It was as l’affaire McChrystal overnight re-oriented the whole Asian scene –
wherein the whole world has a stake and almost the whole world is actively
engaged - followed by the Obama/Medvedev luncheon schmooze over burgers,
which concomitantly re-designed the response of the two “super powers” to all
of this as (for the first time in recorded history!) an honest confrontation of the
elemental facts at issue – instead of one antagonistic confrontation after another,
stretching back beyond the reach of human memory. By the time the dust settled,
we were already living on a newly integrated globe – the perfect setting for the
soon-to-be-united Church!

Amazing what can happen when we have 2 popularly elected presidents,
both men with faith – but not faith in their own wiley political and/or militaristic
propensities, but rather in what lies beyond ourselves and our finite powers and
embraces these, as Pope Benedict indicated in his timely and succinct summary
of St. Thomas’ Summary of Theology (ON THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE ).

I think, nevertheless, that we must make one absolutely essential correction
in the Holy Father’s articulation of God’s “circular design” for ourselves and all
creation as we come forth from Him and then together return to Him. The axiom
expressive of this is: Bonum diffusum est sui. I am acutely aware of this because
my undergraduate study of the Prima Pars of the Summa was a totally mind
blowing experience, inasmuch as, in my earlier Protestant formation, one had to
take everything “on faith” without scrutinizing the truths of faith with one’s mind.

Thus, as I was growing up, I enjoyed using my mind very much; besides what I
learned at school, which I found fascinating, my father was always finding books
for me which supplemented this and broadened my understanding.

Also, I loved God very much. When I was 13, it happened that I became good
friends with a very brilliant Harvard student to whom I was drawn, despite our
age difference, because we had such fascinating talks. Somehow in one of these
chats, atheism came up. I was horrified to realize that anyone I actually knew
as a friend had some contact with atheism: GODLESSNESS. He, however,
thinking to reassure me, went on to say that he even had quite a few very good
friends who were atheists! Which, of course, only made it that much worse!!! It so
shocked me, I began to cry hysterically! My erstwhile friend was very concerned,
he got ice to put on my puffy eyes, and begged me to stop, saying my mother
would think he had violated me in some way, she would never believe all he did
was say he knew some atheists!!!

That was how I loved God – and such love was my inheritance from my Mama,
who would not have misunderstood the reason for my tears in the least! And I
also love using my mind. But only when I encountered St. Thomas in a Catholic
college did I have the exhilarating experience of being able to love God with my
mind!

The Prima Pars of the Summa most especially follows the myriad intelligible
implications of that incredible axiom: GOOD IS DIFFUSIVE OF ITSELF. I
therefore was basically in a state of extended ecstasy throughout my college
undergraduate years!!! I knew how an axiom functioned from math – and to
train my mind on God Himself in like manner was to me totally awesome!

It is Dionysius the Areopagite who especially ruminates on our knowledge of God
being circular, spiraling up to God – that’s another image that in my college years
would catapult me into ecstasy – I believe it was in St. Thomas’ commentary
on Dionysius’ work, The Divine Names, that he treats of this. And, with all due
respect to his Holiness, Pope Benedict, this can in no way be re-stated by a
banality shot through with downright absurdities such as this assertion in his
skimpy summation of St. Thomas’ Summa: “It is a circle: God in himself, who
comes out of himself and takes us by the hand, so that with Christ we return to
God, we are united to God, and God will be all in all.” An axiom is an axiom, your
Holiness. What this means is that it is self-evident. Maybe that’s what Gertrude
Stein meant when she wrote the poem: “A rose is a rose is a rose.” In any case,
an axiom is a self-evident truth which you reason from, like “a straight line is the
shortest distance between two points.” If the folks viewed in our atheistic western
culture as philosophers, theologians, etc., had to do practical work such as
surveyors do, they would soon be forced to understand how an axiom functions.

And so, in the actual world, the RUSSIAN TYCOON MIHAIL
KHORDORKOVSKY is a marvelous instance of
the kind of faithful citizenry capable of inspiring fellow citizens to collaborate in
discerning and then carrying through God’s “circular design” for ourselves and
all creation. I think I have told you how Cardinal Lustiger of blessed memory sent
me one Christmas a card depicting a statue of Mary, on which he copied out St.
Paul’s words to his faithful companion Titus: “… while we wait for the blessed
hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ
[the "epiphaneia" of the Lord, His "appearing"], WHO GAVE HIMSELF FOR US,
THAT HE MIGHT REDEEM US FROM EVERY LAWLESS DEED AND PURIFY
FOR HIMSELF A PEOPLE FOR HIS OWN POSSESSION, zealous for good
deeds.” (2:13f) I confess the quotation is more beautiful and moving in French,
but I no longer have it as I sent the card, which I framed and kept always in the
shrine on my desk, to Pres. Sarkozy – he being also Jewish, as is Khodorkovsky,
and Herbert as well.

Perhaps I have told you how, when my quite amazing Mama fell asleep on
the feast of Epiphany, it was then that I knew God was giving me a vocation
dedicated to the unity of the Church – the more so as it turned out that, since her
repose preceded that of my grandmother, her full inheritance came to me, and
this shortly before I met Herbert.

I was very much moved by your earlier post, “Eucharist is not Understood
Laments Pope” , and I began writing
something in response. In the post on the Summa, you note: “Speaking of the
sacraments, St. Thomas pauses particularly on the mystery of the Eucharist,
for which he had a very great devotion, to the point that, according to ancient
biographers, he used to lean his head on the tabernacle, almost as if to hear the
beating of the divine and human Heart of Jesus. In one of his works commenting
on Scripture, St. Thomas helps us to understand the excellence of the sacrament
of the Eucharist, when he writes: ‘The Eucharist being the sacrament of the
passion of our Lord, is also an effect of this sacrament, it not being other than
the application in us of the passion of the Lord’ (In Ioannem, c.6, n. 963). Let
us understand well why St. Thomas and other saints celebrated the Holy Mass
shedding tears of compassion for the Lord, who offers himself in sacrifice for us,
tears of joy and of gratitude.”

I want to tell you how Herbert Schwartz brought me to a deeper understanding of
the Eucharist:

While I had been an observant Catholic, a “daily communicant”, for some 13
years before I met Herbert, yet I can’t say the Mystery of the Eucharist really
took hold of me in those years as it did when, under Herbert’s spiritual paternity,
I came to have the experience of being immersed wholly in God – like the
fish immersed in the sea which is his entire world, as St. Catherine of Siena
describes. In the black churches I used to visit with my maid as I was growing
up in our southeastern states, the Carolinas and Georgia, one had this sense
of being impermeated with the presence of God, and when I went into the
churches in Russia, first in 1984, I had this same experience. Judging from
my own personal observation, however, I would say that North Americans as
also northern Europeans live too much within their own minds and their own
preferences and their own personal desires to be able to really give themselves
to another person – God included.

How can we help the people whom God sends to us, to break free of this self-
preoccupation that imprisons them within themselves?

I, myself, finally got the point as Herbert was explaining to us that, just as we look at the Eucharist and see only bread and wine, yet we know by faith that it is truly the very Body and Blood of Christ, so also, when we look at ourselves and see only an “angry pig”, at the mercy of our irascible and concupiscible appetites, yet we know by faith that by our baptism and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are participants in God’s own triune divine nature.

Where in the Church is this taught today? How many observant Christians look
into their mirrors and see the “angry pig”, at the mercy of their irascible and
concupiscible appetites that we all are?

Although our Lord minces no words: "If anyone comes to me and does not
hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes,
even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” Lk 14:26 For those incapable of
recognizing the angry pig that they are in their fallen nature, I suggest we just
look around ourselves – since it is so much easier to see another’s faults than
our own, as our everyday experience reliably demonstrates. I think all who are
even passably honest will see the wisdom of something my mother used to tell
us one Quaker said to another: “All the world is crazy but thee and me, and
sometimes I think even thou art becoming strange.”

So I readily caught on (in the final count being one of the very few who did) when
Herbert communicated St. Paul’s teaching to us:

“For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will; but
the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the
law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

For I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is
good. For to will, is present with me; but to accomplish that which is good, I find
not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

“I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the
law of sin.” Rm 7:15-25 Douay-Rheims Bible

I cannot think of any more clear and forceful presentation of the truth – on
account of which Herbert was nevertheless persecuted within the Catholic
Church - that we have two natures: 1) our human nature and, 2) by participation,
God’s divine nature which is ours through baptism whereby we have the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us. And elsewhere in Scripture:

“He hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be
made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence
which is in the world.” 2Pet 1:4

“But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you…. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead
dwells in you, He Who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal
bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.” Rm 8:9-11

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in
you?... God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”1Cor 3:16f
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, and
that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify
God in your body.”1Cor 6:19f

“Keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in
us.” 2Tim 1:14 (Douay-Rheims).

After I was received into Orthodox communion, I came to understand that
precisely this teaching is what is known as theosis, deification, divinization –
as was experienced by the disciples who were with Jesus when they were
transfigured with Him on Mt. Tabor. In practice, it gives rise to the spiritual
discipline known as hesychasm, from the Greek hesychia, quiet, and makes
use of the Jesus Prayer. That is to say: it is nothing more nor less than standard
Orthodox monastic discipline, which also serves to regulate the prayer life of the
laity and of those in the clerical state serving outside monasteries, inasmuch as
the monastery is the well-spring of spirituality for Orthodox in all walks of life.
And this heritage is a major reason why the piety of the Russian people
was rather intensified than otherwise under the atheistic Soviet regime.

I believe, your Holiness, that a prayer that began with the Memorare which I have
altered over time will indicate the direction to be taken.

“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone
who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was
left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my
mother; to you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of
the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer
me. Amen.”

I became fond of this prayer for rather ad hoc reasons when I was just becoming
Catholic – and I guess I continued to cherish it as belonging to that period of my
spiritual journey.

However, as I learned from Herbert, and my experience of what I only later
learned was theosis deepened, I made a most significant addition to the
Memorare prayer:

O Mother of the Word Incarnate IN ME ……

I wrote this in a letter and gave it to Herbert, but I had pretty much forgotten
about the letter – or at least I didn’t immediately bring it to mind when a few
days later I got a phone call at about 2:00am saying Herbert wanted to see me!
Let’s just say that being so summoned in the wee hours by Herbert was typically
NOT propitious! I ran likety split as fast as I could to his room, terrified. With the
warmest and most loving smile you could ever possibly imagine, he said “I just
read your letter,” and clasped me to him in a hug that felt like I was melting into
him. Then he blessed me and sent me back to bed.

If I wasn’t already aware that I had stumbled upon a truth capable of making the
very universe tremble – I was then!

As I continued to use the prayer and its significance and ramifications revealed
themselves more and more to me, I began in time to realize that the traditional
prayer has quite a bit of excess baggage:

Remember, O most gracious/compassionate Virgin Mary/Mother, that never was
it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought
your intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you,
O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and
sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your
mercy hear and answer me …….

I changed “gracious”, which has long since lost its root meaning for us,
to “compassionate”, because our identification with her is what counts here.
I changed Virgin Mary to Virgin Mother, because, again, her virgin MATERNITY
is the point of the whole thing.

I didn’t ask her to “hear and answer me”, because – if she is the very MOTHER
OF GOD THE WORD INCARNATE IN ME – how is she going to turn a deaf ear
to me???

Thus I now pray:

O most compassionate Virgin Mother, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful,
in myself – but I do not live in my sinful and sorrowful self! I live instead in you,
Mother, because it is within your most sacred womb that I am perpetually – at
every instant - re-generated, re-born, transfigured …….. even DEIFIED by that
PARTICIPATION IN GOD’S OWN TRIUNE DIVINE NATURE (2Pet 1:4) which is
mine because GOD THE WORD HAS CLOTHED HIMSELF IN ME! (Eph 4:24;
Col 3:9f) O Mother of the WORD thus INCARNATE IN ME – you who are the
paradigm of the entire created order from all pre-eternity (*Prov 8:22-36 – see
below), Queen of All Creation, and our Holy Protectress, will most certainly and
unfailingly grant that prayer which you, yourself, our Holy Mother Protectress,
gave to me:

- on your feast day, October 1

- in 1995 - following the Nov-Dec ’95 SCOBA meeting at Ligonier at which
the Canonical Orthodox Bishops of America declared Orthodoxy in America
both sufficiently American and mature enough for autocephaly, which put Pat.
Bartholomew into such a tizzy

- and Pope John Paul II’s publications: Lumen Orientale, and Ut Unim Sint,
summer 1995

- in the OCA Primatial Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Washington, D.C.

- at the time of Pope John Paul’s visit to the UN:
“LET THE POPE BECOME ORTHODOX, THROUGH THE PRAYERS OF
HERBERT, FOR THE SAKE OF BISHOP PAUL.”
These words just came into my head exactly as I have written them, and when
the prayer was finished the choir sang the post-Communion

ALLELUIA
ALLELUIA
ALLELUIA

I am certain that Our Holy Mother Protectress will hear and answer this prayer
which she herself put into my head just as I have indicated.

* "The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I
was established from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When
there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding
with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was
given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world.

I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on
the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely
the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters
would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of
the earth. Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after
day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting
in mankind.

‘Now then, my sons, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen
to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed is the man who listens to
me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me
finds life and receives favor from the LORD. But whoever fails to find me harms
himself; all who hate me love death.’" Proverbs 8:22-36