the Pharisees and the rich. The scribes seemed to have viewed physical healing as a means to an end –  the storing up of extra food, wealth, and power on earth – which is what Satan first used to tempt Christ during his forty days in the desert.

The oil has powerful imagery in the New Testament. It’s especially connected when the harlot poured out ointment over the Master’s feet and washed him with her hair. We see in this story that blessed oil touches both Christ and the sinful person, and it is connected to becoming a good, whole person and humility. Metropolitan Hilarion shows us that all things can become the opportunity for transfiguration and repentance. He teaches, “[I]n Christ suffering is not [always] removed; it is transformed into victory,” and “The defeat itself become the victory.” All suffering can have meaning and can become our personal proclamation and entrance into the kingdom of God, to inaugurate our victory in Christ. The unction service itself contains Epistle and Gospel readings. The healing of the Canaanite woman’s possessed daughter and Good Samaritan are images that connect holy oil to the spiritual realities that help us to become aware of our need for forgiveness of sins. 

Metropolitan Hilarion teaches that “…every sacrament is linked with the Eucharist.” The gifts of the mysteries make both the priest and the people holy, and the mysteries are important in drawing us together into one body or community – a communion of people in Christ. When we are healed, we become communal people, and we are healed in the community of the faithful. Without the mysteries there is no lasting community or substantial communion. The next chapter discusses marriage and the service of matrimony more specifically – a sacrament like the others that forms parishes, cities, and communities. Marriage is one of the deepest of mysteries that is made holy in the Eucharist. Love is the greatest of gifts, and it requires at least two people to exist. It is not good to be alone because there is no love in self-love or isolation from all communal activities, but it’s only found in other persons.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 5: Holy Orders (Ordination)

Metropolitan Hilarion focuses on the mystery of holy ordination, of which there are several ranks, and its history. Three basic sacred rites exist in Orthodoxy: the deaconate or servers, the priesthood, or the presbyters (elders), and the bishops who overseer a local church. There are a handful of other important ordinations also discussed in this chapter. One of the major criteria for determining if a church is authentic or apostolic in succession is to look at its ordination history from the Old Testament through the successive Church.

The Jewish people practiced the “laying on of hands” (Gen.48, Num.27, Deut. 34, Num. 8). The Orthodox Church has been fulfilling this covenant as “a gesture of healing” and it is how the Holy Spirit is imparted to holy men who are given the power to heal, pray, and forgive sins as we learned in the previous chapter. Like a procession, God the Father sent His Son and His Holy Spirit, and He sent his disciples as apostles, and the apostles sent priests, bishops, deacons to us in the Church for our benefit. This spiritual power isn’t bought or sold like a company. Holy ordination isn’t exactly like the worldly institutions that many people criticize. One of the earliest forms of ordination was mentioned in the Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus of Rome who said that they were “elected by all the people.” The laity were involved as well as other positions of responsibility in the Church. It continues, “when his candidacy has been declared and accepted by all, he must come to the church on a Sunday together with the attending bishops and presbyters.” Because the Church operates out of love, consensus and agreement are key marks of expressing unity, while maintaining that there still exists a level of seniority that is wise to observe to maintain order – another expression of spiritual unity and love. It’s popular in some conservative circles to say that “the Church is monarchy, not a democracy.” But the Church operates in the system of the mysteries. Worldly rulers use fear and ideology; they use rationalism or individual sentiments. The situation wasn’t exactly an absolute monarchy since the candidates for ordination are also “named and approved” by “the whole people.” Then, the assembly would give their agreement to the candidate for ordination. The laity’s amen was required at that time and that was the situation in the 4th c. AD. 

Metropolitan Hilarion points out that the prayers of the Church read by the holy orders speak of the Holy Spirit coming to purify, give the next generation of hierarchs “exact knowledge of things” and unity with the brother of bishops. The Holy Spirit comes in the Orthodox Church to fulfill authority to heal, forgive, power to change, to fulfill unity of mankind, and to rule over the evil creatures. He mentions that the priesthood is a divine calling, not that someone approaches “by one’s own favor.” Holy ordination is a divine institution of the ministry of opposing the oppressing forces of evil. The brotherhood of the clergy is a ministry that is based on love for each other and the people. 

There are other appointed ranks such as reader and subdeacon. The reader is the keeper of “sacred books and lighting oil lamps.” This rank was usually put in charge of teaching and catechetical functions, and the bishop appointed him also with the cheirotonia (the laying on of hands). So, the liturgical functions and responsibilities as well as the history of the hierarchy in Orthodoxy isn’t merely passed on by books, by word of mouth, or empty customs but by the physical touch of hands and the power of the Holy Spirit comes, which ought to cause Pentecostals and transcendentalists intense envy because of the confidence and blessings we have in such divine rites. What’s the reason for hierarchy? At the ordination of the rank of bishop, the pray read, “… the Grace Divine, which always health that which is infirm, and supplieth that which is wanting …” If God doesn’t act directly through our actions in faith, who could rightly claim to have the truth? The Holy Spirit gives us the abilities and endurance we need to accomplish our pilgrimage to paradise. The rite of tonsure is done to ordain a reader, and it’s a sign of spiritual service. Another rank that literally means “service” in Greek is the deaconate. Like the bishops and priests, deacons too are ordained inside the altar. Their ordination takes one of the greatest mysteries of the Church – holy marriage. They become “betrothed to the Church” and they become Christ’s bride. Men are called to love and serve first the women in integrity, fidelity, dedication, and martyrdom. This is the love of the apostles and of Christ. So, all authority is ministry, all of this is founded on the rock of Christ and His sacrifice. 

There is a “naming rite” in the ordination of bishop and presbyter as well as a hierarchical oath that is taken that harken to a time when the people used to be more involved in elections. This naming is important because it tied a bishop to a specific city that is also named. Every church is linked to a city or place of habitation. That is another wise gift from the Holy Trinity that each bishop has its own area of service and focuses on ministering to one’s own people to avoid disunity and strife, but also so that each place can receive the attention and care that they need with some level of human stability to gain spiritual nourishment. The Holy Spirit is again intimately involved in the ordination of the clergy. The prayers of ordination read, “Blessed are thou, … sending down upon them thy Holy Spirit, and thereby catching the universe as in a net.” The Orthodox Church fulfills the Old Testament promise that all nations will be gathered under God’s blessings and that the confusion of tongues will be reversed by calling all nations to unity under one the authority of the Church through the bishops’ inter-communal love. The hierarchy of the Orthodox Church transmits the mysteries to the world, and it’s an office and ministry that is like the soul of the world who loves the body of the world. Many today in our culture search for transcendence. Some call it more traditionally mother earth, the world soul, and scientists are now calling it the universal mind or consciousness. Orthodox Christians and the clergy are the mind, heart, and body of the Holy Spirit working in the world toward a new creation. The incarnation makes ordination supernatural every time it happens. The next mystery to be discussed that takes hands on application is called Holy Unction that can heal the pain and the penitent of heart in these times. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 4: Repentance (Confession)

Repentance is also known as the mystery of holy confession. English uses penance, reconciliation, and confession to signify repentance. None of them directly imply a “change” like the Koine Greek term metanoia, which means literally to change one’s mind or heart. Penance and repentance are the Latin words for legal punishment, feelings of sorrow, and pain from the verb poenitire. Penitent could have been related to the pain of sin, the penalty that weighs heavily on the soul, and its consequences. That sin ought to make us feel some sorrow isn’t a topic that Metropolitan Hilarion emphasizes here. But turning your mind toward a desire, a goal, and a new life with purpose and determination is another aspect of repentance, since sadness can be easily turned into despair, dejection, and sloth that blocks change. The word reconciliation that is often used by Roman Catholics today means to restore. Our confession is most like exomologesis. It indicated that a Christian confessed one’s sins before a priest or bishop or earlier in the assembly before baptism. It’s the term that the New Testament and the fathers of the Church who wrote in Greek used for this sacrament. Tertullian, who wrote in Latin, still used the term exomologesis, and he refers to this confession of sins to a priest as “the handmaiden of repentance.” There are many forms of repenting. Confession of sins helps us to become humble before the Name of God who secretly knows all our faults and sins already. His name heals our wounds and weaknesses from sin. It would seem unhelpful to view confession as sacrament only needed once in a lifetime. It would also seem harmful to view it as a complete restoration without also partaking of the other mysteries that cleanse us. Baptism removes sins, the Eucharist is purifying fire and light, and confession helps to restore us by humbling us back into our Adamic nature lost in Paradise. God gave us speech, words, language to communicate the hidden spiritual reality under our bodily image of God. And this expression of humility helps us to receive the Eucharist and the Eucharist helps us to change, and to turn our minds back to God, which is what our original nature is supposed to do – to understand with reason this material world but to live beyond it in our noetic home with the Holy Trinity. All will make a confession at the end of time at the universal resurrection. Whether we acknowledge God’s Name in joy and love, or, in sadness and pain is a spiritual work we must engage in completing during our earthily existence. In his writing On Repentance, Tertullian teaches that “the craters of volcanoes” vent in the habitation of our heart, where we ultimately confess His Name. He teaches that out of the heart blasts fiery passions. But since angels are not creatures with a physical body like ours, nor do we have a purely spiritual nature like theirs, the Hell for them might be different from the hell for humans who suffer from “repenting in vain” as some fathers taught. The fathers teach that the demonic creatures have immediate access to doing what they think unlike humans who live in time, space, and earthily bodies. 

 In the Old Testament, there is plenty of typology linking confession to the Orthodox mystery. The evil Babylonian King makes exomologesis and then he is restored. The parting of the Red Sea is a type of confession, and this tragic rejection of it is reflected in the event when the waves destroyed and collapsed on the pursuing Egyptians. The liturgical texts teach that, “Adam, restored by his confession to his own paradise, is not silent.” On the Day of Atonement, there was a confession of sins that the Jewish people made, “We have sinned.” The scapegoat was driven into the wilderness who bore the sins of Israel. If Christ is the scapegoat, the antitype to the type or the image of the reality, and Christ died for our sins, it would follow that we would need to confess our sins as much as we need to be cleansed by baptism. Protestants only view baptism as the required rite of entrance, however, they lack the full means of repentance during a lifetime. Metropolitan Hilarion writes that “the entire spiritual system” of repentance is found in the mysteries of baptism-chrismation and the eucharist. If the types of baptism are recognized by our brothers and sisters outside the Church, why wouldn’t confession and the Eucharist and holy orders also be equally recognizable? To prove that there isn’t anything “extra biblical” about Orthodox mysteries, we find it in Numbers 5:6-8, 2 Samuel 11-12, Psalm 51/50, and Isaiah 1:11-18. If we use the type without the reality (antitype), then there is no use of the type for one’s benefit. 

 The starting point of repentance is a change of mind, of confessing one’s brokenness and the loss of home, gifts, and the blessings of God. The preparation for Pascha is about focusing on exercising “the art form of repentance” and how to desire to “return to the Father’s house” — Alexander Schememann teaches. We do not merely admit we sin, but we confess that we need to change continually until our departure from this life. The Didache mentions confessing sins in church, and many New Testament passages speak of it as well (Matt. 3:6, Acts 19:18, 1 John 1:9, Luke 3:8-14). Some think that Christ’s Cross somehow replaces our need for confessing our sins and being remitted of them. The remission of sins is a sign of spiritual authority that was given as a gift to the apostles and then given to the elders and bishops to govern the Church and to heal us as well as “to bind and loose” that includes the remission of sins. God forgives the sins; the priests and bishops are witnesses to our confession directly to God. In the Six Books on the Priesthood, it teaches that “What priests do on earth, God ratifies above. The Master confirms the decision of his slaves.” God gives the power to forgive, and “they who have the Spirit of God … remit and retain sins.” To eliminate the mysteries of chrism, eucharist, holy orders and confession would be a denial that these types have been fulfilled in Christ, that the Old Testament types have failed to become a reality in our life through the Holy Spirit given to the apostles, given to the hierarchy, given to the people.  

He outlines several layers of confession in the Church over the course of its history. Is confession required before receiving each communion? Metropolitan Hilarion notes that the 2nd - 3rd c. texts or later do not provide us with the view that it would be required or mandatory before each communion. We know that a “general confession” of prayers read by a priest preceded the Eucharist. It’s not a personal confession of what is committed in the heart or public denials of the Church. We know that there was a confession made at the “public assembly” before the bishops at baptism or after apostasy and other “serious sins.” This form seems to have existed when numbers of Christians hadn’t reached the same capacity as did under the Roman empire in Constantinople and the Mediterranean world. We also know that there was a “secret confession” that was revealed privately to a priest who had the authority and power of forgiveness to “absolve sins.” It is practical too because we ought to only tell trustworthy people our sins to protect ourselves and continue to seek healing. We know that sometimes “transgressors” would be summoned to a “tribunal of several presbyters [priests] or a bishop sitting in the presence of the presbyters.” So, there was general confession in liturgical prayers said regularly, public confession at baptism, private confession to reveal one’s thoughts and become healed before entering the new creation at our death, and tribunal confession that handled public, serious sins like apostasy, adultery, murder, extortion, heresy, etc. A rite or established, instituted order of confession probably didn’t yet form until later. But the typology has clearly existed in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church’s history. 

In the 3rd c. AD, many Christians apostatized under the persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius. When these Christians desired to be restored to the faith and confess their apostasy, the Church helped them by establishing “the office of penitentiary presbyter” for those who “fell after baptism.” Sozomenus teaches that “impeccability is a divine attribute, and belongs not to human nature; therefore, God has decreed that pardon should be extended to the penitent, even after many transgressions ….” The Church has shown itself to be loving and practical when it comes to confession. It realizes that we sin and need to make amends for it, we need humility, and that complete negligence and the forgetting our need to confess sins leads to a form of pride that the Orthodox ascetics constantly stress. Some priests were appointed to hearing confessions and helping Christians mend their life. Public confession became “irksome” with the growth of Christianity in the East. Over time it even caused scandals and divisions publicly. General confession through the reading of prayers by the priest wasn’t considered adequate for full healing of one’s private thoughts and sins. In Orthodoxy, repentance is about the change of heart. The revealing of one’s true self, who is the worldly pagan, the thief, the tax collector, the greedy money maker, the harlot, the exiled murderer, the unclean that lives within all of us, that needs to come out before God for our sake, but not for the sake of the priest’s power, not for our ego, and not for God’s obsession with our sins.

Orthodoxy usually does not focus on categorizing sins into “mortal and venial.” The former is required to be confessed before holy communion while the latter does not bar one from holy communion in modern Roman Catholicism. St. John Cassian, not mentioned in this chapter, reflecting the mindset of the Desert Fathers teaches that anger over small actions and situations and obsession over small amounts of possessions isn’t better than worrying over the larger matters, since one still has not gotten rid of the same attachments of the heart. Of course, it’s worth noting that there are references to grouping sins according to “smaller sins” versus “offenses” like apostasy, adultery, murder, sorcery, and extortion. So, private confession seems to have been for the revealing of “smaller sins” that are “nearly unavoidable” while the “office of penitentiary presbyter” was a kind of confession that helped restore Christians after certain serious, public lapses in faith. The last section of this chapter deals with the relationship between God, holy orders, and the power of forgiveness in the mystery of holy confession. The prayers of the Church are firm that “Christ Himself receives confession” while the priesthood witnesses our confession to God just as we do not baptize ourselves and the baptizer doesn’t own the power of the cleansing waters, but we trust in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to work within us a spiritual change. Another major reason we need an ordered, regular confession to a priest or spiritual father is because we ought not to try to evaluate our spiritual progress objectively, the priest Alexander Elchaninov teaches. The next chapter discusses the mystery of holy orders also called the hierarchy, since there is also great treasures and mystical meaning in the ordination of service to the Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 3: Eucharist (Communion)

This chapter focuses on the theological meaning of the Eucharist and the practices of preparation for this mystery. The Eucharist is more ancient than the New Testament. Attempts to reject this mystery based on biblical scholarship and interpretation will not hold up to the evidence in support of this mystery. Since the Church came from Christ who is the Eucharist, Orthodoxy has a “eucharistic ecclesiology” that is reflected in the communion of bishops from apostolic succession. So, the hierarchical structure, canons, dogmas, practices, traditions of the Church come from this eucharistic source. Bread and wine were types in the Old Testament connected to the priesthood, to the blessedness of life, symbols of plenty and creativity, symbols of joy and gifts from the Creator. Melchizedek in Genesis is a type of Christ who began his ministry by supplying and drinking wine at the wedding at Cana. 

The holy fathers of the 2nd c. have taken much of their theology of the eucharist from Christ’s discourse “on the bread of life” to his disciples, and they understood typology and allegory as evidence for the eucharistic life of Christians. St. Ignatius the God-bearer spoke to the Ephesians about the giving thanks to God – meaning the Eucharist. He also taught that heretics abstained from the eucharistic altar, since they didn’t believe that the bread and wine truly became the Body and Blood of Christ. Christians have also always emphasized that they share “one eucharist.” The principle isn’t that there must be “one bishop” over other bishops to celebrate “one eucharist” but that “one eucharist” is celebrated by each bishop under the unity of the Eucharist Itself, which makes everyone in communion with each other. Other forms of authority or unity developed in other Christian groups haven’t accepted this form of eucharistic ecclesiology in practice or theology. 

St. Ignatius the God-bearer writes to the Romans saying, “I desire his blood for my drink, which is incorruptible love.” Love is the single driving force behind Orthodox Christianity and the impetus for all practices and traditions that help us discover again our “desire” for the eternal love of God and love for all people. In a brief discourse on the Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, Alexander Schmemann taught that man’s negative spiritual condition is “unable to see the light and to desire it.” Many psychologists and neuroscience researchers, like Marc Lewis, who has studied brain addictions, have understood that our basic human problem is that we all tend to go for the low-hanging fruit; we desire the drug, the fix, the crave of life’s pleasures because they are easy to grab in the manner of the animal kingdom. But sadly, we get stuck and learn to run in a cycle of sinful passions that we call bad habits that result in the loss of the sensitivity to see spiritually, to love others, and desire what is good for us. The Eucharist is the heavenly food we really wanted, and God is giving it to us now and forever. So, our deeply broken world isn’t rooted primarily in a problem of “the brain” but something deeper that the Church has called the heart, the noetic realm where we store up all our longings and memories and learning. The Eucharist rewires our desires and heals the brain too. The Eucharist also dogmatically “pledges to us the universal resurrection,” says Metropolitan Hilarion in line with the patristic teaching on holy communion. In Against Heresies section 5.2.3, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Gaul taught that, “… as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the use of man, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ, so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at their appointed time …” Historically, there really isn’t any “church fathers” that Christians can say didn’t believe in the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood of Christ. Any reading of church history must confront this reality of the Eucharist as taught and practiced by Orthodox Christianity. St. John Chrysostom taught that Christians must receive Christ “with burning hearts, all fervent, all aroused.” Desire makes people do things beyond their ability and act crazy for what is wanted. He taught that would be the worthiest way to receive Christ in the Eucharist, with a “trembling awareness” and “ardent love.” The holy fathers also teach that our beauty is being restored through the eucharistic liturgy. St. John Chrysostom also taught, “Consider that we taste of that Body that sits above, that is adored by Angels, that is next to the Power that is incorruptible …” We are not only joined to Christ who is surrounded with the angelic ranks and the Most-Holy Theotokos, but we are joined with each other. The “Christian race” is not just a metaphor, but we literally become one blood and form a new “kinsfolk” with Christ. So, matter isn’t neutral or inert like scientists assume. But the flesh is nourished by the Spirit, as St. John the Apostle teaches. Bread and wine are not common elements in the Eucharist, although we see it physically. St. John Chrysostom taught that “to these materials substances, however, he united his divine nature, that through them we might be joined to the Divinity.” The Eucharist isn’t an image, type, or mere symbol. The Eucharist is Christ’s deified body, and we rise to what is supernatural through the natural, out of “human weakness.” We do not partake of God’s essence. But we do partake of the Eucharist that is likened to light and fire. Sin is a spiritual problem as much as a body problem. Through eating sin entered the world, and through eating sin is washed away and we are made whole. The struggle for wholeness is also found in the mystery called holy confession that helps us repent and return to the lost home and the lost peace of the Father. The next chapter discusses what repentance is when it’s lived within the mysteries. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 2: Baptism and Christmation

The Epistle to Diognetus is an ancient Christian and poetic text. The author distinguishes the worship of the Jews and Gentiles with the way of the Christians by teaching and practice. History shows that Christians are to the world as the soul is to the body of a person. The soul loves the flesh, but the flesh hates the soul. Christians, then, too are despised by the world while at the same time they show great love and heartfelt yearning for the salvation of the world. The incarnation makes it possible to reunite the body and soul since Christ became the perfect man and God. History “seeks to persuade, not to compel us” as God has done by allowing historical patterns of typology and actual events of the antitypes to be set before every generation because God is all-loving. He doesn’t need to come in pomp, but He willed to come in humility to convince us that He is the true God and the Savior and the Lover of Mankind so that we can arrive at faith in the Word made Flesh. History and typology help us to see our lost home and our lost beauty that is only in the kingdom of the God. When we can experience that and come to this conclusion, we begin to enter baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist with our own“bright sadness.”

Metropolitan Hilarion introduces an important term to the discussion of the baptismal cycle and mysteries of the Church. The holy the fathers of the Church used a term not found, even despised, by the classical Greek philosophers. They referred to the type as the image or the first image (prototype) and the antitype as the reality or what represents the type. So, the fathers speak of Christ as the antitype of Adam, or the Eucharist as the antitype (the reality) of the Mannah from heaven. Both were miracles from God. Metropolitan Hilarion translates antitype as “sacramental representation.” That description doesn’t convey merely symbolism but the symbol in the source just as Christ became Man – the image united and brought back to the divine and spiritually infused life that was lost. To view the liturgical life of the Church and its rites as lacking efficacy on the spiritual condition of its members is to return to a Judaizing worldview, the Gentile path of science and philosophy, and the old fallen world of symbols – just idols without power. The mysteries point to the Old Testament types that specifically followed an image of inner spiritual renewal, not just symbolic acts, and rituals. Speaking of types and antitypes isn’t a comparison between real and not real. It belongs to a continuous reality and fuller, brighter meaning when we live in the mysteries. St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught that, “… and all things happen to you in images, since you are the images of Christ.” Typology and antitypes form the language of how to speak about communion and mystical indwelling and rejuvenation of the universe through the work of the All-powerful Creator. The communion of type and antitype – God and man – is what we can do in the mysteries of the Orthodox Church. The type is the beginning, and the antitype is the completion. So, the new creation must have a beginning and completion forever. St. Hippolytus of Rome taught that “the action is done on the body, the effect is spiritual.”One of the best illustrations of type and antitype is the relationship between St. John the Forerunner who baptized with water for repentance of sins and the baptism of Our Lord and Master whose baptism will be “in fire and in the Spirit” for the remission of sins and repentance, which begins the formulation of the historical order of the service of baptism and chrismation. These mysteries and typologies are fundamental in understanding how we enter the Church and remain living. It’s worth noting that many Jewish people accepted baptism by John, but many of the religious scribes did not repent and accept John’s baptism that was a type prefiguring both the Old Testament washing of sins and Christ’s baptism that would be given as a command to the apostles. 

These mysteries help prepare us to live in the kingdom of God where we will see Christ as the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. Catechesis was a learning process that preceded and continued after baptism in Christianity. The Epistle of Diognetus taught in Chapter XII that “For neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure without life.” Seeking instruction in the mysteries and repentance and virtue is an ongoing struggle, since we have “declared war” at our baptism to fight against a cynical Evil creature and his darkened followers. The war begins within our own members, and it continues to radiate in the web of interrelationships. A regular time for focusing on catechesis became customary during Great Lent, but anytime could have become an opportunity for learning. St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught that there is some instruction before baptism that is useful, but that the Holy Spirit enlightens us to understand the mysteries after baptism. Knowledge is important, but it must not have been criterion for entering the Church. What was expected of catechumens was to lead as best they could a moral life of struggle, as St. Hippolytus of Rome taught in the 3rd c. AD. The mysteries give us knowledge. St. Justin the Philosopher taught that, “So that we should not remain children of necessity and ignorance, but become sons of free choice and knowledge, and obtain remission of the sins we have already committed, there is named at the water, over him who has chosen to be born again and has repented of his sinful acts, the name of God the Father and Master of all.” This washing or baptism is called “illumination” and “initiation.” A longer catechesis is also mentioned in the Apostolic Constitutions for baptism those who will be, “instructed …in the knowledge of the unbegotten God.” Instruction included the New Testament teaching on Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension. In the apostolic period, catechetical instruction didn’t end but increased after baptism. The important place of catechesis begs the question of why it isn’t considered a rank or mystery of the Church as well. Teachers are mentioned in the New Testament. No rite or laying on of hands seems to exist for this ministry in the Church. Catechetical discourse like Christ’s discourses seems also to be the natural way that Christians educate each other and grow together in spiritual knowledge and faith. Other forms of religious education include didacticism, most often seen in the preaching and biblical scholarship of the Protestant worldview or the Classical Greek period in Hesiod. Another kind is the dialectical method that belongs to the scholastic tradition of Medieval and modern Roman Catholicism and is linked also to the common Greek philosophical tradition of disputation. Orthodox Christianity doesn’t seem to rely on either didacticism like that of the sola scriptura and Protestant bible study or the dialectical method, which requires two opposing viewpoints to arrive at the truth — a legacy also of the Enlightenment in our times. The New Testament only uses Greek terms for “discourse” and “narrative,” not language that belongs to the realm of dialectic or didactic methods. 

Naming is an important ritual that happens before baptism. Names are like the divine because God created the world through the Word, and we are also endowed with words, and we are given names to identify our personality that represent our “mystical symbol.” We do not use names out of vanity, magic, or superstition. Metropolitan Hilarion quotes the scriptures, “as his name is, so is he” in 1 Samuel 25:25. Naming meant changing allegiance, a closer relationship, being subject to God. We are name-receivers and God is the name-changer. Worldly aspirations that aren’t pleasing to God are described in the Old Testament as people who desire “to make a name for themselves,” who wish to find transcendence without God’s strength. In Orthodox tradition, there are saints who watch and are chosen on behalf of the whole family, and they celebrate his or her name day by a feast with offerings of bread and wine in the nave. 

If there were an Orthodox approach to studying the humanities and philosophy of the West, it might be what Metropolitan Hilarion refers to as the recovering of our “humanness” in receiving the mysteries of the Church and carefully reading liturgical and hagiographic texts as well as the discourses our holy fathers have left to us. The effect of the mystical life is the renewal of our image and nature to loveliness and an aurora-like light. The Eucharist is the thanksgiving for such a transformation of our body and soul. The next chapter discusses the mystery of holy communion.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol V, Chp 1: Sacraments in the Orthodox Understanding

In the preface of Volume V, Metropolitan Hilarion describes the goal of writing his five-volume work. Orthodox Christianity is presented as an “integrated worldview” in a systematic way. In Greek, the word systema meant a literary composition or body of literature. By composing the parts to the volume, he gives his readers a schematization of Orthodox liturgical life and teachings. The Greek word schema we’ve borrowed into our language refers to an appearance, shape, or figure. Metropolitan Hilarion creates an integrated figure from the historical record as well as the lives of the saints and liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church. 

History, Metropolitan Hilarion says, is essential to understanding the Orthodox Church. It is one of the guiding principles of these volumes. The chapters of these books, unlike many other works in the Roman Catholic or Protestant worldview, are not meant to be used as a cross reference, word picture book, an etymological dictionary, or an encyclopedia. The Protestant bible scholar, Philip Schaff, and the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, have attempted to write similar exhaustive works, though still useful. But Metropolitan Hilarion’s goal is not to achieve exhaustiveness but to gain a type of valuable knowledge for the faith of Christians which he calls “understanding.” History is another Greek term we’ve inherited that refers to knowledge or learning that happens through inquiry. It might be like the catechetical method of the earliest Christians. 

The historical elements and sources of Orthodox Christianity are important because they relate to one of the fundamental ways that early Christians understood the Holy Scriptures and Tradition. Israel and the Jewish nation have a history with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The real events, prophecies, laws, appearances of the divine, even the mundane parts that surround the Hebrew Scriptures and Law are all images or types that are completed in the life of Christ Jesus and await a fuller revelation in the future. The Bible is a Greek word that is in the plural meaning “books.” What unifies these various scrolls and texts is the hermeneutic principle inherited from the apostles – that Christ Himself is found everywhere and fills all things. To interpret the Holy Scriptures and Tradition without Christ is only to see the spirit of worldliness in all things – to miss the Messiah. The incarnation is the Word made flesh in historical time. Christ, then, is discovered in the most obvious places in the Bible and where we wouldn’t expect Him to be at all. Some call this kind of reading of scripture allegory or typology. But the historical events and literal details on the one hand and the spiritual, invisible meaning on the other hand are interdependent in the Orthodox Christian worldview; they do not oppose each other on interpretation but work together. Both of those ways are very closely related to each other too. Through history the Church proves to be doing what Christians have always been doing – working toward gaining the full knowledge of God and unity with the Holy Trinity in restoring all things to Christ who is in all things.

Some of the earliest Christian texts in the 2nd c. AD, many of which used to be considered or used as an extension of the scriptures, used allegory and typology together to find Christ in the Old Testament and relate Him to New Testament mysteries, most importantly baptism and the Eucharist. The Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Epistle to Diognetus, Justin the Philosopher (Martyr), and the Shepherd of Hermas use the historical and allegorical understanding of Christianity as opposed to Judaism – often called “Judaizing” in the Bible and in extra-biblical texts – and classical pagan religions and philosophies. Barnabas, for example, makes extensive use of allegory. He shows that the Old Testament never says that God asked for or required sacrifices, whether the blood of animals or people. The prophets, he says, preach the contrary as well as the Psalmist David, who can be said to be the first Hebrew to use allegory in the Psalms to see the typology of Jewish laws, especially in Psalm 51. Allegory and typology – encompassing the spiritual, physical and historical aspects of humanity – form the poetic medium and language of the Bible to speak and teach us about Christ, and how we unite ourselves with the Holy Trinity through the mysteries. Metropolitan Hilarion defines “mystery” broadly like the fathers of the Church to mean the “mystery of salvation” rather than the more specific term “sacramental rite.” 

The mysteries both referring to the way humanity is saved and specific mysteries such as baptism and Eucharist can be understood through allegory and typology. Barnabas identifies the real Isaac, the scapegoat, the red heifer, the serpent on a pole, the calf and the lamb all as types of Christ in real time to teach us what Christ will do in history for us. The Jewish fasting from certain animals was an image of Christians joining themselves to Christ and other righteous people. The birds of prey are lazy people who wait and steal from others. The swine are unthankful and unfaithful people who only beg for food when in need, and they are silent and ignore God when they have plenty in their pin. Pork isn’t inherently or metaphysically unclean to eat; the Holy Apostle Peter was called by Christ to rise and kill these unclean animals for food. What we must fast from is joining ourselves to unclean actions and the lifestyle of unbelievers. Circumcision is another Jewish practice that outwardly will not benefit its adherents by the physical act itself, or ex opere operato. Christ was already circumcised; so, He circumcised the whole nature of humanity, it’s not necessary to continue circumcising men physically. The typology points to Christ who had a pure heart and walked like the cleft-footed animals who “ruminate on the word of the Lord.” Pure animals and circumcision point to the inward change of the heart. The Jewish Temple is spoken of as the “habitation of the heart” where the nous of the person becomes the naos (temple) of God. In Orthodoxy, we make our hearts temples within physical buildings called temples or churches. The patristic tradition, especially seen in the 2nd c. texts, understood images, dietary laws, historical events as pointing to Christ Himself and the kingdom of God that unites humanity and divinity through the Christian mysteries. Metropolitan Hilarion teaches that baptism and Eucharist are the major sacraments that give birth to the nous or heart of individuals as well as to the other mysteries. Through historical typology and the revelation of the divine, we learn and come to a certain spiritual knowledge that convinces us and persuades to believe freely without coercion or violence. That experience of persuasion can be perfected through faith that is given to us from God as a gift to proceed into baptism, the Eucharist, and the rest of the whole mysteries of life and death. Allegory and typology help us to receive, understand, and live the mysteries of the Orthodox Church with Christ at the center of all things so that we can unite ourselves with the Holy Trinity. Where mankind goes, so does the whole of the new creation and the universe. Just as Christ united divinity and our humanity, so now humanity united to Christ reunite creation back to the Creator. That cosmic process happens by pouring water over our bodies in baptism when we make our profession of faith, when we receive holy chrism and we are exorcized, where the presence of the Holy Spirit comes with a blessing of the waters. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol IV, Chp 11: Divine Services from the Beginning of the Apostles' Fast to the End of the Ecclesial Year

The Theotokos, after having prayed, fasted, kept herself pure and chaste in body and mind through the grace and light of the Holy Trinity – she gave birth to Christ in the flesh. The theology in these next series of divine services shows us how the holy apostles, holy fathers, and all Christians become a Christ-bearer (theophoros) and give birth to Christ in the cavernous, noetic heart. Metropolitan Hilarion takes us through the Apostles’ Fast from the second week after Pentocost, which uses the liturgical book called the Pentecostarion, to the last feast of the Church’s yearly cycle of worship. There is a movable fast and feast followed by the synaxis or gathering of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul that marks the end of the Apostles’ Fast. The apostolic preaching was built on Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit starting on Pentecost. In Orthodox iconography, the feast of Pentecost is shown in a way that mirrors Christ’s baptism with the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles. It’s an image and reality of how the Church works, how it remains true and unified and powerful. It shows us how the Holy Trinity wills the message of the Gospel to be disseminated to the world in darkness. Usually, the center seat between Peter and Paul is unoccupied, but Christ the King is figured below and in the center of the image. The holy apostles are arrayed in a semi-circle to show the type of unity that characterizes the Church with the Holy Spirit taking a central role in descending upon each of them equally. That empty seat among the twelve apostles is reserved for the invisible head of the visible Church. Some Roman Catholics might see that as sede vacante but that’s not what it seems to be at all. The Orthodox Church has demonstrated that the reservation of the seat is the preservation of the Church. Sometimes the icon also shows the Theotokos, the Mother of God seated in the center among the apostles; that’s an idea rarely discussed or mentioned. The icon also depicts the apostles in an upper room like Mount Sion or Mount Tabor where Christ was transfigured before the holy apostles Peter, James, and John. 

The Transfiguration of the Lord occurs on August 6 during the Dormition Fast, and it’s among “the Great Twelve” feasts. It was chosen at this time because of its link to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord. The Transfiguration was transferred to the summer so that it doesn’t happen during Great Lent but during the forty days before the Exaltation of the Cross. This feast celebrates “the uncreated divine light” that appeared as the glory of God. Christ has not changed. Christ was never isolated or separated from God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The divine light is experienced as an energy of the Holy Trinity that gives us “unwavering faith” and strength to endure; it abolishes doubts and fears. The poetic Menaion teaches us “… that Thou art truly the Radiance of the Father” (Transfig., Matins, Kontakion). The holy prophets foretold of Christ and the uncreated light. The Orthodox are unique in understanding the difference scripturally and theologically that we experience this divine uncreated light as God’s energy, not His hidden and unknowable essence. This teaching is important for our salvation because we imitate how the apostles and the Theotokos were filled with grace and the Holy Spirit and divine light, and they were unified to the Holy Trinity. We’re not interacting with God through a created object called grace, but we are deified and united through Christ’s divinity and humanity that was made possible through the incarnation and the Mother of God. We can bear Christ and Christ can bear us. This reality wasn’t invented by hyper-mystical monks on Mt. Athos, or an ideology called “Palamism.” The Athonite monks are imitating Mary the Mother of God. It’s entirely scriptural, traditional, and true by ascetic experience. We become “receptacles of glory” just like the Theotokos models for us who was born with natural weakness of human nature, who fell asleep and was taken up to Christ in her body and soul. The Transfiguration also connects Mount Tabor to the Old Testament Mount Sinai. Christ has shown us, “the nature of man, arrayed in the original beauty of the image” (Menaion, Transfig., Great Vespers, Aposticha). Sinai was dark and thundering, but Tabor was shining with gentle light. While there was nakedness, death, barrenness, fire, and the cross on the one hand, on the other hand there is victory, life, glorious robes, and radiance. Only the Holy Trinity can encompass or go beyond what we call “good and evil,” and bring eternal value on all negative values. Only the Cross can teach us that for every bad thing in existence, Christ intersects it with a connecting cross beam, and all opposites will have a trial in the fire and the light. Early in patristic theology, Dionysius the Areopagite also discusses in depth this topic of divine light and divine darkness, and the theology of illumination in the Orthodox tradition. The Cappadocian fathers taught that “the light of Christ is the light of the Father.” 

On August 15, the Dormition of the Most-Holy Theotokos is celebrated as the last of the great twelve feasts of the yearly cycle. September 1 begins the Church’s year with the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. The Mother of God understands how people can quickly become hopeless, since she suffered much in her own life and watched her son die. She stands out in the ecclesial calendar and as a model for Orthodox Christians. The Theotokos is “Orthodox spirituality.” Her prayers have an “unfailing hope.” She is a model for how to live spiritual life and how to depart this world in peace and longing for Christ. Some Roman Catholics and Protestants ask and wonder if the Orthodox Church will ever reunify with them. If we tamper with the Orthodox tradition of venerating the Most-Holy Theotokos, we tamper with our own salvation. If we tamper with Dormition or the Nativity or the Conception of the Theotokos, we tamper with salvation itself. Likewise, if we change up the meaning of the Transfiguration and Pentecost, we eventually change what the Church originally has been. So, if it’s possible to “lose your salvation,” as some say, it could involve how we relate to the Mother of God because she is sitting in the middle of the foundation of the Church Itself and all the holy apostles. Next, Volume V discusses the Sacraments and Other Rites in Orthodox Christianity.