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?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
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.]
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.]
Sunday, June 3, 2007
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
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
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