Christ risen from the dead with the Good Thief about to enter Paradise, showing the cross to the flaming cherubim guarding the gates, as his “admission ticket.”
“Today,
you will be with me in paradise.” If we approach the chalice with the self-examination,
the reorientation of our lives, the words of the thief—Remember me in your kingdom—Christ
makes the same promise to us: Today you will be with me in paradise. Today you
will begin to live forever.
What does that even mean, that we will be “with him in paradise,” that we “will live forever?” We sometimes think that eternal life is just like the life we know now… but rather than walking around on earth for some finite period, we will be walking around paradise for “an eternity,” that time will simply be stretched out and stretched out and simply go on much like it does now on earth but without ever having an end in sight.
But eternity—the “forever” of the Kingdom of God—is not simply a very long time that simply never stops. “Eternity” and “eternal life” is simply always NOW. There is no time—not long, not short, not never-ending—just NOW and its quality is as different from what we currently experience as life in the womb differs from life after we are born. It’s impossible for us to understand what eternity and paradise are like just as it is impossible for a baby in the womb to know what to expect when it emerges out into the world.
An icon of Christ as celebrant of the Eucharist, with the four evangelists and four bishops—SS. John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, James of Jerusalem, Gregory the Great—credited with composing the four Eucharistic services of the Orthodox Church; the Holy Gifts on the altar; the anaphora on Low Sunday; the elevation at Low Mass during Easter Week; the hospitality of Abraham hosting the three angels, a “type” of the Eucharist.
One of things that scared those who denied Christ’s presence in the Eucharist was that if true—if Christ is really and truly present somehow in the Eucharistic bread and wine—then how could anyone dare to receive it? How could anyone of us dare to stretch out their hands or open their mouths unless they were as pure as the angels themselves?
Taking St. Paul’s admonition seriously, without discerning the body—without adequate self-examination and preparation to receive the Eucharist—a person would be eating and drinking judgement on themselves. And the people who denied that Christ is present in the Eucharist weren’t wrong to be frightened. It is an awesome thing to dare to reach out and touch—much less, consume!—the bread of the Eucharist if it truly is Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ.
But St. Paul didn’t say the Corinthians had to be pure or sinless. He said they had to be worthy. Worthiness is a very different thing. To be worthy to touch, to be worthy to consume the Body of Christ does not mean to be sinless. As several English theologians in the 1600s and 1700s pointed out, to be worthy is to be committed to self-examination, committed to repentance, committed to always turning around, changing direction, re-orienting myself towards Christ.
So I must always prepare to approach the Table by examining myself, reviewing what I have done and who I have been during the time since I last approached the Holy Table. Examine myself, measure myself against our standard—which is Christ—and determine how I might, in perhaps some single small way, turn my back on that person that I do not want to be and take some small step closer to being the person I was made to be in Christ.
To be worthy of receiving Holy Communion, to dare to touch the Corpus Christi, I must be committed to self-examination and repentance. One of those English theologians, Simon Patrick[1] in 1660, suggested using a phrase from the Gospel that Greek and Russian Christians use as they approach the chalice: “Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom.”
The thief crucified with Christ acknowledged Jesus as Lord and reoriented his life—turning his back on his image of himself as a victim who was owed whatever he could take from other people—and he asked Jesus to make a place for him in the Kingdom. What was Jesus’ answer? “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” If we approach the chalice with the self-examination, the reorientation of our lives, the words of the thief—Remember me in your kingdom—Christ makes the same promise to us: Today you will be with me in paradise. Today you will begin to live forever.
[1]
Bishop of Ely, Mensa Mystica, or a Discourse concerning the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper. (Prayer Book Spirituality, p. 283)
Medieval Byzantine-style mosaic depicts Satan tempting Christ in the desert: “If you are the Son of God, make these stones into bread.”Christ answers: “Man does not live by bread alone.”
For such people are false prophets, deceitful workers who are disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. It is no great surprise, then, if his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness; for their end will be according to their works. (2 Cor. 11:13-15)
St. Paul warns the Corinthians that his enemies, who call themselves the super-apostles, are liars and deceivers who are not true apostles at all. They are servants of Satan, pretending to be something they are not just as Satan himself can pretend to be something he is not.
Evil apes respectability and weeds do their best to look like wheat. But whatever similarity they have to wheat is betrayed by what they taste like …. We therefore need the grace of God, a sober mind and watchful eyes, so that we do not eat weeds instead of wheat and make ourselves sick; nor to mistake the wolf for a sheep and be attacked; and not to mistake the death-dealing devil for a good angel and be devoured.
St. Curil of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 4.1
Satan began as an angel of light. He was, in fact, the brightest of the angels. But he rebelled against God and became the enemy, the deceiver, the liar, and the pretender. Based on hints in the Old and New Testament, we think that about 1/3 of the angels joined his rebellion. Some early theologians thought that humans were created to replace the fallen angels in the Kingdom of God. But others say that Satan and his followers rebelled because they were jealous of the love and attention that the Holy Trinity gave to the human race.
Theologians who specialize in angels tell us that once an angel has chosen to be faithful to God or not, that angel cannot change their mind. That’s why we can trust our guardian angels to not suddenly “switch sides” and lead us away from God once we have begun to trust them and their guidance. We can hope that the fallen angels will be able to repent but we can’t depend on it.
In fact, it’s our ability to repent that makes us superior to the angels. We can repent because we have bodies and are not simply pure intellects as the angels are. But we must still guard ourselves. We can deceive and lie to ourselves, if not other people. We can think we are devout lovers of God but if we claim to love God but hate or ignore our fellow human beings, we do not actually love God.
The super-apostles in Corinth deceived themselves even more than they deceived their fellow Corinthians. Satan deceives himself more than he deceives any of us. Self-deception, in Russian called prelest, is the most dangerous trap we can fall into. That’s why frequent, thorough self-examination against objective standards is so important. There are many “Guides to self-examination” available, often based on the Ten Commandments or the eight Beatitudes or the Seven Virtues. The important thing is to use them and keep checking ourselves against them and admitting–going to Confession–when we have failed to live up to them.
Rather than lie to ourselves, we can embrace and walk in the light with the angels.
