St. Bartholomew the Apostle

Feast Day August 24

Bartholomew the Apostle was a Galilean, and went to the nearer regions of India which had fallen to him by lot for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There he preached to those peoples the coming of the Lord Christ according to the Gospel of St. Matthew. But, since he had converted many in that region to Jesus Christ, he had to endure many trials and persecutions; and he went into Greater Armenia.

Here he brought Polymius the king and his wife and twelve cities to the Christian faith. This aroused against him the hatred of the priests of that people. They inflamed Astyages, the brother of King Polymius, against the Apostle so that he commanded that Bartholomew be flayed alive in a most cruel way and beheaded; and in this martyrdom the Apostle gave up his soul to God.

His body was buried at Albanopolis, the city of Greater Armenia where he suffered. It was later taken to he island of Lipari and afterwards was transferred to Benevento. Finally it was taken to Rome by Emperor Otto III and placed in a church on the island in the Tiber dedicated to God under the title of St. Bartholomew’s.

St. Mary the Virgin

The Feast of the Assumption (Dormition) of Blessed Virgin Mary

Each August 15th we celebrate the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. The Dogma of the Assumption (the declaration that after her death Mary was taken up to heaven body and soul) was solemnly declared by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950. Although it is not an “official” dogma for the Anglican Church, it is held as a universal truth by most faithful Anglican

The belief in the Assumption dates back to the early centuries of the Church. Christians always believed that Mary’s death was a falling asleep in the Lord or dormition. Dormition is from the Latin word for sleep, from which we get the word dormitory. At her dormition, or final sleeping, Mary was immediately taken up to God. Actually the Dormition of Mary or, to use our terminology, the Assumption of Mary was one of the most popular themes in religious art of the medieval times.

To the ancient and medieval Christians, the Assumption of Mary showed the fulfillment of God’s promise to his faithful Christian. Mary’s life was difficult. She suffered the scorn of the neighborhood busybodies because she was pregnant before marriage. She had to quietly endure this waiting for the day that God's plan would someday become evident. In the small tight knit community of Nazareth, everyone knew that Mary's pregnancy shocked and upset her betrothed husband, Joseph. He was a man who, even though he was as gentle as possible, had resolved to send her away. Later in the infancy narratives, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, would be presented. Elizabeth’s son would be born in a home with numerous people attending. Mary’s child was not born in a home, but in a stable. This would be a hardship and suffering for any mother. The Gospel of Matthew says that Mary and Joseph also suffered exile in Egypt to flee Herod. Mary, a young girl with a baby, would not receive any help from her own mother, Anne. Later on Mary would suffer the indignities of people telling her that her son had lost his mind. She would have her heart torn out as her son died on the cross. Then, even after the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Mary would have to put up with the petty squabbling of the apostles.

Mary’s life was difficult. But she had total faith in God's will for her and for his people. Therefore the Feast of the Assumption celebrates her faith being justified.

The 11th chapter of the Book of Revelations presents a woman who is clothed in the sun with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars. The scene is not easy. The woman wails in childbirth. At the moment of the birth an awful beast appears ready to devour the child. The child was snatched up to God and his throne and the woman was protected in a special place prepared for her.

Biblical scholarship views this woman as symbolizing the Church, given the glory of God yet suffering as she tries to make him present to the world. The work of the Church is in fact the very Son of God. The Son is united to the Father. The woman, the Church, is protected by God.

Tradition views this passage in a different way. The woman is Mary, with her whole life seen in one glimpse. She is the one chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. Therefore, she is clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and wearing a crown of twelve stars. But she also suffers. She wails in pain. Her Son is attacked by the devil, but ultimately He is united to the Father. Mary is also protected in a special place set aside for her.

The solemnity of the Assumption considers Mary receiving the reward for her labor of love. She is taken to that special place that we call heaven.

She trusted in God and God justified her trust. Her life ended in her sleeping in the hand of the Lord, her dormition. She would live forever, body and soul, in heaven. She would be the one who all generations will call blessed. She will be the one who receive the total benefit of the sacrifice of Jesus. At her death, her final sleeping, Mary’s body would be raised up and united with God.

All of us have difficult situations and periods in our lives. All of us are tempted to give up our lives, to go a different way. How many of us know people who have just left, left their spouse and children, left the priesthood, left their lives. We are all tempted to walk away. But we can’t give in. We are called to sacrifice. We are called to be followers of Christ, who died on a cross.

And we trust God to pull us through. He's sees the sacrifices we make to be his followers. And we benefit. We benefit here on earth because we are happy living lives that our Christocentric, centered on Christ and his sacrificial love, rather than lives that are egocentric, selfish.

Mary had free will. She was not a plastic statue; she was a real person who could have said “no” to the angel or “no” to God’s plan at any time during her life. She could have complained. She could have doubted. She could have walked away. But she didn’t. She accepted all. She rejoiced in the new way to love she found with this special child. She sacrificed everything for him who was love.

We remember Mary and her life in the Anglican rosary. It is a wonderful background for prayer and mediation. It is an opportunity to slow ourselves down. And I recommend the rosary to you and in particular for the family who are blessed with children in the home.

When we pray to Mary, we should remember that Mary was a real person very much like us. She had difficult choices. She chose love, but this love entailed sacrifice and suffering. It also brought eternal happiness.

Mary’s Assumption is a reminder to us that God has a plan for each of us, a purpose for each of our lives. If we allow him to complete his plan in us, we also will be taken to that special place prepared for us, the place of inexpressible joy that we call heaven.

Homily for the Feast Day of the Most Holy Name of Jesus

“I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” —Philippians 3:12

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name—of Jesus Christ—whose name in regard to character and authority is so firmly bound to the person himself, that we as disciples of Christ are exhorted to baptize, exorcise, heal the sick, and raise the dead by and through the sacred and salvific power of its very invocation. Indeed, today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name—of Jesus Christ—whose name in regard to character and authority in Hebrew and Aramaic is strikingly similar to the phrase “he will save,” and whose name reminds us that God is with us—even to the end of the age. Yes, today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom every knee shall bow, and under whom all creation (as we speak) is being re-ordered and in and by whom all meaning is being re-inscribed in the actualization of God’s Holy Covenant.

The faith that we demonstrate and enjoy in proclaiming Jesus Christ Lord is the sustaining and propulsive power that continually drives us to insist on proclaiming to the world the message of Christ’s forgiveness of sin, comfort in times of weakness, loneliness, and desolation, and revolutionary subversion of violent force into works of love in any situation—come what may, fear or no fear, anxiety notwithstanding.

Yet the question our Savior asked his disciples in antiquity is the same one that he asks each one of us today: Who do you say that I am?

Some of Jesus’ disciples said that he was John the Baptist, and others that he was Elijah. St. Peter even confessed Jesus as the Christ—the Messiah—anointed one of God... Yet St. Peter’s confession wasn’t so strange considering that at the time, there were many who were claiming this title, and performing miracles by the score. What was perhaps more interesting about St. Peter’s confession was the confession he himself received from Jesus in return: `'You are Peter (or “rock” in quotes!) and on this rock will I build my church.” Needless to say, there is a pun regarding the names Peter and Jesus, probably owing to the Aramaic and Hebraic property to allow proper names and place names to be descriptive of the very being of things and persons.

So perhaps it may be similar for us—although my name `'George” meaning farmer might only apply if we are considering parables about vineyards.

The point is, that in confessing who Jesus is to us—individually and corporately, Jesus confesses us as faithful witnesses and disciples, and in this we are given an identity—we find out who we are in relation to God. As we appreciate here at St. Ignatius Church and according to Acts 11:26, “in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians,” so in confessing Christ as Lord, we in turn take on his name and are called Christians—not as a surname, but as a change of name similar to that experienced by Abraham the father of our faith: we too make a testimony of loyalty to God: to follow Jesus, Lord and Savior of all, and to bring his teaching to the world as the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Now this name “Christian” that we have been given and in which we rejoice is not to be taken lightly or for granted as though it were merely a given as opposed to a gift. As our philosopher friends Kierkegaard and Bonhoffer knew, taking on the name of Christ lightly and not in earnest—even with plenty of theological, liturgical, biblical, and pious window dressing—is at best to make a mockery of God, a mess of our lives, and to try and buy discipleship at a fixed cut rate.

For to do so in this wise is to take the name of the Lord in vain, and to squander the opportunity to walk in the way of our teacher and savior Christ, and to grow into the stature that he lovingly wills for us.

Judge for yourself: this is not an easy road—for to choose to follow Christ and take on his Holy Name is to choose to follow the one who had no place to lay his head... and in terms of the world, to choose this is to choose certain downfall. Yet as Christians, we already know that we are not merely bound by the world—how boring and easy that would be; would that that were the case! Our greater responsibility has to do with eternity, and to realize that eternity begins on this side of the grave.

We have already been born again by water and the Holy Spirit by virtue of our baptism. We affirm this birth whenever we partake of the Holy Sacraments in the community of the Body of Christ known as the Church.

The decisions we make now have eternal repercussions... And the commitment we have now as brothers and sisters in and of Christ exacts not merely the whole of our terrestrial lives from us, but an eternal responsibility to living up to our birthright. The choice is all yours.

by The Rev’d Fr. George M. Rogers III, given at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, NY, NY, Assistant Rector, Christ the Redeemer, Pelham, NY

The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Today we celebrate the occasion on which Christ, as He was beginning to teach His disciples that He must die and rise again, revealed Himself in shining splendor to Peter, James, and John. Moses and Elijah were present, and are taken to signify that the Law and the Prophets testify that Jesus is the promised Messiah. God the Father also proclaimed him as such, saying, "This is my Beloved Son. Listen to him." For a moment the veil is drawn aside, and men still on earth are permitted a glimpse of the heavenly reality, the glory of the Eternal Triune God.

Our Lord had spoken to His disciples many times not only concerning His Passion, Cross, and Death, but also concerning the coming persecutions and afflictions that they themselves would endure. Since all these evils were near at hand, but the enjoyment of good things which they hoped to receive in their stead was yet to come, our Savior desired to give them full assurance, evidently and openly, concerning that glory which is prepared for those who endure to the end. Therefore, fulfilling that which He had promised shortly before, that "there be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His Kingdom" (Matt. 16:28), He took His three foremost disciples and ascended Mount Tabor, where He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as the light. Suddenly, together with this dread and marvelous effulgence of light, there appeared those pinnacles of the Prophets, Moses and Elias, who spoke with the Lord Jesus concerning His saving Passion which was about to take place. Standing before Him as reverent servants, they showed that He is the Lord of both the living and the dead, for Moses came forth from Hades, having died many centuries before, and Elias, as it were from heaven, whither he had been taken up while yet alive. After a little while a radiant cloud overshadowed them and out of the cloud they heard that same voice which had been heard at the Jordan at the Baptism of Christ, testifying to the Divinity of Jesus and saying: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased; hear ye Him" (Matt. 17: 5).

Such are the marvels, truly worthy of God, celebrated in this present feast, which is an image and prefiguring of the future state of the righteous, whose splendor the Lord spoke of, saying: "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun" (Matt. 13:43).

In the East, the Festival of the Transfiguration has been celebrated since the late fourth century, and is one of the twelve great festivals of the East Orthodox calendar. In the West it was observed after the ninth century by some monastic orders, and in 1457 Pope Callistus III ordered its general observance.

The following is an excerpt from a Sermon by Pope St. Leo the Great (Sermo de Transfigurat., ante medium)

THE Lord took chosen witnesses, and in their presence revealed his glory. That is to say, the form of body which he had in common with other men, he so transfigured with light, that his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment became exceeding white, even as snow. Now the chief purpose of this Transfiguration was to remove from the hearts of the disciples their fear of the Cross. So, before their eyes, was unveiled the splendour of his hidden majesty, that the lowliness of his freely-chosen suffering might not confound their faith. But nonetheless there was also thys set forth, by the providence of God, a sure and certain hope for holy Church, whereby the whole Body of Christ should know with what great a change it is yet to be honoured. For the members of that Body whose Head hath already been transfigured in light may promise themselves a share in his glory.

ALSO, that the Apostles might be strengthened, and brought forward into all knowledge, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias (that is, the Law and the Prophets), talking with them. This glorification of Christ took place before five witnesses, as though to fulfil that which is written : At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established. What can be more certain, or better attested, than this matter which is proclaimed by the trumpets of both the Old and the New Testament, and concerning which the witness of ancient testimony uniteth with the teaching of the Gospel? The pages of either Covenant strengthen one another, and the brightness of open glory maketh manifest and distinct him whom the former prophecies had promised under the veil of mysteries.

THE unveiling of such mysteries roused the mind of the Apostle Peter to an outburst of longing for the things eternal, which despised and disdained things worldly and earthly. Overflowing with gladness at the vision, he yearned to dwell with Jesus there, where the revelation of his glory had rejoiced him. And so he said : "Master, it is good for us to be here ; if thou wilt, let us make here tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." To this proposal the Lord answered nothing, thus signifying that what Peter wished was not wrong, but out of place, since the world could not be saved but by the death of Christ. And the Lord's example was to call the faith of believers to this, that although we should have no doubts concerning the promise of eternal blessedness, yet we are to understand that, amid the trials of this life, we are to seek for power to endure rather than for glory.

From the Anglican Breviary

At the time of the Reformation, it was still felt in some countries to be a "recent innovation," and so was not immediately taken over into most Reformation calendars, but is now found on most calendars that have been revised in the twentieth century.

According to tradition, the Lord's Transfiguration came to pass forty days before His Crucifixion; this is why the Transfiguration is celebrated forty days before the Exaltation of the Cross.

A recent tendency though, in the West is to commemorate the Transfiguration on the Sunday just before Lent, in accordance with the pattern found in the Synoptics, where Jesus is represented as beginning to speak of his forthcoming death just about the time of the Transfiguration, so that it forms a fitting transition between the Epiphany season, in which Christ makes himself known, and the Lenten season, in which he prepares the disciples for what lies ahead. Whether observing the Transfiguration then will affect the observation of it on 6 August remains to be seen. It might be that we are called to observe the Transfiguration on both days.

Compiled text from various internet and written sources. A.A.B.

Saint Dominic

The Albigensians and their Heresies

The founder of the Friars Preachers was born of a Castilian family, and his early years were uneventful. When he was about twenty-six he became one of the canons regular who formed the cathedral chapter at Osma; in 1206 the turning-point of his life came, when his bishop, Diego, became unofficial leader of a papal mission to the heretical Albigenses, who were firmly established in Languedoc. The bishop chose Dominic as his companion; they lived simply and in poverty, and undertook discussions with their opponents for which they prepared very carefully. These methods contrasted with the formality and display of the official missioners, and a house of nuns founded at Prouille became the center of the new preachers. The death of Bishop Diego at the end of 1207 coincided with the murder of the papal legate Peter de Castelnau by the Albigenses, and Pope Innocent III ordered a military campaign against their leader, Count Raymund of Toulouse. There followed five years of bloody civil war, massacre, and savagery, during which Dominic and his few followers persevered in their mission of converting the Albigenses by persuasion addressed to the heart and mind.

The Early Preaching

In 1215 Dominic was able to establish his headquarters in Toulouse, and the idea of an order of preachers began to take shape: a body of highly trained priests on a monastic basis, bound by vows with emphasis on poverty, but devoted to the active work of preaching and teaching anywhere and everywhere. The enterprise was formally approved at Rome in 1216, and in the following year the founder sent eleven of this brothers, over half the then total, to the University of Paris and to Spain. He himself established friaries at Bologna and elsewhere in Italy, and travelled tirelessly to superintend the nascent order, preaching as he went. St. Dominic always gave importance to the help of women in his work; one of his last undertakings was to install nuns at San Sisto in Rome; another was to send thirteen of his friars to Oxford.

The Saint

All the evidence goes to show that St. Dominic was a man of remarkable attractiveness of character and broadness of vision; he had the deepest compassion for every sort of human suffering; he saw the need to use all the resources of human learning in the service of Christ; his constant reading was St. Matthew's gospel, St. Paul's letters and the Conferences of St. John Cassian. The order that he founded was a formative factor in the religious and intellectual life of later medieval Europe; its diffusion is now world-wide.

St. James the Greater - Apostle

For James there was no indication that this was the day that his life would change. The dawn for him was not the bright beginning of a new day, but the end of long fruitless night of fishing. As James sat mending his nets in the boat with his brother John and his father Zebedee, he must have watched in wonder as his partner Simon brought in nets loaded with fish he had caught at the command of Jesus. Was he shocked when he saw Simon and his brother Andrew walk away from this incredible catch at a word from this same Jesus?

As he watched Jesus walk toward him followed by Simon and Andrew, did he feel curiosity, fear, hope, envy? Jesus didn't pass him by but, stopping by their boat, called James and his brother John to do just what Simon and Andrew had done. Without argument or discussion, James and John left their boat and even their father behind, and followed Jesus.

The first thing James saw after he followed Jesus was his teaching with authority in the synagogue and the cure of Simon's mother-in-law.

We all know that Jesus was the focus of James' life from then on, but it is also evident that James held a special place in Jesus' life.

He was chosen by Jesus to be one of the twelve apostles, given the mission to proclaim the good news, and authority to heal and cast out demons. To be named one of the twelve James must have had faith and commitment.

But even among the apostles he held a special place. When Jesus raised Jairus' daughter when all thought her dead, he only allowed James, John, and Peter to come with him. Even more important when he went up to the mountain to pray, he wanted James, John, and Peter to go with him. And it was there on the mountain they were privileged to witness what no one else had seen -- Jesus transfigured in his glory, speaking to Moses and Elijah, as the voice of God spoke from a cloud.

And with Simon Peter, James and John were the only ones of the apostles that Jesus gave a special name: Sons of Thunder.

To be singled out in these ways, James must have been a close and respected friend of Jesus.

It's no wonder then that James, along with John, felt that he had the right to go to Jesus and ask him to give them whatever they asked. As a mark of his love, Jesus didn't rebuke them but asked them what they wanted. They showed their lack of understanding of his mission when the asked that he let one of them sit on his right and the other on his left when he came into his glory. He replied that they didn't know what they were asking. They didn't see the cross in his future, but an earthly throne. Could they drink of the cup he would drink of? They replied that they could. He assured them they would indeed drink of that cup.

(Matthew has their mother asking for this favor for her sons. Despite the bad reputation their mother got for this, it should be remembered that she too had followed Jesus in his travels, providing for him, and was one of the women who stayed with Jesus as he was crucified when the apostles, including her son James, had fled.)

The other apostles were furious at this request. But Jesus used this opportunity to teach all of them that in order to be great one must be a servant.

James and John did show further lack of understanding of their friend and Lord when he was turned away by Samaritans. They wanted to use their newfound authority as apostles not to heal but to bring fire down on the town. (Perhaps Jesus gave them their Sons of Thunder nickname because of their passion, their own fire, or their temper.) Jesus did reprimand them for their unforgiving, vengeful view of their power.

But despite all these misunderstandings, it was still James, Peter, and John that Jesus chose to join him in prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane for his final prayer before his arrest. It must have hurt Jesus that the three of them fell asleep on this agonizing evening.

James did drink of the cup Jesus drank of, all too shortly after the Resurrection. Acts 12:1 tells us that James was one of the first martyrs of the Church. King Herod Agrippa I killed him with a sword in an early persecution of the Church. There is a story that the man who arrested James became a convert after hearing James speak at his trial and was executed with him.

James is called James the Greater because another younger apostle was named James. He should not be accused with this James, or the James who is a relative of Jesus, or the James who was an elder of the Church in Jerusalem and heard Peter's defense of baptizing Gentiles. James, son of Thunder, was dead by then.

On Women's Ordination

A letter written by Orthodox Priest Fr. Alexander Schmemann



Dear Friend:

When you asked me to outline the Orthodox reaction to the idea of women's ordination to the priesthood, I thought at first that to do so would not be too difficult. It is not difficult, indeed, simply to state that the Orthodox Church is against women's priesthood and to enumerate as fully as possible the dogmatical, canonical, and spiritual reasons for that opposition.

On second thought, however, I became convinced that such an answer would be not only useless, but even harmful. Useless, because all such "formal reasons" - scriptural, traditional, canonical - are well known to the advocates of women's ordination, as is also well known our general ecclesiological stand which, depending on their mood and current priorities, our Western Brothers either hail as Orthodoxy's "main" ecumenical contribution or dismiss as archaic, narrow-minded, and irrelevant. Harmful, because true formally, this answer would still vitiate the real Orthodox position by reducing it to a theological context and perspective, alien to the Orthodox mind. For the Orthodox Church has never faced this question, it is for us totally extrinsic, a casus irrealis for which we find no basis, no terms of reference in our Tradition, in the very experience of the Church, and for the discussion of which we are therefore simply not prepared.

Such is then my difficulty. I cannot discuss the problem itself because to do so would necessitate the elucidation of our approach - not to women and to priesthood only - but, above all to God in his Triune Life, to Creation, Fall and Redemption, to the Church and the mystery of her life, to the deification of man and the consummation of all things in Christ. Short of all this it would remain incomprehensible, I am sure, why the ordination of women to priesthood is tantamount for us to a radical and irreparable mutilation of the entire faith, the rejection of the whole Scripture, and, needless to say, the end of all "dialogues." Short of all this my answer will sound like another "conservative" and "traditional" defense of the status quo, of precisely that which many Christians today, having heard it too many times, reject as hypocrisy, lack of openness to God's will, blindness to the world, etc. Obviously enough those who reject Tradition would not listen once more to an argument ex traditione....

But to what will they listen? Our amazement - and the Orthodox reaction is above all that of amazement - is precisely about the change and, to us, incomprehensible hastiness with which the question of women's ordination was, first, accepted as an issue, then quickly reduced to the level of a disciplinary "matter" and finally identified as an issue of policy to be dealt with by a vote! In this strange situation all I can do is to try to convey to you this amazement by briefly enumerating its main "components" as I see and understand them.

The first dimension of our amazement can be termed "ecumenical." The debate on women's ordination reveals something which we have suspected for a long time but which now is confirmed beyond any doubt: the total truly built-in indifference of the Christian West to anything beyond the sphere of its own problematics, of its own experience. I can only repeat here what I have said before: even the so-called "ecumenical movement," notwithstanding its claims to the contrary, has always been, and still is, a purely Western phenomenon, based on Western presuppositions and determined by a specifically Western agenda. This is not "pride" or "arrogance." On the contrary, the Christian West is almost obsessed with a guilt complex and enjoys nothing better than self-criticism and self condemnation. It is rather a total inability to transcend itself, to accept the simple idea that its own experience, problems, thought forms and priorities may not be universal, that they themselves may need to be evaluated and judged in the light of a truly universal, truly "Catholic" experience. Western Christians would almost enthusiastically judge and condemn themselves, but on their own terms, within their own hopelessly "Western" perspective. Thus when they decide -- on the basis of their own possibly limited and fragmented, specifically Western, "cultural situation" -- that they must "repair" injustices made to women, they plan to do it immediately without even asking what the "others" may think about it, and are sincerely amazed and even saddened by lack, on the part of these "others" of ecumenical spirit, sympathy and comprehension.

Personally, I have often enough criticized the historical limitations of the Orthodox mentality not to have the right to say in all sincerity that to me the debate on women's ordination seems to be provincial, deeply marked, and even determined by Western self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, by a naive, almost childish, conviction that every "trend" in the Western culture justifies a radical rethinking of the entire Christian tradition. How many such "trends" we have witnessed during the last decades of our troubled century! How many corresponding "theologies"! The difference this time, however, is that one deals in this particular debate not with a passing intellectual and academic "fad" like "death of God," "secular city," "celebration of life," etc.-- which, after it has produced a couple of ephemeral best-sellers, simply disappears, but with the threat of an irreversible and irreparable act which, if it becomes reality, will produce a new, and this time, I am convinced, final division among Christians, and will signify, at least for the Orthodox, the end of all dialogues.

It is well known that the advocates of women's ordination explain the Scriptural and the traditional exclusion of women from ministry by "cultural conditioning." If Christ did not include women into the Twelve, if the Church for centuries did not include them into priesthood, it is because of "culture" which would have made it impossible and unthinkable then. It is not my purpose to discuss here the theological and exegetical implications of this view as well as its purely historical basis, which incidentally seems to me extremely weak and shaky; what is truly amazing is that while absolutely convinced that they understand past "cultures," the advocates of women's ordination seem to be totally unaware of their own cultural "conditioning" of their own surrender to culture.

How else can one explain their readiness to accept what may prove to be a passing phenomenon and what, at any rate, is a phenomenon barely at its beginning (not to speak of the women's liberation movement, which at present is nothing but search and experimentation) as a sufficient justification for a radical change in the very structure of the Church?

How else, furthermore, are we to explain that this movement is accepted on its own terms, within the perspective of "rights", "justice," "equality," Etc. -- all categories whose ability adequately to express the Christian faith and to be applied as such within the Church is, to say the least, questionable?

The sad truth is that the very idea of women's ordination, as it is presented and discussed today, is the result of too many confusions and reductions. If its root is surrender to "culture", its pattern of development is shaped by a surrender to "clericalism." It is indeed almost entirely dominated by the old "clerical" view of the Church and the double "reduction" interest in it. The reduction on the one hand, of the Church to a "power structure," the reduction on the other hand, of that power structure to clergy. To the alleged "inferiority" of women within the secular power structure, corresponds their "inferiority," i.e., their exclusion from clergy, within the ecclesiastical power structure. To their "liberation" in the secular society must therefore correspond their "liberation," i.e., ordination, in the Church.

But the Church simply cannot be reduced to these categories. As long as we try to measure the ineffable mystery of her life by concepts and ideas a priori alien to her very essence, we entirely mutilate her, and her real power, her glory and beauty, and her transcendent truth simply escape us.

That is why in conclusion of this letter I can only confess, without explaining and justifying this confession by my "proofs." I can confess that the non-ordination of women to priesthood has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with whatever "inferiority" we can invent or imagine. In the essential reality which alone constitutes the content of our faith and shapes the entire life of the Church, in the reality of the Kingdom of God which is perfect communion, perfect knowledge, perfect love, and ultimately the "deification" of man, there is truly "neither male nor female." More than that, in this reality, of which we are made partakers here and now, we all, men and women, without any distinction, are "Kings and priests," for it is the essential priesthood of the human nature and vocation that Christ has restored to us.

It is of this priestly life, it is of this ultimate reality, that the Church is both gift and acceptance. And that she may be this, that she may always and everywhere be the gift of the Spirit without any measure or limitations, the Son of God offered himself in a unique sacrifice, and made this unique sacrifice and this unique priesthood the very foundation, indeed the very "form" of the Church.

This priesthood is Christ's, not ours. None of us, man or woman, has any "right" to it; it is emphatically not one of human vocations, analogous, even if superior, to all others. The priest in the Church is not "another" priest, and the sacrifice he offers is not "another" sacrifice. It is forever and only Christ's priesthood and Christ's sacrifice -- for, in the words of our Prayers of Offertory, it is "Thou who offerest and Thou who art offered, it is Thou who receivest and Thou who distributest...." And thus the "institutional" priest in the Church has no "ontology" of his own. It exists only to make Christ himself present, to make this unique Priesthood and this unique Sacrifice the source of the Church's life and the "acquisition" by men of the Holy Spirit. And if the bearer, the icon and the fulfiller of that unique priesthood, is man and not woman, it is because Christ is man and not woman...

Why? This of course is the only important, the only relevant question. The one precisely that no "culture," no "sociology," no "history," and even no "exegesis" can answer. For it can be answered only by theology in the primordial and essential meaning of that word in the Church; as the contemplation and vision of the Truth itself, as communion with the uncreated Divine Light. It is only here, in this purified and restored vision that we might begin to understand why the ineffable mystery of the relationship between God and His Creation, between God and His chosen people, between God and His Church, are "essentially" revealed to us as a nuptial mystery, as fulfillment of a mystical marriage. Why in other terms, Creation itself, the Church herself, man and the world themselves, when contemplated in their ultimate truth and destiny, are revealed to us as Bride, as Woman clothed in sun; why in the very depth of her love and knowledge, of her joy and communion, the Church identifies herself with one Woman, whom she exalts as "more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim."

Is it this mystery that has to be "understood" by means of our broken and fallen world, which knows and experiences itself only in its brokenness and fragmentation, its tensions and dichotomies and which, as such, is incapable of the ultimate vision? Or is it this vision and this unique experience that must again become to us the "means" of our understanding of the world, the starting point and the very possibility of a truly Divine victory over all that in this world is but human, historical and cultural?

St. Basil the Great

St. Basil the Great was born in Caesarea in Cappadocia in 330 AD. He came from a very holy family. He was one of ten children of St. Basil the Elder and St. Emmelia. His paternal grandmother was St. Macrina the Elder, several of his brothers and sisters are honored among the saints. His elder sister was St. Macrina the Younger, and St. Gregory of Nyssa was his brother.

He attended school in Caesarea, as well as Constantinople and Athens, where he became acquainted with St. Gregory Nazianzen in 352. A little later, he opened a school of oratory in Caesarea and practiced law. Eventually he decided to become a monk and found a monastery in Pontus which he directed for five years. He wrote a famous monastic rule which has proved the most lasting of those in the East. After founding several other monasteries, he was ordained and, in 370, made bishop of Caesaria. In this post until his death in 379, he continued to be a man of vast learning and constant activity, genuine eloquence and immense charity. This earned for him the title of "Great" during his life and Doctor of the Church after his death.

Basil was one of the giants of the early Church. He was responsible for the victory of Nicene orthodoxy over Arianism in the Byzantine East, and the denunciation of Arianism at the Council of Constantinople in 381-82 was in large measure due to his efforts. Basil fought simony, aided the victims of drought and famine, strove for a better clergy, insisted on a rigid clerical discipline, fearlessly denounced evil wherever he detected it, and excommunicated those involved in the widespread prostitution traffic in Cappadocia.

He was learned, accomplished in statesmanship, a man of great personal holiness, and one of the great orators of Christianity.

Corpus Christi – Triumph Over Heresy

An Augustinian prioress, a hermitess and an archdeacon, all living at Liege in the thirteenth century, are the people mainly responsible for the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi.

Although the institution of the Holy Eucharist has been commemorated on Maundy Thursday since Apostolic times, the Church is concerned at this period with the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ which overshadows remembrance of the events of the Last Supper.

The First Petition

Some of the faithful felt that a further day to honour the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar should be established. Notable among these was the prioress of a nunnery in Liege, Blessed Julienne de Retrinnes. She believed she had seen a vision encouraging her to petition the ecclesiastical authorities for such a feast. In 1230 she consulted a number of persons of influence concerning this, among them Jacques Pantalon of Troyes, who was the Archdeacon of Liege, and the Dominican cardinal and Papal Legate, Hugues de Saint Cher.

An office for the feast was composed and Robert, Bishop of Liege, ordered that the feast of Corpus Christi be celebrated throughout his diocese. Fourteen years later on 29 August 1261, Archdeacon Jacques Pantalon was elected Pope, taking the name Urban IV.

Because of the political situation at the time, Urban was never able to establish himself at Rome and lived first at Viterbo and then at Orvieto. It was not a period when the papacy excelled itself.

The Feast Extended

Following the death of Blessed Julienne, a holy recluse named Eve, one of her confidantes, persuaded the then Bishop of Liege, Henri, to petition the Holy See for the feast to be extended to the Universal Church.

Urban IV is said at first to have been uncertain whether to institute the feast, but eventually he agreed. He may have been influenced by the reputed miracle of Bolsena. While his court was at Orvieto in 1264, it was reported that a priest in the nearby city of Bolsena had spilt a drop of the Precious Blood while he was saying Mass. He tried to hide the accident by covering the spot where the Precious Blood had fallen with the corporal.

Suddenly, it is said, the corporal, which is still preserved at Bolsena, was covered with red spots in the shape of a host. Some versions of the story suggest the priest had had doubts about the Real Presence.

Although there is no certainty that this was the reason for the institution of the feast, some say that hearing of this incident, the Pope delayed no longer. The Bull of erection, however, makes no mention of it.

Something else which may have influenced Urban was a desire to counteract the teachings of Berengarius, a writer from about a century earlier who, as Archdeacon of Angers, had attacked the teaching on the Eucharist; he denied transubstantiation and held that Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament was only spiritually conceived.

On 8 September 1264 Urban published a Bull commanding the celebration of the feast on the Thursday after the First Sunday of Pentecost. Thursday has always been consecrated to remembrance of the Holy Eucharist because that was the day of the week on which it was instituted.

St Thomas Aquinas

Urban asked both the Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan, St Bonadventure to write an office for the new feast. Both did so, but when Bonadventure read Aquinas’s composition, he withdrew his own as being not comparable with that of the Dominican.

Although the Papal court celebrated the feast, there is some doubt as to whether the Bull was actually executed elsewhere. Soon after the institution of the feast, the Pope died on 2 October in the same year.

At the Council of Vienne which opened on 16 October 1311, Clement V, the Pope who established the Papal court at Avignon, confirmed Urban’s Bull and made the feast of obligation throughout the Church. His successor John XXII, who became Pope in 1316, promoted the feast as did two later Popes, Martin V and Eugenius IV, who both granted indulgences for it.

Although the feast had an octave from the beginning, it was not celebrated with a vigil; vigils in their original sense having already passed into desuetude. The Papal decree which produced the 1962 Missal abolished the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi along with most other octaves.

The Feast in England

It seems to have taken some time for the feast to be adopted generally, but Corpus Christi was finally observed in England from 1318. The feast quickly became popular here and numerous guilds were established to honour the Blessed Sacrament as it was carried in procession. The custom of carrying the Most Holy Sacrament in procession had been recognised as a part of the ceremonies of the feast from the beginning.

It was the Corpus Christi guilds rather than the clergy which arranged the processions and the miracle play cycles which, in many places, also became a part of the celebration of the feast. The Corpus Christi procession became a major civic event in many medieval towns. Houses along the processional route were decorated with hangings, flowers and lights. Such decoration is still prescribed by the Caeremoniale Episcoporum.

The Council of Trent praised the feast as a triumph over heresy.

Father Adrian Fortescue in his directory of ceremonial, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, explains that the outdoor procession on this feast should be a general one for the whole town, that is to say that every church, whether of seculars or regulars, in each town should join together for the procession.

He has a footnote to the effect that the Caeremoniale Episcoporum has most elaborate directions to prevent quarrelling among the clergy as to precedence in the procession. ‘The Bishop is to settle it, and if anyone is not satisfied he shall be excommunicated.’ Not much doubt about that! Merati (an Italian writer on the liturgy), Fortescue says, ‘writes columns on the same subject. Martinucci (another liturgist) also is very much concerned about this matter.’ The note ends by saying, ‘Fortunately, such foolishness is unlikely to occur in England’!


[Taken from the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, February 2004 Newsletter.]

The Mystery of The Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity is one of the great mysteries of the Orthodox Faith. With our finite and limited minds, we are unable to comprehend the Holy Trinity at all, and yet with our hearts, we can believe in the truth of the this mystery. We confess our belief each time we say the Creed , "I believe in One God, the Father almighty,...and in one Lord Jesus Christ...and in the Holy Spirit..." And so, even though it is incomprehensible, the mystery of the Holy Trinity is intertwined throughout the most basic confession of our faith.

The worship of the Trinity is the key element of the Orthodox Faith. If you were to ask a group of people, "What is the essence of true religious belief?" you would get a number of different answers, depending on who you asked. If you were to narrow your questioning down to only those who confessed Christianity, it is most likely that you would get an answer which expressed in some way "to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ". But if you were to ask an Orthodox Christian who was familiar with the services of the Church, "What is the truefaith?" he could immediately answer with the words of the Church. At the end of the Divine Liturgy when we sing "We have found the true faith..." we describe what this "true faith" is "...worshipping the undivided Trinity." Orthodox Christians have known even from the very beginning that in order to truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary to believe in the Holy Trinity and that in order to worship God "in spirit and in truth," we must worship the Holy Trinity.

What is it that makes this mystery of the Holy Trinity so vital to our Christian belief? In order to answer this question, we must first understand a little about the Holy Trinity. The mystery of the Trinity is that there is One God in three Persons and that each of these Persons is distinct and separate from the others while at the same time all three Persons are indivisibly united. How can something be three separate and distinct things and yet at the same time be only one? This is the mystery of the Trinity.

But the nature of the Trinity is not just an abstract idea, a belief that has no impact on us as Orthodox Christians. St Athanasius said about the incarnation, "God became man so that man might become god." And indeed this is true - when we "put on Christ" at Holy Baptism and as we begin to work out our salvation, we become like God, that is we take on His nature. We give up our own fallen human nature, and in exchange we receive the nature of the God-man Jesus Christ. In order to be saved we must exhibit the mystery of the Holy Trinity in our own lives.

How is such a thing possible? How can we, who are created beings, who are limited, mortal and finite, become like the Holy Trinity - three persons in one essence? Again the Holy Fathers teach us what we must know. We know that there is no salvation outside the Church. In order to be transformed and enter into the life of Christ, we must do so within His Church. The Church is the ark of salvation and we are all gathered into that ark. But there is more to this than just membership in an earthly organization. The Church is much more than that. The Church is the union of all Orthodox Christians into the one mystical Body of Christ. It is in the Church that our true nature as Christians is made manifest. We, who are many, are united into one body (and yet we remain many persons, distinct from one another). This unity of diversity that we find in the mystery of the Church is exactly the same mystery of the unity in diversity of the Holy Trinity. By being members of the Holy Church, we are transformed so that our nature becomes like that of the Holy Trinity.

In the Holy Church, our true nature as a corporate body, a single entity made up of many persons, is made manifest. When we gather together to worship in the public services of the Church, we express this godlike nature. In this we can begin to see the importance of participating in the services of the Church. These services are not just a social gathering, a ritual that we share with those of like mind and belief. The services of the Church are the necessary expression of our godlike nature. By participating in the public worship of the Church we act like God, we confess our belief in the Holy Trinity and we confess our likeness to the Holy Trinity. If we shun the services of the Church, if we do not participate, then we are in effect turning our back on Christ, turning away from the salvation that He provides, denying that we are like Him. It is in the public services of the Church that God does the work of making our nature to be like His. It is only in the Church and in her public and corporate worship that we become like the Holy Trinity.


by Fr. David Moser