Our Life In Christ

The Proskomide, or the leavened bread that is offered to God, and the accompanying Proskomide prayers, form the essential first part of the Divine Liturgy, taking place well before the arrival of the parishoners to the scheduled service. In this program we attempt to convey some of the significance of the Proskomide and the preparation required for its use. In the Proskomide, the whole of the Kingdom of God - those on earth and in heaven - is commemorated; the Incarnate Lord, the One Sacrifice, the One Bread, the One Body of Christ.

Having entered sacred space in the Church building, we now turn to the 'main event' of the Church, the Divine Liturgy. We know that liturgy means 'work of the people', the labor of love we perform as citizens of the Kingdom. Yet, there is much that must be done to prepare for the public worship, and this work is begun long before the typical schedule published in the bulletin. In this program we focus on the "eternal time" of the Divine Liturgy in the sacred space of the Church, and the rationale for the special clothes or vestments of the priest, which, having been donned with special prayers from Holy Scripture, transform him into the Icon of Christ, the Humble Servant.

It is said that if you are familiar with the book of Revelation you will feel right at home in an Orthodox Church. The interior of the Church is modeled after the vision of St. John, who on the Lord's Day in worship, sees the heavenly worship he is participating in here on earth. The 'sacred space' of the Church building is the joining of us who are still 'in the world but not of it' to those who are before the altar of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world in the Heavenly Jerusalem in eternity. This is not mere symbolism, but the mystical reality of the communion of the saints spoken of in Hebrews 12. Steve and Bill give an 'audio tour' of an Orthodox Church building and talk about the meaning of the things that you will see beginning from entering the doors from the west parking lot to the easternmost back wall behind the altar.

If the daily, monthly, yearly prayer cycle of the Church and personal practice of the Jesus Prayer speak to the consecration of the person in time - sacred time - then it follows that Orthodox Christians are also concerned with space and its relationship to the Kingdom of God. Orthodox Church architecture and the decoration of space reflect the grand reality and destiny of the universe created and redeemed by God incarnate: Jesus Christ. It is through the Incarnation and the sacramental world view that we come to understand that the physical Church building itself allows us to participate in the Holy Infinite, even as the physical Eucharist is mysteriously the Body and Blood of Christ. Simply put: Church buildings are indeed "houses of God." This program begins to explain why.

In this program we discuss the topic of "personal prayer" in the Orthodox Tradition. Liturgical (corporate) and personal prayer are tightly linked together because the goal of all prayer is, ultimately, union with God. To "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17) is to live every moment consciously in the presence of God and to "take every thought captive to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). The Fathers teach that when we set ourselves to pray seriously, we enter the arena of spiritual warfare with the hosts of Satan whose aim is to keep us from God. As in all things, the Orthodox Christian succeeds in prayer through humility and simplicity - and the Jesus Prayer and the prayer rope are our aids in making our lives, as Paul Evdokimov says, "prayer incarnate."

Steve and Bill finish the mini-series on the liturgical prayer life of the Church. For all the teaching and talk about fasting on the program, the Church's liturgical calendar really focuses on the 12 Great Feasts and fasting is our preparation for the Feasts of the Church. In the third segment of the program, Steve and Bill tag team wrestle a glossary of liturgical terms and show once again that two lightweights are no match for the 2000 year old Tradition. They deftly handle the Troparion, they almost pin down the Kontakion, but the Canons and Exapostilarion finally throw them. The Church's liturgical terms win by a unanimous decision. A rematch may be scheduled in the future.

Central to the prayer life of the Church is the cycle of eight musical tones or structures (The Octoechos, or eight echos) that accompany the hymns and prayers in all the services. In this program, Steve provides a basic, lighthearted but informative overview of the Eight Tones of the Church as expressed in Byzantine, Russian, Bulgarian and other styles, and how the Tones reflect the Orthodox Traditional concern with the beauty of sound and its place in sacramental worship.

We begin a series on prayer which is the center of the life of the Orthodox Christian. Prayer is our connection to God who is our life. It is to be like our breathing, without ceasing. The Church provides a deep wealth of writings about prayer, but it also provides us with a daily order of services that structures the entire day around prayer. We are able to pray in the same ways the Jews prayed at set hours of the day that we see in the book of Acts. In this program Steve and Bill begin a discussion of the daily order of prayer services and then next week will move into "personal prayer" and a discussion of "The Jesus Prayer", the single most important prayer of our spiritual life.

What accounts for the differences between the Eastern and Western churches? Many things of course, but primarily the development in the West - through those such as Anselm and Aquinas - of an emphasis on human reason and intellect in the pursuit of theological understanding. Returning briefly to our discussion of Rome and the Eastern Church, we contrast rationalism with the Eastern tradition that bows to the Mystery of the Incomprehensible, that proclaims that "theologians" are pure in heart through love of God (the eastern Church grants the title of Theologian to only three Saints in all of Church History), and we begin to see how steeped our modern culture and we ourselves are in scholastic thinking.

In this program, we revisit Orthodox Holy Week with selected passages from the Holy Tradition - in the hope of trying to convey the richness of the "conversation" between God and the Church. For Christ invites us to go with Him to the Holy Cross, and we find ourselves both willing and unwilling, like the repentant harlot and the betrayer Judas, like the good thief and the blind and unbelieving crowd. Glory to God in Christ! He overcomes the wrath and sins of mankind through love and humility in His Suffering and tramples down Death by Death.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! This is the anthem of Pascha, and since it was in fact Holy Week and Pascha last week, we have decided to "go lite" this program hour and air a 20-minute interview segment we did last month with local Phoenix evangelical drive-time radio program host Andrew Tallman in lieu of a full study hour. So enjoy, and next week we'll tackle another topic. A blessed Bright Week to all.

We finish this Lenten series discussing the virtues of patience, love, and not judging our brother. Again, the Orthodox axiom of working out the virtues in the body is true, and we learn that patience is not merely a passive state, but also requires spiritual/bodily effort to restrain evil thoughts/actions, choosing to perform God's will instead. Love for God, neighbor, enemies and the whole of creation is our aim, cultivated with our growing awareness of God's pure and captivating eros coming down from heaven. Engulfed in this love we lose interest in the world and adopt the humble mind of Christ, whose words on the Cross, "forgive them for they know not what they do," are to become our own towards all men.

Following Chastity in the the list of virtues in St. Ephraim's prayer comes Humility. Reading from the Fathers, we find that humility is not merely a state of mind, but a mystery that comes about as the result of labors of the soul and body, mirroring the Incarnation itself, and so it is by nature incomprehensible. We look at humility and its opposite, pride and prelest. to try to gain even just a little more understanding of this virtue and why it is central to our life in Christ.

St. Ephraim begins the second half of his great prayer "Give rather a spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant." Asking God to take our sinful passions away is followed by a petition to give us virtue, chastity being first in the order. In the Fathers, and especially St. John Climacus, we find that the virtues (which are in truth the energies of the Holy Spirit) act in our heart and are active through us through the deeds of the body surrendered to Christ. And chastity, rather than being limited to some quaint notion of sexual purity (true enough), is the virtue of wholeness in Christ which enables us to fight the passions fervently.

We continue our discussion of the famous Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian and his plea for God to remove from him the "lust for power" and "idle talk". As is made clear from the sayings of the Fathers cited here, these sins are so well-rooted in our normal, everyday lives that raising our self-awareness regarding how and how often we commit them is a significant Lenten undertaking.

We continue our discussion of Great Lent by reviewing, with many quotes from the Church Fathers, the famous Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian that is used during all the weekday services. Writing in the 4th century, St. Ephraim's hymnography captures the Spirit of the Lenten Season and has been a vital standard for the Orthodox Church ever since. In its simplicity and penetrating quality we learn that we are at once helpless and in need of God's grace to overcome our sinful nature, and yet must also pursue repentance and the virtues in faith continually, to be both emptied and filled.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust for power and idle talk. -Lenten Prayer, St. Ephraim the Syrian The Lenten Season, or the Great Fast as the Church calls it, comes each year as part of the Paschal celebration. It is a forty day fast, a time of preparation during which we come face to face with ourselves in the light of extraordinary prayers and insights into our spiritual condition, given as only the Orthodox Tradition is able. Here we discuss Lent, the school of repentance and what God intends for us by it.

The addition and acceptance of three words—and the Son (filioque in Latin)—to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith (Creed) in the Western Church, and then finally by the Roman See, changed the course of Church and human history. It is often seen as the primordial cause of the dogmatic schism that separated the West from the East a thousand years ago. Here we attempt to unpack the origin and significance of the filioque, and why the Eastern Orthodox Church views it as an assault on the historical doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Continuing with our discussion about Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology, we turn to the question of what happened to the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in the first centuries following the death of the Apostles, and specifically the relationship between the Eastern Churches and the Church at Rome. Contrasting the Petrine Doctrine and the conduct of Roman Bishops with that of the Eastern Bishops through the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the first millenium, we find that the collegial model was maintained as it had begun in Acts 15, and that Rome, despite certain attempts to exert universal authority over the Churches, was subject to the Councils and their declarations.

We continue our discussion of apostolic succession by examining some common objections given by Protestants, found in a sermon outline published on Calvin College's CCEL Historical Church document site. It becomes clear that for Protestants, reaction against apostolic succession is not based on solid Biblical or historical grounds, but rather on the need to question and reject the authority of Rome (papal and magisterial) and its excesses, which are not necessarily a part of the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.