Category Archives: Bible Study

Synergy of Hands and Words

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  • A Coptic icon of the Annunciation, showing the angel Gabriel presenting a lily as he announces the Incarnation to the Mother of God.
  • The elevation of the Host in a contemporary celebration of the Solemn Mass by Dominican religious.

Working together with God, then, we also entreat you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: “In a favorable time I listened to you; on the day of salvation I helped you” (Isaiah 49:8). Behold, now it is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor. 6:1-2)

Synergountes de kai parakaloumen …. Synergy. Working together. Cooperation. We only experience “salvation” by working together with God. Any day we work together with him is the day of salvation.

Working together = cooperation with = synergy (fancy theological jargon)

Synergy = salvation

The classic, most clear example of synergy is the cooperation of the Mother of God with the request to bear the Word-made-flesh: “Be it unto me according to your word,” she answered the angel Gabriel. She cooperated with the request of God and the world was saved. If she had said “No,” we can only hope that God had a Plan B but there is no guarantee of that.

The Mother of God cooperated with God and the world was saved. We each personally make that salvation OURS when we approach the Holy Communion to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, harmonizing and uniting our Self with him. During the theological debates of what is the minimum necessary for an authentic celebration of the Eucharist, some said the Words of Institution (“This is my Body… Blood”) were the minimum necessary. Others said the invocation of the Holy Spirit (“Send down Your most holy Spirit to make this bread the Body of your Son ….”) was the minimum necessary.

What both sides presumed but never stated was that the priest also lent his hand to Christ to make the sign of the Cross over the Holy Gifts of bread and wine. The physical gesture was just as important–just as necessary–as the words theologians argued about. The priest’s hand had to cooperate/synergize with the words that he was saying and with the gestures that the Church expected him to make.

The priest’s gesture is as necessary as the priest’s words. That’s true for all of us. What we DO is just as important as what we say. “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20)

Serious Joy

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Christian pilgrims hold candles on Easter Eve as they gather during the ceremony of the Holy Fire at Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead, in the Old City of Jerusalem dead, Saturday, April 23, 2022. (AP Photos/ Tsafrir Abayov and Maya Alleruzzo)




For the love of Christ holds us in its grip, since we have reached the conclusion that one has died for all; therefore, all have died and he died for all in order that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who died and was raised for them…. if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:14-17)

One man died for all and rose from the dead. Christ. Because that one man died, everyone has died. Because that one man rose, everyone will rise. Because everyone will rise, no one lives only for themselves. No one has to be afraid of everybody else. No one has to protect themselves from everybody else. No one needs to live only for themselves, looking out for Number One and taking and taking and taking from other people in order to survive themselves. Because everyone has died and will rise again, we are free to live without fear. We are free to live for those around us.

The human race died when Christ died on the Cross. The human race rose with Christ from the tomb. Now it is for each of us to personally accept that we have died and will rise again when our bodies catch up with the spiritual reality that already exists. Baptism, as St. Nicholas Cabasilas wrote in the 14th century, is our joyful acceptance of that immortality that awaits us. There’s no way to avoid that resurrection and immortality. We can either be happy about it or we can be miserable about it. We are washed in Holy Baptism and accept the reality that we cannot escape: we will be with Christ forever. The misery of being with someone forever when we don’t want to be there is what we call Hell.

Dead and risen with Christ–joyfully accepting the death and resurrection that we cannot escape–means that we are new people, a new creation. The old me died in the font. The new me emerged dripping wet, with one foot already in eternity–“the time beyond time,” we might say.

I am a new creation. I am free to live for those around me. I can be Dorothy Day, if I want. I can be Mother Theresa, if I want. I can be Gandhi, if I want. I can pour myself out in love for the people in my neighborhood, wherever that neighborhood happens to be. I only need to take my coming resurrection seriously. Seriously, but joyfully.

Read more of what St. Nicholas Cabasilas wrote about Holy Baptism in his masterpiece, The Life in Christ.

Tribulations … Small Time and Big Time

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St. Paul writes one of his letters in this icon. He sits at a writing desk with plenty of writing supplies with his feet on a small pedestal. This is not a footrest. It is common in icons for saints to be slightly elevated by standing on such a pedestal to indicate that they are in a slightly higher position than we are, closer to God, and able to see the world more clearly, more honestly and truthfully. They are “on the heights” (Ps. 18:33). They are where we aim to be when we lift up our hearts.


Even though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For the momentary light weight of our tribulation is producing a more and more exceeding and eternal weight of glory over us who are not looking to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

St. Paul says that although he is physically tormented and wasting away, his inner self–his spirit, his soul–is being renewed and grows stronger every day. His tribulations attack him and damage his body but he is looking forward to the glory that he will share in the Kingdom of God.

All this was true for St. Paul. What about us? We are not being attacked for our faith and tormented physically the way St. Paul was. Why do we still read this passage today? What does it have to say to us?

Not all our tribulations are caused by our mortal, political or social enemies. Sometimes our tribulations are caused by our one True Enemy, which is Death. Some people might say that the Devil is our true enemy but the Devil–the great archetype of Evil, the gigantic monster with horns and bat wings that presides over Walpurgis Night in A Night on Bald Mountain–is actually more a comic figure than a frightful, terrifying figure. In all the stories of the desert fathers and mothers, the Devil is the comic relief: he is foolish and easily duped. He is a vain narcissist and the best way to get rid of him is to laugh at him.

The idea that the Devil is an exaggerated figure of terror comes to us from the Puritans who reduced the invisible world to simply God and the Devil. The Puritans forgot that the one, true, ultimate enemy of the human race–and of the whole created order–is, in fact, Death itself (1 Cor. 15). Death is The Enemy that Christ mounts the Cross to wage war against. Death is The Enemy that is destroyed from the inside-out by Christ’s Death and Resurrection. If we think the Devil is the enemy, then Christ’s Resurrection becomes less the salvation of the world and more a spectacular feat without much direct meaning for us.

Sometimes we bring tribulations upon ourselves. We do something stupid and suffer the consequences. But sometimes we embrace tribulations in order to teach ourselves a lesson. That’s one of the aspects of Lent: we embrace things that are physically difficult–fasting, longer prayers or Bible reading, putting up with people who are difficult–in order to experience a little bit of Christ’s victory over Death here and now.

The renewal of the human race, begun in the sacred bath of baptism, proceeds gradually and is accomplished more quickly in some people and more slowly in others. But many are making progress toward the new life …. No one starts out perfect. To think we can be perfect without a struggle against our fallen selves is a mistake. Thinking we can be perfect without a struggle is to lead the weary astray rather than uplift the weak. Is that really what you want to do?

paraphrase of St. Augustine’s The Way of Life of the Catholic Church I.35.80

God is not a sadist. He does not want us to be miserable. But sometimes we need a little reminder that the victory was won and is being played out and extended throughout the world bit by bit. We need a physical reminder of this and so we embrace small tribulations during the tithe of the year that is Lent.