Temple Theology and the Christ

As I was travelling about a couple of weeks ago, while looking for something else, I came across a very promising podcast entitled Our Great High Priest: The Church is the New Temple, and began to listen to it.  It was an address delivered by Dr Margaret Barker at St Vladimir's Seminary, about the Temple in Jerusalem and the Messianic fulfilment in the Person of the Saviour and lived in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church.  Unfortunately, I was on the train and my phone's battery was low, so I stopped only a few minutes into the talk.  I then proceeded to forget all about it until last night, when I listened to it in its entirety.

It can be heard here and a transcript may be read here.

I found this absolutely fascinating, both for some of the facts that had previously been unknown to me and also for the affirmation of the Christ as the fulfilment of th Law and the Prophets, and the actualisation of our faith in this in Orthodox worship.

I strongly recommend listening to or reading it.  So much of what we see and do in church finds its meaning in what Dr Barker has discovered that her work certainly serves as a channel for us to deepen our understanding and appreciation of what we are as the people of God.

Has anybody else encountered Dr Barker's work?  What of her books?

Fans

My parish purchased a pair of fans over the summer, which we only started to use regularly a month or so ago, (when we finally got enough altar servers to be able to do so). I had seen them used before in other places and had myself borne fans while serving at the cathedral. However, they were new to most of our people and, while I was able to explain their use and purpose, it occurred to me that I knew very little of their history and development. So I decided to do a little bit of googling and reading. This, of course, meant that a post about liturgical fans was destined to appear here sooner or later, and I must confess to having really enjoyed doing the background work for this. It has been educational and rather good fun.

First of all, the nomenclature is interesting. There is no doubt about the purpose of these implements: they were most definitely functional fans at one point, and the names by which they are called today simply reflect this. In the west, the liturgical fan goes by the name flabellum, which is simply the Latin word for fan. In the Russian church, it is called the ripidi, from the Greek word ripidion, again meaning fan. However, in the Greek church, the fans are generally no longer known as ripidia but rather hexapteryga, meaning six-winged, reflective of the ancient six-winged seraphim that are often depicted on them. Curiously, it seems that this name is applied even to examples that do not bear the image of the seraphim, (which many do not). Better, I think, to stick with fan. I rather like ours. They are a wooden pair, and form a complete set with our processional Cross and icon, which we keep at the High Place when not in use:

It seems that the use of such implements dates from the time of the ancient Egyptians,

Read more...

Piety, Processions, and Puppetry

This post is really just a string of ideas rather than a planned construction of coherent thoughts and I claim no authority beyond being a servant of Christ's Church who often fails miserably at his calling to be even that. Yet a conversation I recently had with a priest, shortly after witnessing the services of Holy Week and Pascha, got me to thinking a little about the liturgy of the Church and how, through it, we enter into the worship of God.

I love the multi-layered symbolism of the corporate worship of the Church. When we begin to explore it, there is so much that gives us the firm grounding from which to elevate our hearts to God. It is doctrine expressed and acted out, often in the most accessible way possible. Processions, prostrations, crossings, the opening and closing of the doors - some of these things speak to us immediately and have an obvious meaning. Yet some of them have depths of meaning that only come to us with time and being steeped in the Church's worship. For instance, at the old Paschal Vigil which we serve on Holy Saturday afternoon in the form of the Vesperal Liturgy of St Basil, we hear the reading from Isaiah, (the same one that provides the inspiration for the oft-repeated hymn, Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem), in which we hear:

And thy gates shall be open continually: they shall not be shut day nor night.

- Isaiah 60:11

So the doors of the iconostas remain open through Bright Week, and are not closed until the beginning of the Ninth Hour on Saturday of that week, for this is the week of thr renewal, when we celebrate most fully the conqeuring of all that separates us from the fullness of union with God.

However, I wonder at the nature of some of the things that have crept into Orthodox practice and the degree to which they are in keeping with the Tradition of the Church. One of the most powerful symbols of Great and Holy Friday is at Matins. After the fifth Gospel, which ends with Christ taking up his Cross and being assisted by Simon of Cyrene, during the fifteenth antiphon, the priest solemnly carries the large icon of the Saviour on the Cross from the altar and sets it in the midst of the church for the edificaton of the people. This becomes their focus as they hear the remaining Passion Gospels, which tell of the final events in the Passion of the Saviour, including his death. After the service, the people may come forward and venerate the icon, kissing the feet of their Saviour on the Cross.

Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
Today is hung upon a Tree He Who suspended the earth upon the waters.
He who is King of the Angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns.
He who wrapped the heaven in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery,
He who freed Adam in the Jordan receiveth a blow on the face.
The Bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails.
The Son of the Virgin is pierced with a lance.
We worship thy Passion, O Christ,
We worship thy Passion, O Christ,
We worship thy Passion, O Christ: show unto us also thy glorious Resurrection!

- The fifteenth antiphon of Great Friday Matins

Yet a custom has developed in some places of setting up a plain Cross in the midst of the Church before the service begins, and the icon that is carried out at the fifteenth antiphon is of the corpus only. This often has holes pre-drilled in the hands and feet, through which nails are inserted, and the priest hammers the icon to the Cross during the service.

I have never seen this done in full so I cannot comment on it experientially. However, it seems to run contrary to everything that I have been taught about the place of icons in the doctrine and praxis of the Orthodox Church. Icons serve to focus the mind and heart on the holy one represented in the image.

For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν), not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν) which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented. For thus the teaching of our holy Fathers, that is the tradition of the Catholic Church, which from one end of the earth to the other hath received the Gospel, is strengthened. Thus we follow Paul, who spake in Christ, and the whole divine Apostolic company and the holy Fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. So we sing prophetically the triumphal hymns of the Church, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Rejoice and be glad with all thy heart. The Lord hath taken away from thee the oppression of thine adversaries; thou art redeemed from the hand of thine enemies. The Lord is a King in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more, and peace be unto thee for ever."

- from the decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

With that in mind, the traditional practice of placing the icon of the crucified Saviour in the midst of the people and their later veneration of it seems very fitting. However, I, personally, struggle with the idea of an icon being used as, if I may be forgiven, a theatre prop. I'm just not sure that this action of nailing an image of the Saviour to the Cross is in keeping with the Orthodox theology of the icon and I am not sure it is something that should be encouraged. If the honour paid to the icon is passed to the holy person represented therein, what are we doing when we hammer nails into an icon of the Saviour? In the quiet piety of Orthodox Christians, an icon, if accidentally knocked over, is often picked up quickly and kissed before being returned to its place of honour, because people understand what the image represents, even if the Saint is largely unknown. Yet we are speaking here about pounding nails into an icon of the Christ.

Even if we leave aside the matter of the nailing, I do not like the concept of the detachable corpus being placed on the Cross, and then taken down during the Vespers service and wrapped in a shroud to be taken into the altar, (which is the second half of this late practice). For the same reasons as the nailing, it seems not to sit well with the concept of the icon as an object of focus and veneration. My priestly interlocutor said to me that the Orthodox understanding of the icon does not extend to puppetry. It may seem a shocking statement to make at first but, having given it some thought, I find myself unable to disagree.

The Church's services have a drama of their own, in their shape and structure, in the way one element flows into another, which then overlaps with the next, in the readings, in the hymns, in the actions of the clergy and people - all of these things carry beautiful meaning and symbolism, and speak of the mystery of salvation into which we are to enter more fully through these services. If we think, for example, of the traditional Great Friday ceremonies, they are actually very restrained while being very rich. When we focus on the Passion of the Saviour at Matins, the Cross is set up in the midst of the people and censed. Before Vespers, the Cross is quietly removed because the focus of this service is not the Passion but rather the burial of the Saviour. There is no theatrical taking down of the icon of the Saviour's body from the Cross and wrapping it in a burial shroud. Where the Cross once stood, we now see the sepulchre of the Lord, on which is placed the plashchanitsa, which is an icon showing the body of the Saviour, often surrounded by his Mother and the Holy Myrrh-Bearers. It is carried out solemnly, and offered for veneration by the people. Offerings of flora and rose water are laid on it in honour of the Christ depicted. Then, during the Midnight Office of the Paschal Vigil, the plashchanitsa is removed from the midst of the people with the same solemnity with which it was placed there, and when the people go outside for the procession after the Midnight Office, the sepulchre is quietly removed, so that when the people re-enter the church, it is simply not there, having been replaced by an icon of the Resurrection.

So it seems to me that the mystical drama into which we are to be caught up is inherent to the services themselves and is not to be found in extraneous re-enactments of Christ being crucified, taken down from the Cross, or wrapped in a shroud.

Another historical example of this is the procession of Palm Sunday. A very late development in parts of the west in Orthodox times, possibly originating in France, was the custom of including the Holy Things in the procession on Palm Sunday. This was different from the custom known among Roman Catholic people today, of carrying the sacrament in procession as a sign of devotion. As it came to develop in Britain by the late mediaeval period, an elaborate portable shrine was constructed, on which would be carried the Holy Things. As this approached, the choir would sing antiphons hailing the coming Christ, reminiscent of the Hebrews greeting the Saviour with shouts and hymns as He entered Jerusalem, which would continue through the procession. This was not simply a devotion to Christ in the Mystery of the Eucharist, (although the extra-eucharistic piety, including such processions, is perhaps intrinsically questionable anyway), but rather seems to have been a theatrical re-enactment over and above the natural drama of the Church's liturgy, using the sacrament in a very unusual way.

How did this sort of thing creep into Orthodox custom? These things do not appear in the rubrics of the services but are simply pious additions which are largely unknown outside of Greek practice, so I wonder whether these are latinisations, (in terms of the way of thinking about how we worship rather direct borrowings of practice), that permeated the Greek church under Ottoman rule. I recall once reading that a number of Greek clergy during this time were trained in Roman Catholic seminaries. Whatever the origins, is it something that is in keeping with the way that we understand worship, that we feel worship, that we do worship? Is it something that we ought to continue? I don't think so, personally, but my saying so comes largely from gut feeling based on what I have been taught and what I have absorbed, and how it has moulded me over the past few years and is not something that I can argue academically. However, given the centrality of worship to the Christian life and the importance that has in transmitting the Faith to the innermost parts of our beings, I do not feel that the degree to which the way we worship affects our understanding of our own place in relation to Christ and within the life of his Church can be thought of too lightly.

Anyway, there my thoughts are. I don't know what, if anything, others make of them.

Our Father

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of his disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.' So He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'

- Luke 11:1-4

I love the Lord's Prayer but I know that, as with anything familiar, it is easy to come to disregard its significance and to treat is as something ordinary and commonplace. I have been saying these words now for twenty... something (cough) years and it is certainly a failing of mine. I have become more keenly aware of it since having been made a reader because now I am responsible not just for my own prayers but also for those who are gathered with me. When I lead the Trisagion prayers or the Hours, and I get caught up in the rhythm, I sometimes find myself rattling them off, but when I get to the Lord's Prayer, I am reminded of what I am saying, what the words mean, and to Whom I am addressing them, and it acts as a call back to the reverence and awe with which we must approach God.

The prayer is loaded with theological meaning which others will be far better at understanding or explaining than I, and there are numerous papers written on the subject. My focus is simply on the opening words and what they mean for us.

When we call upon God as "Our Father", we are claiming our place within the family of God, affirming our Baptism and our sealing with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation, through which we receive the adoption as children of the same heavenly Father and become joint heirs with Christ, into Whose Body we are grafted. In the Divine Liturgy, the priest introduces the prayer by asking that God may grant that, 'with boldness and without condemnation, we may dare to call upon Thee, the heavenly God, as Father'. We begin the prayer by signing ourselves with the Cross of Christ, and we prostrate ourselves towards the east, acknowledging that we share in the inheritance of Christ, and that it is only through God's grace and through no worthiness of our own that we may presume to call God our Father. We are mere temporal beings, of which the psalmist writes:

As for man, his days are as the grass, as a flower of the field, so shall he blossom forth. For when the wind is passed over it, then it shall be gone, and no longer will it know the place thereof.

- from Psalm 102

Yet the great God of heaven, the eternal God, Who is beyond space, time, language, speech, and comprehension, Who is Creator and Maker of all that is - this God adopts us as his children and calls us his sons and daughters through our Baptism into the Body of his Son. This is what we are saying when we dare to call Him Father. I find this astounding, and not something that ought to be taken lightly.

Therefore, brethren, we are debtors — not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

- Romans 8:12-17

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth — in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in Whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory.

- Ephesians 1:3-14

In their treatises on the subject of prayer, Tertulian and St Cyprian of Carthage both express this link between Baptism and the ability to call upon God in prayer as Father. St Cyprian tells us that this was the first prayer said by the newly-baptised upon emerging from the font. They also emphasise the corporate nature of it: that we do not approach God in prayer as individuals but as part of God's family, through our common Baptism and our common faith.

Dearest brothers, we should turn our minds and understand not only that we call Him "Father, Who is in heaven," but that we add to this and say: "Our Father," that is of those who believe, of those who have begun to be children of God, sanctified through Him and restored by a birth of spiritual grace...

- St Cyprian, "On the Lord's Prayer"

It is for this reason that the unbaptised were, for many centuries, not permitted to even be present at the corporate prayer of the Eucharist, when the Church actualises the fullest possible expression on earth of the New Covenant in the Body of Christ, and its relationship to the Father. A number of the Church's canons very forcefully forbid us from joining in prayer with those who are not united with us in faith, and it is also the reason why, to this day, our catechumens, who have publicly affirmed their obedience to the Church, are dismissed from the Eucharistic assembly until such time as they are baptised. From the Liturgy of St James:

Let none of the catechumens, let none of the uninitiated, let none of those who are not able to join with us in prayer remain.

- The Dismissal of the Catechumens

We can see how serious it is when we stand with our brothers and sisters at the Eucharist and call upon God as Father. The placement of the Lord's Prayer between the Anaphora and Communion is no accident, and is common to most, if not all, ancient rites. One is the great offering back to the Father of all that He has given us, along with the saving death, Resurrection, and Ascension of his Son, and the other is our nourishment with that very risen and ascended Body and Blood of his Son and our communion with God and each other.



What does that mean for us? Have we lived in such a way as to strengthen that baptismal bond? Have we entered into prayer regularly? Have we looked after the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of God's children? Are we really in such a state that we can, with clear conscience, easily say the Lord's Prayer? Or have we sinned and damaged that relationship so that we need to ask forgiveness of God and our brothers and sisters? Have we professed things contrary to the saving Faith? If so, then we should not be afraid to confess and receive absolution. These are the things to think about in our daily lives and when we come to Communion, and indeed whenever we pray. So if, like me, others of you find yourselves sometimes breezing through the prayers out of habit, or perhaps because you want to get them over with so you can get on with other things, perhaps we should let the words Our Father call us back and cause us to think about what we are saying, so that, once we have made our prostration, we may stand tall, adopted and redeemed, as "sons of light and sons of the day", and with boldness and without condemnation, call upon the heavenly God as Father, and say:

Our Father, Who art in the heavens,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one.

Psalm 103 sung to Valaam Chant

Vespers in the Byzantine Rite begins with Psalm 103. It is the psalm of creation, sung at the beginning of the new day, and is all the more loaded with meaning at Saturday Vespers, when we usher in the Sunday, looking forward to the Eighth Day of the New Creation. According to the ustav, (or typikon, for those who like Greek words), the Royal Doors remain open during this psalm while the priest censes the church and people, reminding us of the paradise that was open to our first parents through their communion with God. Immediately afterwards, the doors are closed. A Manual of the Orthodox Church's Divine Services tells us that this is to show that our dwelling in paradise was short-lived, and that we are totally dependent on the mercy of God as we turn to Him in prayer in the Great Litany, with the deacon's words, 'In peace, let us pray to the Lord'.

I love the plethora of settings of Psalm 103, but I have, over the past year, developed a fondness for the music of the Valaam monastery in particular. After Jordanville, it is the place I currently most want to visit. Below is the choir of the Holy Cross Hermitage, (music section here), singing an English translation of Psalm 103 to a Valaam setting. It is in its abbreviated form with refrains, as is permitted when Vespers is served as part of the All-Night Vigil.



I think it's beautiful. I have a recording of the Valaam Monastery choir and the setting of the Phos Hilaron on my CD is very similar. They are more complex than - but remind me of - the Carpatho-Russian music that I love, and some of which we occasionally use at my parish. Perhaps there is a simple setting of the Song of Symeon that we can adopt when we resume Saturday Vespers instead of it simply being intoned.

Ashes

'When you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.'

- Matthew 6:16-21

For my Orthodox brothers and sisters who belong to the Western Rite, today is Ash Wednesday, and the first day of Lent. Many Christians, Orthodox and non-Orthdox alike, will be familiar with the ceremony of the imposition of ashes which has become customary on this day. This comes to us directly from the custom of the dismissal, in former times, of those who were excommunicate for one reason or another, and were serving a time of penitence before being received back into the full communion of the Church. Eventually, it became customary to impose the ashes on the heads of all who presented themselves.

Indirectly, this custom comes to us from Scripture, where numerous times in the Old Testament, we see reference to dust and ashes thrown upon the head as a sign of mourning, penitence, and a reminder of human mortality. (Job 2:12; Joshua 7:6; Lamentations 2:10; Ezekiel 27:30, among others).

Yet the Saviour warns us in quite clear terms not to disfigure our faces in order for our piety to be seen by men. This certainly seems to make the widespread practice of people walking around with a dark smudge or Cross on their faces something that is not compatible with the teachings of Christ. Less so seems to be the custom of mixing the ash with oil for the purpose of giving it a darker, more noticeable hue, and causing it to stay in place for longer. Can it be that centuries of Christian tradition have been in direct conflict with the words of the Saviour? Or is there something else going on?

All of those Old Testament references make mention of the dust and ash being specifically thrown upon the head. Could it be that this is the practice that was adopted by the Church but which later became corrupted?

I recently learnt that it is mainly in our anglophone world that the Cross on the face is as widespread as it is, and that in the Latin church, in many European countries, the custom is for the ashes to be sprinkled over the inclined head of the penitent in the form of a Cross, which is then barely, if at all, noticeable to anybody. It is the action and its significance to the penitent that is the focus, and not any lasting mark intended to be seen by the world. After all, a smudge of ash on the forehead is not the natural outworking of the practice of a lively faith but rather the evidence is in the lasting effect on our hearts and lives.

'Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being honoured, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice. Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin. Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful... Let the ear fast... by not listening to evil talk and gossip... Let the mouth fast from the foul words and unjust criticism. For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?'

-St John Chrysostom, "The Proof of Fasting"

Below we see the sprinkling form of the imposition of ashes employed in the cases of the current and last popes.













Could it be that this is in fact the earlier practice and that, somewhere along the line, it became customary in some places to place a smear on the face? The relevant rubric in the Sarum Missal simply says:

Afterwards the ashes shall be distributed on the heads of the clergy and laity by the higher dignitaries, making the sign of the Cross with the ashes...

The precise manner of how the ashes are to be distributed is not specified and it seems perfectly possible to me that this is the case because it was simply assumed that clergy would know how to do it. The rubrics in the local Roman use are equally vague. They certainly make no mention of forming a visible and lasting Cross in ash on the face. Here is a missal woodcut that depicts the same thing, (sadly I do not know its provenance):

On the one occasion that I observed the beginning of Orthodox Lent in the Western Rite, the ashes were imposed using the Cross-on-forehead method but that may not be representative of general Western Rite Orthodox practice. Is anybody able to offer any comment from experience of this elsewhere? Has anybody seen the sprinkling method employed? Most importantly, is it worth considering using this method in light of the words of the Saviour? Perhaps then we shall focus less on the foreheads of those around us and more readily internalise within our hearts the meaning of the Lenten fast, allowing our passions to be subdued, and the resultant imbuing of our hearts with the grace of God to spring forth in genuine love for ourselves and our neighbours, for the sake of our salvation.

Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’

-Isaiah 58:5-9

Christ in the Psalms

Virtually all know the words of this psalm and they continue to sing it at every age, without knowing, however, the sense of what has been said. This is no small charge, to sing something every day, putting forth words from the mouth, without searching out the meaning of the thoughts residing in the words.

- St John Chrysostom

I recently came across reference made to Priest Patrick Reardon's Christ in the Psalms on another site and decided to buy it. I must say that it is one of the most rewarding purchases that I have made in recent months.

Father Patrick takes us through the 151 psalms with reflections on their poetry, the doctrine of their content, and their liturgical use, inviting us to pause and ponder the depth of some of the words that we often chant casually or unthinkingly. He also shows how many of these psalms have traditionally been seen as references to the Christ and why they are, therefore, an integral part of the hymnody and culture of the community of the New Covenant, the Body of Christ, the Church.

I never really had much exposure to the psalms in my Anglican childhood. At most of my parishes over the years, we were mass people and not really office people. Yet in my teens I started to pray the office and began to be more fully exposed to the beauty and richness of the psalms. However, it was always very much a private affair, always disconnected somehow from the regular worshipping life of my parish. As such, it became difficult to sustain. Now that I am Orthodox, I find myself bombarded on every side with psalmody, at each and every service. We chant a number of psalms in full as a standard part of almost all of our services, portions of psalms are included in our prayers, antiphons, troparia, communion hymns, responsories, and so forth. Eventually, the words permeate the consciousness and become second nature. I find that there are a number of psalms that I simply know without having made any conscious effort to learn them, and because I can say them effortlessly, I am able to pray them internally. Then, when I pray the office at home, it seems so very natural because it is built on a solid foundation.

Father Patrick does not include the text of the psalms in his book, as it is assumed that the reader will either be familiar with the psalms or will have a psalter to hand. For this I would strongly recommend The Psalter According to the Seventy, published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery. This is by far the most beautiful translation of the psalms that I have ever encountered. The language is dignified without being so archaic that it is clumsy, (as I find the King James and Coverdale translations to be, despite having grown up with and readily understanding both). This translation also renders "anointed one" as "Christ" in many of those psalms that are traditionally seen as Messianic in the writings of the fathers and the liturgical use of the Church. This I am sure will prove to be a great help when using the psalter alongside Father Patrick's book.

Very importantly, though, is that, as the name suggests, The Psalter According to the Seventy has the advantage of being a translation from the Septuagint, which has been used as the Old Testament of the Church since the early centuries of Christianity. The translation from the Orthodox Study Bible or the Eastern Orthodox Bible may also be found to be quite acceptable for the same reasons.

Many currently-available English renderings of the psalms are based on the much later, flawed Masoretic Hebrew text of the Old Testament. This omits books and alters words in places, which can cause confusion when being read alongside Orthodox commentaries. Also, its different numbering system for the psalms, while only a minor inconvenience, can prove to be something of an annoyance.

Further to this, a number of recent "translations" have been done without a view to expressing the mind of the Church in understanding the psalms. As a result, expressions in the psalms, which for centuries have been understood as references to the Christ, have been obliterated for the sake of a slavish obedience to the modern idol of gender-neutrality. So Blessed is the man in Psalm 1, which the fathers tell us refers to Christ, and which begins the Church's liturgical celebration of the Resurrection at the start of the week, has been turned into such nonsense as Happy are those in a number of "translations".

So while study of the Scriptures is always to be commended, I would recommend caution in choosing a translation. Personally, I am very grateful indeed to Father Patrick because his book is better helping me to heed the words spoken to me by my bishop on the day that he ordained me a reader:

My child, the first degree of the Priesthood is that of Reader. Therefore, it is fitting for you to read the divine Scriptures every day, that they who hear, beholding thee, may receive edification, that thou, in no way putting to shame thine election, may prepare thyself for a higher degree. For by a chaste, holy, and upright life thou shalt gain the mercy of God, the Lover of Mankind, and be counted worthy of a higher ministry: in Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory unto ages of ages. Amen.

- from the rite for the setting apart of a reader

I am all too aware that I fail on a number of counts, and I have really found a renewed zeal since having got this book. I hope that others receive benefit from it in their own lives and spiritual growth. If you do, why not contact Father Patrick and let him know that his labour has not been in vain?

Incidentally, I notice that he has also written Christ in His Saints. Is anybody familiar with it and able to give an idea of what it is like?

Small Things

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill,
be a scrub in the valley... but be
the best little scrub by the side of the rill;
be a bush if you can't be a tree.

If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass,
and some highway happier make;
if you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass...
but the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
There's something for all of us here,
there's big work to do, and there's lesser to do,
and the task you must do is near.

If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,
if you can't be the sun, be a star;
it isn't by size that you win or you fail...
be the best of whatever you are!

- D. Mallock

Concordia Parvae Res Crescunt (In Harmony Small Things Grow)

- Xaverian College motto

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

The poem Be the Best of Whatever You Are I learnt at primary school, the Latin motto I learnt at college, and the Mother Teresa quotation I stumbled upon while googling. I think that there is an important message contained in all of the above words, and it is something that is sadly often disregarded by many people in secular society and scorned by many Christian people: I am speaking about the value of small things.

There seems to be a cultural laxity about doing things well. I am not referring to people doing their best and making mistakes but rather to the attitude that care for the little things doesn't matter. We see it in spelling and grammar, in workmanship, in precision of communication, and in various aspects of life. When those of us who are troubled at this express our thoughts, we are often accused of being fussy, pernickety, and are treated with some degree of hostility because we are perceived as being critical. After all, these are just small things. What do they matter? Whether or not this is a cultural shift I am too young to say - it may well be the case that this carelessness has always abounded and that mankind has survived in spite of this. I don't know.

What I do know is that this mentality has infected Christians. I can think of a number of occasions in my life where I have been dismissed as petty, called a bigot, or accused of being pharisaical because of my desire to do things well in church - and this by other Christians. I do not understand this way of thinking or the motivation for dismissing somebody's act of faith in this way. On one Sunday, at a former Anglican parish of mine, we had a visiting priest who overestimated the amount of wine that would be required. After everybody had been communicated and the priest had consumed what he could, there was still a full chalice left over, which I put into the aumbry. Before the Wednesday lunchtime mass, our regular priest removed it, placed it on the altar, and treated it as though the previous Sunday had not happened, consecrating it afresh. When I politely expressed concern about this afterwards, I received the cavalier response, "Oh well. If God can get into it he can get out of it again". I can list a number of examples, both within and without Orthodoxy.

Where does this come from? Is it from a genuine lack of care for how things are done? Do people imagine that, because God is, in his essence, beyond our wildest imaginings, the mundane things of earth are of no concern to Him? The Incarnation and all of salvation history would seem to suggest otherwise. Or is it possibly due to a low sense of self-value, so that people think that their own actions and devotion are so meaningless that it cannot possibly matter if they are not done well?

The Anglican church of St Anne on the island of St Kitts used to have a sexton called Mr Ronald Mills, (may his memory be eternal). One day, he was in church, performing his usual duties during the daytime. He paused to ring the Angelus before continuing with his duties. An hour or so later, he was making his way home and, as he was leaving the churchyard, the priest shouted from the rectory balcony across the street, 'Ring the Angelus, Ronnie!' 'But I've already rung it,' came the reply. 'Well, ring it again!' said the rector. It turns out that he had initially rung it an hour early.

When Mr Mills told me this story, I was about 12 years old and he was well into his 80s. The events of the story had happened at least forty years earlier, yet he told me about them while he was polishing a censer. I hasten to add that, by this point in his life, his fingers weren't quite as nimble as they had once been and his buffing perhaps not as vigorous, and it showed in the appearance of the censer afterwards, and he was aware of it, but that's all rather beside the point. The point is that this was his devotion. He had very little money and had never lived outside his small town on his small island. This service that he performed to the best of his ability was his way of giving of what he had to honour God, of contributing to the communal worship by his parish of almighty God, and it had nourished his faith for nearly half a century. If it wasn't done well, it upset him. It was a small thing.

At my parish, most of us don't have very much money. Some of us sing, others mop, while others bring back candles, wine, and incense from their travels. Some people bake prosphora while others arrange flowers and clean icons. Some of us arrange the variable parts of the services week by week, feast by feast, while others pick the embedded wax out of the candle stands or prepare food to share after the Sunday Liturgy. All of us try our best to make sure that what we do is done as well as it can be. I sometimes see one lady fixing the flower arrangements as she venerates icons because she wants them to look the best that they can. Before they unwrap it, some people privately check with our priest that the food they have brought to share doesn't break any fasting rule because they want their offering to be a joy and not a stumbling-block for their brothers and sisters. I bury myself in books of rubrics during the week because I want my parish's worship to bring our people into the life and common worship of the Church as much possible. These are small things.

Are we Pharisees? After all, a petal falling to the floor, eating a piece of chicken during Lent, and the Sunday Communion Verse sung on a Thursday are all things that are unlikely to set off a sequence of events which will ultimately culminate in the end of the world, (which is probably just as well, because we don't always get it right). However, I prefer to think that we are just people who have inherited a Christian Tradition through which the Saints have been saved, and are trying our best to be faithful to it, for the honour and love of God, out of love for each other, and for our health and salvation. These may just be small things, but they are our small things, and we offer them so that may come together to make a beautiful offering to God. In harmony small things grow.

I always remember the parables of the Saviour whenever people make accusations of pharisaism in matters such as these. There is the parable of the unjust steward:

(Jesus) also said to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’

Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’

So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.

And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?"

- Luke 16:1-11

The teaching of this parable is that even the most unlikely, worldly, things may be used for the service of God, and that the world is better at using money for the sake of its own ends than religious people are at using money for higher things. The Saviour asks how we can possibly be trusted with great things, with true riches, when we have shown that we cannot be faithful even with small things.

We see this also in the parable of the talents.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord’s money.

After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ He also who had received two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.’ But his lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents. ‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"

- Matthew 25:14-30

The lord of the servants gives to each according to his ability, just as we receive our lot in life. Do we use whatever small portion we have for the glory of God or do we instead convince ourselves that what we have is of so little worth that God cannot possibly have any use for it? This is the immortal God Who, for our salvation, deigned to be incarnate of the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and without change became man, and was crucified. Surely this God is concerned with the physical things of the world and appreciates our offering, given with a humble and contrite heart. Psalm 138 should convince us of this.

Do I think that there is a danger of legalism? Yes, I do. If we merely follow the externals of our faith slavishly, rather than because they spring from a lively faith, then we are not open to the transformative power of God's grace. Yet the external elements of our faith - even the most minute act of devotion and careful precision - can be spiritually beneficial. We learn from the psalmist that the external offerings are not rejected but that they must be offered in humility and contrition.

O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise. For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I had given it; with whole-burnt offerings Thou shalt not be pleased. A sacrifice unto God is a broken spirit; a heart that is broken and humbled God will not despise. Do good, O Lord, in thy good pleasure unto Sion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be builded. Then shalt Thou be pleased with a sacrifice of righteousness, with oblation and whole-burnt offerings. Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

- verses from Psalm 50

Yet, while there is the danger of falling into legalism, I do believe that it is often with too much
ease that this accusation is made, and that it is sometimes used, perhaps unwittingly, as an excuse for slovenliness and for the placing of personal preferences over and above the humble obedience to Holy Tradition that should naturally flow from love for God. So yes, perhaps sometimes I get a little frustrated when things go wrong with my preparation of the services, or when I don't understand how something should fit together; and perhaps I flinch a little when I see due care not being given to the offering of the services, but it is only because it is primarily through participation in the services of the Church that I am nourished and fed. I need them, and when I have a part to play in them, I want for it to be the best offering that I can give to God and to my brothers and sisters in Christ. If this makes me a rubricist, or a pharisee, or a fusspot, then it is a label that I am willing to embrace, because what matters to me most of all - what I truly long for - is that, after a lifetime of trying to pray faithfully, and striving to love ardently, and struggling to worship fervently, and being embraced by God's grace in the Mysteries of salvation, when I breathe my last, I might just hear the words, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful in small things, I will make you ruler over great things. Enter into the joy of your lord.'

Lord, have mercy!

Holy Scripture and the Church

Christianity is not an ideology that can be learnt from internalising texts. It is a way of being and of living with an ultimate purpose. It isn't for nothing that the early Christians referred to it simply as The Way. More on this from St Hilarion the New Hieromartyr.

Kamilavka tip to Daniel.

On Righteous Anger

When anyone is disturbed or saddened under the pretext of a good and soul-profiting matter, and is angered against his neighbour, it is evident that this is not according to God: for everything that is of God is peaceful and useful, and leads a man to humility and to judging himself.

-St Barsanuphius the Great

What can I say in response to this other than to repeat the protest of the disciples when the Saviour told them that in order to inherit eternal life, the must eat of his Body and drink of his Blood? 'This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept it?'

The truth is that I have no response to this. I do not understand it. When our hierarchs and priests teach and practise things that we know are contrary to the saving Faith, it causes pain and confusion, and yes, sometimes anger, because we know that what they are doing is wrong, and we know that they know that it is wrong, and yet they do it anyway. So how are we to respond to that? The anger is detrimental to our spiritual well-being. It eats away at the soul and affects our relationship with God and creation, and when we recognise this it is very easy to become resentful of those whose actions have elicited these feelings in us. Yet only we have the power to choose to leave it behind. God will strengthen us to do so but not against our will. We must shed the anger and bitterness and seek the peace and love of Christ in our hearts.

But does this mean that we are to remain silent? As Christians, baptised into the death and resurrection of the Christ, and one with our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ, are we to stand idly by, humbly remaining silent while our beloved brethren are led astray? The Saviour tells us:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 7:15

How do we retain our spiritual composure and our focus on the path of humility while simultaneously facing the reality of the dangers that confront us even within the life of the Church? I do not know. Perhaps it is a balance that we are not called to find. Perhaps it is not for most of us to challenge the heresiarchs, and perhaps we should leave it to those who have the spiritual gounding to face them, to the Ephesian St Marks and the Studite St Theodores of today. But what if St Mark of Ephesus and St Theodore the Studite, and others like them, had said the same thing?

This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept it?

The Conception of the Mother of God

And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by, saying: Anna, Anna, the Lord hath heard thy prayer, and thou shalt conceive, and shall bring forth; and thy seed shall be spoken of in all the world. - from the Protoevangelium of St James
The feast of the Conception of the Mother of God is perhaps one of the most poorly understood feasts of the Church. This falls on the 8th of December on the Western Rites and on the 9th of December in the Byzantine Kalendar. In either case, it falls approximately nine months before the Nativity of the Mother of God in September. Each year we celebrate this feast and each year somebody asks what it is all about. That people have a yearning to learn more about this part of the Christian Mystery is, of course, encouraging, but it does reveal that it is one of the feasts that is not as readily understood as others.

My suspicion is that this may be particularly true among western converts to Orthodoxy. Many of us who have come to Orthodoxy from western traditions have known of the later Latin teaching of the immaculate conception of the Mother of God, which states:

...the doctrine which asserts that the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from every stain of original sin is a doctrine revealed by God and, for this reason, must be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful.

Constitution Ineffabilis Dei, 1854

Whether we come from traditions where this was affirmed or repudiated, we have been affected by it, whether by overenthusastically embracing it or by overzealously throwing out the proverbial baby along with the bathwater.

Yes, we may remember from our days of exploring Orthodoxy that our understanding of ancestral sin is different from the Latin teaching of original sin, and that this means that the Conception of the Mother of God was, in this respect, just like the conception of any other human being. She was conceived in innocence, as indeed we all are, and her freedom from the guilt of sin at the moment of her conception is unremarkable in that respect*. We may know in our heads that this renders the teaching on the immaculate conception meaningless, for it is the solution to a problem that doesn't exist. We may also understand that because we do not believe that the sin of our first parents means that all human beings are deprived of a supernatural grace from the first moment of our conception, the angelic salutation of the Mother of God as being "full of grace" poses no doctrinal problem for us. We do not need to ponder on what is unique to her that could make this so because there is nothing in the nature of man that precludes this.

So where does this leave us?

Well, as a new convert from Anglicanism, I wasn't quite sure. I would get asked the question of my Anglo-Catholic friends, 'If her conception wasn't immaculate, then what was so special about it? Why celebrate it as a feast?' and I would usually not have an answer. Sometimes this was asked out of genuine curiosity. At other times it was asked in an attempt to highlight what they saw as an inconsistency between Orthodox teaching and Orthodox liturgical practice. The argument was that the existence of the feast in the Orthodox kalendar is evidence that we did once celebrate the immaculate conception but later changed for some reason, perhaps in relation to the disdain with which Blessed Augustine of Hippo is held in some quarters of Orthodoxy, and that we are now left with a meaningless feast as a result.

The sad truth is that this is simply evidence of just how much damage has been done by this teaching of the immaculate conception. The actual meaning of the celebration of the Conception of the Mother of God has been overshadowed to such a great extent that it has almost entirely departed from the consciousness of many Christians, who are left unable to see the point of the feast without this later teaching, and who, as a result, perceive that they have to choose between the two extremes of a) fully embracing the immaculate conception and the original sin on which it is based, and b) reacting vehemently against this teaching and refusing to celebrate the feast at all! Neither of these is acceptable to the Orthodox mind.

So where does this leave people who are coming from such backgrounds into Orthodoxy, and are faced with what appears to be an inconsistency between our belief and practice? It is not unreasonable that they may also wonder about this and ask similar questions to those posed by my Anglo-Catholic friends.

What follows is my own attempt at answering those questions.

At the very basis of Christian teaching is the understanding that nature, as we perceive and experience it today, is fallen. It is still inherently good as we are told in the creation story but it suffers from the effects of the fall. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the state of mankind. We experience the effects of the fall in perceptible and unimaginable ways. We die, suffer from ailments, experience pain, hunger, and other discomfort. Some have chemical imbalances causing psychological problems. Our passions are also disordered so that many of us struggle with things that, properly, are a wholesome part of our existence and even theosis: food, properly a source of nourishment and enjoyment, is a temptation in many to overeat or undereat, often with deadly consequences; there are inclinations of the sexual passions to acts outside of the procreative marriage bond; there are inclinations and temptations to misdirect our emotions of anger and so forth, often to the point of violence and murder. These are all effects of the fall that affect us all in different ways and to different degrees. They are all ways in which mankind today is separated from complete theosis, from the full participation in the light, love, splendour, holiness, and life-creating energies of the Holy Trinity.


The Ascended Christ, taking our restored human nature back to the bosom of the Father.

The hope that we have in Christianity is the Incarnation. God became man. He fully took on the human nature in the Person of Jesus Christ, and, in that flesh, shared in our struggles, our sufferings, and grief. He had a physical body, just like ours, and felt pain and hunger and, ultimately, shared in our death. Having released the bonds of those righteous ones in Hades who had died before the Incarnation, He also conquered all those elements of the fall in his glorious Resurrection, while still in our flesh - still fully possessing the human nature. In the Ascension, He took that redeemed and restored human nature back into heaven, once again opening the way for us to follow and this we do, by being grafted into his Body, the Church, through Baptism, and being nourished by his Body and Blood, and through participation in the grace-filled life of the Church.

The post-Resurrection Body of Christ was still human, but what we are called to be rather than what we are. He was truly, physically present, but the Gospels tell us of characteristics that we know ourselves not to have. He appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and just as easily vanished from sight. He even showed the brilliance of what our deified bodies are to be at the Transfiguration on Tabor. We see evidence of this in some cases in the lives of the Saints, as they have, in their advanced states of theosis, even during their earthly lives in some cases, physical characteristics beyond what is the common fallen state of mankind. We hear of healing miracles, incorruptible relics, relics that give a sweet aroma, levitation, and even resurrection from the dead! The Saints truly participate in the energies of God and overcome these effects of the fall. Such is the call of all of us and this is at the very heart of the Christian Faith and, indeed, of our entire lives as Christian people.

Another effect of this fallennesss is barrenness. That the ability to procreate becomes diminished or even ceases in men and women, often after a certain age, is a sign of the separation of mankind from participation in the life-giving energies of God. Yet in the childless, elderly couple, the righteous Joachim and Anna, we see a foretaste, a foreshadowing, of the great Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ. Even before Christ is born, we see something of the effects of his conquering the fall, when the barrenness of his grandmother, the righteous Anna is overcome when the Mother of the Redeemer comes into existence in her life-bearing womb.

It is this that we celebrate on the feast of the Conception of the Mother of God. At different times, through repeated renewal of covenants, and in various ways, God revealed something of Himself to his people of various lands, tribes, and backgrounds. He spoke through prophets, sages, and bards for hundreds, even thousands of years, and, after all of this prophecy and prayer, and hopeful expectation, in the Conception of the Mother of God, we have the first sign of the coming of the One Who Is, Who comes to save us from the fall, from peril, and from death, and Who comes to give life. We see this same glimpse of Christ's triumph over lifelessness in the person of the Holy Forerunner and Baptist John, the last in the line of the prophets before Christ, through whose conception, (celebrated on the 23rd of September), the barren womb of St Elisabeth was opened. It is partly for this reason that it is the Mother of God and the Forerunner who are usually depicted on the Deisis icon.


Deisis triptych by the hand of Aidan Hart.

As with most feasts in the Orthodox Church, the best expression of the meaning of the Conception lies in the prayers and hymns of the feast itself, and is immediately recognisable as part of the restoring, healing, paschal Mystery of Christ.

This is clear from the hymns of the feast in the Byzantine Rite:

Today the bonds of barrenness are broken: God has heard the prayers of Joachim and Anna. He has promised them beyond all their hopes, to bear the Maiden of God by whom the Uncircumscribed One was born as mortal man, Who commanded an angel to cry unto her: Rejoice, O thou who art Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee!

Troparion for the Conception of the Mother of God, tone 4

Let the heavens rejoice this day, for Anna has conceived the Theotokos through God's dispensation, for she has brought forth the one who is to bear the ineffable Word!

Kontakion for the Conception of the Mother of God, tone 4

By no means is this unique to the east. From the western Divine Office, here is the final psalm appointed to be sung at first Vespers on this feast. Note its joy:

Praise the Lord, you children! Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and for evermore. From sunrise to sunset may the Lord’s name be praised. The Lord is supreme over all the nations; his glory is beyond the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, Who makes his home on high, yet watches over the humble things in heaven and on earth? He raises the poor from the earth and lifts the needy from the dunghill, to seat him with princes, with the rulers of his people. He settles the barren woman in a home as a happy mother with her children.

Psalm 112

It seems quite unlikely that this psalm was chosen by coincidence. See also this excerpt from the Mass of the feast:

Let us celebrate this day
whereon piously we say
Mary was conceived.
Begotten is the mother maid,
conceived, created, channel made,
or pardon to the world.
Adam's primeval banishment
and Joachim's own discontent
there find a remedy.

from the Sequence at the Mass for the Conception of the Mother of God.

So it seems to me that the hymns and prayers of the feast in both east and west are replete with the theology of the Conception of the Mother of God as the first foretaste - a prelude - of the great bountines of the Lord's restorative and healing grace of which we can all partake. This is what the Church has celebrated since the establishment of this feast, long before the departure of the west into exploring ways around the problems caused by its understanding of original sin. This feast is a celebration of the grace, love, and bountiful mercy of God, and, without the need for recourse to late doctrinal developments that serve merely to obscure its meaning, Christians have great cause for celebration, prayer, and thankfulness on this day.

Let us all rejoice and praise the Lord, keeping holy day in honour of the Virgin Mary, for whose Conception the Angels are joyful, and glorify the Son of God!

- the office/introit for the Conception of the Mother of God

*For those unfamiliar with this distinction, Father Gregory Hallam offers this very good elucidation.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory. - Philippians 3:20-21

All ye who seek for Jesus, raise
your eyes above, and upward gaze:
there may ye see the wondrous sign
of never-ending glory shine.

Behold Him in celestial rays
Who never knoweth end of days;
exalted, infinite, sublime;
older than heav'n or hell or time.

This is the Gentiles' King and Lord;
the Prince by Judah's race adored,
promised to Abraham of yore
and to his seed for evermore.

To Him the prophets testify;
and that same witness from on high,
the Father seals by his decree:
'Hear and believe my Son', saith He.

All glory, Lord, to Thee we pay,
Transfigured on the mount to-day;
all glory as is ever meet,
to Father and to Paraclete. Amen.

Quicumque Christum - The Office Hymn at Vespers

I love the Feast of the Transfiguration, and shall be celebrating it tomorrow at the Parish of the Intercession of the Mother of God here in Manchester.

I'm ashamed to say that it was only last year that I began to properly understand the significance of the Feast, and yet I'm delighted that I now do. It had always been for me the cause of some confusion. Yes, Our Lord appeared in brilliance and two long-deceased key figures in the history of the people of Israel appeared along with Him, but what was the point of it all.

It is, of course, Christ's showing to us that He is the fulfilment of all things, and giving us a taste of the pure Light that is God, in which we are called to share, and which is the purpose of our journey of theosis/deification, and the whole point of our life and existence. Moses and Elijah's presence show Christ as the summit of both the Law and the Prophets, not called to replace them but to show their meaning in the splendour of their fullness in Him.

The disciples, who are with Christ, not having yet completed their theosis, are unable to look upon Him transfigured for they do not yet share in that brilliance, holiness, and life of the Trinity. I love the way the Transfiguration icons show them in various states of disarray, averting their eyes, tumbling down the mountain, falling to the ground. For them to behold that Presence would be destructive to them. We see the same thing in the Old Testament where contact with holiness means sure and certain death. Uzziah reaches out to prevent the Ark of the Covenant from falling and dies instantly because he lived before the Incarnation and Ascension, before the New Covenant, where completion of theosis was quite simply impossible. Only those in the Old Covenant who had met with God's favour were able to approach Him, and even then it was in veiled form, as a burning bush, or a voice from a cloud. Even then, for them to have been exposed to the fullness of the splendour of God would have been pain beyond what they could bear. This is hell - the brilliant Presence of God as experienced by those who have not accepted his grace to conform their hearts, minds, bodies, wills, and their entire being to Him. This bizarre concept that hell is somehow the absence of God is just too far removed from God's revelation of Himself to us and indeed from the belief and practice of the Church to be taken seriously.

O heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things; Treasury of blessings and Giver of life, come and abide in us, cleanse us from all impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!

- from the Trisagion Prayers

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
And from thy Presence whither shall I flee?
If I go up to heaven, Thou art there;
if I go down into hades, Thou art present there.
If I take up my wings toward the dawn
and make mine abode in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there shall thy hand hold me.

- verses from Psalm 138

How can there be a place where God is not? Yes, hell is a separation from God but only in the sense of self-imposed rejection of unity and communion with Him, causing his Presence to be experienced as unbearable agony.

Yet with our the restoration of our human nature to the heavenly state at Christ's Ascension was the gate once again opened for us to follow, including all those who had died before the coming of Christ who, at his glorious Resurrection, pulled them from the jaws of death and Hades where they had been waiting.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held by it extinguished it.
Having descended into Hades, He made Hades captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of his flesh.
And Isaiah, receiving this beforehand, cried out:
'Hades,' said he, 'was embittered when it met Thee in the lower regions.'
It was embittered, for it was destroyed.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was cast down.
It was embittered, for it was bound.
It received a body, and met God face to face.
It received earth, and encountered heaven.
It received that which was seen, and fell upon that which was unseen.
O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen! and thou art cast down.
Christ is risen! and the Angels rejoice.
Christ is risen! and life lives.
Christ is risen! and not one of the dead remains in the grave.

- from the Paschal catechetical sermon of St John Chrysostom.

So in the Transfiguration, we have a foretaste of our calling, made possible by Christ's taking upon Himself our human nature, descending to our death and conquering it by his glorious Resurrection, and taking that human nature once more into the Presence of God. It is this destiny of ours that in which the Saints already share, and of whom Our Lady is chief, whose glorious Assumption we celebrate in a few days' time. May they pray for us.

A blessed Feast of the Transfiguration to all celebrating at this time.

O God, Who in the glorious Transfiguration of thine Only-Begotten Son didst confirm the mysteries of the Faith by the testimony of the fathers, and in the voice which came down from the bright cloud didst marvellously foreshow the perfect adoption of sons: vouchsafe in thy mercy to make us coheirs with the glorious King, and grant that we may be partakers of his glory. Through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, Who with Thee and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, God, world without end. Amen.