
Father George Bithos' weblog
July 22 is the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene. I believe that Mary is one of the most interesting of our saints. She is a woman of great theological significance, but she is not well documented in history. The Tradition of the Church, gives us a good bit to think of concerning this special person. She carries several “titles” in the Church usage. She is known most of all as Mary Magdalene. With this, we know she came from a town named Magdala. This city was located on Lake Gennesaret (“a garden of riches”), which is another name for the Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberias. Geographically the town would be located presently north-west of Haifa, Israel near the Golan Heights. This places her town north of Nazareth. Mary also carries the titles of “Apostle to the Apostles, Equal to the Apostles and of course Myrrh-bearer” There is mistaken idea that Mary was a prostitute before she met Jesus. This is not true! There is a tradition that Mary Magdalene led such a chaste life that the devil thought she might be the one who was to bear Christ into the world, and for that reason he sent seven demons to torment her. The first time Mary is mentioned in the Gospels is St. Luke 8,1-3; Christ freed her from these demons and she followed him thereafter. She is considered one of the Galilean disciples. We see her prominently in the Passion narratives. She followed Jesus to Jerusalem and was steadfast at the foot of the Cross with The Virgin Mary standing by Jesus in His darkest moments. She figured importantly in the post-resurrectional accounts. She is the first person to see the Risen Lord, whom she saw twice, she spoke to Him near the tomb, She was the first to announce the Resurrection. The privilege of being the “first” witness of the resurrection that was granted to Mary by the Lord is something that twentieth century sensibilities need to absorb. In the time of Christ, women were not considered creditable witnesses. They were not allowed to give testimony, only men were considered believable. Yet to Jesus this didn’t matter. He trusted these disciples, these women disciples to deliver the greatest news in the history of the world. She had seen Jesus die on the Cross, seen Him buried, seen the great stone set at the door, seen the guard posted at the door of the tomb, her tears were shed for her teacher, she saw a stranger in the Garden, until she heard a familiar voice call her name. She then saw Him resurrected and glorified. Joy overcame sorrow! As Jesus instructed her, Mary Magdalene found the other disciples. She was a member of the inner circle; she was trusted by them and when she delivered the message, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20,18) they did not believed her. Jesus had to appear to them and upbraid them before, even her friends, would believe such news. The other appearances of Jesus are well documented in the Gospels.
After the Ascension and Pentecost, Mary travelled from Jerusalem to Rome where she announced the resurrection. One tradition concerning Mary Magdalene says that she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red (for more details, see Wikipedia). Each time we answer, “Truly, He is Risen!” we should think of Mary. After many years evangelising across the Mediterranean area, she travelled to Ephesus where she joined St. John the Evangelist and her friend, the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos. There she died peacefully. During the second Patriarchate of St. Photios the Great, he had her relics transferred to the Queen City (Constantinople).
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Troparion:
Prophet and Forerunner of the coming of Christ, we honour you lovingly but cannot extol you worthily; for by your birth your mother’s barrenness and your father’s dumbness were unloosed; and the Incarnation of the Son of God is proclaimed to the world.
This week, our Holy Church commemorates the Nativity of the Friend of the Bridegroom
(see book by S. Bulgakov). St. John the Forerunner, a cousin of Jesus, but what is more important, he was, as Jesus himself said, “…among those born of women there has risen no one greater that John the Baptist” (Matt. 11, 11). There is the portrait of John the Baptist, which is presented in the Gospels. We learn that St. John was the answer to a prayer. His parents, Zachariah and Elizabeth were advanced in years. They prayed for a child. Like Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Elizabeth was beyond the time of bearing children. But, God had a plan of salvation and John the Baptist was to be His messenger (Is. 40, 3). God intervened so that His plan could be accomplished. Elizabeth and Zachariah became the parents of a child, who they were instructed to name John. In the first chapter of Luke, we read John was chosen to be the one to prepare the people of Israel for the Lord (Luke 1, 16). What was his message of preparation? This preparation was contained in one word, Repent! If we look at this word closely, John was not asking for sad eyed sorrow for what had been done. He was calling for change, a radical change of direction. Basic to John’s message were the admonitions to stop, think, examine and change. Change the way you live, the way you treat others, the attitudes in your heart and make a new beginning. This new beginning was and is preparation for the KINGDOM OF GOD. This kingdom will arrive with the Incarnation of Our Lord. God with Us, Emmanuel; this is the decisive moment in the history of the world and in our life. John was born to deliver a message, to bear witness to Christ, to be His friend and to disappear(John 3, 30). Do we still hear his message today?
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This week our Church commemorates the Sunday of the Paralytic. The Gospel reading is taken from St. John 5, 1 – 15. One thing struck me after I read this passage. Aren’t all of us paralyzed in one way or the other? The young man in the Gospel account was physically impaired for many years, but he never gave up on the possibility of being healed. He waited by the pool for thirty-eight years for his deliverance.
Many of us who are paralyzed spiritually, emotionally or psychologically sit by the side of life. There may be limitations to our understanding, we may not be able to move past a scar on our heart, perhaps we cannot forgive some hurt we have experienced. Do we live our life trying to be healed or trying to ignore our malady? The question that Christ asked the young man is very pertinent to our own circumstances or powerlessness, “Do you want to be healed?” At first, the obvious response would be an indignant, “of course,” but many of us wear our debilitation as a badge of identity. Not too many weeks ago, we were anointed with the sacrament Holy Unction. While we were being anointed, the invocation reminded us that Christ is the physician of our souls and bodies. Souls and bodies, we are told that the young man needed physical healing. Nonetheless, waiting next to the pool for thirty-eight years to be healed must have left emotional scars on the young man. As we analyze all the miracles of Christ, He heals each person whom He encounters; provided that the person turns him in faith. The healing always restores the person to wholeness. So, it is understood that all aspects of this paralyzed man was healed.
Turning to Christ in faith is not a magic formula. Wholeness involves the restoration of our spirit. This restoration may impart to us the capacity to recognize our paralysis, to understand its cause and to start on a path to wellness. Its possible physical limitations remain with us to illumine our heart to overcome the deeper emotional weakness. The healing of Christ is a mystery as is the opportunity to witness His love in our life. Our witness, like the young man’s in the temple, is the acknowledgement that God is working to transform our heart.
]]> Today, I would like to talk about silence. As I was growing up, my parents always referred to the Friday before the Saturday of Lazarus – as the “Silence (oi koufi)”. I always thought this was because the Akathist had finished and there wasn’t a service that night. Ok, there was silence. Now, I look at this a bit more deeply. If you remember a few years ago, there was this movement to help young people make better decisions by using the question, “What would Jesus do?” As I recall, there were even little rubber bracelets with the letters “WWJD” on them. In this case this is the question that should be asked. The Gospel reading of the Raising of Lazarus, (John 11, 1 – 45) begins with Jesus apparently hesitating to go to his friend’s aid. Well, this supposed hesitation had a real purpose, for all to see the glory of God. How was this to be accomplished? Our Lord seemingly was blasé about Lazarus’s illness and rushing to his side. After staying put for two days, Jesus prepared to go to Bethany informing His disciples that Lazarus was dead. As Jesus encountered Martha and Mary, they expressed thoughts that we all feel at sometime, “if only.” They were sure that if only Jesus had been there Lazarus wouldn’t have died, but Jesus was silent and missing. For us to truly understand Jesus’ hesitation, we need to know a bit about the Jewish teaching concerning death. At day four, in the Jewish understanding, the soul left the body in other words the body was a cadaver, a corpse. So if Lazarus was a corpse, Jesus did not simply resuscitate him. As Jesus called forth Lazarus and Lazarus walked out of his tomb Christ created life from dead matter. The Creator God bestowed life on Lazarus. Christ is God and the silence of Lazarus’ tomb was shattered. To the assembled crowd this silence was deafening.]]>
stavrotheotokion. If we look at this compound word and break it down to its component parts we can recognize a couple of fairly familiar Greek words, Stavro – Greek for cross and Theoto(kos), the Mother of God. Now, we can connect the concepts The Theotokos and the Cross. The Stavrotheotokion is a troparion (short hymn with a theme usually sung after a verse of psalm), which is a manifestation of true human emotion. It is a poetic expression of the pain, sorrow and astonishment of a mother beholding her Son and her God on the Cross. These verses of theology and tenderness are heard in many of the services of the Great Lent, but reach their zenith in the services of the Holy Passion. The Theotokos expresses the wonder of us all. The awe, which could only be articulated by a mother who has kept a secret for many years (“and his mother kept all these things in her heart” Luke 2, 51). The identity of her Son as the incarnate God was known the Theotokos since the Annunciation. Now she suffers a new mystery, the inscrutability of her Son and Creator taking on death by His own free choice. Each of these verses proclaims the truth of Christ’s condescension.
[caption id="attachment_299" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Lament of the Virgin"][/caption]
…”Woe is me beloved Child, light of my eyes! Thou has hung the earth above the waters, how can you endure to be nailed upon the Tree between two evildoers.” – Vespers of Tuesday in the Third Week.
None the less, the Virgin stands by the cross, hour by hour true to her mission to intercede for the entire world. Her pain is palpable. Her lament is moving and yet there is true nobility in her devotion. When all the disciples, except John the Beloved, had fled because of their fear, she and the other women stood there unafraid. St. Romanos the Melodist has captured her grief and her consolation in a kontakion (a combination of troparia of the same structure, connect alphabetically or acrostically) used on Great and Holy Friday. This dialogue between the Theotokos and her Son becomes the revelation of God’s plan of salvation in poetry. This kontakion is lyrical theology, stavrotheotokion with the voice of response by our Crucified Lord. Christ assures the Theotokos just as she witnesses his hanging on the Cross, she would receive this grace. [caption id="attachment_302" align="alignright" width="91" caption="The Theotokos at the Cross"][/caption] So, he must have had something to do with icons, but other than that who was he? Ultimately, this is the question we should ask about each saint, but more importantly we must ask how do they make a difference for us today? At the time I began my studies Methodios was a stranger. This is the reality of all saints unless we look at them in the light of faith. They stand as reflections of Christ, in their time and their place. Every one, young, old, male or female is a person who faced life with one thing in common with us today, struggle. All of us struggle to live a life that matters, not in the great things but in the real things. A life that matters is the path each person must travel. So consider a saint’s life as a journey. Look how they made the voyage. When they came to that fork in the road to which we all come, how did they choose? Yes, Methodios is the Patriarch who presided over the first Sunday of Orthodoxy. He is right there in the icon! If the people of the Church made him a saint, put him in icons and gave him a feast day; it is because he a chose a certain path. What will be your choice? The life of a saint may show you the “Way”. [To learn more about Patriarch Methodios link to: https://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/06/14/101719-st-methodius-the-patriarch-of-constantinople ]]]>