Category Archives: Bible Study

Offering = Fellowship with the Saints

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Everyone was expected to bring something to offer at the Eucharist, even if it was only the clean water to be mixed with the chalice. No one expected to receive a portion of the Holy Gifts in Communion if they had not first offered something themselves, no matter how humble. The offering of bread, known as “prosphora,” are an expression of fellowship with the saints on earth as well as the saints in heaven.


Concerning the collection for the saints, as I have ordered the churches of Galatia, so you should do likewise. On the first day of the week let each one of you put aside whatever he or she has gained, so that the collection doesn’t take place when I come. (1 Cor. 16:1-2)

Among the early Christians, there was no modern plumbing in the churches. No one could turn on a faucet to fill a cruet with water. If water was needed—and it was needed to mix with the wine in the chalice—then someone had to bring it to church from a well or a fountain. And among the early Christians, everyone was expected to bring something to offer at the Eucharist: most people probably would not bring cash but they could bring food or clothing to share with the poor. They brought the bread and wine to be placed on the altar. In Rome, orphans–who had nothing and were themselves the recipients of charity–brought the clean water to mix with the chalice for Holy Communion.

Taking a collection of some sort was standard practice at the Eucharist. Offerings (prosphora, in Greek) were a sign that the people making the offering had given themselves and their whole lives to God. The prosphora—food, clothes, money—collected for the saints was an important expression of fellowship, whether the people (“the saints”) receiving the prosphora were local or far away. Making an offering—bringing prosphora—to the Eucharist was an expression of fellowship with the needy saints on earth as well as with the glorious saints in heaven.

St. Paul is organizing a relief effort for the Christians in Jerusalem because there was a famine and severe need there. He is asking all the churches he has founded or visited to contribute to this collection. He will make sure the money gets delivered to Jerusalem, but he wants the local parishes to collect the money before he arrives so that he doesn’t have to wait for the collection itself to be made; he just wants to pick up the money they have already collected and send it on. He was afraid it would take too long if the local parishes waited to take up the collection and that it would arrive in Jerusalem too late.

St. Paul is organizing this relief effort for the Christian community in Jerusalem to demonstrate that he has no animosity or ill will for Christians who were not Gentiles. He is working to relieve the hunger and needs of the Jewish Christians who might have suspected that he thought Gentile Christians were better in God’s eyes than the Jewish Christians were. St. Paul wants to demonstrate that he does not think more highly of Gentile Christians and that all Christians are united in Christ.

St. Paul instructs the Christians in Corinth to organize the collection on Sundays, “the first day of every week,” at the celebration of the Eucharist. Many churches still call the bread brought to church for the Eucharist prosphora. The life of devotion to Christ and public service to the poor go hand-in-hand at the Eucharist. Fellowship with Christ cannot be divorced from fellowship with those in need.

O Hell, Where is Your Victory?

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Lamentation of Christ found in the Church of St. Panteleimon (Nerezi) in Macedonia. The fresco dates back to the 12th century. Several times hymns ask, “What place is capable of containing your life-bearing body?” Only the Church—and each Christian—can contain the life-bearing Body, received in Holy Communion, by which Christ incorporates us into his victory.

So when this corruptible body has put on incorruption, and this mortal body has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? (1 Cor. 15:54-55)

St. Paul tells his readers that this mortal, corruptible body will become immortal and incorruptible when it is raised from the dead on the Last Day. That victory is already anticipated in Christ’s victory. St. Paul quotes three different verses from the Old Testament as if they were one passage, a common practice among ancient preachers–and modern ones!

Death is swallowed up in victory. (Isaiah 25:8)

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? (Hosea 13:14)

There were several versions of these passages in circulation during the first century and most modern Bibles in English don’t have these exact versions in Isaiah and Hosea. But these are the passages most people are familiar with because of the way St. Paul used them and the way they appear in the famous Easter-Paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom:

[Hell] took a body and, face to face, met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!

“O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?”

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!

Hosea 6:1-6 is traditionally read on Good Friday by Western Christians although most revisions of the services in the 1970s removed the reading from Hosea, which is unfortunate. Hosea’s reading on Good Friday and these words of his quoted at Easter express the traditional understanding that Christ’s victory begins on the Cross and will not be complete until the Last Day, when the entire human race is raised from the dead. Thus, Easter-Pascha is not the celebration of a past event; it is the celebration of an eschatological, apocalyptic event that began 2,000 years ago, is still happening, and will continue until time has ceased. It is an ongoing reality.

Second Adam

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Mosaics in the Palatine Chapel, palace of the Norman kings of Sicily, built by Roger II, Palermo, Sicily, Italy (built in the AD 1100s). We see Adam & Eve with the serpent in the top row; below them the angels escort Lot and his family away from Sodom and Gomorrah. (Lot’s wife is the white statue of salt.) Read about artistic depictions of Eve and the serpent here.



It is written, “The first Adam was made into a living creature;” the last Adam is made into a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual Adam that is first, but the natural; the second Adam is the spiritual. The first Adam is made of the dust of the earth; the second Adam is from heaven. (1 Cor. 15:45-46)

St. Paul refers to Genesis 2:7 (“Adam became a living creature”) to make his point that Christ, who is the Second Adam–the Ultimate Adam–is the model for human existence. The first Adam received life; the second Adam gives life. The first Adam (in Genesis) is made from the dust of the earth; the second Adam comes down to earth from heaven in order to raise the first Adam to heaven.

The first man was made from the slime of the earth. The second man came from heaven. By using the word MAN, he taught the birth of this person from the Virgin …. [was both human and] from the Holy Spirit who came upon the Virgin. Thus, precisely while he was human he was also from heaven.

St. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Holy Trinity, chapter 10.

Just as Christ was “the Second Adam,” his Mother is frequently referred to as “the Second Eve.” Justin Martyr wrote in AD 150

He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, ‘Be it unto me according to thy word.” And by her has He been born, to whom we have proved so many scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe upon Him.

St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 100

It was also St. Irenaeus of Lyons who wrote in AD 182

In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) But Eve was disobedient, for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. … having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.

And on this account does the law term a woman betrothed to a man, the wife of him who had betrothed her, although she was as yet a virgin; thus indicating the back-reference from Mary to Eve … For the Lord, having been born “the First-begotten of the dead,” (Revelation 1:5) and receiving into His bosom the ancient fathers, has regenerated them into the life of God, He having been made Himself the beginning of those that live, as Adam became the beginning of those who die. (1 Cor. 15:20-22)

Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. So it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book 3, chapter 22

Just as Adam and Eve were both necessary for the creation of the world, so Christ and his Most Pure Mother were both necessary for the salvation of the world. Just as we share in the dust of the first Adam, we now share the spirit and resurrection of the Second–Ultimate!–Adam who was able to be born because the Second–Ultimate!–Virgin made the right choice when given the opportunity to love or reject God.