PASCHAL EPISTLE OF ARCHBISHOP LAZAR (PUHALO)
PASCHA, 2005
This year, I would like to invite you to look at Holy Pascha through the lens of the Presanctified Liturgy. I am not speaking of a theological discourse or historical examination of this special divine service; rather let us engage in a meditation on it.
The name "Presanctified Liturgy" invites us to depart from a mere awareness that Communion has been consecrated on the previous Sunday. Let us rather perceive something greater. Let our hearts be caught up in the great wonder that God the Word had presanctified Himself for our redemption even before the creation of the world. The awesome and ineffable love of God gave the gift even before the recipients had come into being. He provided so great a salvation even though He knew how many would reject it and despise both the gift and the One Who gave it. Pascha is this eternal feast, which is outside time and space. It proclaims to us the eternal co-suffering love of God for humanity.
A special feature of the Presanctified Liturgy is the opening and closing of the curtain during the service. Let us put aside the mechanics of the typikon for a moment and notice the pattern of these actions.
Aside from the litanies, almost the entire content of the Presanctified Liturgy is from the Old Testament. The curtain is opened during the litanies, but closed during the chanting of the Old Testament verses, for there was a veil of unknowing throughout the whole of the Old Testament.
During the time of the Old Covenant even the righteous saw God through a veil of ignorance, as Apostle Paul says, "But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament" (2Cor.3:14a) For if even now, when God has dwelt amongst us in the flesh, and revealed Himself to us as Saviour, we still see only "darkly as in a mirror" (1Cor.13:12), how much more did those of old see only through that veil of ignorance. Scripture is a blend of divine revelation and human interpretation. The Old Testament interpretation of God, which presents Him with an all too human personality, comprises a vision seen through the lens of our own societal imperfections, hardness of heart and lack of understanding. Together with this, however, we find God's own continuous, dynamic refinement of our knowledge of Him. This unfolds almost imperceptibly in events, words and passages throughout the earliest books. It takes on a new vital dynamism in the great prophets who vividly proclaim that the true justice of God manifests itself not in punishments, but in the care of the poor, the alienated and the dispossessed. The holy prophets progressively draw back the veil, or rather shine a light through it. Little by little, the veil becomes more diaphanous, "thinner" as God prepares us for the supreme revelation. But the veil is drawn aside, like a curtain of the royal doors in the Presanctified Liturgy, only when God appears in the flesh to testify of Himself, as the Apostle says, "...which veil is done away in Christ" (2Cor.3:14b).
Jesus Christ radically transforms our understanding of God, and of man's relationship with Him. As the veil of ignorance fades before the progressive revelation, it is torn asunder by the power of the glory of God which shone forth on the Cross, for "Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away (2Cor.3:16). Suddenly we become aware that the true glory and nature of God is to be seen in His own meekness, humility and boundless co-suffering love of mankind. Every coarse and juridical image of the Creator vanishes like a morning fog before our eyes when we begin to chant the Lamentations of Great, Holy Friday. The all too human interpretations of God in the Old Testament evaporate and the God of love is truly revealed to us in Christ Jesus. Nowhere is it seen so vividly as on the Cross when we behold the King of Glory making the supreme sacrifice for us, for "...we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2Cor.3:18).
It is to a considerable degree, through the experiencing of the Presanctified Liturgy with the understanding imparted to us by its content and by the meaning of the opening and closing of the curtain of the royal doors, that we ourselves have the veil of ignorance drawn aside from our hearts. This helps to prepare us for the great revelations of Holy Week and above all, the fulness of the awesome mystery of Holy Pascha; the triumph of light over darkness and the victory of life over death.
And now, brothers and sisters, lest we draw again the veil of ignorance over our own hearts, let us reflect deeply upon the meaning of all that the Church has given us during the Great Fast and the lenten divine services. Let the veil of the Passions, which lead so many to deform and distort these divine services and their revelation, not cloud our understanding. For as Paul says, "But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart" (2Cor.3:15).
Let the veil be cast aside so that we can perceive the God Who is the Lover of mankind, the man befriending God Who has created, nourished and redeemed us. Let us see, through the revelation of the risen Saviour, the Lord Who gave us being and again ransomed us from bondage into the glorious "freedom of God's children" (Rom.8:21; 2Cor.3:17) and from the power of death into everlasting life.
CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY HE IS RISEN!
NATIVITY EPISTLE (2004)
December 25 2004/January 7, 2005
THE INCARNATION OF THE LIGHT
NATIVITY EPISTLE, 2004
Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
In Him was Life and that Life was the light of the world. That light
shines on in the darkness; for the darkness has neither overcome it
nor comprehended it, neither does it receive it (Jn.1:4-5).
The Feast of the Nativity of Christ is so often seen as an occasion
of worldly happiness and perceived as being lesser that Holy Pascha.
Indeed, both feasts are an occasion for joy and good will, but both
are also seasons for repentance and spiritual renewal.
This year as we prepare to celebrate the Nativity Feast, I wish to
invite you to take a new look at its meaning C at the meaning of
Christ's birth and the meaning of the feastday on which we celebrate
it. Let us for a moment put away such euphemisms as "Christmas" and
even the term "the Nativity Feast." Let us instead focus our minds on
the reality of this great cosmic event, and address it with
understanding as The Incarnation of God.
In order to understand what took place that night in Bethlehem, we
must first return to the beginning of history, to the creation of the
universe.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth....And He
separated the light from the darkness (Gn.1:1,4).
If we understand this narrative only materially and do not see its
spiritual dimension, we will miss the essential meaning of the
Nativity of Christ. The whole of the creation narrative has a
prophetic meaning. It both offers us the meaning of life, and
foretells the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This is why John,
in his Gospel precedes the above words by telling us that Jesus
Christ, God the Word, was the actual creator of all that exists, and
that "nothing that exists was made without Him."
Christ came into the world to profoundly separate light and darkness,
and to expose the darkness to the light of his presence. It is our
own struggle to recognise that the darkness is not "out there," or in
others. The possibilities of evil, even great evil, is an option for
all of us. Hitler, Stalin, and a host of other villains of our own
era were not uniquely evil. They had many followers willing to do
their bidding. During His ministry Jesus Christ did not give us a
critique of the world itself, or of the Roman Empire. He exposed the
wickedness and cold indifference in the hearts of actual individuals.
He shone the light on the darkness that lurks in the hearts of each
human being and becomes shared by others around them. The evil that a
man like Hitler carried out is a possibility for each of us. Hitler
was a human being; we are human beings, so whatever was possible for
him is a possibility for any person. We are governed by a conscience,
but we can learn to ignore our conscience, or even to so rebel
against it that in our bitterness, we act radically in opposition to
it. We might then respond to the torments of our conscience with even
greater wickedness.
We may not intentionally nourish the darkness that lies within each
of us, and most human beings would never carry out any great evil.
Nevertheless, in our daily lives, we are burdened with inclinations
based in prejudices, envy, self-righteousness, self-pity and moments
of bitterness, which make it possible for us to commit lesser acts of
evil against others. This is the darkness which Christ exposed to the
light in each human being. This is the darkness that we must
constantly struggle with in ourselves. Wars begin in the hearts of
men, murder is an affair of the human heart and Auschwitz existed in
prototype in the hearts of its creators before it was put into
practice. All this was exposed in the hearts of the most religious
men of the day during Christ's earthly ministry.
And yet, humanity is essentially good. There is a light of grace in
all and the conscience is a holy prophet implanted in every human
being to reflect the image and likeness of God in each. It is this
inner conflict that Christ came to illumine. He came to separate once
more light from darkness in each human being, and to give us the real
possibility of overcoming this darkness. He rekindled within us the
lamp of grace, reopened the doors of the conscience and called upon
all to embark in a real struggle for the triumph of light over
darkness in each of our hearts, to empower our own consciences anew.
This is the reason for the long fasting period before the Feast of
Christ's Nativity. For most of society, the celebrating begins long
before Christmas, and seems to come to an abrupt end the day after.
This is because the worldly frame of mind celebrates the world as it
was before the advent of Christ, while for Orthodox Christians, the
season of celebration begins with the advent of Christ, and continues
until Theophany. We do not celebrate the world as it was before the
Incarnation, rather we keep the Nativity Fast as a proclamation that
the world was deficient and poorer before the Incarnation, before the
coming of Jesus Christ, and we celebrate only on the Feast of the
Incarnation and the days that follow; we celebrate a world renewed in
Jesus Christ, not the enfeebled and broken world that existed before
His coming.
It is during this fasting period that we are called upon to examine
ourselves deeply. With prayer and fasting to help guide us and
liberate us from the secular way of thinking, we are able to discern
more clearly where the boundary between light and darkness is in our
own hearts. In such fasting and prayer, we seek to acquire the self-
discipline and self-control that makes it possible for us to
cooperate with Divine grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit, to
increase the light and diminish the darkness. It is by means of this
preparation, worked out through fasting and prayer, that we are the
more able to comprehend that Light which "the world could neither
overcome nor comprehend." It is by means of this preparation that we
can receive the Feast of the Nativity, not in terms of the saccharine
slogans and mantras of the world, but as a real presence that truly
does separate the light from the darkness within us.
It is a wondrous mystery of God's grace that we can become co-workers
with Christ in the salvation of mankind. If we have prepared
ourselves and truly received the presence of Christ, the real
Incarnation of God, then His grace can become incarnate in us. The
less darkness there is in each one of us, the less there is in the
world. The more light there is in each one of us, the more light
there is in the world. To the degree that Christ becomes incarnate in
us, in our consciences, to that same degree, we also become the light
of the world, as a "candle set upon a lampstand" (Mt.5:15).
Brothers and sisters, on this Feast of the Nativity, of the
Incarnation of God, let us resolve to understand that we are called
upon not only to receive the mystery, but to live it. We are called
upon not only to receive our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and be
transformed by Him, but we are called upon to become co-workers with
Him in the redemption of mankind and of the whole world. We can
fulfil this first of all be letting His light so shine in us that the
darkness within is driven out by that light, and the light can then
so shine in us as to help dispel the darkness in the world around us.
We can accomplish this if, with the help of the grace of the Holy
Spirit, the light of Christ becomes truly incarnate in us. This is
the true meaning of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ.
CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!
NATIVITY EPISTLE (2004)
March 29/April 11, 2004
Archbishop Lazar of Ottawa
(OCA, Retired)
To the faithful of St. Nicholas Metochian,
and the Metochian of St. John the Theologian.
CHRIST IS RISEN!
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and
believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John
5:24)
This year as we celebrate Holy Pascha, I would like to reflect on the
life of Saint Mary of Egypt. There are so many aspects to this deeply
moving story that are not always explored. Too often we think of the
Resurrection as a moment in history that assures us of a moment in
the future. Our resurrection begins, however, even before our death.
In the life of Saint Mary of Egypt we see the power of addiction that
can take complete control of a person's life. When we work at
counselling people who are addicted, we begin to have a deeper
understanding of the life of Saint Mary of Egypt and also of the
nature of hell. She had begun as a prostitute and become totally
addicted to sex. As with most addictions, the promises that create
them can never be fulfilled. They begin to consume a person's whole
life to such a degree that one begins to experience hell already in
this life. We have repeatedly seen how true this is in working with
people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Our addictions can so
consume our lives that we may become spiritually dead while we are
physically alive.
It is easy to think of addictions as relating to something dramatic
such as narcotics, but most people who are addicted are not using
narcotics or even alcohol.
Let us look for a moment at the meaning of the word "passion." It
does not mean "sin," but rather "suffering." Every passion arises
from a normal emotion or need such as hunger, which can become
gluttony. When an emotion becomes so strong within us that it begins
to control our lives, and we begin to suffer from it, then it is
called a passion in the negative sense. Such a passion can become an
addiction so that we develop a psychological or physical bondage to
it. In such a case, we are not living an authentic life, and we begin
to die spiritually. We can become addicted to material possessions,
to food, to having our own way, to vanity. Even care about our
appearance can become an addiction. All these things can consume our
lives. They can destroy our relationships with other people and even
separate us from God, making us self-centred and indifferent to
others. They rob us of life itself.
The Holy Church has given us the periods of fasting as a way of
helping us to break our addictions or even to prevent them from
developing. The life of prayer and fasting, which the Church teaches
us, is designed to renew us spiritually, emotionally, mentally, even
physically. As with Saint Mary of Egypt, who, with God's help,
struggled against her own addiction, our own repentance and spiritual
struggle begins the process of resurrection in our lives. It not only
prepares us for the Heavenly Kingdom, which we will experience in the
future, but it makes God's Kingdom present to us already. The paschal
Mystery becomes clear to us only through repentance in which we
experience a passage from darkness to light, and from a spiritual
death to a spiritual life. Jesus Christ has provided for us the
possibility of an authentic life and the Holy Church has given us the
means for acquiring it.
Like Saint Mary of Egypt, we can pass from death to life in our
present earthly existence. We can experience the Paschal Mystery
daily, even while we anticipate the General Resurrection and the
complete manifestation of the Heavenly Kingdom. In order to do this,
we must look honestly and sincerely at our own addictions, at those
things which consume our lives, which make us self-centred,
emotionally insecure and spiritually cold. It is the unselfish love
of Jesus Christ for mankind that makes liberation from bondage
possible for us, but it is only the acquisition of unselfish love in
ourselves that makes it possible for us to participate in that
liberation.
Brothers and sisters, we have come through the journey of Great Lent
in which fasting and prayer have helped us to break the power of some
of our addictions and demonstrated to us that it is possible to break
such power. If we will complete the course of this fast with a
sincere self-examination and repentance, we can come to Holy Pascha
with the realization that Christ's Resurrection and victory over
death can be experienced in our daily lives and that we can even now
pass from death to life, from an illusion of life to an authentic
life daily throughout our earthly existence. The joy of the Heavenly
Kingdom can be ours already in some measure. The holy martyrs had
such an experience and such a certainty of everlasting life. The life
of Saint Mary of Egypt reveals to us that this joy and this certainty
are available to all who will pursue it with faith and repentance.
Let us, therefore, come to the holy feast of Pascha with rejoicing as
ones who have already passed from death unto life.
Truly He is Risen!
+ Archbishop Lazar (Ret.)
Pascha, 2004
|
