I wonder sometimes who nailed St. Andrei Rublev’s icon of Christ the Savior into the stairs. I think it couldn’t have been a Christ-hater, because it would have been easy to destroy the image along with so many of the icons, vestments, liturgical items and churches that fed the flames during those early Soviet years.

It might have been someone indifferent to the faith, someone who happened to be fixing the stairs and said to himself, “Here’s a board with paint on it.  It’s as good as any.” It might have been someone like that, but it seems unlikely.

For one thing, who could be neutral about religion at that time, when the choices were so clear and the consequences so heavy. For that matter, who could see that face, so full of strength and compassion, and not respond to the Person depicted there? Only someone wearied or hurried or frightened into a blanket of indifference. There were many such people, but when I imagine this unknowable event, that’s not what I see.

I see a believer who turns over a board in a pile of rubble and sees the face of Christ looking at him. He carefully places the icon with the building materials he’s carrying to work on the broken stairs. When he gets there, he glances over his shoulder, reverences the icon one last time, and nails it into place on one of the risers.

For 70 or so years the icon was part of a stairway, kicked, trampled and forgotten until someone found it. It was broken and damaged but miraculously preserved and bearing vertical marks of wear that look like tears.

When I see that icon in the center of the church, I think of the stairs in my house. I run up to get something, run down to go out, run up for this, down for that. If my life were a stairway, sometimes Christ would be as
invisible as if I had turned His face toward the darkness and hidden Him underfoot.

It’s not hatred that put him there, nor the loving protection I’ve imagined in that long-ago Soviet worker, but more like the indifferent middle way.  I’m too harried and hurried to see Him in the midst of everything I do and in the face of every person I meet.

It comforts me that the icon was still intact in the stairway after all those decades. In a way, the story parallels the parable of the Prodigal Son. Christ is not far away, and even if we have turned His face away from us, he knows how badly we need Him, and He returns to us when we are ready to receive Him. And when I return Him to the center of my life, I see that He has suffered the loss on my behalf.

— Jan V. Bear

Author: John
Date: A.D. 95
Location: Island of Patmos, Asia Minor mainland; Roman Empire; the heavenly firmament
Situation: Persecution of Christians by imperial edict — Domitian declared himself to be “Lord and God;” Christians (especially the noteworthy ones) were being rounded-up, arrested, imprisoned, exiled, or executed for failing to express their worship of the emperor: impiety = un-patriotic.
Occasion: Apocalyptic literature arose out of oppression, foreign occupation, and persecution. The use of bizarre and enigmatic imagery (which often hides allusions to the oppressing empire under the guise of a previous enemy such as Egypt or Babylon) helps to veil any references to contemporary historical events and personalities. The present enemy would not readily understand the text, and thus would not respond by escalating its persecution of the faithful. It is possible that even the intended audience did not fully understand the precise meaning of the apocalyptic imagery.

Literary Context:

The overall shape of the Apocalypse of John (set in the context or liturgy & worship):

Intro
Apocalypsis of celestial liturgy introduced
Interlude: Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor
Apocalypsis of

celestial liturgy continued:
breaking of the seven seals w/sealing of God’s servants
sounding of the seven trumpets w/cosmic conflict & Victory of God’s Lamb
pouring of the seven bowls of God’s wrath
punishment & fall of Babylon and pagan nations; victory in the heavens
celestial liturgy concluded: the heavenly Jerusalem; new heaven and new earth

Literary Analysis:

Form: “apocalyptic” (prose, poetry / hymnography; oracles, etc.
Literary Techniques: symbolism, metaphor, verbal repetition, chiasm and other patterns, irony, simile, alliteration, allusionary, allegorical, enigmatic imagery, pseudonyms, cryptic numbers, symbols, and mystical events, etc.
Genre: Apocalyptic genre was most popular from about 200 B.C. until about A.D. 200. It had a profound and pervasive influence in Judaism (the book of Daniel being the archetype) and Christianity (The Revelation to John being the archetype) as an expression of hope in the face of oppression and persecution.

Exegesis:

Verbal icon of liturgy:

• a-temporal celestial (prototypical);
• O.T. Jewish terrestrial — tabernacle and temple (antitypical);
• N.T. Christian terrestrial — universal in time and geography — (antitypical);
• a-temporal eschatological (archetypical)

Recapitulation and fulfillment of the past,

Interpretation of the present,

Revelation of the future,

In order to give hope & encouragement

to the members of the Church

in the face of persecution —

Hermeneutics:

Apocalyptic literature points simultaneously toward the past, the present and the future. It alludes to salvation history from events of ages gone by. It concerns the age in which it was written. It concerns the inauguration of the new age of God’s Kingdom to come. It is equally “applicable” and “relevant” to subsequent times and places (ages and environments) after its initial revelation. Apocalyptic literature is not a simple allegory that can be “translated” to fit a one-to-one correspondence with this or that particular era, setting, or meaning. Apocalyptic literature has special significance for its contemporary world, but it also has a universal meaning:

“The Kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ and He shall reign unto the ages of ages.” (Rev. 11:15)

The purpose of God’s revelation (apocalypse) is to show the whole community of faithful – in the midst of a world gone mad with the sometimes subtle, and sometimes obvious intoxicating, destructive, and fatal machinations of Satan – a glimpse of the true homeland which beckons our return. With such a goal upon which we set our sights and toward which we strive, we are promised strength from God to bear the suffering and hostility of this world in this age, and to emerge victorious on the Great Day of His Appearing.

The “apocalypsis” that St. John sent to the churches of Asia Minor (which were under his oversight) was intended to call his flock to faithful endurance amid raging persecution. By sharing in the visions he was granted, his flock could also find (and share with others) the comfort and encouragement echoed in the message of Psalm 91, “The Lord is God and has revealed Himself unto us” (Ps. 118:27).

 A Collection of Beastly Numbers (Apoc. 13:18)

X / 666Beast Common Denominator
0.00150150… Reciprocal of the Beast
25.8069758… Square Root of the Beast
443556        Square of the Beast
1010011010    Binary Number of the Beast
Route 666     Highway of the Beast
666 mph       Beast’s Highway Speed Limit
666              Biblical Number of the Beast
DCLXVI           Roman Numeral of the Beast
665              Number of the Beast’s Older Brother
667              Number of the Beast’s Younger Sister
999              Number of the Australian Beast
6, uh…, I forget      Number of the Blond Beast
666.0000                Number of the High Precision Beast
00666                   Zip Code of the Beast
666@hell.org            E-mail Address of the Beast
www.666.com             Website of the Beast
1-666-666-6666          Phone & FAX Number of the Beast
1-888-666-6666          Toll Free Number of the Beast
1-900-666-6666          Live Beasts, available now! Only $6.66 per minute! [Must by over 18]
666-66-6666 Social Security Number of the Beast
66.6%            Tax Rate of the Beast
666 Minutes Weekly News Show about the Beast
666o F           Oven Temperature for Cooking “Roast Beast”
666k             Retirement Plan of the Beast
Word 6.66        Word Processor of the Beast
Windows 666 Bill Gates’ Personal Beast Operating System
66.6 MHz         FM Radio Station of the Beast
666 KHz          AM Radio Station of the Beast
666-i            BMW of the Beast

Introduction
In the earliest days of the Church the Lenten Fast was no more than Holy Friday, on which a total fast and abstinence was kept due to the fact that the Bridegroom had been taken from His Bride. Holy Saturday (The Blessed Sabbath from which the Lord rested from all His works) was also observed in an ascetical manner, but the fast was broken with the reception of the Holy Mysteries at sunset…the Vesperal Divine Liturgy. Eventually a five-day period of Holy Week was added to this “triduum” in order to commemorate the final days of the Savior’s earthly life. Then the Saturday commemoration of the Raising of Lazarus and the Triumphal Sunday Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem was celebrated immediately before this.

By the 5th century the preparatory period for Pascha had been extended to include an additional 40 days (in solidarity with the Lord’s 40 days of fasting in the wilderness). This 40 days was meant to be a retreat for the Catechumens who were expected to turn away from every wicked occupation in preparation for their Baptism — a time for them to “leave material things in order to gain spiritual things.” (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Baptismal Instructions)

Since at least the 9th century the Church has added an additional four-week period to our annual Journey to Pascha. With the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Church commences the season of The Lenten Triodion. Although Great Lent doesn’t begin until the Vespers of Forgiveness on Sunday evening we are given a four-week preparation to gear-up for the Great and Holy Fast. As with the Sundays of Lent, this preparation period is also punctuated particular themes each Sunday.

Pride and Humility
The Gospel lesson of the Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14) gives us a verbal icon of humility (and pride). As we prepare for Lent (and for our Lenten confession) all of us would do well to look at our lives in light of this theme — a reality check to address our own humility and pride. It is also at this time that we sing the Matins hymn “Open to me the gates of repentance, O Giver of Life…” There is a general dispensation from all fasting and abstinence during the week that follows — our own version of a pre-lenten Mardi Gras.

Squandering
On the following Sunday we hear the Gospel lesson of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Here the Savior provides us with an example of the consequences of a self-willed alienation, a coming to one’s senses, and a desire to return to one’s true homeland. This provides us with another reality check: How have I wandered away from God and the Kingdom in pursuit of my own will and comfort? At Matins we sing Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon” — the song of exile and nostalgia for home.

Last Judgment
Next comes the Sunday of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). In stark contrast to the popularized concept that the God of the Old Testament was seen as a vengeful God and the Savior of the New Testament is loving and affirming, Jesus Himself tells us that “When the Son of Man comes in glory…he will separate the sheep from the goats…” The goatish self-absorbed head off to eternal punishment and the flock of God’s just and righteous head off to eternal life. Although He lovingly and tenderly identifies Himself with the oppressed “least of the brethren” — bringing peace and reconciliation, the Savior is also the One Who pronounces our ultimate destiny: the joy of Heaven and paradise or the despair of Hell and torment. But that destiny is actually in our hands (and actions and attitudes).

Forgiveness
The final pre-Lenten Sunday, known as Forgiveness Sunday, has as its theme the expulsion of Adam from Paradise. The Gospel passage appointed for Liturgy is Matthew 6:14-21. In this passage, the Lord teaches about forgiveness and fasting. He also reminds us that where our treasure is, our heart is to be found: if our treasure is on earth, then our heart is earthbound; if our treasure is in heaven, then our heart is heaven-bound. It is up to us to decide where we want ultimately to reside. (See the previous Sunday’s theme.) The Rite of Mutual Forgiveness is appointed for this day. This inaugurates the season of Great Lent. Fr. Alexander Schmemann refers to this transition point as a movement of love, reunion and brotherhood. While we ask and receive (and are asked and give) mutual forgiveness, the choir sings the hymns of Pascha — announcing to us the destination of our Lenten journey.

Entering into the Great Fast
Lent is characterized by what the Church calls “bright sadness” — a seemingly contradictory term. Services are sober, somber, quiet, monotonous. Yet as Lent progresses, we sense that this sadness is “bright.” A mysterious transformation is offered to take place within us. As we become used to quieting down and centering-in, we begin to see restored in us a God-given inner stability and equilibrium. Fr. Schmemann writes “What first appears as monotony is now revealed as peace.” What sounded like sadness is now experienced as joy. What was initially felt to be burdensome can now be seen as light and liberating. Monotony and sadness can be transfigured — they are given a new significance.

The Great Fast
Continuing with the investigation into the theme of each Sunday, it is interesting to note that there are two levels of meaning to be found during Lent. The deeper level consists of the ancient themes given by the Church. The superficial (i.e., surface) thematic level is a later layer of commemorations by which each Sunday is now called. As meaningful and important as these newer commemorations are, writes Fr. Schmemann, they are largely independent from Lent. They have been popularized as central themes over the course of the Church’s historical development. While looking at these latter themes we should spend time investigating the deeper, earlier layer: the layer that makes the essential connection between Lent, the preparation of the Catechumens, and the Paschal Mystery of Baptism and Resurrection.

First Sunday: Victory and New Life
The First Sunday of Great Lent, since the 9th century, has been called “The Sunday of Orthodoxy.” This is due to the fact that on the first Sunday of Lent in the year 843, (a purely historical coincidence, having little to do with our Journey to Pascha per se) the icons, frescoes, mosaics and other liturgical graphic art were restored to the churches after nearly 95 years of iconoclasm between 730 and 843 (there was a respite of about 25 years in the middle).

Before the 9th century, the Church commemorated Moses, Aaron, Samuel and the prophets on the First Sunday of Lent. Traces of this can be seen in the lesson from the Epistle to the Hebrews, appointed for the day (11:24 – 12:2) as well as other liturgical material.

At the deepest level, the focus of Great Lent was (and should still be) Catechetical preparation of the Catechumen for the Paschal Mystery of Baptism. Thus, the first and essential theme of the First Sunday of Lent is the proclamation that New Life in Christ comes after a long period of preparation. The Gospel reading for Liturgy that day (John 1:43-51 — a dialogue between Jesus, Philip and Nathaniel) affirm — even promise — that the Catechumens who are preparing themselves for Baptism at Pascha will behold great things: they will lay aside the Old Creation and embrace the New Creation; they will leave behind the Old Aeon and enter into the New Age; they will give up the kingdom of this world, replacing it with the Kingdom of which the Old Testament Righteous, by faith, experienced only as a fore-shadowing. The Catechumens (and all the faithful) will experience not in shadow but in truth. We are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses who urge us to throw off everything that weighs us down and clings to us. We will see the heavens open up and we are to look to the Lord Jesus.

Second Sunday: Perseverance
This Sunday is dedicated to St. Gregory Palamas, (+ 1359). The choice of St. Gregory as the secondary theme is likely due to his theological assertion that the presence of God can be experienced personally by those to whom He reveals himself.

According to Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, an earlier commemoration on this Sunday was of the martyred bishop Polycarp of Smyrna (+ 115).

The ancient (and deeper) theme for this Sunday is discovered in the readings from Hebrews 1:10-2:3 and Mark 2:1-12 (the healing of the paralytic of Capernaum). These readings stress the necessity of closely attending to our salvation, putting faith into action and making the effort progress on the Lenten Journey to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb of God. After two full weeks of Lent, our resolve usually weakens and our focus usually blurs. We are called to stay on task and not drift away from the goal. We are given encouragement that although we have fallen far short of the mark, the Lord offers us forgiveness.

Third Sunday: Through Calvary to the Empty Tomb
The Third Sunday of Lent has as its theme the Holy Cross. In the middle of the Great Fast the Cross of the Lord makes its appearance in our midst and we sing portions of the beloved Easter hymnography. This is a breather, as it were. We are given a slight respite from the somber monotony of the 40 days with a glimpse of the Three-Day Pascha of the Lord. We are provided with a re-sighting and little fore-taste of the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb of God. Metropolitan Kallistos states that there is no separation between the death of Christ and His resurrection: the Cross is an emblem of victory; Calvary is seen in the light of the empty tomb. The Epistle is taken from Hebrews 4:14-5:6 and the Gospel is Mark 8:34-9:1. The hymns for this day remind us that in addition to an instrument of excruciating suffering, the Cross is also the sign of victory, the trophy of godliness and weapon of peace.

Fourth Sunday: The One Who Offers and is Offered
St. John Climacus (7th century), abbot of the monastery at Mt. Sinai is the commemoration made on this Sunday. He was the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, a work appointed to be read during Great Lent which describes the perfect ascetic. It is a book intended for monks, but it has great significance for all Christians.

The deeper theme of this Sunday is found in the readings from Hebrews (6:13-20) and Mark (9:17-31). These passages announce the voluntary Passion of the Christ. They set the stage for Holy Week. In the Epistle we are reminded that (by His Resurrection and Ascension), Jesus the High Priest and sacrificial Passover Lamb, has entered “inside the curtain” of the celestial Holy of Holies, taking us with Him. In the Gospel we hear the Savior declare that He, “The Son of Man” (the messianic title He takes as His Own) will be delivered into the power of men and they will put Him to death — nonetheless in three days He will rise again.

Fifth Sunday: To Jerusalem
As with John of the Ladder on the Fourth Sunday, so also Mary of Egypt (5th century) on this Fifth Sunday — St. Mary is considered to be an ascetic par excellence: the model of all penitents. This is why the season of Lent can be summed up on this Sunday by a dedication to her memory.

But on the deeper level, we now draw to a close the annual catechesis / formation / preparation for the great mystery of the Pascha of the Lord. Hebrews 9:11-14 tells us that the Savior’s sacrifice on the Cross wins eternal redemption for us and His blood (not that of sheep) will purify us from dead actions. Mark 10:32-45 relates yet another prophecy of the Lord’s Passion. The Savior tells His disciples “Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is about to be handed over…they will condemn Him to death…and after three days He will rise again.” He also states that His followers must drink of the cup that He shall drink and be baptized with the baptism which He shall be baptized (i.e., taking up the Cross). Finally, in this passage, Jesus teaches that His disciples must also be servants, for the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

And so we are led though Lent, up to the commemoration of the Raising of Lazarus; the Entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem; the final days of His earthly ministry; His Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. — the subject for another study.

The first hymn is a most beloved song sung on Christmas Eve. It refers to a cave, rather than a stable. This is because the stable / crèche scene actually comes from medieval Italy, whereas the image of the Christ Child being born in a cave comes down to us from the early Church. The gifts mentioned are the very best that can be offered by each category of giver. And the human race offers its very best — the young girl who was the epitome of a righteous Jew of the Old Covenant: one who said “yes” to the archangel. This “yes” resulted in the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and a new act of divine creation (see Luke 1:35 and Genesis 1:2).

The words and images of this hymn lend themselves to much meditation and awe:

What shall we offer You, O Christ, Who for our sake has appeared on earth as a human being? Every creature You have made offers you thanks. The angels offer You a song. The heavens offer You their star. The wise men offer You their gifts. The shepherds offer You their wonder. The earth offers You its cave. The wilderness offers You a manger. And we offer You a Virgin Mother. O God-Who-Exists before eternity, glory to You!

The second hymn reflects a meditation on Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 2, verses 1 – 12. It refers to the Wise Men from the East (Babylon / Mesopotamia) who, though they worshipped the stars, and followed the star to the place where the young child lay, nevertheless worshipped the Incarnate God. Note that myrrh was one of the items used to embalm the dead. There is a profound irony in each of the gifts the Three Kings bring to the infant King of Kings:

When the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, Magi coming from the East worshipped God-made-human. They eagerly opened their treasures. They offered Him precious gifts: Refined gold, for the King of the Ages; Frankincense, for the God of All; Myrrh for the One Who is Immortal. Come, all nations and peoples, let us worship the One Who was born in order that the cosmos might be saved!

The Christmas hymnography of the Eastern Orthodox Church reaches back over 1400 years. These hymns have been sung annually ever since the Feast of the Nativity of Christ was established as we know it today. We look forward each Christmas to the rich texts of the scriptures and the hymns which are so expressive of irony, paradox, mystery and depth.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

- Fr. George

• PRAYERS in time of sickness, suffering, dying and death
• RESOURCES in preparation for dying, death and burial

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Why fast during Advent?

A brief discussion of Nativity Lent

Meditation on a bike ride

This past summer I took a ride on my bicycle down a very steep, serpentine trail through a local cemetery. Zooming down the trail, gaining speed as I went, I quickly realized that if I looked directly in front of me as I maneuvered the turns, I would easily wipe out. I forced myself to look ahead of me by about 15, even 20 — looking at where I wanted to be as soon as I got around the next hairpin turn. By a series of near mishaps, I realized that if I gazed only at the pavement right before my front tire as I took the turns, I was going to end up on that pavement with my bike on the ground, next to me.

There’s a lesson to be learned in that bike ride. It applies to many things in life — in fact it could even be a metaphor for life. But for now, I’d like to apply it to Christmas and Advent: As you ride, keep you eye on where you want to be, not where you are.

Christmas — The Winter Pascha

The Feast of the Nativity of Christ is known to have existed in some form from the middle of the third century. By the fourth century it was often coupled with the feast of the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan — a double commemoration of the manifestation of Christ’s glory (i.e., January 6). Christmas on December 25 was not observed universally until late — the Christian East receiving it from the Christian West around the fifth century, when it was eventually connected with (nine months after) the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25.

Christmas has come to be known as “The Winter Pascha.” Its liturgical shape, its hymnography, its themes are largely taken from the Feast of Feasts (Pascha) and applied and adapted to the incarnation of the Lord: it is preceded by a period of lenten preparation; it calls for a strict fast on the Eve of the Feast; it is followed by a post-festal season (i.e., the “Twelve Days of Christmas” that conclude with Theophany); etc.

Fr. Thomas Hopko, in his book The Winter Pascha (pg. 49) writes: “The Church’s Typikon speaks of the celebration of the Lord’s Coming in the flesh as a ‘splendid Pascha.’ It was Father Alexander who added the adjective ‘winter’ for those of us who celebrate it in the darkness of wintertime, when the light is just starting to shine more brightly and the nights begin to shorten, heralding the victory of Light and Life in the springtime Pascha of the Lord’s Death and Resurrection.”

The Pascha of His Cross was prepared by the Pascha of His Coming. The Pascha of His Resurrection was begun by the Pascha of His Incarnation. The Pascha of His Glorification was foretold by the Pascha of His Baptism. If you were to compare the hymnography of these three feasts, you would immediately see the intimate connection and deep significance alluded to here.

By the way, The Winter Pascha is an excellent book to have and read year after year. It contains short readings for each of the days of Advent that should be incorporated into one’s daily Rule of Prayer.

Advent in the West:

The term “advent” derives form the Latin “adventus” for “coming” (of the Savior) and is an exact equivalent of the Greek word “parousia” — though the Greek term generally refers to the Second Coming.

It is interesting to note that St. Benedict of Nursia (+547) makes no mention of a pre-Nativity fast in his Rule — though he treats the Lenten Fast in great detail.

The first authoritative mention of Advent is at the Synod of Lerida, Spain (524), where it was referred to as the beginning of the Western ecclesiastical calendar.

In 567, the Second Council of Tours legislated that the monks were to fast from the beginning of December until till Christmas. This practice soon extended to the whole forty days, even for the laity. It is said that this custom originated with Celtic monks (who themselves received their spiritual tradition from the monks of Egypt.)

However, the First Council of Macon in Gaul, held in 582, stipulated that during the interval between St. Martin of Tour’s day (November 11) and Christmas, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays should be fasting days. This season was commonly called St. Martin’s Lent because it immediately followed the Feast of St. Martin. St. Martin’s feast was a special day of celebration that corresponded with mardi gras before Paschal Lent.

A collection of sermons by St. Gregory the Great (+604), begins with one for “The Second Sunday of Advent.”

The first allusion to Advent’s being reduced to four weeks is to be found in the ninth century, in a letter of Pope St. Nicholas I to the Bulgarians, and later by an encyclical of Pope Gregory IV (+1085).

Advent in the East:

Oddly enough, there appears to be nothing that documents the Nativity Fast in the Christian East prior to the 900s, where it was only possibly alluded to by St. Theodore of the Studion monastery in Constantinople. He simply spoke of annual feasts and fasts.

It appears that the first mention of a Lenten fast being legislated was not until a Council in Ruthenia (Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1720. The Nativity Fast / Lent as such was a 40-day preparation period before the Winter Pascha. It begins on November 15, the day following the Feast of St. Philip the Apostle and deacon, thus it is often called Philipkova, of St. Philip’s Fast / Lent.

Beyond this, there is little that can be found to spell-out the gradual adoption, development and practices of the pre-nativity season.

The Spirit of Advent Fast

“Fast” means literally to refrain from eating. We break-fast with some food in the morning. “Abstinence” means to refrain from eating certain foods. When we think of lent (nativity, paschal, dormition or apostles) we tend to reduce our image of lent to food and drink. But this is far from what we should do.

The Shepherd of Hermas —

The “Shepherd” or “Pastor” is an allegory. It was written by an individual named Hermas during the first or second century. This book had great authority in ancient times and was ranked with the Holy Scriptures. Though it was considered by some to be controversial (i.e., not “canonical’” it was publicly read in the churches even up to the third century. St. Irenaeus listed it with the books of the Bible. It was included in some copies of the New Testament (especially the Codex Sinaiticus). St. Athanasius mentions it in connection the Dicache, and with many of the Deutro-canonical books of the Old Testament.

Book 2, Similitudes, Chapter 3:

Fasting is very good, provided the commandments of the Lord be observed. Thus, then, shall you observe the fasting which you intend to keep.

First of all, be on your guard against every evil word, and every evil desire, and purify your heart from all the vanities of this world. If you guard against these things, your fasting will be perfect.

And you will do also as follows. Having fulfilled what is written, in the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having reckoned up the price of the dishes of that day which you intended to have eaten, you will give it to a widow, or an orphan, or to some person in want, and thus you will exhibit humility of mind, so that he who has received benefit from your humility may fill his own soul, and pray for you to the Lord.

If you observe fasting, as I have commanded you, your sacrifice will be acceptable to God, and this fasting will be written down; and the service thus performed is noble, and sacred, and acceptable to the Lord.

These things, therefore, shall you thus observe with your children, and all your house, and in observing them you will be blessed; and as many as hear these words and observe them shall be blessed; and whatsoever they ask of the Lord they shall receive.

Roberts-Lonaldson translation — see:

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Shepherd_of_Hermas

Going a step further:

Fasting is not only to give our money and our time — not only what we have, but what we are. It is to give a part of ourselves.

Fasting is meant to be partnered with prayer and attendance at divine services, almsgiving and works of mercy, and confession. This is intended as a preparation of the whole person (mind, body, soul) for the upcoming feast of the Birth of the Savior in much the same way we should prepare properly for the Second Coming of the Lord.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, in his Introduction to the Lenten Triodion writes that the “primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence upon God…to make us ‘poor in spirit,’ aware of our helplessness and of our dependence on God’s aid.” (p. 16)

Fasting is not a simple matter of food and drink. It is moral / ethical as well as physical. True fasting is to be converted in heart and will. St. John Chrysostom stated that when one fasts, one must not only abstain from foods, but one should also abstain from sin: “The fast should be kept not only by the mouth, but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all body parts.” (Homilies on the Statues 3:3-4)

The outward regulations for the Advent Fast are given at the end of this article. But we must not overlook the inward, spiritual significance of the Advent Fast.

Fasting and abstinence, almsgiving, works of mercy, prayer, attendance at divine services, confession — all of these help us in our preparation for the advent of the Savior’s nativity. We are called to cast away the works of darkness (i.e., our self-indulgence) and put on the armor of light. The Church’s liturgy reads: “Make ready, O Bethlehem, for your Savior comes to you…” Our participation in this readying is made by entering into the spirit and the practice of Nativity Lent. We can demonstrate our anticipation and expectation of the Lord’s Advent by what we do outwardly and inwardly.

So, in addition to the gastronomic and culinary “rules, rules, rules” of the Advent season (see below), we should take on specific acts of almsgiving and works of mercy. We should step up our prayer and attendance at divine services. We should do an interior assessment of our lives and come before God in confession.

The possibility of a winter house-cleaning is beneficial on many levels. Whenever we anticipate anything important, we prepare for it. Whether it is vacuuming the rugs and washing the floors before guests come, or it is working-out and training for a half-marathon walk or run, or it is studying and reviewing for a test or exam or annual review, or it is planting bulbs, bushes and flowers in anticipation of Spring — we all engage in preparations.

Advent is just that sort of thing.

And there are plenty of opportunities available here at St. Nicholas.

Hampers will be found in the narthex during the Season of Advent. These are intended to receive new coats, gloves, hats, blankets to be distributed to those in need. St. Francis Dining Hall (which was begun by the Catholic Worker Movement a few decades ago) serves meals every weekend. We have customarily participated in this on the third Sunday of each month. Why not consider making this a weekly discipline in your own life? (These are only two of a multitude of actions we can take to put into practice the admonition given in the Shepherd of Hermas, above.)

There are more services during Advent than would be found during the rest of the liturgical year. At St. Nicholas, we have the Akathist of Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving morning Divine Liturgy. We have a period of Quietude following Vespers on the Tuesdays of Advent. We have pre-Nativity services scheduled on the days immediately preceding the feast.

Additionally, at St. Nicholas there is a specific opportunity for confession following Vespers on Thursdays and Saturdays (as well as by appointment) during Advent.

So whatever your Advent discipline will be this year, may you engage in it to the glory of God and to the up-building of your spiritual life. May it be a blessing not only to those who benefit from your gift of self — may it also be a blessing to you and yours.

So, specifically, Eastern Christians have a 40-day period of fast and abstinence before Christmas, the Winter Pascha of the Savior.

The rules, rules, rules (for food and drink):

Advent begins on the 15th and goes through December 24.

Strictly:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: no dairy, no meat, no fish, no oil, no wine;

Tuesday, Thursday: no dairy, no meat, no fish (but oil and wine are OK);

Saturday and Sunday: no dairy, no meat (but fish, oil and wine are OK);

Except on the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotoks into the Temple, November 21, as well as St. Nicholas day, December 6: no dairy, no meat (but fish, oil and wine are OK);

From December 20 to 23 inclusive only wine and oil are allowed;

December 24 = a strict fast day…so that means: no dairy, no meat, no fish, no oil, no wine (just like Holy Saturday, the eve of Pascha).

Because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14), Christ is truly a human person. As a human, He is truly the “image (literally, “icon”) of the invisible God,” and who has seen Him has seen the Father (Jn 12:45, 14:9; Col 1:15; 1 Cor 11:7; 2 Cor 4:4). Thus, an icon of Christ affirms the reality of the incarnation.

The Holy Spirit speaks through line and color

When one paints an icon, one opens a gateway for God. One opens a window to heaven for us. The Spirit of God speaks behind the lines and colors of an icon, telling the worshipper things the art critic cannot see. In viewing an icon, we should not look at it analytically. We should allow ourselves to be looked at by God.

The icon reveals a borderland

Not unlike the wardrobe and lamp-post as markers of the frontier between us and Narnia, the icon is a borderland of holiness where the completely foreign is brought together with the familiar. Through the icon we come face to face with Christ, with his Mother, with the saints

The icon reveals the great cloud of witnesses

It is the task of the iconographer to open our eyes to the actual presence of the Kingdom of God in the world and to remind us that fellow-citizens of the saints, members of the household of God, the Body of Christ. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1). We are part of the whole Church. This includes the living and the departed at all times and in all places. Icons of the saints are our Christian family picture gallery, but also much more.

The icon reveals a world of mystery

The icon introduces us to a world of mystery — the kingdom of God. Yet at the same time we discover that this mystery is not only “far away” and transcendent. It is also hidden within each of us — closer to us than our own heart; it is immanent. “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk. 17:21) An icon can be a sacramental medium that reveals not only the presence of the Kingdom come into our midst, but also the Kingdom that is within us.

The icon reveals a the Faith

“Icons in our churches and homes are opened books to remind us of God. If one lacks learning or the leisure to study theology, he or she has only to enter a church to see unfolded on the walls all the mysteries of the Christian religion. “If a pagan asks you to show him your faith, take him into church and place him before the icons.” ( St. John of Damascus)

The icon reveals transfiguration

An Orthodox icon is not simply religious art that depicts the subject realistically (as in a snapshot or portrait). The things of this world are transitory and will eventually rot and disappear. The Orthodox icon depicts the subject in a manner that looks beyond this world to the world to come. The icon shows a transfigured humanity — a transfigured world: a world that is “good,” (Gen. 1) spirit-bearing, and even deified (1 Cor. 15:28). This is why icons are sometimes called “windows” to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Father and the Holy Spirit cannot and must not be depicted (“No one has seen God” — Jn. 1:18). However, Jesus Christ, His mother, St. John the Baptist, the Apostles and the saints can be depicted in iconographic form because they themselves were visible in the body.

The icon is liturgical, anamnetic art

The icon exists in a specific context. If divorced from that context, it ceases to be truly itself. The icon is part of an act of worship; its context is invocation and doxology; it is liturgical art. It is not religious or decorative art. It is anamnetic art. By means of the icon, we can be present to God; God can be present to us — the icon is a meeting point encounter / anamnesis; the icon enfolds us; the icon invites us to follow a journey, to engage in a pilgrimage; the icon helps us enter into a new and transfigured world; vision and contemplation becomes participation and communion.

The language of the icon:

• Color; style; line; movement; impassivity; gesture all have significance — laid down very specifically over the centuries.
• Reverse perspective vs. vanishing point — we are the focal point of the icon; we are the reason it has been painted.

Thomas Merton:

An icon is not a painting merely of “our dear friend Jesus” but at once portrays his divinity as well as his humanity; his absolute demands on us as well as his infinite mercy. An icon bears witness to the incarnation. It is a sacrament of his presence. The great theologian affirming the place of icons in Christian life was St. John of Damascus, writing from Mar Saba Monastery in the desert southeast of Jerusalem. In his essay On the Divine Images , he argues:

If we made an image of the invisible God, we would certainly be in error … but we make the image of God incarnate who appeared on earth in the flesh, who in his ineffable goodness, lived with us and assumed our nature; the volume, the form, and the color of the flesh…. Since the invisible One became visible by taking on flesh, you can fashion the image of him who you saw. He who has neither body nor form nor quantity nor quality — being of divine nature — took on the condition of a slave and reduced himself to quantity and quality by clothing himself in human features. Therefore, paint on wood — and present for contemplation — Him who desired to become visible.

Rowan Williams:

The divinity of Jesus is inseparable from his humanity. Nonetheless, his divine life reveals itself through his human nature. It transfigures it. It deifies it. An icon of the Savior does not show a humanity apart from divine life. An icon of the savior depicts a humanity soaked through with divine life. “We don’t depict just a slice of history when we depict Jesus. We show a life-force radiating with the light and force of God. And if we approach the whole matter in prayer and adoration, the image that is made becomes in turn something that in its own way radiates this light and force.” In the icon of the Lord we can see the transfigured and transfiguring reality of Jesus.

Yet, paradoxically at the same time, Thomas Merton:

What one ‘sees’ in prayer before an icon is not an external representation of a historical person, but an interior presence in light, which is the glory of the transfigured Christ, the experience of which is transmitted in faith from generation to generation by those who have ‘seen,’ from the Apostles on down. So when I say that my Christ is the Christ of the icons, I mean that he is reached not through any scientific study but through direct faith and the mediation of the liturgy, art, worship, prayer, theology of light, etc., that is all bound up with the Russian and Greek tradition.

Icons are central to Holy Tradition and are necessary to help protect the Christian dogma of the Incarnation and Salvation, the very essence of our Christian Faith.

When we consider the Incarnation of the Savior, we can see that there is a primary reason for iconography. It is precisely by means of the Incarnation that God enters the material realm to which He gives new birth and life by means of assuming our flesh, so that we, too, become temples and bearers of God (Gen 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19; 15:49; 2 Cor. 6:6).

The Theophany in the Jordan and the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor prefigured the Resurrection of the Savior. In these cosmic events, the Lord sanctifies all matter, which can now serve to represent Him as well as represent the mysteries of salvation and the restoration of the material realm to its originally created intent: theophany and communion.

“God became a human person by nature so that human persons could become divine by grace.” — i.e., the en-fleshment of the Word of God for the en-Wordment of the flesh of humanity — that is, transfiguration and “theosis” of the human person, and by extension, of the whole cosmos. We do not become God but we participate in the very inner life of God.

Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy :

The icon is inextricably connected with the unveiling in the Church’s consciousness of the meaning of the incarnation: the fullness of the Divinity that dwells bodily in Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the man Christ reveals Him in full. An image of the man Jesus is therefore an image of God, for Christ is the Divine-Human. If the material universe and its matter can be sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit…if [through] the water of Baptism [we are granted] forgiveness of sins; if the bread and wine of the Eucharist make present to us the Body and Blood of Christ, then a portrayal of Christ, the product of human art, may also be filled with the grace of His presence and power — may become not only an image but also a spiritual reality. In the icon there is…the gift of a new dimension in human art, because Christ has given a new dimension to humanity itself. Everything in the world and the world itself has taken on a new meaning in the Incarnation of God. Everything has become open to sanctification; matter itself has become a channel of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, from “Eastern Christendom” in Oxford History of Christianity

“To refuses to depict Christ is somehow to doubt the fullness of his human nature. Icons are therefore a guarantee that the incarnation of the Word is genuine and not illusory. By virtue of the icon, we pass within the dimensions of sacred space and sacred time, entering into a living, effectual contact with the person or mystery depicted. The icon is a way in, a point of meeting, a place of encounter.”

No one could describe the Word of the Father,
But when He took flesh from you, O Theotokos,
He consented to be described
And restored the fallen image to its former state
by uniting it to divine beauty.
We confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.

(Hymn for the First Sunday of Great Lent)

St. John of Damascus:

“If you have understood that the Incorporeal One became man for you, then it is evident that you can portray His human image. Since the Invisible One became visible by assuming a human body, you can make a picture of Him Who was seen. Since He Who has neither body, nor form, nor quantity, nor quality, Who transcends all grandeur by the very excellence of His nature; who, being of divine nature, assumed the condition of a servant, He thus reduced himself to quantity and quality by clothing Himself with human features; therefore, paint on wood and present Him for contemplation, Who desired to become visible.” (On the Divine Images, 1:8; PG 94:1239)

St. Theodore the Studite:

“Nowhere did Christ order that even the briefest word be written about Him. Nonetheless, His image was sketched in writing by the apostles, and preserved for us to the present day. So, what is represented on the one hand with paper and ink, is likewise represented on the icon with various colors and different materials.” (Refutation, 1:10; PG 99:340D)

“From the moment Christ is born of a mother who can be depicted, He naturally has an image which corresponds to that of His mother. If He could not be represented by art, this would mean that He was not born of a mother who can be depicted, but was born only of the Father, and that He was not Incarnate. But this contradicts the whole divine plan of our salvation.” (Refutation 3:2; PG 99:417C)

St. Maximus of Tyre (2nd cent),

On the Dispute about Images:

God Himself, the Father and fashioner of all that is, older than the sun or the sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is un-nameable by any lawgiver, un-utterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. And we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and icons of beaten gold and ivory and silver. We use the help of plants, rivers, mountain peaks and torrents, yearning for knowledge of Him. In our weakness, we name all that is beautiful in this world after His nature, just as happens to earthly lovers. To them the most beautiful sight will be the actual outline of the beloved, but for remembrance’ sake, they will be happy in the sight of a lyre, a little spear, a chair, or perhaps even the running ground, or anything in the world that wakens the memory of the beloved. Why should I further examine and pass judgment about images? Let men know what is divine, let them know. That is all. If a Greek is stirred to the remembrance of God by the art of Pheidias, another man by a river, another by fire, I have no anger for their divergences. Only let them know, let them love, let them remember.

St Basil the Great (+379):

Arise now before me, you iconographers of the saint’s (i.e., St. Barlaam of Antioch’s) merits…let me behold this fighter most vividly depicted in your icon. Let Christ also, the Instigator of the battle, be depicted therein…

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE DA VINCI CODE?

Many people are reading author Dan Brown’s latest novel, a work of fiction, as if it accurately portrayed the facts about Christ, the New Testament, the Church and Christian history. But sadly, like one of my son’s roommates at Boston College, many people reading The Da Vinci Code come away from the book with their faith in Christ and the Church shaken. The definition of fiction according to the American Heritage Dictionary:

1. An imaginative pretense.
2. A lie.
3. A literary work, such as a novel, whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.

The confusion about this book begins on the opening page where the author, prior to actually beginning his story, states that: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is so much that is historically false in this book that it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the main characters in the book is an Englishman named Sir Leigh Teabing who is actually the bad guy, the mysterious “Teacher” responsible for ordering the murder of the curator of the Louvre with which the book opens. But Mr. Brown never lets the fast paced action of the book stand in the way of a good lecture and beginning with chapter 55, that’s exactly what the Teabing character delivers. Let’s begin by looking at some of the things that are said there about the Bible and the 1st Ecumenical Council.

THE LORD JESUS, THE BIBLE & THE 1ST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

FICTION: “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven” declares Teabing. “The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not magically fall from the clouds. The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great. In 325 AD, he decided to unify Rome under a single religion: Christianity. Constantine needed to strengthen the new Christian tradition and held a famous gathering known as the Council of Nicea. Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet….a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. Jesus’ establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicea. A relatively close vote at that. Nonetheless, establishing Christ’s divinity was critical to the further unification of the Roman Empire and to the new Vatican power base.

Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned.”

FACT: Although there was a great deal of consensus among the Churches as to what constituted the New Testament well before the Council of Nicea, the first person to list the 27 books that all Christians today accept as the New Testament was not Constantine the Great but Athanasius the Great, the bishop and patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt, in a circular letter to all the Churches in Egypt written in 367AD, 42 years after the 1st Ecumenical Council. It was not Constantine who determined the canon of the New Testament as part of a political power play, but the Church, in the persons of its bishops and teachers.

FACT: We would agree that the New Testament “did not arrive by fax from heaven.” The books of the New Testament were written by the apostles in order to get the story about Jesus straight. This is made clear, for example, in the opening verses of the Gospel of Luke 1: 1-4, where Luke, a friend and disciple of the apostle Paul, states that he wrote his gospel as “an orderly account” of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus after having “carefully studied” and consulting “eyewitnesses.”

Virtually all scholars agree that Luke’s gospel was written sometime between 80 and 90 AD at the latest. Some scholars theorize that his gospel was written even earlier. Mark’s gospel was certainly written earlier, no later than 65AD, probably in Rome, within only a few years of the execution of Peter and Paul during the persecution of Christians under Nero. All of the Gospels proclaim that Jesus was not “a mortal prophet” and the disciples understood that Jesus was far more than just a man. When the disciples are asked by Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” the apostle Peter responds: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” (Matthew 16:16). Nathaniel, another one of the 12 apostles, declares to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49). After Jesus calms a storm and walks on water, the Gospel of Matthew records that the disciples “exclaimed: Truly you are the Son of God!” (Matthew14:33). In fact, Jesus is called “the Son of God” more than fifty times in the books of the New Testament! It would certainly be a surprise to the apostles (including Paul) to learn that they did not proclaim Jesus to be the Son of God and that this had to wait until the 1st Ecumenical Council. It is therefore utterly false to assert that “Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet….a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless” prior to the Council of Nicea. Just the opposite is true: the 1st Ecumenical Council was held in Nicea to uphold the New Testament teaching that Jesus is the Word and Son of God against the false teaching of an Egyptian man named Arius, a priest who taught that Jesus was more than a man but less than God – a kind of super angel. Athanasius, the future patriarch of Alexandria, attended the 1st Ecumenical Council as a young deacon. And, by the way, the vote was not “relatively close” at all. Of the 318 bishops who attended, all but 2 sided with the New Testament and the apostles and not Arius.

FACT: In the 4th century, during the reign of Constantine, there was no such thing as “the new Vatican power base.” This is little more than an anti-Roman Catholic slur, one of many contained throughout the book. In fact, there was no such thing as the Vatican as we understand it today. For Mr. Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, the only Church is the Roman Catholic Church and he reads back into the 4th century the medieval rise and development of the papacy in the West. This is anachronistic. The Vatican, as we understand it today, is the result of the fall of the Roman Empire in western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries, the increasing civil responsibilities of the papacy during the early Middle Ages, the emergence of the papal states and a number of other historical processes stretching over many centuries, long after Constantine’s death. And finally, the modern Vatican state is a creation of the 19th century and the rise of Italian nationalism.

JESUS & MARY MAGDELENE

FICTION: Perhaps the most outrageous and ludicrous assertion made in this novel is the character of Sir Leigh Teabing’s statement that “the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record.” Two reasons are then given for this amazing assertion. First, according to Robert Langdon, the novel’s main character, “Because Jesus was a Jew and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned.” Second, Teabing insists that the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is mentioned specifically in two ancient documents, The Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which he calls, together with the Dead Sea Scrolls, “the earliest Christian records.”

FACT: There is not one shred of evidence accepted by any credible historian stating that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. First, while it is true that “Jewish custom” encouraged marriage, it was not at all unheard of for Jews to practice celibacy. Perhaps the two most famous cases are Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet of the 7th century B.C. who abstained from marriage as a sign to the Jewish people that the end of the kingdom of Judah was near (Jeremiah 16:1-9); and the Qumran community, a proto-monastic sect within Judaism at the time of Jesus responsible for producing and probably preserving the Dead Sea Scrolls so often mentioned in The Da Vinci Code as part of the “earliest Christian records.” Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls, initially discovered in 1947, contain no “Christian records” whatsoever because they are the products of an ancient Jewish community. Rather, they contain – among other things – some of the oldest known manuscripts of the Old Testament. Ironically, the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced by a community of male Jewish celibates, precisely the kind of people Langdon asserts couldn’t have existed within Judaism at the time of Jesus.

FACT: Both The Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene are commonly called “gnostic” gospels by New Testament scholars and historians today. They are pseudonymous works notoriously unreliable as historical documents and in fact contain no historical outline of events in the life of Christ whatsoever, in stark contrast to the canonical New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that clearly speak in historical terms of the birth, baptism, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

FACT: Gnosticism is an umbrella term that modern scholars use to describe a number of religious movements in the ancient Roman world, many of which were not at all related to Christianity, all of which had several common themes: that members of the various gnostic sects had a secret knowledge not available to others; that there were a series of lesser mediating divinities sometimes called Archons, sometimes called Aeons; and a dualistic outlook, an antithesis between matter and spirit, body and soul and a hatred of the physical world that was often believed to have been created not by God but by a lesser, evil demigod to imprison the souls of human beings. None of these beliefs is Christian.

To take only one example from The Da Vinci Code, The Gospel of Philip cited by Teabing as proof that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married was produced at the end of the 3rd century AD, almost two hundred years after the Gospel of John, the last of the four New Testament gospels to be written. It is hardly part of “the earliest Christian records.” Scholars today agree that it was produced within circles faithful to the teaching of a man named Valentinus, an Egyptian gnostic teacher who taught in Rome between 135 and 168AD and who is one of the few gnostic teachers whose subsequent disciples – Ptolemaeus and Markus – and theological views we know anything about.

Their Christian contemporaries in the ancient world, like St. Irenaeus, the bishop of the city of Lyons in what was then the Roman province of Gaul but is today France, wrote a series of books refuting the teachings of Valentinus, his disciples and other gnostic teachers, as well. These books, like The Gospel of Philip, have survived to this day and I, as a seminarian, had to read both these Gnostic documents and the response to these documents by various bishops and teachers of the Church like Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria.

THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

FICTION: “Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans,” the Teabing character declares. “Originally,” Langdon adds, “Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration of the sun. To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god’s weekly tribute – Sunday.”

FACT: Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of pure and simple fact, the New Testament records quite clearly that Christians gathered for worship on the day of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the day after the Sabbath (Mark 16:2) or the Lord’s Day (“Kyriake” in the original Greek) as it is described in Revelation 1:10. This ancient practice is also referred to in Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2. Furthermore, a number of post-New Testament writers like St. Ignatius of Antioch (executed in 115AD) and St. Justin the Martyr (executed in 155AD) to name only two, confirm the practice of Christians gathering for worship on Sunday. Constantine “shifted” nothing. All that Constantine did in the year 321AD was grant legal status as a holiday within the Empire to a centuries-old apostolic practice of the Church. But we also need to look at the question of language. It is true, as the Langdon character asserts, that Sunday is indeed the “Day of the Sun” in English. And Saturday, by the way, is “Saturn’s Day” and not the Jewish Sabbath. Thursday is “Thor’s Day.” It is true that the names for the days of the week in modern English have all been adapted from ancient mythologies. But in Greek, things are very different. Only three days have names in Greek: Paraskevi, the Day of Preparation for the Sabbath; Savvato, the Sabbath day; and Kyriake, the Lord’s Day. After the Lord’s Day, the days of the week are merely numbered: Deutera, the Second Day (Monday); Trete, the Third Day (Tuesday) and so on. In the Greek of the New Testament as well as in modern Greek to this day, there is no confusion regarding the Judeo-Christian origins of the names for the days of the week.

YHWH

FICTION:

“The Jewish tetragramaton YHWH – the sacred name of God – derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Havah.”

FACT: This is completely false! As any first year seminary student can tell you, Jehovah is actually a 16th century rendering for the King James Version of the Hebrew YHWH using the vowels for the word “Adonai” or “Lord,” the word which was read by devout Jews whenever they came across God’s name in the text of the Old Testament because they felt the actual name of God was too awesome to be pronounced by human lips.

WITCH HUNTS

FICTION: “During 300 years of witch hunts the Church burned at the stake an astounding 5,000,000 women” Langdon, the Harvard professor, says to his French love interest, Sophie.

FACT: Even non-Christian historians now agree that the number of people – both men and women – executed between 1400-1800 for suspected witchcraft was somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000. Modern scholars suggest that perhaps 100,000 such trials were held between 1450 and 1750, with somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000 executions, of which 25% – 7,500 to 12,500 – were men. It is also clear that despite the involvement of Church authorities, the vast majority of those condemned as witches were in fact condemned by local secular courts. Of course, here, as throughout the book, whenever Mr. Brown uses the word “church” he is always referring to the Roman Catholic Church and this book contains a clear anti-Roman Catholic bias. But it is a simple fact that many witch-hunts took place in Protestant countries like England and her colonies (for example, one need only recall the infamous witch trials in Salem, MA). Interestingly enough, in the Orthodox Church, there never developed an Office of the Inquisition as in the Roman Catholic Church; nor were there ever any witch-hunts or trials.

A CONSPIRACY?

“Everyone loves a conspiracy,” thinks Langdon and indeed, this is perhaps one reason why The Da Vinci Code fascinates so many people and still dominates The New York Times bestseller list. Brown’s conspirators in this two millennia long cover-up include the Roman Catholic Church, the Knights Templar, Opus Dei (a Roman Catholic organization that in fact does not have monks nor do its members wear a monastic habit of any kind, much less go around murdering people) the Masons, Interpol and a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, (that is an actual organization officially registered with the French government in 1956 that most likely originated after WW II and first came to public notice in 1962). So much for being a “secret” society! With the exception of French film maker Jean Cocteau, its illustrious list of Grand Masters as presented in the novel – Leonardo, Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo – is simply not credible and no historian takes such claims seriously.

THE RELICS OF MARY MAGDALENE

But perhaps the most fantastic claim of all is that the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend and popular movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is not the chalice that Christ drank from at the Last Supper but Mary Magdalene herself and a tomb that contains her remains. The main character in the novel, Robert Langdon, cracks the mysterious code left behind by Sauniere, the murdered curator of the Louvre and discovers that the bones of Mary Magdalene are buried in the Louvre. Where are the relics of Mary Magdalene today? Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians know that they are certainly not buried in the Louvre! According to the historical tradition of the Church, Mary Magdalene died in the city of Ephesus and was buried there. Her body, an object of veneration by Christians, was transferred to Constantinople in the 9th century by the Byzantine emperor Leo the Wise, an event that is still commemorated on our liturgical calendar each year on May 4th. Following the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, most of her relics were carried back to Rome and placed under the altar in the Lateran Palace (the papal chapel). Some of her relics are located in Vezelay, a small town near Marseilles in France, and are housed in St. Maximin’s Basilica. Her arm is kept at the Monastery of Simonos Petra on Mt. Athos.

The Da Vinci Code is a fast paced but poorly written murder mystery full of ridiculous errors of fact. It is, after all, a work of fiction. Whatever the claims concerning his research in preparation for writing this novel, the simple fact is that author Dan Brown knows little about Leonardo, little about art and virtually nothing about Jesus, the Bible and Christian history.

O Lord and Master of my life,
Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk,
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to your servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not judge my brother,
For you are blessed unto ages of ages.
Amen.

During Lent, it’s prescribed for every prayer time and — as if the Church Fathers weren’t sure we’d really get it — more than once at a lot of them. And, of course, there’s no rule against saying it the rest of the year.

The words, especially of the second and third lines, always seemed to hide some profound understanding of the spiritual life, the way those 3-D pictures a few years back purported to show a hidden picture if you held the thing up to your nose and crossed and uncrossed your eyes.

I never did see a hidden picture, but I think I’ve found a pattern in the “Take from me” line: sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

• Sloth is the idea that nothing I do matters. It’s the sin of the parsimonious servant in the Parable of the Talents, the one who says to the Master, “What do you need me for? You can get everything you want by your own power. Here’s yours back. Take it and leave me alone” (paraphrased).

  The Master is angry, not because of the small return on investment (he apparently didn’t expect — or ask — much of the servant, if the disparity in the investment capital is any indication), but because of the servant’s lack of commitment and lack of trust.

• Which leads to the second item — despair — the idea that, in the words of the third Psalm, “there is no help for him in God.”

  The servant not only believed he dare not do anything to increase the holdings; he also feared the master’s hardness, expecting brutal treatment from him, and certainly not help, so he was left on his own, to handle his own problems.

• Which leads to lust of power. One response to the frustration of having no meaningful role to play in life (the illusion that is sloth) and expecting no help from God (the illusion that is despair) is to try to take over the world oneself. It would be as if the faithless servant buried his own treasure in the ground and then tried to tell the other two what to do with theirs.
• And if that doesn’t work, there’s always idle talk — both outward and inward. It’s the senseless chatter — fruitless plans and imaginary arguments and self-justifications on the inside, meaningless bilge on the outside. (Some trivial conversation is part of the process of building relationship, so I’m not talking about that, but it’s important, but not always easy, to discern the difference.) We use idle talk to shut out true thought, true understanding, which can be painfully revealing. In some ways idle talk is the opposite of lust of power; in other ways, it simply alternates with it, passive and aggressive reactions to sloth and despair.

Sloth is a sin we don’t talk about much these days, because it’s so often translated “laziness,” giving us a picture of a man sitting in a hammock chewing a grass stalk and watching a creek flow. But we’re too busy running around, making money, and controlling the world to be lazy in that way, and we’re too full of inward chatter to be able to do nothing in that way.

So spiritual laziness is not rest — the Psalmist also writes, in the same Psalm, “I lay down and slept. I awoke for the Lord sustained me.” In other words, he gave himself over to the vulnerability of sleep, even in the midst of being under attack, and trusted in God to protect him. And God blessed his trust.

But if sloth is not rest but a belief that nothing we do matters, then it can lead to laziness — being a couch potato, for example, is both sloth and idle talk — or to horrible crimes — armed robbery can be a combination of sloth and lust for power. It can cause someone to say, “I can’t provide a million dollars to fund that school, so the $20 I have to give is worthless.”

Or, “I can’t be a great evangelist, so being a good cook is meaningless,” or alternatively, “I can’t cook worth beans (heh), so my gift for opening spiritual discussions with strangers is of no use to anyone.” In other words, it can cause us to deny the value of our own talents (what is with that pun anyway? does it work in any languages beside English?) instead of seeing them as a unique and infinitely valuable contribution to the whole.

The Psalmist again (same Psalm) answers the whole line of the prayer: “But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the one who lifts up my head.”

• “You, O Lord, are a shield for me . . . .” The shield, naturally, is protection, specifically from the many enemies in the Psalm (“Many are they who rise up against me; many are they who say of me, ‘There is no help for him in God’”). But the “shield of faith” comes up again in Ephesians: “above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” The fiery darts of the wicked one include both inner and outer dangers, just as broadening the interpretation of the Psalm includes both inner and outer voices saying, “There is no help for him in God.”

  With the shield of faith, the slothful servant would have overcome his fear of the Master’s wrath, just as the Psalmist, tempted to despair, overcomes his fear that God might abandon him.

• “You, O Lord, are . . . my glory . . . .” Glory is fame, respect, good reputation. It’s exactly what the lazy servant refused the master in calling him a “hard man,” reaping where he doesn’t sow, and exactly what we promise — and, at our best, give — to God every time we sing,”Glory to you, O Lord, glory to you.”

  So if God is our glory, it’s a reminder that if our task seems small — or our investment capital insignificant — it’s God who glorifies us. Or that our reputation doesn’t depend on people, many of whom say, “There is no help for him in God,” but on God’s declaration that we are “good and faithful servants.”

• “You, O Lord, are . . . the one who lifts up my head.” I try to be careful with drawing too much of a conclusion from biblical gestures, because they can be so dependent on languages and translations, and something that has a perfectly obvious meaning in one cultural context can mean nothing or exactly the opposite in another. Nevertheless, I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that throughout human society and history, a drooping head comes with sadness or depression. When someone is “downcast,” we might say, “Chin up,” or “Things are looking up”; we gently lift a child’s chin and tell her to cheer up.

  But the Psalmist says it’s God himself who does this for his despondent children. This is not a master who is a “hard man,” as the mistrustful servant says, but a God of lavish compassion.

The reality is that we do tumble through the sins of this line from St. Ephraim — sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk — which is why I prefer the translation “take from me” rather than “give me not,” even though I’ve heard from people whose Greek is much better than mine that “give me not” is more accurate.

The answer, again, comes from the third Psalm — a simple prayer: “Arise, O Lord. Save me, O my God.” If it can save the Psalmist from “ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around,” it can save me from my lone worst enemy — myself.

God’s answer to the Psalmist and to everyone who calls on him ends the Psalm: “For you have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone; you have broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be upon your people.”

The next line contains what I’m calling the positives: “Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant.” I had expected to find that the positives filled slots left by departing negatives or that there would be some kind of neat parallel between the lines. Instead the reality is much richer and more complicated.

The word “chastity,” in the way most people understand it, has come to be entirely sexual, and in the licentious general culture of our time, “chastity” even has a connotation of being unhealthy or ridiculous. But the Greek word is sofrosini, “wholeness.”

To be whole is to “have it together,” to be complete, integrated — drawing on the related Latin root, to have integrity. St. Paul told the Corinthians that sexual promiscuity joins a person to various sexual partners, leaving him scattered, and we have a bit of understanding what that means when we say out our attention is scattered — we’re here and there, but not present where we are.

In this moment is the only place my life is happening, and I lose too much of my life by being elsewhere while appearing to be here. In Charles Williams’ novel War in Heaven, there’s a stone that gives its holder whatever he wishes for. One character thinks he can go into the future and make a killing at the stock market or something, and as a test, he wishes himself a half hour into the future. What really happens is that he moves his decision-making capacity out of the present time and spends the rest of his life reacting to what he’s already done — in this instance having killed a man. Williams’ description of the character’s vague memories of having done the murder exactly fits my vague memories when I’ve interacted inattentively.

My mind travels here and there — off into fears and expectations about the future, regrets about the past, what I might have done, should have done differently, where I might be if I weren’t here right now — and then I come to myself and realize that I haven’t been in the only place I have any influence over — this moment. One of the Desert Fathers, I believe, talked about the mind being like a wheelbarrow full of monkeys, and that’s a good description. He instructs us to keep collecting the monkeys and putting them back into the wheelbarrow, in essence returning our attention, our sofrosini, to the present moment, the now.

Or we could say sofrosini is like being a grownup driving a school bus. In the back, feelings and passions, fears and wishes and expectations, nostalgia and regrets vie for the bus driver’s attention. They want to stop here or go faster or change direction. There may be a reason to stop, speed up or change direction, but I need to keep my adult decision-making capacity, in harmony with the Holy Spirit, as the driver.

Once chastity, sofrosini is in place, the rest of the positives follow.

Humility makes its natural and sometimes painful appearance when I realize how often I’ve let the kids drive the bus. But beyond that, thinking through this line of the prayer, I made a list of the things that tempt me away from sofrosini. It was a short, unscientific survey, but I learned how often the voices in the back of the bus were saying, “I don’t want to be [there],” or “I don’t want to do [that],” or “I don’t have time for [that].” Humility doesn’t say, “I deserve better.” Humility doesn’t say a lot, in fact, except maybe to repeat St. Paul’s description of love, “Love suffers long and is kind . . .” (1 Cor. 13:4-8). Humility doesn’t keep us from working to improve our situation, but it begins here, in this moment, with the reality at hand.

Patience also follows sofrosini, and, oddly, not so painfully. Without sofrosini, the effort to be patient is a battle of will against hurry, a sort of teeth-gritting, watch-watching, “Will you hurry up?” on the inside and a tight smile on the outside. But when I do have the adult driving the bus, each moment has its own purpose, and having to slow down is a gift to at least one of the kids in the back of the bus — so I can enjoy that short sense of leisure.

St. Paul’s description of love is worth repeating here, because it captures the interplay of the positives in this line: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” To be centered in the moment and to give my attention to the person before me is the place where love can happen, because if my mind is elsewhere, I’m not even seeing this person, but a concoction of my own mind.

Finally, a few words on the next line of St. Ephrem’s prayer: “Grant me to see my own faults and not judge my brother.” Seeing one’s own faults is an aid to humility, but I’ve learned something new about judging.

I’ve always thought that warnings against judging one’s neighbor have to do with negative judgments — and misunderstanding the meaning and effect of “judgment,” tended to narrow it to judging someone’s eternal disposition. But my search for sofrosini has taught me that even positive or neutral judgments can damage a relationship. I heard a fairly famous author say, “You don’t meet people at zero anymore. They think they know things about you, and they project things on you.” This is not about the poor, misfortunate author — she wasn’t even complaining, just saying — but an illustration of how even positive expectations can interfere with truly seeing a person.

In another example, I had classified a woman I know as “not very adept with mechanical things.” I had put her in that box in order to overcome a tendency toward impatience with her mistakes with mechanical things, so it was well meant — and possibly true — but I was glad I happened to be working on sofrosini when she asked me a computer question one evening, because it reminded me to be still and listen to her question — in other words, to open the box and see if she really fit in it. She didn’t, actually, and the conversation was more interesting and profitable to both of us than it would have been if I hadn’t bothered to open the box.

I suppose it’s necessary to say that I’m confident that St. Paul and St. Ephrem are not asking us to deny history, to disregard proven dangers or to ignore the intuition that is one of the voices sofrosini should pay attention to in the back of the bus. But most of the time, what I’m afraid of is not actual danger, but rather discomfort or embarrassment or something that won’t do me any lasting harm at all.

What I’ve learned from short forays into sofrosini is that it’s not just a moral good — “good for you,” like some nasty medicine — but an existential good — adventurous, exciting, sometimes scary, and dotted with delightful surprises — “life and more abundantly,” as Christ said. Another thing is that it doesn’t take years of disciplined practice; it takes only this moment and my undivided attention. I’ve been surprised to find that St. Ephrem’s prayer — rather than being something dour and self-flagellating — can be a door into the richness and potential of the moment.

So here it is, a discovery that most people probably figured out the first time they read St. Ephraim’s prayer. Apologies for the length of this post. I’m like a driver who learned how to get to a destination by a circuitous route and, when trying to give directions to the place, gives all the twists and turnings of that route because it’s the only one I know.