Hebrews 13:7-16
Psalm 138:1-8
John 17:1-13
During our journey to the One Church, two members of the Hermitage visited Holy Assumption Monastery in Calistoga, California. The Monastery is an Orthodox religious community, and we met a Russian Orthodox priest that day, which was their patronal feast. The abbess of the monastery accorded us a warm welcome. Seeing my Western attire — a white collar and clericals — she told us this joke: "How many Orthodox bishops does it take to change a light bulb?" And the answer? "Change?! What is change?!" I swiftly made the Eastern sign of the Cross and said, "May God continue to bless and protect those who protect the faith!" This is the heart of Holy Orthodoxy, which offers the world the same faith that the Early Church learned and practiced.
What is the only part of the world that did not need missionaries? Did not need to be baptized and catechized and chrismated by foreign visitors? Why, the Holy Land, of course! The Holy Land was evangelized by the Evangelists and by their Master, Jesus Christ. Their descendants hold to that same faith today. Changeless. The Church. Simply, the Church.
At the Hermitage, we are hermits. Yes, we visited this monastery two years ago, but we rarely leave here. Yet, we are not alone, for we live on an extended spiritual retreat. Who is our spiritual director? Certainly, we have the teachings of Jesus, but we must always be careful here and go slow, for, as we read in our daily Mass readings this week
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"For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance;
but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see,
and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed
is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says:
'You shall indeed hear but never understand,
and you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.' But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it." (Matthew 13:10-23) |
Exactly, who are these men to whom Jesus said, "Blessed are our eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear?" Why, these are the very Saints who, I was just told, cannot save me.
This passage from Matthew 13 very often is simply passed over, for it does not square with the "pal Jesus" view of Christianity: If you should pride yourself that you are the Disciple He is speaking to or an Apostle, then I caution you to go back a few pages in the same book:
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For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:20). |
What precisely is righteousness? It has to do with living a life that squares with the Holy Scriptures; it proceeds from understanding (eye that sees and ear that hears); it is the fruit of discernment. Now, what did people discern when the stone was rolled away and Jesus emerged? This is the crucial question. What was understood? Let us begin by singling out things that no one discerned:
The articles of faith pop Christianity offers today — Believe, and be saved! — can be traced back no further than the sixteenth century with many aspects of "Born again" religion having been developed on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. These are the strange and diverse teachings that Scripture warns us about.
I am not diminishing importance of belief in the Sonship and Kingship of the Lord Jesus. Far from it! Without this, there is nothing. But I ask you: If belief is so important, who then are the most reverent and fervent believers in the Holy Gospels? The Disciple? No, not the Disciples. Jesus family. No, certainly not His family members. The scribes or Pharisees or Sadducees? The High Priest? The most fervent believers in the Gospels are the demons of Hell. As St. James writes,
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You believe that God is one; you do well.
Even the demons believe — and shudder. (Jas 2:19) |
What is the nature of this journey? As in any holy pilgrimage, it is to follow the holiest pilgrims who have gone before us. Who are they? The first among them are the ones Jesus called "to see" and "to hear" ... and then their spiritual descendants. You see they are Fathers, who have many sons and daughters, who must be faithful .... to those Fathers. As with any disciples, they did not understand everything all at once .... and I am still pondering things my teachers told me a half-century ago! But over time, the pieces do fall into place. This is why Jesus promised that a Spirit of Truth would come not only to teach but also to remind what has been taught.
This is how Christian doctrine came about. For three centuries, the One Church did not understand who Jesus was, what His life signified, what His death on the Cross meant (in a detailed way), Who the Holy Spirit was, and what the Holy Trinity might be. When St. Basil the Great wrote his masterpiece On the Holy Spirit, the Church did not yet have a settled doctrine on the Holy Spirit, and this was written in the latter fourth century! This means, of course, that a settled theology on the Holy Trinity also had not yet been defined and agreed to. Our own Nicene Creed comes from this same century, three hundred years after Jesus ascended to Heaven.
The Scriptures themselves would require time. They began in oral form: holy stories shared in hushed silences in house churches. Ss. Peter and Paul and the other Apostles traveled from community to community, that the faithful could see with their own eyes the man who had seen the living Lord. St. John was carried on a litter in his old age, perhaps one hundred years old, so that a young girl or boy might touch the head that had lain on the Master's breast, and then be touched by subsequent generations — this ancient woman touched the head of the Blessed Disciple .... may I kiss her feet?
The earliest written Scripture, probably the Pauline Correspondence, would not be written for twenty years following the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. That is one, whole generation. There are those who argue that the Holy Gospel According to St. John was not completed in its final form until the beginning of the second century! Time was required. Time and discernment. The Holy Spirit's guidance was required as faithful men and women were singled out for the holy work of discernment. Holy lives had to be lived and discerned themselves and each other, even to the point of exhuming remains of the saints, discovering which of them had not decomposed as others had. Holiness itself had to be understood, embraced, cherished, and followed.
What exactly did the Holy Fathers teach? Well, I could offer an eight-semester curriculum in Patristics and still not answer this question fully. But let us hear a brief sampling.
Origen, born in the second century, took his cue from one line in St. Mark's Gospel, that Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many (reprinted in St. Matthew's Gospel, which contains 90% of St. Mark's Gospel) and then developed a doctrine of life — that Jesus redeemed us not so much with this death, as with his life. The arrogance that had led Satan to make war in Heaven also led him into the vain conceit that Hell could imprison the Son of God. What?! That Death could surround, much less contain, the cosmic Principal and Person of Life itself?! And Jesus shattered Hell's power offering life ever after to all who will receive it. This so-called Ransom Theory of Atonement continues to be primary today.
St. Ireneaus agreed with Origen that it is Jesus' life which has endowed us with eternal life. Noticing the pattern of New Creations in the Scripture — from Eden to the new world after the Flood to the Incarnation of God — that God's way is always to begin again. Together with St. Justin Martyr, born at the end of the first century, St. Irenaeus was the first to understand Jesus to be our Maker, our Creator, the Framer of the Universe, the Father's Instrument of Creation, the Eternal Word. Ss. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr saw that Jesus had summed up all Creation in Himself and that through Him we might be restored to the Kingdom of Heaven.
St. Athanasius, born during the third century, wrote that after the Fall from Eden the blueprint within each living thing was ultimately death. Death was the common thread among all living things. By touching the Creation with His incommensurable Life, Jesus redrew the blueprint within each human, whose ultimate destination now was life, no longer death ... though we can fall back into the culture of death if our desires should lead us there.
This is where Christianity comes from. It is not a moment that comes through belief, but quite the opposite: a long journey — holy men and women on a great journey .... to meet with God. The Proto-Pilgrim, the first-born of Creation, was their Eldest Brother, Jesus of Nazareth, and they were to be His adopted sisters and brothers. "Who are my brothers and sisters?" He asked? "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Mt 12:50).
Today we celebrate the greatest among our older brothers, following Jesus, whom we call the Fathers of the Church. We have the Apostles; we have the Apostolic Fathers, alive during the time of the Apostles; and then we have the Church Fathers following them. They guided the Church through the first Seven Ecumenical Councils (Eight, if you count the first-century Council of Jerusalem). We do not adduce everything they have written as being authoritative. But for purposes of doctrine, we receive what the Church calls the Patristic Consensus, those golden convergences where their insights agree. For without this imperishable gift of revelation, organically united with its checks and balances, we as Christians would have nothing.
Rolled away the stone and then gave Christianity to everyone who will believe?
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For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance;
but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. |
Christianity is a journey,
a struggle, if you will.
But we are not alone.
For we have the Fathers to guide us,
and
to them (and to us) He promised that He will be with them until the end of the age.
And they have bequeathed to us, their descendants, the priceless gift of their writings.
These are the writings of the Undivided Church
—
before there was a Roman Catholic Church in the eleventh century,
before there was a Protestant Revolution in the sixteenth century.
One.
And in that unity we received the safety and security of the faith.
"I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Amen."
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.