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HOW TO hear the Word of the Lord

MEMO

To: Your Holiness, Pope Benedict XIV

From: Laura Jones - http://www.mamaleh-larisa.com

Date: October 9, 2008 – Feast of Pat. St. Tikhon

Subject: HOW TO hear the Word of the Lord

Thank you very much, your Holiness, for publishing so much from the Synod on Zenit where I have access to it. I was overjoyed by the piece concerning your talk, entitled “Paul Knew the Heart of Christ”. I thought you must have learned from St. Gregory Palamas, who calls Paul “Christ’s mouthpiece.”

But, your Holiness, I am constrained by honesty to say that my joy was dispelled as I read through the article, which seemed to be saying that although he learned only second hand of the “historic” Christ, nevertheless it is the main themes of this teaching which are to be found in Paul’s letters. This, your Holiness, would render St. Paul redundant, since the other Apostles and disciples could all convey this teaching very well – and what about the holy Myrrhbearers who are known as Apostles to the Apostles, because the risen Christ appeared first to Mary Magdelene, especially, and instructed her to convey His message to Peter and the others.

The Zenit article concludes:
"St. Paul did not think Jesus was something historical," the Pope said, "as a person from the past. He certainly knew the great tradition regarding his life, his words, his death and his resurrection, but he did not treat them as something from the past; he proposed them as the reality of the living Jesus.
… We should also learn to know Jesus, not physically, as a person of the past, but as our Lord and brother, that today is with us and shows us how to live and how to die."

Yet this assessment, your Holiness, overlooks an altogether critical sacred event which occurred before Paul became an Apostle, i.e., a witness to the Risen Lord, Who appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. That sacred event was Christ’s Ascension. Jesus Himself indicates the importance of this, for when He made His first appearance after His Resurrection, to Mary Magdalene, he said to her, “Do not hold onto Me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (Jn 20:17) Herbert used to say of Christ’s Ascension, in his very New York Jewish manner, “That’s what made it all for us!” When Christ, “clothed in” our nature (as it is expressed in our Orthodox services, in more appropriate, and certainly more biblical, especially more Pauline (cf. Eph 6:13-18 et passim), terminology than saying He “assumed” our nature! As I would “assume” the so-called “theologians” could recognize) – so Christ, “clothed in ME” as the services actually express it, upon His ascension to heaven was seated at the right hand of God – and we, you and I and all the saved – were thereby, with Him, also seated next to the Father, according to the promise that we “may become participants in the divine nature.” (2Pet 1:4) Christ’s Ascension also, of course, set up for Pentecost, at which time the promised Paraclete actually descended in flames of fire to empower the Apostles for the overwhelming task that was theirs.

Paul’s role – for which he pointedly says that he was set apart before he was born - was not a reduplication of the efforts of the Apostles who knew Jesus when He walked on earth. Note that the Apostle Paul explicitly and with impassioned urgency stresses that it was NOT through the other Apostles that he came to know Christ the Lord:

“When God, who set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I DID NOT CONFER WITH ANY HUMAN BEING, NOR DID I GO UP TO JERUSALEM TO THOSE WHO WERE ALREADY APOSTLES BEFORE ME, BUT I WENT AWAY AT ONCE INTO ARABIA, AND AFTERWARDS I RETURNED TO DAMASCUS.” Gal 1:15-17 Paul could not possibly be more emphatic in declaring that the details of Christ’s earthly life were not his concern. “I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. … Then after 14 years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I WENT UP IN RESPONSE TO A REVELATION. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. … And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) – those leaders contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, … they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship; … they asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do. (Idem, 1:22-2:10)

I, myself, before I learned of Gregory Palamas, used to think of Paul as Christ’s psychologist, because his constant and very intensive focus is on how our Christian mission plays out IN US: “It is no longer I who live,” he proclaims, “but it is Christ Who lives in me.” (Gal 2:30) And the astute self-analysis of the Christian schiz in Rm 7:14-25, concluding, “Therefore, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh to the law of sin,” would surely put the most practiced Freudian professional to shame. He concludes with a stunningly succinct recapitulation of the regenerated, transfigured, DEIFIED mode into which we have been re-born through the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ Jesus, followed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us which was accomplished on Pentecost: “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” (Rm 8:9) Palamas, in calling Paul “Christ’s mouthpiece”, underlined that knowledge of the “historical” Jesus has no power whatsoever to save us, to transfigure us, to re-generate us – for this is accomplished in us by nothing less than our participation in the Triune Divine Nature itself, which is ours by reason of Christ’s incarnation in OUR flesh, in MY flesh, YOUR flesh. The presence of Judas in the Gospel underlines this very point. Judas lived with Jesus during the 3 years of His public ministry, and was one of His intimates, so much so that he was wont to greet Jesus with a kiss (Mt 26:48f; Mk 14:44f; Lk 22:47f). Yet Judas betrayed Jesus, and then hung himself, horrified at what he had done - “I have sinned, I have shed innocent blood” (Mt 27:4) – yet rather than beg Jesus’ forgiveness, he ended his life in final despair.

No, your Holiness, it is not knowledge that is salvific, and another article on today’s Zenit bears this out:

1) In a summary of the situation of the word of God in the Americas, it was revealed by the representative of America, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras that there is a wedge between what Christians know about the Bible and the actions they carry out in public life - what happens in our countries, many times great scandals of every type.

"Nonetheless," he added, "we lament that many of those involved in this political and social scene have passed by our centers of formation -- be it catechesis, youth groups, colleges and universities."

The Honduran prelate asked: "What has been the role of the teaching of the word of God in them? Did we help them to find God in the word? Why aren't the values of the Gospel the guide of their lives upon arriving to public life, and in whatever situation they find themselves in?"

Cardinal Rodríguez called for a rethinking of the "way in which we educate the biblical faith" so that the word "changes," and "modifies conduct to being Christian."

Such changes are effected, not by knowledge, not even knowledge of the heart – but rather by OUR personal transfiguration, divinization. We use the Greek word for this: theosis. And this is what being a Christian is all about. A third Zenit post points us in this direction:

2) Cardinal George of Chicago: "In Scripture, God is both the principal author and the principal actor. In Scripture, we encounter the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, "Our people, for the most part, do not live confidently in the biblical world of active spirit, of angels and demons, of the search for God’s will and God’s intentions in the midst of this world governed by God’s providence. "Scripture takes on the genre of fantasy fiction, and the biblical world becomes an uninhabitable embarrassment." The cardinal added that Scripture is then "approached only as a moral guidebook, and often found deficient even in that." [The Cardinal proposes instead:] School of liturgy "Scripture is the soul of liturgy even more than it is the heart of theology," the president of the US bishops' conference said. "With decreased participation in the Sunday liturgy, the faithful cut themselves off from contact with

Scripture in the context of communal worship.”

This is the lesson to be learned from the experience of Russia and Eastern Europe under the atheistic Soviet Regime, where the Faith was intensified even to the acceptance of martyrdom - while Card. George has most accurately described the situation here, as has Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga. The liturgical services are the Biblical texts themselves, together with the Church’s meditations on these throughout her history, chanted in tonalities that embed them in the very depths of one’s psyche. I sometimes attended Synagogue with my Jewish friends when I was in Jerusalem, becoming Orthodox in the Russian convent there, and in both I felt in my element. We of the St. Tikhon’s community also are more and more coming to live and breathe this same sacred atmosphere – with our monastery, with its parish community, and seminary, both swelling in numbers – especially in the number of families with children! I am sure that, since these things are coming to light within the context of the Catholic Synod, they will lead to more, and more intimately shared among us, Mount Tabor experiences.

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