Category Archives: Icons

Stewards of the Mysteries of God

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Detail of mediaeval fresco of St. Clement celebrating the Eucharist in the Lower church of San Clemente (Rome) and a Russian icon of St. John Chrysostom, vested as a bishop to celebrate the Eucharist and preach the Gospel.


Look upon us as stewards of the mysteries of God. In this regard it is expected of stewards that each one be found trustworthy. To me it matters little that I be judged by you or some other tribunal…. The one who judges me is the Lord…. who will shed light on things hidden in darkness and will make manifest the intentions of hearts…. (1 Cor. 4:1-2, 4-5)

A steward is a person who administers someone else’s property, house, finances, etc. This is an important role and was especially important in the ancient world. Stewards often know more about their employer’s business than the employer does; usually an employer has only one steward, not several.

St. Paul tells the Corinthians that he is one of the many stewards of the mysteries of God. What does it mean to be responsible for the mysteries of God? What are the mysteries of God? How is it that there are several such stewards?

The “mysteries of God” are the Greek term for what Latin theologians call the “sacraments” of God. To be a steward of the mysteries is to be a steward of the sacraments–i.e. the clergy who are responsible for leading the celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and for making them available to the faithful. As the stewards of the mysteries, the clergy are responsible for the liturgical life of the parish and leading the people into deeper fellowship with God.

The “mysteries of God” are also the teaching of the Church–i.e. the preaching of the Gospel. The clergy are responsible for teaching and preaching, often in the context of the Eucharist. They are ordained to proclaim the Good News that is enacted in the celebration of the Eucharist. Teaching and celebrating are two sides of one coin: making the life of God available to the people. A life of teaching-preaching-sacramental celebration depends on the steward’s trustworthiness and efforts to live up to these privileges/responsibilities.

The people themselves are also stewards of the mysteries. They are charged and empowered by their baptism and reception of Holy Communion to invite others to share the life of the Resurrected Christ and lead them to closer fellowship with God as well.

Each parish is the entire church. There are many stewards because there are many parishes but within each parish the whole life of God is available to be lived out by everyone there, following the leadership of the clergy/steward(s) of that parish.

Does each steward occasionally fail in some way? Yes. Does each parish occasionally fail the steward in some way? Yes. But each steward and each parish will be judged by the Lord. Until that judgement comes, the parish and the steward work together to proclaim the Good News of the Lord and to live the life of the Kingdom here and now.

Test by Fire

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 Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello. (12th century, Byzantine) The lake of fire described in Rev. 20:15 is populated by monks, bishops, members of the imperial family, and Turks.

If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones … [what each has contributed] will be revealed in fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, such as it is. If anyone’s construction work survives, that person will receive wages; if anyone’s work burns, that person will suffer a penalty; the person will, however, be saved … as if through fire. (1 Cor. 3:12-14)

Our work will be tested by fire. Sounds ominous. Dangerous. Even if there is the promise that the person will be saved by passing through the fire that destroys whatever the person has built. Ouch.

This idea of being tested by spiritual fire is rooted in ancient Greek construction and subcontracting practices: a subcontractor’s work would be tested by fire to see if it was up to the client’s expectations and the needs of the building itself. If the work failed the test–stonework and masonry could crack or was otherwise destroyed or damaged by the fire–the subcontractor didn’t get paid and a new builder was hired.

This idea–which also appears in 1 Peter 1:7–was often used in the medieval justification of the doctrine of purgatory as it developed. Debates between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic theologians relied on this “test by fire” idea but the Orthodox said that the Roman Catholics took the idea too literally. In his response to the Latins about purgatory, St. Mark of Ephesus wrote that the punishment of the dead was internal, not external. (Recent Roman Catholic teaching has come to agree with this.) The dead suffered from sadness, conscious shame, and remorse, as well as their uncertainty about their future. According to St. Mark, even the biblical descriptions of eternal fire and worms in Hell were to be taken as allegories rather than as descriptions of external physical punishments and suffering. St. Mark insisted that the true suffering of the damned was the ignorance of God.

“Tested by fire” is also a way to describe how difficult circumstances before death can force people to give up false ideas about themselves and honestly face themselves. This kind of forced self-examination can help people admit who they are and the true effects of their behavior, thus enabling an honest re-orientation or re-direction of their lives and efforts.

It is facing the truth about yourself–when you can no longer do anything about it–that is the “punishment” of the dead, according to St. Mark of Ephesus. Maybe “the consequences of their actions” is a better way to phrase it than “punishment.” This “testing by fire” on earth anticipates and eases the testing by fire–however we might understand that–after death.

Read the first sermon of St. Mark of Ephesus about purgatory here.

Spiritual Milk

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Madonna di San Gugliemo, 12th century (Sienna, Italy). This depiction of the “Madonna Lactans” (Nursing Madonna) is a eucharistic image as much as it is an image of a mother caring for her child. Read more about this type of image here and see more examples here.

And I, brothers and sisters, was able to speak to you not as spiritual people but only as carnal people, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not substantial food, because you were not yet capable, nor are you capable until now, for you are fleshy people. (1 Cor. 3:1-3)

In the ancient world, milk-blood-semen were all thought to be the same liquid but warmed to differing temperatures by different internal organs. Blood was the coldest of these and the basic, most natural form of this liquid. Milk was blood, warmed and made frothy in a woman’s breasts. Semen was blood, made even warmer and frothier in a man’s testes. According to this biological idea, when a mother was nursing her child, she was feeding the baby with her own blood.

Because blood and milk were identical, the correspondence of the Virgin’s milk and Christ’s blood was important to early and medieval Christians. The Virgin’s blood becomes milk in her breasts; she nurses Christ, feeding him her warm and frothy blood; he drinks this frothy blood, which becomes the blood in his own veins. Medieval images of the Nursing Madonna (Madonna lactans) are fundamentally eucharistic images, celebrating the identity of the Virgin’s milk with Christ’s blood; she feeds him with her body which becomes his Body and he feeds the Church with his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

There is no more vivid and elaborate exposition of 1 Corinthians 3 in early Christian literature than that found in Clement’s Paedagogus 1.6…. By combining Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 3, Clement sets the foundation for his argument that all Christians are already spiritual…and, as a result, milk-drinking infants cannot be viewed as equivalent to “carnal” Christians. Rather, milk is the food of all Christians who “seek our mother, the church.”

John David Penniman, Raised on Christian Milk

Not only did a mother’s milk (blood) provide sustenance to her baby, the infant received religious and ethnic formation as well by ingesting his/her mother’s identity via the milk-blood. This is why receiving Holy Communion was so important: to receive Christ’s blood was to be shaped and formed by his identity, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Discover more about this fascinating subject in Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity by John David Penniman (Yale University Press, 2017).