www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Farewell to my brethren

Christ is Risen!

Mary,

I must ask your patience but I am not sure that I understood some of the points in your posts in reference to me. I do not recall ever saying that "WE make the Church holy" or even intentionally implying anything like that. This concept sounds like some of the countefeit Vatican II spirituality (as opposed to the real Vatican II) more commonly seen in the west in recent decades whic I have no use for.

One of my points is to to encourage anyone who is disturbed at anything to make their thoughts known to their bishop. I do not advocate disobedience nor leaving our Church. Sharing one's heart with the "Father" of the Church "family is not in any way being disobedient. I always emphasize that expressions to our Bishops should be respectful, offer productive and positive alternatives and be well founded. In fact, the very "fatherly" quality of the "Patriachial" model of leadership in the Eastern "lung" of Church invites us "children" to in fact share our hearts with our "father"(bishop, pastor, Patriach, abbot.) In this way the wise discerment of our "fathers" on matters relevant to all of us is actually being charitably served.

Fr. Thomas J. Loya, STB.,MA.

Ours is a calling not to go in search of a ready-made Bride that is ALREADY holy and immaculate, ready made for us, but to MAKE her holy ourselves through the gifts that we have been given.

Christ is Risen!

I applaud the recent post by Im regarding the significance of the Bridegroom-Bride relationship in the whole matter of Sign, Sacrament and liturgical text.

Where there is gender confusion there is theological confusion.
Where there is theological confusion there is gender confusion.
Gender actually IS theology as it is the way (mystically) in which God reveals Himself and in which we in turn as humans are able to love as God loves. Our gender is an icon of the very interior life of the Holy Trinity. Gender is not arbitrary. It is revelatory. I hope to be picking this point up much more comprehensively in the future.

"..Christ emerges from the tombe like a bridegrooom from a bridal chamber" (Paschal Matins.)


--Fr. Thomas J. Loya, STB., MA.

But Recluse - as one who is discerning conversion to Orthodoxy - I will simply say that I am praying for you and your family during what I know to be a very difficult time.

The Great Mystery

19. Saint Paul uses a concise phrase in referring to family life: it is a "great mystery" (Eph 5:32). What he writes in the Letter to the Ephesians about that "great mystery", although deeply rooted in the Book of Genesis and in the whole Old Testament tradition, nonetheless represents a new approach which will later find expression in the Church's Magisterium.

The Church professes that Marriage, as the Sacrament of the covenant between husband and wife, is a "great mystery", because it expresses the spousal love of Christ for his Church. Saint Paul writes: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word" (Eph 5:25-26). The Apostle is speaking here about Baptism, which he discusses at length in the Letter to the Romans, where he presents it as a sharing in the death of Christ leading to a sharing in his life (cf. Rom 6:3-4). In this Sacrament the believer is born as a new man, for Baptism has the power to communicate new life, the very life of God. The mystery of the God-man is in some way recapitulated in the event of Baptism. As Saint Irenaeus would later say, along with many other Fathers of the Church of both East and West: "Christ Jesus, our Lord, the Son of God, became the son of man so that man could become a son of God".

The Bridegroom then is the very same God who became man. In the Old Covenant Yahweh appears as the Bridegroom of Israel, the chosen people�a Bridegroom who is both affectionate and demanding, jealous and faithful. Israel's moments of betrayal, desertion and idolatry, described in such powerful and evocative terms by the Prophets, can never extinguish the love with whichGod�the Bridegroom "loves to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1).

The confirmation and fulfilment of the spousal relationship between God and his people are realized in Christ, in the New Covenant. Christ assures us that the Bridegroom is with us (cf. Mt 9:15). He is with all of us; he is with the Church. The Church becomes a Bride, the Bride of Christ. This Bride, of whom the Letter to the Ephesians speaks, is present in each of the baptized and is like one who presents herself before her Bridegroom. "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her..., that he might present the Church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish" (Eph 5:25-27). The love with which the Bridegroom "has loved" the Church "to the end" continuously renews her holiness in her saints, even though she remains a Church of sinners. Even sinners, "tax collectors and harlots", are called to holiness, as Christ himself affirms in the Gospel (cf. Mt 21:31). All are called to become a glorious Church, holy and without blemish. "Be holy", says the Lord, "for I am holy" (Lev 11:44; cf. 1 Pet 1:16).

This is the deepest significance of the "great mystery", the inner meaning of the sacramental gift in the Church, the most profound meaning of Baptism and the Eucharist. They are fruits of the love with which the Bridegroom has loved us to the end, a love which continually expands and lavishes on people an ever greater sharing in the supernatural life.

Saint Paul, after having said: "Husbands, love your wives" (Eph 5:25), emphatically adds: "Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body" (Eph 5:28-30). And he encourages spouses with the words: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21).

This is unquestionably a new presentation of the eternal truth about marriage and the family in the light of the New Covenant. Christ has revealed this truth in the Gospel by his presence at Cana in Galilee, by the sacrifice of the Cross and the Sacraments of his Church. Husbands and wives thus discover in Christ the point of reference for their spousal love. In speaking of Christ as the Bridegroom of the Church, Saint Paul uses the analogy of spousal love, referring back to the Book of Genesis: "A man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). This is the "great mystery" of that eternal love already present in creation, revealed in Christ and entrusted to the Church. "This mystery is a profound one", the Apostle repeats, "and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:32). The Church cannot therefore be understood as the Mystical Body of Christ, as the sign of man's Covenant with God in Christ, or as the universal sacrament of salvation, unless we keep in mind the "great mystery" involved in the creation of man as male and female and the vocation of both to conjugal love, to fatherhood and to motherhood. The "great mystery", which is the Church and humanity in Christ, does not exist apart from the "great mystery" expressed in the "one flesh" (cf. Gen 2:24; Eph 5:31-32), that is, in the reality of marriage and the family.

The family itself is the great mystery of God. As the "domestic church", it is the bride of Christ. The universal Church, and every particular Church in her, is most immediately revealed as the bride of Christ in the "domestic church" and in its experience of love: conjugal love, paternal and maternal love, fraternal love, the love of a community of persons and of generations. Could we even imagine human love without the Bridegroom and the love with which he first loved to the end? Only if husbands and wives share in that love and in that "great mystery" can they love "to the end". Unless they share in it, they do not know "to the end" what love truly is and how radical are its demands. And this is undoubtedly very dangerous for them.

The teaching of the Letter to the Ephesians amazes us with its depth and the authority of its ethical teaching. Pointing to marriage, and indirectly to the family, as the "great mystery" which refers to Christ and the Church, the Apostle Paul is able to reaffirm what he had earlier said to husbands: "Let each one of you love his wife as himself". He goes on to say: "And let the wife see that she respects her husband" (Eph 5:33). Respect, because she loves and knows that she is loved in return. It is because of this love that husband and wife become a mutual gift. Love contains the acknowledgment of the personal dignity of the other, and of his or her absolute uniqueness. Indeed, each of the spouses, as a human being, has been willed by God from among all the creatures of the earth for his or her own sake. Each of them, however, by a conscious and responsible act, makes a free gift of self to the other and to the children received from the Lord. It is significant that Saint Paul continues his exhortation by echoing the fourth commandment: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ?Honour your father and mother' (this is the first commandment with a promise), ?that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth'. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph 6:1-4). The Apostle thus sees in the fourth commandment the implicit commitment of mutual respect between husband and wife, between parents and children, and he recognizes in it the principle of family stability.

Saint Paul's magnificent synthesis concerning the "great mystery" appears as the compendium or summa, in some sense, of the teaching about God and man which was brought to fulfilment by Christ. Unfortunately, Western thought, with the development of modern rationalism, has been gradually moving away from this teaching. The philosopher who formulated the principle of "Cogito, ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am", also gave the modern concept of man its distinctive dualistic character. It is typical of rationalism to make a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit. But man is a person in the unity of his body and his spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter: it is a spiritualized body, just as man's spirit is so closely united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit. The richest source for knowledge of the body is the Word made flesh. Christ reveals man to himself. In a certain sense this statement of the Second Vatican Council is the reply, so long awaited, which the Church has given to modern rationalism.

This reply is of fundamental importance for understanding the family, especially against the background of today's civilization, which, as has been said, seems in so many cases to have given up the attempt to be a "civilization of love". The modern age has made great progress in understanding both the material world and human psychology, but with regard to his deepest, metaphysical dimension contemporary man remains to a great extent a being unknown to himself. Consequently the family too remains an unknown reality. Such is the result of estrangement from that "great mystery" spoken of by the Apostle.

The separation of spirit and body in man has led to a growing tendency to consider the human body, not in accordance with the categories of its specific likeness to God, but rather on the basis of its similarity to all the other bodies present in the world of nature, bodies which man uses as raw material in his efforts to produce goods for consumption. But everyone can immediately realize what enormous dangers lurk behind the application of such criteria to man. When the human body, considered apart from spirit and thought, comes to be used as raw material in the same way that the bodies of animals are used�and this actually occurs for example in experimentation on embryos and fetuses� we will inevitably arrive at a dreadful ethical defeat.

Within a similar anthropological perspective, the human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeanism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object. This neo-Manichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as a area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). This same wonder is echoed in the words of the Song of Solomon: "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes" (Song 4:9). How far removed are some modern ideas from the profound understanding of masculinity and femininity found in Divine Revelation! Revelation leads us to discover in human sexuality a treasure proper to the person, who finds true fulfilment in the family but who can likewise express his profound calling in virginity and in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Modern rationalism does not tolerate mystery. It does not accept the mystery of man as male and female, nor is it willing to admit that the full truth about man has been revealed in Jesus Christ. In particular, it does not accept the "great mystery" proclaimed in the Letter to the Ephesians, but radically opposes it. It may well acknowledge, in the context of a vague deism, the possibility and even the need for a supreme or divine Being, but it firmly rejects the idea of a God who became man in order to save man. For rationalism it is unthinkable that God should be the Redeemer, much less that he should be "the Bridegroom", the primordial and unique source of the human love between spouses. Rationalism provides a radically different way of looking at creation and the meaning of human existence. But once man begins to lose sight of a God who loves him, a God who calls man through Christ to live in him and with him, and once the family no longer has the possibility of sharing in the "great mystery", what is left except the mere temporal dimension of life? Earthly life becomes nothing more than the scenario of a battle for existence, of a desperate search for gain, and financial gain before all else.

The deep-seated roots of the "great mystery", the sacrament of love and life which began with Creation and Redemption and which has Christ the Bridegroom as its ultimate surety, have been lost in the modern way of looking at things. The "great mystery" is threatened in us and all around us. May the Church's celebration of the Year of the Family be a fruitful opportunity for husbands and wives to rediscover that mystery and recommit themselves to it with strength, courage and enthusiasm.

but it firmly rejects the idea of a God who became man in order to save man.

I don't claim to speak for Corsair or for others that have gone to the Orthodox Church

Look particularly at the sections that deal with original sin and Baptism for the remission of original sin. You may possibly hear there is no such thing in Orthodoxy.

Like Recluse, deciding to stay (or leave) has been a very difficult struggle for me. I had to turn my emotions off, because the confusion/turmoil was getting to me. I wait patiently now. If I am lead to Orthodoxy at some point, then so be it. Either direction I go, I feel I lose. That is no offense to the Orthodox or Catholics, it is my personal feelings on the matter. I await the unity of East and West. Unlikely to be in my lifetime, but still my hope!

Christ is Risen!

Dear Monomakh,

I think you meant Carole and not corsair. Not that I don't entertain the idea of converting to Orthodoxy from time to time. I haven't left the BCC.....

Like Recluse, deciding to stay (or leave) has been a very difficult struggle form me. I had to turn my emotions off, because the confusion/turmoil was getting to me. I wait patiently now. If I am lead to Orthodoxy at some point, then so be it. Either direction I go, I feel I loose. That is no offense to the Orthodox or Catholics, it is my personal feelings on the matter. I await the unity of East and West. Unlikely to be in my lifetime, but still my hope!

Christ is Risen!