Sadness That Brings Joy

Posted on by
Reply
Alexei Ivanovich Korzukhin’s painting from 1877, “Before confession,” shows people waiting to make their confessions–waiting to out their repentance into words–in order to make right their relationships with God and their neighbors.


For even if I saddened you by my letter, I do not regret writing it. Even if I did regret it–because it saddened you for a brief time–I now rejoice, not because you were dad but because your sadness led you to repent. You were saddened according to God so that you did not suffer damage from us. Sadness according to God produces repentance without regrets and leads to salvation; the sadness of the world, however, produces death. (2 Cor. 7:8-10)

St. Paul tells his readers in Corinth that he did not intend to make them sad or depressed but he is glad that their sorrow–depression?–led them to repent and correct themselves. Their sorrow proved to be life-giving; secular sorrow and depression leads the other way and results in death … metaphorical death if not literal death. Certainly, spiritual and emotional death. The sadness he provoked in the Corinthians was a good thing, finally. It was, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann calls it, a “bright sadness.”

The person who is sad with a Godly sorrow repents for his sins; sorrow because of one’s iniquity produces justice. First, let what you are displease you so that you may be able to become what you want to be …. Will you, my brethren, ever find dung in a pile of sifted wheat or flour? Nevertheless, the wheat or flour is beautiful because of the dung; the foulness was the path to a beautiful result.

St. Augustine of Hippo, Easter Sermon 254.2

Sin gave birth to pain; pain destroys sin. Just as a worm is born by a tree consumes the very same tree, likewise pain, which is born of sin, kills sin when it is supplied by repentance …. Pain is good for those who repent sincerely. Mourn for the sin so that you do not lament the punishment.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Repentance and Compunction 7.6.19

Sometimes we are not patient enough to see the good thing that results from a painful–or at least, uncomfortable–process. We want results RIGHT NOW and we don’t want it to hurt in the process. But we live in time and everything we do is a process. Time–and pain–are the gift and opportunity we have to set right what we got wrong before. As Fr. Jay Smith–who serves the Church of St. Mary the Virgin Times Square–wrote recently, the ashes we are smudged with on Ash Wednesday are precisely that: reminders that we live in time and that we have a limited time to get our relationships with God and our neighbors set right. Death is coming for all of us and although death is not the end, it is a definite change in our circumstances and we can’t postpone our repentance to when our circumstances change. We have to take advantage of the time we have now. Even if it hurts–like taking a bandage off a wound that is healing but needs exposure to the air to finish the healing process.

See more about Bright Sadness here.

Christ vs. Belial?

Posted on by
3
Believers would be baptized in this ancient Christian baptismal font, stepping down three steps into the water. The font was kept supplied with “living water” (i.e. running water) by a series of pipes and plumbing–the first directions (in chapter 7 of the Didache, written AD 60) for how to baptize said that it was always better to use living/running water for baptism. Baptism is what distinguished the Church from the pagan world. There could be no agreement between the Church and the world, between believers and the Devil, between Christ and Ceasar because–as Tertullian said in the 2nd century–if Ceasar were to be baptized he would have to renounce being Ceasar!



What fellowship does light have with darkness? What does Christ have in common with Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God …. (2 Cor. 6:14-16)

I have heard many preachers use this passage to insist that believers should not marry unbelievers. But there is no direct mention of marriage in this passage. The passage itself seems to suggest that there should be a radical separation between the Church and the society in which believers live. St. Paul seems to be saying that outside the Church there is nothing but darkness and devils; what could that world have in common with the Church, the Body of Christ and the light of the world?

The great teachers of the Church have understood this passage to condemn a person’s efforts to have two opinions in their own mind.

There cannot be two contradictory loves in one person. Just as there is no harmony between Christ and Belial, between justice and iniquity, so it is impossible for one soul to love both good and evil. You that love the Lord, hate evil, the devil; in every deed, there is love of one and hatred of the other. “He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me…” [John 14:21] You that love the things that are good, hate the things that are bad. You cannot love good unless you hate evil.

St. Jerome, Homily 73 on the Psalms

The Church understands that our baptism cannot be something that we put on or take off, depending on whether it is convenient on any particular day or not.

Neither the wetness of the water in which we are baptized not the oiliness of the oil with which we are anointed remain with us…. But the Holy Spirit, who is mingled in our souls and bodies through the oil and water, does remain with us, both in this life and after our death.

Philoxenus of Mabbug, On the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

A person can try to have a foot in two camps but that never works. Not in the long run. If we are the temple of God because we are baptized and anointed, then we cannot also worship idols. Most baptized people don’t think they worship idols. But anytime we put ourselves first–before God’s command to love–we are making an idol of ourselves. Anytime I prefer injustice–because it is convenient for me–I am not loving my neighbor and I am worshipping the idol of myself.

If the Church cuts herself off from society, she cannot be the Church–the fountain of health, the fountain of salvation for the world. We cannot hide from the world and refuse to participate in it and still call ourselves followers of Christ. Even the hermits and monks in the desert did not cut themselves off from the world. They cut themselves off from distractions so that they could pray the more earnestly for the world and the people living in it. Scrooge in his counting house on a busy London street cut himself off from the world more completely than any monk or hermit ever did.

Jesus didn’t tell the apostles to teach all the nations so that the nations would believe what he said; he told the apostles to teach the nations so that they would obey what he said. (Matthew 28)

Obey. Do. “Love is the soul of justice; justice is the body, the flesh, of love.” (M. Borg and J. Crossan, The Last Week)

Synergy of Hands and Words

Posted on by
Reply
  • 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)