Christ is Risen!

Truly He is Risen!

I will write more here in the future, but for now it is time to celebrate and rejoice in the hope we all have in Christ!

The Transition

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day — Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another — Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.

We sing that Christ is ". . . trampling down death by death" in the troparion of Easter. This phrase gives great meaning to Holy Saturday. Christ's repose in the tomb is an "active" repose. He comes in search of His fallen friend, Adam, who represents all men. Not finding him on earth, He descends to the realm of death, known as Hades in the Old Testament. There He finds him and brings him life once again. This is the victory: the dead are given life. The tomb is no longer a forsaken, lifeless place. By His death Christ tramples down death.

Today Hades cries out groaning:
"I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary.
"He came and destroyed my power.
"He shattered the gates of brass.
"As God, He raised the souls I had held captive."

Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord!

Triumph of Evil

The priest holds the Crucifix, heavy against his face as it is held aloft, and starts his procession around the church. His somber hymn clang and echo around the walls:

"Today is hung upon the Tree, He Who did hang the land in the midst of the waters. A Crown of thorns crowns Him Who is King of Angels..."

As the scandal of the Crucifixion is bought before the congregation, each member kneels and bows his head; each member's head is bowed.

"He is wrapped about with the purple of mockery Who wrapped the Heavens with clouds. He received buffetings Who freed Adam in Jordan..."

Each one kisses the Crucifix as the instrument of our salvation and shame passes them by. Dry lips, or moist, a misguided peck or a pious lingering on the wood, every one leaves their impression on the cross. Every one is is collusion.

"He was transfixed with nails Who is the Bridegroom of the Church. He was pierced with a spear Who is the Son of the Virgin...."

At the front of the nave the Crucifix is raised up. Our Lord, scoured, spat upon, nails driven into feet and hands is raised up. The congregation flow forward as a mass, pressing onwards at the back, but slowing at the front as the approach to the Messiah, God in suffering flesh brings sorrow and regret. Yet still each one kisses those wounds weeping blood into Golgotha, hoping to be like the good thief.

"We worship Thy Passion, O Christ..."

Head crowned with thorns and bowed to the right, his side throwing forth His blood and water; Our Lord already having commended His spirit to the Father...

"Show also unto us thy glorious Resurrection

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With a Single Kiss, Two Souls Reveal Themselves

Holy Wednesday

Loving God, the woman taken in sin approached You, pouring out on Your feet myrrh mixed with tears, and at Your word she is rid of the odiousness of her acts. But the disciple, lacking all grace, though he lived by Your grace, rejects it and covers himself in mire, selling You out for greed. Glory to Your forbearance, O Christ. The wily Judas, possessed by love of money, plotted craftily how to betray You, Lord, the very treasure-house of life. Besotted, he runs tothe lawless men and says, "What will you give me to turn Him over to you to be crucified?" As the harlot lovingly dried Your undefiled feet with her hair, weeping, groaning from deep within, she cried out to You: "My God, do not cast me away or regard me with loathing, but accept me repenting and save me, as the One who alone loves mankind!"


The sinful woman in her humility was raised up while the chosen Apostle was lost. Bestir yourself, then, and sing out: "Holy, holy, holy are You, our God; through the prayers of the Theotokos, save us."

Keep Watch

See! The Bridegroom sets forth in the dead of night. And blessed is that servant whom he shall find on watch; unworthy the one he shall come upon lazing. See to it, soul, that sleep does not overtake you, lest you be given up to death and be shut out of the kingdom. Bestir yourself, then, and sing out: "Holy, holy, holy are You, our God; through the protection of the bodiless powers, save us."

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The Triumphal Entry

"Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass"
-Zech 9:9

The liturgy of the Church is more than meditation or praise concerning past events. It communicates to us the eternal presence and power of the events being celebrated and makes us participants in those events. Thus the services of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday bring us to our own moment of life and death and entrance into the Kingdom of God: a Kingdom not of this world, a Kingdom accessible in the Church through repentance and baptism.

On Palm Sunday palm and willow branches are blessed in the Church. We take them in order to raise them up and greet the King and Ruler of our life: Jesus Christ. We take them in order to reaffirm our baptismal pledges. As the One who raised Lazarus and entered Jerusalem to go to His voluntary Passion stands in our midst, we are faced with the same question addressed to us at baptism: "Do you accept Christ?" We give our answer by daring to take the branch and raise it up: "I accept Him as King and God!"

Thus, on the eve of Christ's Passion, in the celebration of the joyfulcycle of the triumphant days of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, we reunite ourselves to Christ, affirm His Lordship lover the totality of our life and express our readiness to follow Him to His Kingdom:

"... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead"

-Philippians 3:10-11

(From the Very Rev. Paul Lazor)

Stop being Rational!

"Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white."
-William Blake

There is a pernicious idea abound that the correct interpretation of Scripture can be found if only the correct scholarship is applied: a scholarly understanding of Hebrew (or Greek), an understanding of ancient Jewish culture, of the history of the 1st century Holy Lands, or even what St. John might have been eating while on Patamos. With a good grasp of these background details, the correct, orthodox, meaning of a passage can be teased out - the truth can be discovered.

It's called exegesis and it must stop! This is not what the faith of our fathers is built upon!

The opposite of exegesis, is eisegesis, a word so derogatory that it is used as an insult all on its own in certain academic circles. Eisegesis is reading into scripture presuppositions; not coming to the Bible with an "open mind."

But consider this:

In the second chapter of his gospel, St. Matthew tells us with confidence that Jesus flight into Egypt as a boy (and his eventual return to Galilee) fulfilled Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." But Hosea 11:1 is simply describing the Exodus; it is a passage that is not predictive of Christ's coming but retrospective of Israel's disobedience. Or so would say any half-decent Biblical scholar.

Or consider Paul's use of Isaiah 59:20 in his letter to the Romans, where he finishes an argument by announcing, "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion.' " But Isaiah says something quite different: "The Redeemer will come to Zion." This is how a scholar would read the verse, painstakingly examining every word of the original text.

So who do we believe? Apostle or scholar?

Many of the Church Fathers have been, throughout history, responsible for the grossest of eisegesis. Quite right too. Matthew ate with, lived with, touched, Jesus Christ, God made flesh. Paul was physically blinded by the revelation he received, and then healed by the love of one of Christ's disciples.

You don't just put that experience aside and get out your interlinear for a long, hard, study session. Even Thomas Aquinas, who wrote the favourite "theological proof" of all Western scholastics (even many Protestants) put down his pen before it was finished after receiving a revelation, declaring the whole thing "of little value" compared to what God directly imparted to him. So this is how I take the Church to be infallible in matters of faith. Not because she has the best scholars, but because her members pray, and pray, and pray, until spiritually they are caught up in heaven, just as St Paul described. From these people miracles flowed, healings flowed, prophesies, visions, and for some their own blood.
These are the saints of the Church I listen to, and trust. This is my proof.

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The time for looking at things in a calm, reasonable, manner is long gone. It's later than you think!

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