Fr. Fred Saato

Because we are a minority tradition among the Christians of America, we are often asked what our Church is like and what we believe. What do we answer to these questions? Where do we find a coherent and systematic statement of our faith as Eastern Christians? It is this question we hope to answer in these pages.

There is a ritual in the Church that we all have undergone and which shows us the basis for our
answer. When we were christened, we (or our sponsors for us) were asked if we believed. If we said
yes, we were asked to say what we believed, and in answer to that question we recited the NICENE CREED - the same one we repeat at every Divine Liturgy. This is the statement of our faith, the summary of what we believe as Eastern Christians.

Most Christians profess this creed and we must recognize that the basis of our faith is not something unique to us. We cannot speak of a "Catholic faith" or an "Orthodox religion" or a "Lutheran faith": our common faith is the Christian faith, which has many expressions. We understand ours to be the most integral statement of the Christian faith, but recognize that any Christian who can confess this Creed is in the mainstream of the apostolic tradition.

As far as our public practices go, however, we Eastern Christians are the Nicene believers PAR EXCELLENCE. The central importance of the Trinity, the only-begotten Son, the Spirit as Giver of life and all of the creed's teachings and emphases found in our prayers, services and spiritual thinking point to our formal recognition of what this creed professes as the central statement of our faith.

It is always a sad; albeit, illuminating experience to see that many times we actually "profess" a different faith. In church we may well recite the creed, but our personal faith is sometimes far removed from the contents of the creed. Sometimes it is limited to a generalized belief in God and a respect for the Ten Commandments and, perhaps, Church discipline But this, of course, is not the Christian faith, if anything, it is closer to Judaism.

This contradiction between our formal statement of belief and our personal, working faith often results when the doctrines of the creed seem to bear no relation to life. Among Eastern Christians, such a situation is doubly schizophrenic because of the importance of these teachings in our Church life. The Eastern Christian is in a sense compelled, more than any other, to bring their personal faith up to the level of their formal religious expression. Our carrying out of the Byzantine ritual with its heavy doctrinal emphasis becomes so much sham when it is not backed up by a personal orientation to the God whom the Nicene tradition proclaims THE GOD OF OUR FATHERS.

TRADITION, SOURCE OF OUR FAITH

It is no secret that the Nicene Creed was compiled in the fourth century after Christ, when the Churches were forced to come up with a concise statement of belief. However the teachings which the creed expresses and which it places before us as the chief elements of our faith are much older. Our faith is expressed in the creed, but it is older that the creed.

The same can be said about the New Testament itself. The books of the New Testament - from the Gospels to Revelation - were composed after the organization of the first Churches. These books were meant to express and stimulate faith in the early Christians, but even the New Testament is not the original source of our faith. Our Christian belief is proclaimed in the New Testament, but it is older than the New Testament.

Where then do our beliefs as Christians, the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit who was promised to the Church by Christ, come from? "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth" (Jn 16:13). The Holy Spirit came upon the Church at the first Pentecost and has remained with it ever since, assuring us that our faith is one with that of those early Christians who had seen Christ face to face.

This idea of the living continuity of the Spirit's direction is captured for Eastern Christians in the word TRADITION, the totality of the expressions of our faith, which the Spirit has spoken over the ages. The most important elements of Tradition are those whose divine authority is unquestioned and which cannot be changed or done away with, because the Spirit meant them to be absolute. Chief of these is, of course, the BIBLE. Also here we must include the Bible faith's systematic expression, the CREED, and those formal TEACHINGS OF THE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL meant as official interpretations of Scriptural Truths. There are other elements in Tradition which, although framed in the Spirit, have not been given to us with the same universal authority. Nevertheless, they point out to us the direction in which the Spirit has been leading us over the ages. The WRITINGS OF THE FATHERS of the Church, the DIVINE SERVICES of the ancient usage, our WHOLE SYSTEM OF WORSHIP, practice and spirituality are thus all part of our Tradition ... the gift of the Spirit to us.

This is not to say that everything the Church does is of the Holy Spirit. This is why we find today that practices we have grown up with are now being discarded while other new attempts at expressing our faith are not widely accepted. This is because some things we have done or would like to do are out of line with the AUTHENTIC tradition of the Church and do not stand. Only those forms, which express the continuity of the Spirit's presence among us, form a part of our authentic Tradition. Thus our experience of the Holy Spirit today does not annul or supercede the experience of the past.

And so, to know the source of our beliefs we go to that living voice of the Spirit we call TRADITION. But tradition does not simply give us a collection of truths and practices without order or direction. Rather, by seeing how tradition expresses our faith, we can detect the Spirit's order of priorities. We come to know what is of first importance in the faith-life of the Church and what is of lesser significance. We learn, for example, that faith in Christ is more important than devotion to a favorite saint, although both are a part of our tradition. We learn to order our personal life of faith in accordance with the priorities of the Holy Spirit so that we may most truly express the faith of the Church in our individual lives. It is hoped that the outline of our faith, which follows, will reflect these priorities of the Spirit as our Eastern Christian Tradition has expressed them through the years.

THE OTHERNESS OF GOD

One of the first impressions people receive from an Eastern liturgical service is the all-embracing sense of the holiness of God. The majesty of the church building, the beauty of the icons, the uniqueness of the chanting, the dignity of the vestments are all meant to reflect this radiance of God. The Church is charged, to borrow the poet's phrase, with the grandeur of God when it stands before him.

These characteristics of Eastern worship point to the most basic quality of God: He is completely and totally other than anything else in our experience. We are so far removed from God that we cannot even begin to speak knowingly about Him, much less describe His nature. He is so above and outside everything we know that all we can positively say is that He is beyond our reach' This quality of "otherness" or distinctness from everything we can identify with, we call HOLINESS.

"You are holy, O God, and we glorify you" - this is our first and most basic reaction to God. It is the attitude, which Moses had when he encountered God in the burning bush on Sinai; he took off his shoes and prostrated himself to the ground at the sacredness of the experience. This same attitude pervades the Scriptures where it is captured perhaps most graphically by Isaiah when he records his vision of God in the temple (IS 6:60). It is this same attitude which permeates our Eastern liturgical experience where we constantly proclaim the holiness - the otherness - of God.

Because God is so completely other, so far beyond our comprehension, one thing is clear. It is impossible for us to speak of Him accurately or adequately. If this were not so and we could describe Him, He would not be beyond our reach and so not be God. As a result, we find ourselves with two ways of speaking of Him. The first is by saying that He is not like we are or anything we know: "beyond description or understanding, beyond sight or comprehension, always in being yet always the same" (anaphora, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom). This negative way of speaking, called APOPHATIC, emphasizes that God is not one of us. He does not share our limitations but transcends them all.

When we want to speak positively of God, we are forced to turn to imagery, the language of poetry, to shed some light on the INDESCRIBABLE ONE. We then speak of Him as a "refiner's fire and a fuller's alkali" Mal 3:2), a shepherd or a vine, "the Life, the Sanctification, the Power, the True Light" (anaphora, Liturgy of St. Basil). There are clearly not attempts to describe God - that would be impossible - but to suggest something of the way He is. They simply point to the mystery but do not capture it.

When we reflect on this otherness of God and our inability to speak definitively about Him, we realize that all we can say is limited and imprecise, and that our minds as well as our language are too small to grasp the greatness of our God.

GOD REVEALS HIMSELF

If this distance between the human race and God makes it impossible for us
to speak of Him, much more does it make Him inaccessible to us. By our own
powers we cannot experience or know Him. When we try, we are like the
infant who attempts to climb a flight of stairs and invariably falls.

But God does desire us to know Him and to experience His goodness. He
reaches out to us because we cannot reach out to Him. This reaching out of
God to humanity we call REVELATION.

The first revelation of God to men of which we have a record is the
relationship He had with the Jews as described in the Old Testament. He made
His presence known to them in various ways and assured them of His love. He
chose the Jews for a special task - to be a people who would proclaim His
glory in the heart of an idolatrous civilization. Through their first father,
Abraham, God promised them freedom and sovereignty for their lives and that
they would become a great people so that through them all the earth would
be blessed.

God never showed Himself to the Jews, but revealed Himself in many images: the "Burning Bush," the "Cloud," the "Pillar of Fire" - each time letting them grasp something of His faithfulness to them. He made Himself known through the godly patriarchs, kings and prophets of the Israelite nation during a period of almost 1900 years. And at the end of that era He came among them Himself, taking flesh and becoming man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

In Jesus God's self-communication becomes complete because through Jesus we learn that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: a Trinity, yet still one. It is complete in that Jesus shows us that God is love, wanting us to share in His life and become partakers of His very nature. It is complete in that, by becoming man, the Son of God shares our humanity. He communicates something of His Godhead to us and we are all forever sanctified by that contact. Thus is fulfilled God's original promise: through this son of "Israel" all nations are blessed.

Many people assume that the "Old Testament God" was the one whom we now know as the Father and that the God of the New Testament is the Son. The Scriptures and our Eastern Christian Tradition tell another story. All of the self-disclosures of God in both Testaments are the work of the only-begotten Son and Word of God. It is always through this Word that God communicates Himself to us. This is why Jesus says to Thomas "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me" (Jn 14:6); and to Philip, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." (Jn 14:9). The Word, incarnate in Jesus, is thus not just one phase of God's dealings with mankind. It is only through the Word that God communicates with us. "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only-begotten Son, ever at the Father's side, who has revealed Him." (Jn 1:18). To emphasize our faith that the One who revealed Himself in the Old Testament and Jesus the Word of God incarnate are one, Christ is always depicted in icons of God's Old Testament revelations. In addition, He is always identified in icons with the Old Testament name for God, Yahweh (O UN). This man Jesus is the very Son of God, the Yahweh who chose the Jews as His people and was to die and rise again for all humanity.

At the same time as it identifies Jesus with the YAHWEH of the Old Testament, Eastern Christian Tradition forbade us to depict the Father in our icons in human form, since He did not become man. Icons usually represent God symbolically, as in the so-called "angelic Trinity" which portrays the Trinity in the form of three angels. God remains for us beyond sight or comprehension in Himself - "whom no man has seen and no man is able to see" (1 Tm 6:16) - yet visible in His incarnate Word.

CHRIST REVEALS GOD AS FATHER

The Jews had come to know God as their protector and deliverer - the One who was with them in all things. Jesus introduced a new idea to their notion of God. He said that God was His Father and theirs as well. He continually returned to this theme and taught His followers to call God 'Our Father', a truly distinctive teaching.

'Father' is a human image, an idea Jesus used to tell us something about God. Reflecting on what a human father is, we come to know something of what Jesus had in mind when He said that God is our Father. First of all, a father is responsible for physical birth. In a comparable way, the heavenly Father is responsible for the existence of His creatures. "You brought us from nothing into being" says the Chrysostom Liturgy, and in this God is in some way Father of all mankind. But there is more. The Liturgy continues, "and when we had fallen you raised us up again." God's plan makes Christians more than God's sons by creation; we are sons in a unique way, by adoption in Christ. God is our Father in that He is responsible for our new birth as well as our physical existence. What praise we owe Him for these awesome facts of life.

But a father is more than a life-beginner. A father is, very simply, the one who takes care of his children cooperating with them in their development. And here lies the key to our ongoing relationship to God as our Father. As our Father, God is the One who ever has us in His loving care: the One who always has our welfare at heart. Unlike a human father, there is nothing that escapes His control, nothing beyond His communion. If this God is our Father, then we never have cause to be insecure - we are always in His hands.

If Jesus is right and God is our Father, this has some important consequences for my life. The first is this: there is never a time when His loving care is not working for me. St. Paul confidently proclaims this when he writes "We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love Him. (Rom. 8:28)"

Usually Christians feel that things happen more or less spontaneously without plan or purpose and that God is there so that we can call on Him to get out of any jam in which fate may thrust us. God becomes someone plugging up the dam whenever it springs a leak. He does not always seem to be fast enough, because some of the 'leaks' never do get blocked up.

Alternatively, God is conceived of as waiting for us to determine what we want in life, place our requests and have them filled. But this is a Santa Claus God, not the loving Father whose concern for us is working at all times.

Paul is very clear. The Father is present "in everything" already - without exception - to work for good for those who love Him. If this is true, there is no circumstance in life - including the 'bad' or tragic ones - in which God's fatherly love is not present to bring good out of it for us! To the believer He is at work in even the most difficult periods of our life to bring about good.

This does not mean that He is simply there at these difficult times to get us out of them, but that He is truly working in them for us. Florence Bulle tells how her husband was critically injured in an explosion. When it became clear he would live, people began telling her how good God was to her, sparing her husband's life. "Sometimes I could hardly refrain from shouting, 'No, no! You don't understand. God is good - period! Whether Al lives or dies has nothing to do with God's character. God is good - regardless.'"

Nor does it mean that God causes evil. He does allow an ungodly nature to take its course, to bring His faithful to a greater good on a higher level. A serious illness is unquestionably bad in the physical order. But God may use such an evil to bring the sufferer to a deeper level of faith and love in an unquestionably higher order. Recognizing His order of priorities does not come easy to us. But it is an essential part of trust in His fatherly love.

Believing in a deep way in God as Father means recognizing that "God is good - period!" It is a recognition that God is working for good in my life without my having to ask Him, in ways I may never understand. When this kind of faith in God's fatherly love for us takes hold in our hearts, we see everything from a new viewpoint. I can even see God bringing good out of my sins. Many a time I have found myself being irritable, spiteful or otherwise unloving to those God has given me to love. Looking back on these failures I can see God in them, pointing out to me that I am not as saintly as I might care to think, not as on top of things as I might like to believe. Only He is number one. God even uses my sins to lead me to Him.

A true faith in God as Father, then, means the believer trusts that in all circumstances of life God is working for good, whether the believer understands it or not. With this kind of faith, the Christian approaches the ideal set by Christ when He said, "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt 18:3). The believer is called to trust in the Father with the same unwavering confidence that a child places in his father. The relationship that develops is one of MUTUALITY.

If all this is true, it makes clear a second of the consequences of Jesus' revelation that God is our Father, which many Christians find hard to swallow. In 1 Thess. 5:16-18 St. Paul encourages his readers, "Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ for you." This is incredible advice, unless we are ready to recognize the Father's hand in all things. Until we do, it is impossible to rejoice always, because we simply do not find reason to give thanks in all circumstances. Once we acknowledge God's fatherhood as a living reality in our lives, we become able to give thanks and praise in everything, because we see every circumstance as an expression of God's love for US, no matter how little we may understand the process.

Our growth in Christian life depends greatly upon the degree to which we recognize God as our Father.

Convinced that He is at work for good in all things, our attitudes become transformed. Resentment at life has no place in a soul that sees God working. Our spirits are then able to praise God at all times and to seek understanding of His workings in our life with openness to His will.

This, then, is personal faith in God as Father: knowing that He is at work for us in all things, and praising Him gratefully for His work in our life.

THE SPIRIT REVEALS JESUS AS LORD

Perhaps the earliest statement of faith in Christ recorded in Scriptures is Paul's affirmation that Jesus is Lord (Phil. 2:11). For the person living in the Roman Empire at that time, LORD - KYRIOS - was a word rich in meaning. Caesar was Lord, the pre-eminent one, to be honored and venerated above all. For the Jews, only One was truly Lord: Yahweh Sabaoth, God Himself. When the Jews translated the Old Testament into Greek, KYRIOS was the word they chose to translate the name of God.

And so when the Christians began calling Jesus Lord, they were in a sense challenging Jews and Romans; not only God, but God and man - and certainly not Caesar - was Lord. The wrath this provoked from both Jews and Romans is well known. What is not commonly understood is what the term meant to the Christians, why they insisted on calling Jesus Lord.

The word Lord does not have the same power and richness today. We are perhaps too used to associating the phrase "Our Lord" with the emasculated images of Jesus in popular art to appreciate its original strength. There is probably no term that could be its modern equivalent. In the first century it implied both preeminence and leadership. The lord was first in the ranks, both by reason of his position and also because of his leadership. In all respects lord meant Number One.

The early Church found many reasons why Jesus was Lord, was Number One. A glance at Paul's hymn of praise in Col. 1:15-20 will reveal several of these images in which the Church has found joy throughout the ages. But chief of these reasons for the lordship of Jesus was that the Lord had been to death and back. He had led the human race through the valley of death and in His triumph over Death, He has freed us who were held captive in its power. As the Byzantine icon of the resurrection shows, Christ takes mankind by the hand and leads us out of the realms of sin and death. With Him and because of Him we have access to the throne of God. With Him and because of Him we are God's adopted sons.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MY LIFE

If, as we say in the Divine Liturgy, "only one is Lord: Jesus Christ," there is only one Leader through the power of sin and death to God. Too often we seem to feel that we are the ones chiefly responsible for uniting ourselves to God. We want to pile up good works of a spiritual or charitable nature, building up our account with God. We fail to see that nothing we can do will earn us divine life - which has been done already, once and for all, by Christ our Leader - our Lord. All we do can only be an attempted response to the great love of God for us.

In the same way, the dedicated Christian does not have to drive himself to unnecessary guilt or fear, trying for a spotless record before God in hopes of thereby "earning" heaven. Our individual human experiences show each of us all too clearly that we simply do not have the power to free ourselves from sin. No one has ever been able to observe the Law of God to perfection. No one ever will. And, thank God, no one will ever have to. Christ has already achieved man's union with God. "We were God's enemies, but He made us His friends through the death of His Son." (Rom. 5:10)

The Scriptures, especially the writings of St. Paul, are very strong in reminding us that it is Christ, not I, who has overturned history and freed me from the grip of sin and death. "No man," Paul writes, "is put right in God's sight by doing what the Law requires what the Law does is but to make man aware that he has sinned. Now God's way of putting men right with Himself has been revealed, and it has nothing to do with the Law." (Rom. 3:20-21) As Paul would write in another place, "If a man is not put right with God through the Law, it means that Christ died for nothing." (Ga1.2:21)

It is Christ who puts men right with God, not my own deeds. He is my Leader and Lord in the battle against sin and death. Deep faith in Jesus as Lord, then, means accepting in my heart and trusting that His death and resurrection "worked". It is realizing that, like a true heir, I have earned nothing of what I have received, and that like a true heir, all I can do is to try to express my gratitude to the One who has given me all that I have. I do not have to strive to earn God's favor, or even to put myself in Christ: I am there already if I have accepted Christ's work through faith and baptism. I will not be trying to put myself in God's good graces. I will simply be responding in love to the One who first loved me and gave Himself up

My Leader in all Things:

Once a person has accepted Christ as the only One who puts him right with God, he has another step to take. It is easy to see Christ as Lord of the universe, as Victor over death. It is often not so easy to install Him as Lord of my daily life. I give Him a certain amount of time, perhaps daily, in prayer, reading or the like. More often than not I hold back most of myself for myself. "I love you," I may say, "but please stay out of my business, or life, or relationships. Don't tell me how to deal with that troublesome neighbor, that aggravating coworker, that agonizing family problem. I give you my weekly or daily due when I go to church or say my prayers. That's all you're getting."

All of us say this, perhaps less crudely, in one or another aspect of life. But if Christ is my Lord, He must be the Lord of my whole life, the One whose Way I follow in all things. Despite the frequent urging we have in the Liturgy to "entrust ourselves, one another and our whole life to Christ our God," we more often than not allow Him to be Lord of only part of it. True belief in Jesus as Lord comes the day I begin to turn over one or another part of my life to His lordship, that He might be "pre-eminent in everything" in my life as well as in the universe. I will realize then that I truly believe in Jesus as MY Lord only as much as I let His Way govern every aspect of my life.

Jesus' Way, the guidelines He gives for letting Him be Lord in our lives, can chiefly be found in Matthew's Gospel, chapters five to seven, the so-called Sermon on the Mount. Reflecting on just how radical and demanding this Way is, we understand that coming to real acted-on faith in Jesus as Lord is a lifetime experience. Just as we can spend out whole life deepening our sense of trust in God as Father, so too we can spend the rest of our lives placing one part of our lives after another under the Lordship of Jesus.

A Promise Fulfilled:

As Christ's earthly life was drawing to a close, He began speaking of the Holy Spirit. St. John's Gospel records that Jesus told His followers of His coming departure. But He also said, "I will ask the Father and He will give you another Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, to stay with you forever" (Jn 14:16). This Spirit, Christ promised, would "remain with you and live in you" (Jn 14:17). St. Luke tells that the risen Christ told them to wait in Jerusalem until they were filled with the power from on high (Lk 24:49). Then they would begin to go forth and bear witness to all they had seen.

Jesus compared this coming of the Spirit to a baptism. "John baptized you with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit"(Acts 1:5) Thus the Spirit's coming was to be an outpouring, a drenching which would immerse the Church in the power, of God.

This promise was kept at Pentecost when the Spirit actually came upon the apostles in the form of fiery tongues (Acts 2:1-13). The coming was a real baptism, a drenching. The apostles were so visibly affected and transformed by what had happened to them that people said they were drunk. Not even Jesus Himself seems to have had such an effect on them as did the Holy Spirit that Pentecost. This was without a doubt the "power from on high."

The Church has since understood the full meaning of what happened that day. For the first time, people were consciously experiencing the Holy Spirit. Jesus' followers had come to know God as their Father. They recognized Jesus as His Son. Now they came face to face with His Holy Spirit. Jesus had effectively revealed that God is Trinity: three persons in one God.

With this experience, other happenings took on more of a meaning. The words of Gabriel to the Virgin (Lk 1:35), the presence of the dove at Jesus' baptism (Mt 3:16), Jesus command to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19) - all these and more became clearer. The puzzle pieces began fitting together. No wonder that the Eastern Church keeps Pentecost Sunday as the festival of the revealing of the Trinity.

Jesus' Imagery:

When Jesus spoke of God, He used the image of 'Father' to help people see what God is like. In the same way He had a favorite image to describe the Holy Spirit. Jesus called Him the 'Paraclete.'

A Paraclete is basically a Helper, but not simply one who assists or helps out the Greek word PARACLETE suggests one who gives the strength and power to the one he helps. He goes along, exhorting and encouraging the person on the way - a kind of companion whose presence brings strength and support. All these ideas were common to the notion of Paraclete, which Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit. If he were living today, Christ might have called the Spirit our 'Coach'.

The Paraclete, Jesus said, would help the Church in many areas. First of all, he would work on the level of faith and understanding. The Spirit, Jesus promised, would place in focus for the Church all that Jesus had been, said or done. "The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you" (Jn 14:26). The Spirit, Jesus pledged, would make God's plan clear and show how His way's differed from men's understanding of life (see Jn 16:8-11). The very existence of the New Testament, written under the Spirit's inspiration, and the living faith-tradition of the Church are signs that the Spirit does His work in this area.

The Spirit-Paraclete walks along with the Church and helps it in every area of life as well. One are on which the New Testament insists is the Spirit's role in the Church's ministries. As the vesper hymn of Pentecost proclaims, the Holy Spirit "perfects the priesthood". It is He who calls men to be presbyters and confirms them by His grace. (Acts 20:28)

He also inspires every type of ministry that may exist in a Church. In the famous twelfth chapter of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul lists a number of these ministries as they were manifested in his day. He emphasizes that, though different individuals may receive different gifts, it is basically the Church for whom these gifts are intended. "Each one is given some proof of the Spirit's presence for the good of all" (1 Cor 12:7). And so a Church may be blessed with a good teacher or musician or with someone whose prayers for healing are effective. All this is of the Holy Spirit, who "gives a different gift to each man as He wishes (1 Cor 12:11)

Of course there are important ministries in addition to those cataloged by Paul. Youth ministries, social services and other contemporary forms as well as these which have developed in time such as monastic life or icon painting are also signs of the Spirit at work in the Church.

The Spirit in My Life:

More basic to my personal life are those gifts the Paraclete grants to each believer. First of these is FAITH itself. It is by the helping grace of the Spirit that each Christian is led to believe in Jesus. "No one can confess 'Jesus is Lord' unless he is guided by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). It is also by the prompting help of the Spirit that we learn to see God as our Father. "By the Spirit's power we cry to God, "Father, my father"' (Rom 8:15). Thus even the first stirring of faith in our hearts comes by the encouragement of the Spirit. Unless He were touching us we would not believe.

Next of the Spirit's gifts intended for all believers is LOVE. The capacity for love, that tell-tale sign of the Christian life is, in fact, the chief sign of the Spirit's presence and the believer's cooperation with Him (Gal 5:22). Without it, all the exercises of ministry or piety are hollow. Love makes every act of Christian devotion or dedication authentic; the absence of love makes them incomplete, even unreal. This ability and eagerness to love is both a gift of the Spirit' and a sign that He is near at hand.

The Christian is called to rely on his Paraclete for help in leading him to even deeper faith and love.

There is perhaps nothing so impressive as the strong faith and love that some Christians reflect. In the times of the Roman persecutions, the 39 martyrs of Sebaste, Armenia were joined in suffering and death by one of their captors who wanted what they seemed to have. The same is true today where a committed Christian's extra-ordinary faith or love can draw someone to meet the Lord Himself.

In our lives because of our chrismation, the Spirit is present to be our PARACLETE, our personal guide, as well as the whole Church's Helper. He is with us to enable us to pray even though our own words fail us. "When we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, The Spirit Himself expresses our plea" (Rom 8:26). He is with us to enable us to bear witness to the Good News in our life. "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; then you shall be my witnesses," said Jesus (Acts 1:18). The Spirit is also with us to help us live out our daily life according to Christ's way. He is with us to prompt us in each circumstance of daily living that we might see how we as Christians should face each situation, and thus be "led by the Spirit" (Rom 8:14).

But the Spirit is not a dictator. It will not drag us along the way. We must actively seek its guidance in prayer. "Acted-on faith" in the Holy Spirit as my Paraclete, then, is to trust that He is with us and will enable us to live the Christian life to the degree that we follow Him. If we have this kind of faith in Him, we show it by asking for and listening to His prompting throughout the day. Thus we would follow the Spirit's lead by seeking its guidance before an important conversation, for example, before attempting to study some point of teaching, before disciplining the children, or before writing an important letter. Then our entire life will be guided by Him and we can truly said to be "directed by the Spirit" (Gal 5:25).

The late Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras recognized the Holy Spirit as the key to fruitfulness in each Christian and in the Church. He understood will that there is life in what we do when we are in constant fellowship with the Holy Spirit:

"Without the Holy Spirit, God is far away, Christ stays in the past, the Gospel is a dead letter the Church is simply an organization, authority, a matter of domination, mission, a matter of propaganda The liturgy no more than an evocation Christian living a slave mentality.

But in the Holy Spirit, the cosmos and groans with the birth pangs of the kingdom; the risen Christ is there, the Gospel is the source of life, the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity authority is a liberating service, mission is a Pentecost, the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation, human action is deified."

(Dialogue with Oliver Clement)


KNOWING GOD: THE GOAL OF LIFE

Why has God shown something of Himself to man? What reason lies behind this action? The purpose of God's self-revelation is not simply that we might be able to talk about God intelligently or correctly, but that we might have a relationship with Him. God extends Himself so that somehow we might personally experience Him. Early in the history of God's dealings with us, this relationship was expressed in various images: living in God's garden (Gen 2), walking with God (Gen 6), entering into a Covenant with Him (Gen 9) - all signs of the fellowship He was extending.

In Christ, however, this relationship became deeper, because God does not simply reach out to man - He becomes man. In Jesus, Godhead and humanity are joined in a new and unique way, intermingling the two and making mankind holy as a result. Man is touched by God in the depth of his being, and the result is not just fellowship but union.

St. Peter daringly expressed the newness of this relationship in one of his epistles. "...bringing us to know God Himself who has called us by His own glory and goodness, He has given us the guarantee of something very great and wonderful to come: you will be able to share the divine nature... (2 Pt 1:3-4). The relationship between God and us becomes, through Christ, nothing less than a sharing in God's own nature

The Fathers of the Church gave a name to this relationship in the making: one that has become a hallmark of the Eastern Christian view of God and humanity. They called it DEIFICATION. "God became a person," they continually repeated, "so that people might become God". Because of Christ it is possible for us to have a personal, organic union with God. It is more than possible; it is the very purpose of our existence.

In the New Testament this unity is described in many images, but two especially graphic ones are of special interest. Jesus himself proclaimed it a life-giving relationship: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me with me in Him, bears fruit in plenty" (Jn 15:5). Likewise St. Paul speaks of this relationship in terms of a human body. Both images suggest to us that this relationship is unique: God dwells in us and We in Him as intimately as parts Of a living organism. Of course both man and God retain their individual integrity. Though united to God, we remain distinct from Him. Nonetheless, we become (in the language of the Fathers) "god by grace".

For most of us the full realization of this gift will not be ours until the last day when, with the resurrection of our bodies, we will be totally transfigured after the image and likeness of God. For now that transfiguration is at its very earliest stage, perhaps not yet even discernible. Still it is there, as we recognize when we see someone whole life shows the effects of that transfiguring relationship. Such a person appears radiant, transfigured , because the union with God has shown forth in his life. Too few of us visibly manifest evidence of this deifying union. Nevertheless, each of us united to Christ in baptism and gifted with His Holy Spirit in chrismation is already in some degree deified.

Faith in the Trinity, then, is the hallmark of Christian life. Praising the Trinity is the chief joy of Christian worship. Living in relationship to the Trinity is the privilege of each of us who know God as Our Father, Jesus as our Lord and the Holy Spirit as our Paraclete and are mystically joined to this, the God of our Fathers.

THE CHURCH, THE "REST" OF CHRIST

Our God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: three distinct persons, whose
unity does not sacrifice their singularity. God is, as it were, the original
community. The human race, created after God's image, is also a
society, rather than a number of self-contained individuals. Deep within
us is the need to gather together in the fellowship of families, societies,
and nations. So basic is this element to our makeup that God deals with
us as a people also. The divinizing relationship of people and God is
not one we enjoy in isolation from other people. God has always
approached humanity as a community. As a result both Jews and
Christians are the most community - conscious of the world's religious
groups. In the Jews God chose a nation to be witnesses to His oneness
and uniqueness as the only true God. In the Church He created a new
People out of all nations to be witnesses to the love He bears all men in
Christ. It is this community which received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
and in this community as a whole He still abides.

All the dealings of God with us have been in the context of a people - the people we call the CHURCH.

Likewise our personal points of contact with Him are true and authentic only when they embrace this people with whom Christ has chosen to be identified. Christ so completely linked Himself with the Church that He could say to Saul, the persecutor of Christians, "Why are you persecuting ME?" (Acts 9:4) and to those who are kind to His people, "Whatever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do to me" (Mt 25:40). This union, as we have seen, is as complete and intimate as that linking part of a living organism. This is why some Fathers spoke of the Church as the "whole Christ", the completion of Him who perfects all. We cannot fully accept Christ the head without accepting the rest of the body, the Church; nor can we reject the body without rejecting the Head also. Thus we are, as Paul says, "no longer aliens or foreigners, but citizens like all the saints and part of God's household, part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations and Jesus Christ Himself for its main cornerstone" (Eph 2:19-20).

The Church is One:

Christ's heartfelt prayer for His followers on the night of His arrest was "that they maybe one in us, as you are in me and I am in you" (3n 17:21). He saw the deep cause of this unity, not in human structures, programs or experiences, but in the common relationship each believer has with God in Christ. The unity He sought for us, then, is basically a mystical and unseen one, transcending our natural capabilities attempts, or preferences and profoundly rooted in the common sonship we have in the Father, the common identity we have been given in Christ, the common gift of the Holy Spirit we have received. Christ's prayer has obtained for us a unity on a real, ontological level: one which does not come into being by our designs and which is not severed when we attempt to withdraw from it. It remains (however shattered or unnoticed by us) because the source of our unity, God, remains.

Although the Church's oneness does not stem from our efforts, we are called to live out our faith in this unity by constantly reinforcing and proclaiming it. We do this to the degree that we support one another in our local Church and build it up as an effective witness to God's love. Local Churches do it to the degree that they maintain good relationships with one another, showing that oneness in Christ is not limited by differences of geography or culture.

From the time of the apostles the Christian East has always recognized the individuality and uniqueness of the local Church. The early Christians, especially in the East, saw the Church as fully present in each given community of bishop, priests, deacons and people. They recognized that the Church's true nature as body of Christ is made present at the EUCHARISTIC TABLE around which they gather as a local Church. They saw that it is the power of the Holy Spirit manifested in the Eucharist which makes the Church one, causing it to be as Christ had willed it: a Body united to and in Him. "Where Jesus Christ is," writes Ignatius of Antioch· speaking of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the local community, "there is the catholic (i.e. integral or whole) Church" (Epistle to the Smyrneans).

Because they saw the power of God in the Eucharist as that which brings the Church together, the early Fathers considered Christ's presence within the local community as complete. They saw - and our Tradition continues to see - the Church as primarily sacramental and, therefore, whole and entire on the local level rather than as primarily organizational, in which local communities are only parts. The local Church has Christ for its head, the local Church is the body of Christ, who is no less present to it than to any other Church. The local bishop is the vicar of Christ, "for Jesus Christ, the Life which cannot be taken from us, is the image of the Father, and the bishops appointed over the whole world are in the image of Jesus Christ" (Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians).

Recognizing that the element of unity in the Church is Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit, Eastern Christians look to the Lord rather than to Church structures as the source of Christian unity. The oneness we strive to maintain is not by centralization of authority, but by the bonds of love and faith in the Holy Spirit. The Eastern Churches are not now, and probably never will be, organizationally one. They are united when they share a common faith and mutual love, relating to one another fraternally in the image of the Trinity. Thus we recognize this pluralism as normal and pray regularly for the "well-being of the holy Churches of God."

Just as the Churches' unity is not founded on organizational centralism or identity of culture, neither is it based on simultaneity in time. The unity of the Church spans the ages and we are one with all the believers of every era who have put their faith in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is what is meant by the term COMMUNION OF SAINTS. All the "saints" (believers sanctified by baptism) living and dead are united in Christ the Lord. Our church buildings represent this when they surround the worshippers with icons of the heavenly saints, indicating that they are one with us as we stand in worship before God. When we honor the saints in glory or pray for others who have died, we express our unity with them and our belief that we form one Church throughout the ages.

The Church is Holy:

Often people consider the Church as a purely human organization with man-made systems and rules. Behind all this, however, is the fact that the Church was not only founded by Christ but made holy by Him. The Church was sanctified when the Holy Spirit descended upon it at Pentecost and made his home in it. Thus St. Peter - one of those who experienced the initial outpouring of the Spirit - would write, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation: a people set apart to sing the praises of God..."(l Pt 2:9), confessing the unique nature of the Church. Its holiness comes from the fact that it is in union with the Holy One and is consecrated by that relationship. Joined to Christ, living by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Church draws its very life from God. If it did not, it would not be the Church. Thus, although its members are sinners, its activities not without blemish, nevertheless the Church is holy for the Source of its life is holy. And so, as Christ is both God and man, his Body is also in a way both human and divine, because it is made up of people yet joined to the Head which is Christ. As a result, "together sinners become something different from what they are as individuals" as Father Meyendorff has expressed it.

The way we relate to the Church shows whether or not we believe it to be holy. If we look upon it as another human organization, governed as a bureaucracy, with social and financial concerns taking precedence over all others, we are in fact denying the holiness of the Church. As Eastern Christians in America, we have often tended to look upon our parishes as ethnic social clubs at which one could, incidentally, receive the sacraments. Placing any concern other than the glory of God as the most important in the life of our communities likewise makes for group disregard, if not denial, of the holiness of the Church and its first mission; to sing the praises of God who called us out of the darkness into His marvelous light.

The Church is Catholic:

Our experience of the term "catholic" makes us identify it almost exclusively as the brand name or trademark of one particular Church, the Roman Catholic. However the word is not a name so much as a description and as such it has been used among Christians for centuries in speaking about the Church. It is as a description that the word is used in the creed, not only by Catholics and Orthodox but by some Protestants as well.

When we say that the Church is "catholic," we mean that it has a universal dimension, since the word "catholic" means universal or all embracing. Usually this is explained in a geographical or cultural sense: that the Body of Christ includes or is meant to include all peoples, all over the world. However this is not the richest or most ancient explanation of the term.

When the Fathers said that the Church was catholic they meant that it professed the entire faith of the apostles, leaving nothing out. Catholic, then, was used to mean universal in the sense that the faith was whole, total, integral and complete, not distorted by any omission or change. It signifies much the same in our Tradition as the phrase "full gospel" does for some Protestants. We respond to the catholicity of the Church when we accept the fullness of its teachings without reservation. Many people are selective in what they accept of the Christian message. Some agree with the doctrines, but reject the morality of the Scriptures. Others believe in some elements of the faith but not others, using their own reason or education as the basis for their decision. If we accept the Tradition of the Church as something catholic or integral, we would not attempt to leave anything out.

In the same way when we Profess that the Church expresses God's Word in its entirety, we do not look to other sources to supplement or add to our faith. If we believe totally i" what God reveals to us as His way for us, we do not put faith in contrary revelations, seers, astrologers, clairvoyants, philosophers or practitioners of life systems such as TM as well. Accepting the Church as catholic, then, happens when we neither add anything nor take anything away from the Tradition it has received.

The Church is Apostolic:

Almost two thousand years have elapsed since the beginning of the Church. Many things are done now among us which the apostles "ever heard of. For example, icons, the Presanctified Liturgy, Canons, and the creed itself were unknown to them. Yet we say that our Church is apostolic. What does this mean?

First of all it does not mean that we do everything as the apostles did. If so, we would have to attend the Jewish Synagogue in addition to our Christian worship as they were accustomed to do. It does mean that we live within a Tradition that is consistent with the faith of the apostles. Our Church has not struck out on its own, developing concepts not in harmony with the apostolic ways. Where it has developed new forms such as icons, it has done so within the mainstream determined by the apostolic community and these forms have been the organic continuation of what had come before. We recognize this apostolic dimension in the Church when we realize that our faith is something we have received from those who have gone before us. We honor the Church's apostolicity when we can live comfortably with the idea of being heirs rather than initiators, not forcing an artificial "relevance" or modernity upon the Church in the interests of being contemporary. When we learn to venerate our entire Tradition as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, then we have made the doctrine of the Church's apostolicity our own.

THE SPIRIT'S LIFE IN US

A group which claims to be one with God and sanctified by Him, to have passed on totally and integrally

His revelation and life without omission since the time of the apostles - this is the Church. For the Church to be all this, it must live in close contact with God. If it were not deeply one with Him, it could never maintain itself as the people he has called it to be. The Church's ever-present link with God is the Holy

Spirit who lives in it and gives life to all it does.

Our entire LITURGY and TRADITION look to the Holy Spirit as the Divine Person working among us, the One who makes everything happen in the Church. We see Him as causing every good, every blessing in the Church because He is the One whom Christ sent to work until His own return at the end of time. This viewpoint is perhaps best summed up in the following hymn sung at vespers on Pentecost:


The Holy Spirit provides every gift: He is the One who inspires prophecy and perfects the priesthood. It is He who grants wisdom to the illiterate and turns simple fishermen into wise theologians. Glory to you, O Paraclete, equal in nature and majesty to the Father and the Son!


Little wonder, then, that one of our leading hierarchs has remarked, "The Eastern Church is THE Pentecostal Church", where the Spirit is seen to dwell with us and work continually to lead us to the Father.

The Spirit works among us in a variety of ways. Two of them are especially noteworthy in our Tradition. First, the Holy Spirit is the TEACHER of the Church. It is He who inspired the early Christians to compose the writings of the New Testament and later Christians to accept them, codify them and recognize them as the Word of God. It is He who is the Gospel. It is He who has gifted, in varying degrees, the councils, the Fathers, the hierarchs of the Church in "rightly handling the word of truth" (2 Tm 2:15). In this has been fulfilled the promise of Christ: "The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring to our remembrance all that I have said to You" (Jn 14:26) Where the Word of God is rightly and powerfully proclaimed, there is the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is so the One who empowers our prayer. "The Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words"

(Rom 8:26). The Church's liturgical services have been ordered under His inspiration, collecting the texts of the Holy Scriptures as well as the prayers, hymns and sentiments of the Fathers so that we can raise, not simply our own weak voices, but the inspired voice of the Church when we praise Him in worship. This is why liturgical renewal among Eastern Christians consists, not in devising new forms of worship, but in seeking to understand and live what the Spirit has already given us. Thus, more than any other worship tradition, the Byzantine gives prominence in the liturgy to the Holy Spirit. The priest begins every divine service by saying, aloud or silently, the following prayer to the Spirit:


O heavenly king, Paraclete, Spirit of truth, present everywhere and filling all things, Treasury of blessings and giver of life: Come, dwell with us and cleanse us of all stain and save our souls, O gracious One.


But the Spirit's most powerful activity in our prayer life comes in those highpoints of worship, which the Western tradition calls sacraments and Eastern Christians refer to as the HOLY MYSTERIES. These two terms speak of complementary sides of a single reality. When the Spirit works in these rites, he effects an unseen or hidden reality that is signified by the external, visible sign performed by the priest. The Latin word SACRAMENTUM refers to the outward sign, while the Creek term MYSTERION speaks of the inner, hidden reality.

In Eastern Christian thinking the mysteries and other blessings of the Church are accomplished by the Spirit's power. At the Divine Liturgy the priest calls upon the Father to "send your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered; and make this bread the precious body of your Christ, and that which is in this chalice the precious blood of your Christ, changing them by your Holy Spirit." When baptismal water and Jordan water are blessed, the priest prays: "Be present now through the descent of your Holy Spirit and sanctify this water." When oil is blessed for anointing the sick, the priest asks the Father to "send down your Holy Spirit and sanctify this oil." In some prayer books the priest blesses objects by sprinkling them with holy water and proclaiming, "This object is blessed by this sprinkling with water and sanctified by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit.

In these climactic or peak worship experiences of the Church we see the Spirit working to do what the actions we perform symbolize. This in BAPTISM when the priest immerses the candidate into water, we know that the Spirit is plunging him into Christ, renewing his sinful nature and making him a new creature reborn of water and his power. In CHRISMATION as the priest pours chrism upon the believer, we see the Spirit himself poured out upon the Christian, "the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it" (Eph 1:13). In the EUCHARIST, as we share in the Holy Gifts we know we are sharing in the body and blood of Christ which they have become by the Spirit's power. In CONFESSION we are truly forgiven and in HOLY UNCTION truly strengthened by the Spirit as the priest prays over us. In MARRIAGE a man and woman become a family, united by the Holy Spirit and made into a new creature, no longer two but one. In HOLY ORDERS the Spirit bestows the charism of ministry as the hierarch raises a man to be a bishop, priest or deacon. Thus what we see symbolized in the language of ritual is truly happening in an unseen way by the working of the Holy Spirit.

We respond in faith to the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in the Church's mysteries when we approach them fully believing that what we see before us symbolized in the ritual will truly happen by the Spirit's power. A believer comes to the mysteries confident that he is encountering the power of God in a hidden way. He approaches them with awe and prepares for them by prayer and fasting, for they are not mere symbols but the vehicles of the Spirit's sanctifying power. Thus when we receive the Eucharist - or any other mystery - in faith, we can only respond with the hymn that is our song of thanksgiving at the Divine Liturgy, "We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit."

LOOKING TO A NEW AGE

The divine life of the risen Christ is at work in us. The process of our deification - begun in us at baptism- goes on. Often our growth in Christ only comes through trial and hardship. Yet we look with confident expectation to the end that awaits us: our final transformation in glory.

The most important experience we will have as Christians will be the event of our death. Through this experience we pass from one stage of life to another. We leave our life in the body and enter into a new and largely unknown phase of our being. Thus death marks a stage of growth for us as we move one step further toward the completion of our journey. It must always be in this light - as an advancement on our way to glory - that a Christian looks at death.

While our added closeness to God after death is a source of joy, nevertheless we know that dying is a solitary and painful experience. The physical agony of a diseased body is often surpassed by the mental anguish of realizing that we seem to be losing everything that we hold dear. In one of the hymns of the burial service, St. John of Damascus expresses the complete isolation in which we encounter death:

"What a struggle will I have to sustain when

it is time to be separated from my body. What

suffering shall I have to endure alone. There

will be no one to relieve me. Even if I were

to turn to the angels, my pleas would be in

vain."

Our personal sense of loss is heightened when we realize that the destruction of our bodies is not according to God's plan. God created man with a body and intends him to live in one. Man is not, as some have believed, a spirit imprisoned in flesh until death frees him from it. The loss of the body is an authentically Christian cause for grief because it is contrary to the will of God for us. Again, a hymn by St. John of Damascus captures our frustration and sorrow:

"I weep and I lament when I consider death and

when I think of those who are laid in the grave.

Where is now that moving beauty created in the

likeness of God? Where is the glorious form?

O the wonder of it - what happened that we now

delivered up to corruption? How did death come

into our life?"

The Scriptures connect the fact of death as we know it with sin, and trace it back to man's beginning. As a result of sin, man loses his claim to life and finds that the state of his body mirrors the condition of his soul, "death thus coming to all men inasmuch as all sinned" (Rom 5:12). Only in Christ is death cheated out of its prize, because He is without sin.

While we grieve over death, because of Christ's victory we do not surrender completely to it "like those who have no hope" (1 Thes. 4:13). We experience the agony of dying, knowing that in Christ it is not the end. Our assurance is that death will not have the final say with us. This confidence overrides our grief and gives us hope that death's seeming victory will be reversed. As St. John Chrysostom said, "It is true that we die as before, but we do not remain in death; and that is not to die."

Thus, though death is not God's will for us and is the result of sin, through it we are brought closer to our final transfiguration because Christ has overcome it.

We frequently pray for those "who have left this life in the hope of rising to eternal life", not only at funeral services but at other times as well. Since the earliest days of the Church it has been customary to remember the dead at stated times after their passing. The Eastern Churches solemnize these days with Memorial Services and pray for all the dead on the Saturdays of the Dead in the spring. The prayers and hymns of all these services do not hesitate to express our loss and grief over death, yet strengthen us with the assurance that God's life will triumph in us. Frequently at these services it is customary to bless a dish of sweetened boiled wheat, called KOLYVA. Thus we express our hope that the life to come will be sweet and delightful because it is in Christ.

Con't

Heaven and Hell:

Christ by His resurrection is victorious over sin and death. The Christian by his Baptism in faith is a sharer in that victory. Here and now he experiences the mystical presence of the Holy Spirit and so can face all trials in the assurance that God is with him. He can even be hopeful in the face of death, because of the promised resurrection.

This assurance does not keep believers from wondering what happens after death. The fate of the body is clear, but what about the spirit of man, made in the image of the immortal God? The New Testament is not overly concerned with the time after death, preferring to direct our eyes to the resurrection of our bodies at the end of time. Only then, Scripture insists, will man's growth in Christ be complete.

Nevertheless, St. Paul could long for death in the belief that "when the earthly tent in which we dwell is destroyed, we have a dwelling provided for us by God, a swelling in the heavens not made by hands, but to last forever" (2 Cor. 5:1). After death, although we are separated from the body and are thus "incomplete", we will experience our union with God to a greater degree than we have on earth. This is what the Scriptures and Christian tradition have variously called Paradise, Heaven, Abraham's Bosom. The time after death and before the resurrection thus marks a further stage in the process of our deification;

When Jesus speaks of this stage in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), He notes that some of the dead are not in Abraham's Bosom but in "Hades", a place of separation and thus torment. The lack of relationship with God, which those who share this man's lot had on earth, is experienced to a greater degree after death. Still, it is not as intensely felt as it shall be after the resurrection. This is what the common Christian tradition calls "hell".

The relationship a person has with God on earth determines the quality of their relationship after death. If a person is in union with Him on earth, that union will be strengthened in heaven. If they are separated on earth, that condition will continue more intensely after death, Each persons situation will be proclaimed to them at their death (cf Heb. 9:27), but it is still the way a person lives on earth which determines their course after death. Thus the period after death is a further stage for all along the course which they have chosen on earth.

The Intermediate Stage:

It is the common tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches to pray for the dead. This reflects the belief that they do not attain their final state of blis until the Last Day and so can be helped by our prayers. The West has called this intermediate condition "purgatory" and has seen it as punishment due to past sins, whether forgiven or not. The Eastern tradition has not given this intermediate state a same and prefers to see it as a period of further growth: a growth which is surely purging or cleansing, but not punishing.

Nevertheless, some Eastern Fathers did speak of punishment for sins of which we have not repented.

St. Cyril of Alexandria and other Fathers compared the time after death to a journey, as if on a modern parkway along which the soul "encounters toll booths, as it were: certain gates or toll houses in which taxes are exacted which will bar its way into the Kingdom, will halt and hold back its progress toward it. At each of these toll booths as account is demanded for particular sins" (Homily on the Departure of the Soul).

In any event, we must always remember that all the terms given to these states after death - including heaven and hell - are simply images which we can only reflect in a very dim way the realities of growing union with God of progressive separation from Him, which face all men after death.

The Life of the World to Come:

Restored to life in Christ, united to Him sacramentally and gifted with His Holy Spirit, facing hardships and death in the confident assurance of God's presence, growing from glory to glory in a process of deification - this is the Christian understanding of life. But mankind's transformation will not be complete in that union with God experienced after death. There is still more to come. As we say in the Nicene Creed, we "look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

The New Testament continually proclaims the belief that we will be raised at the end of history, as Christ was raised that first Easter: "Christ, the first fruits, and then at His coming, all those who belong to Him" (1 Cor 15:23). The victory which Death seemed to have, over us will be annulled. We shall be remade as we were meant to be: body and as well as spirit, whole persons sharing in the glory of God.

While the Scripture is constant in affirming the resurrection, it does not speak about what the risen life shall be like. St. John says that we simply don't know what awaits us, but that we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is." (1 Jn 3:2) This similarity to Christ will include our bodies which will be remade "according to the pattern of His glorified body" (Phil 3:21). Thus our union with God in Christ will be so profound and complete that it will totally renew and recreate us in a way we cannot even begin to envision.

This climax to our deification will come when Christ returns in triumph. He will be manifested as the King of all, the Lamb of God our Redeemer "come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and of His kingdom there shall be no end." At His coming the countless generations of His people will be raised to enter with Him into His eternal kingdom. He shall reign forever and ever as king of kings and lord of lords. And the voice of every creature in heaven and on earth, under the earth and in the sea - everything in the universe shall cry aloud: "To the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor, glory and might forever and ever." (Rev. 5:13) Eastern Catholics Believe