Did Jesus Have a Wife?

There are really just a few blogs that I read and Just Genesis is at the top of that list. Alice has a way of cutting to the basics and I encourage my readers to visit her blog. (leah)

by Alice C. Linsley at Just Genesis blog

Jesus Christ never married but He has two brides, following the marriage and acendancy pattern of his Horite ruler-priest ancestors. A second bride was taken shortly before he ascended.

The second bride is the Church, represented by Photini. As was the common practice among Abraham’s people, grooms met and courted their brides at wells.

The pattern of two wives characterizes the Horite marriage and ascendency structure. This is evident with Abraham’s father, Abraham, Jacob, Esau and Moses’ father.

The first wife is his sister bride, represented by all who lived in faithful expectation of His coming into the world in the flesh. They repose in the “Bosom of Abraham.” Among these are the priest Simeon and the Prophetess Anna.

Karen L. King, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, notes that Jesus refers to a wife in this Gnostic Coptic fragment.  The specific phrase in question reads, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…” and many assume that this must be a literal wife.

Photo: Karen L King

In this article in the New York Times, King makes the point that “that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question.”

The Vatican has declared the fragment a fake.

Related reading:  Who Were the Horites?; Moses’ Horite Family; Jesus’ Horite Ancestry; Yes, Georgia, there is a Kingdom!; Dr. Albert Mohler, The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife? When Sensationalism Masquerades as Scholarship; The Wife of Jesus Hoax

 

Psalm 107:5 & 6…

 “Be Thou exalted above the heavens, O God, and Thy glory  above all the earth. That Thy beloved ones may be delivered, save Thou with Thy right hand  and hearken unto me.”

…the Psalmist says, ‘Save Thou with Thy right hand…” in order, that  is, to indicate, in saying, ‘right hand’ that it was eternal salvation that he sought. Hence again  it is written, Your right hand, O God, dashed the enemy in pieces” (Ex. 15:7). For the enemies of  God, though they prosper in His left hand, are dashed to pieces with His right, since for  the most part the present life elevates the bad, but the coming of eternal blessedness condemns them.

~St Gregory the Great, Saint Gregory’s “Pastoral Rule,” as quoted in Grace for Grace: The Psalter and the Holy Fathers, Johanna Manley (ed)

An Interview with Fr. Thomas Hopko…

Maria Vishnyak- The Interior of the Church of St Paraskeve the Great-martyr (1986)

by Peter and Helen Evans

Helen: So often we hear the popular notion that God doesn’t want us to suffer, God wants us to be happy all the time.

Fr. Tom: That’s not the New Testament teaching. There is not a word in the New Testament about being happy. Jesus said, if you be my disciple, you’ll deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. That’s the way to get the joy that surpasses human understanding, the joy that no one can take away from you. The choice for Christians is not between joy, fun and happiness on one side and suffering on the other. There will be suffering. Either the suffering will be redemptive, Godly and filled with the joy that comes from God, or it will just be misery. That would be a neurotic suffering that, you might say, is simply the suffering of Hell.

Jesus never promised anybody a good, happy life in this world.

Take the Apostle Paul. When he had to boast that he really was an Apostle, what did he boast in? He didn’t boast that he had a wonderful human lineage. He didn’t boast even in his mystical experiences. He claimed to have had a vision of the risen Christ but, when he boasted, he boasted in what he had suffered. He boasted in how much he was beaten and rejected for the sake of truth, for the sake of God, for the sake of how God really is. I think we have to read the New Testament again.

Helen: True, but for people who haven’t read the New Testament but hear someone tell them that “God is compassionate” couldn’t that be understood as “we shouldn’t suffer in this life”?

Fr. Tom: If someone said to me “God is compassionate,” I’d remind them that the word “compassionate” means co-passionate or co- suffering. The God who is compassionate is the God who suffers with us. He’s not the God who takes our suffering away in the fallen world. Never forget that the ultimate revelation of God on the planet earth is in the bloody corpse of a dead Jew hanging on a cross in front of the city of Jerusalem, put to death by Gentiles between two thieves, in the most horrible, vile, wretched method by which a person could die, which, according to Mosaic Law, was even cursed. That’s the Christian faith.

Helen: So, the main confusion is that people look at their problems from a secular attitude, saying to themselves, “My life should be happy here on earth” rather than looking toward the life after this one. Is that so?

Fr. Tom: Yes. I would also say that not only do people look at life secularly, which I guess would mean with no relationship whatsoever to God, but I think it’s also true to say, especially nowadays, that many people look at the world, falsely religiously. Not necessarily just secularly. People think that God exists to make our earthly life ‘happy,’ to take away all suffering and pain, to do whatever we want Him to do, that all we have to do is “name it and claim it” and God will give it to us, no matter what it is — health, a good job, a good sex life or, for example, how the human genome project is described. I read it recently on the front page of the New York Times. The director of the project said, “Our purpose is very clear, to live a longer happier, more pain free, healthier human life before we inevitably die.” Well, many people think that’s a good program. Many religious people think that’s what God is trying to do, too — to make us live a longer, happier, healthier, better and easier life…

Helen: … and then retire to Florida!

Fr. Tom: … because we’re going to die and go to heaven anyway. Well that’s not the New Testament, that’s certainly not the Bible. It’s certainly not the teaching of Christian scriptures. The Christian Saints all suffered immensely. The quintessential Christian Saint is a martyr. A martyr is a person who dies, gets killed while actually forgiving the person who killed them. Just as God forgave the persons who sinned against him. In fact, Jesus even forgave the people who sinned against him and crucified him. He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The forgiveness of God and the compassion of God is guaranteed… absolutely!

Helen: Don’t we have to repent first?

Fr. Tom: I don’t think we have to repent first. God gives us his mercy and forgiveness whether we want it or not, whether we repent or not. But if we repent and we want it, then that mercy is just glory and happiness and a blessed life. But if we resist it… it’s Hell! In fact, the fire of Hell is not God punishing people. The fire of Hell is the presence of God’s love, His mercy and His compassion on people who don’t want it, don’t accept it, don’t think they need it and don’t even care about it.

hat tip: Sunday Bulletin of Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

Why is it so difficult to accept?

Anastasis icon: Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

…it is impossible to reject the entire Gospel.  Christ’s miracles and teaching, His consciousness of being the Son of God, His Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension, the visible and objective descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, and the entire multitude of saints that followed.  We shall have either to adopt the trivial and philosophically lame standpoint of rejecting all this or else, recognizing the objectivity and reality of all the cases of Theophany, to ask ourselves: ‘Why is it so difficult for me to accept all this?’  The answer to the question is clear.

Has there been in my life, as in so many others, a clear indubitable encounter with the Objective?  Frankly, I must answer: no.  But there have been many partial contacts: in certain rare instances of love expressed in entire self-denial; sometimes in prayer, especially during the holy service, you feel that you come out of yourself, that something which is not yourself has entered into you; in many situations, which cannot be explained except in terms of God’s manifest help.  This is faith no longer – it is knowledge, precise and comprehensible signals from the other world.  All the rest is faith, assisted by the love of God.

~Alexander Elchaninov, “Fragments of a Diary,” The Diary of a Russian Priest

hat tip: Daily Dynamis

Christ the Branch of David…

In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land” (Jeremiah 33:15).”

With these words, the holy Prophet Jeremiah prophesies the coming of the Holy Savior of the world from the lineage of David. The Branch of Righteousness is Jesus Christ Himself. These words could not have referred to anyone else, since, at the time of the coming of the Lord Jesus, a prince from the lineage of David did not sit any longer on the throne at Jerusalem but rather a foreigner, Herod the Idumean. Neither from then until today was there any other prominent branch of David, neither as a worldly ruler nor a spiritual ruler. At the time of the nativity of Christ, there were but a few people from the Tribe of David and they were unknown and impoverished. Among these were numbered the All-Holy Virgin and the righteous elder Joseph, the carpenter. It is clear therefore, that for the past thousand years since this prophecy was spoken, no other majestic branch from the lineage of David appeared, except the Lord Jesus. This becomes more clear from the following words: “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister to Me” (Jeremiah 33:22). These words could only apply to the spiritual descendants of David through Christ the Lord, i.e., upon Christians, for only the number of Christians (and not the physical descendants of David of whom there are not any at all), for these twenty centuries can be measured with the stars in the heavens and with the sand in the sea.

O my brethren, let us rejoice that even we Christians belong to this countless number of people of God; to the greatest people in the history of the world both as to numbers and as to character. Let us rejoice even more that we belong to this heavenly Branch of David Who, by His Blood redeemed us from foreigners and adopted us and made us heirs and co-heirs of the kingdom eternal. O, All-good Lord, You have redeemed us prodigal sons from the contemptible humiliation and hunger and made us sons of the kingdom.

Homily from The Prologue of Ohrid by St Nikolai of Zica

it is needful to make use of tradition…

It is not necessary that all the divine words have an allegorical meaning. Consideration and perception is needed in order to know the meaning of the argument of each. It is needful also to make use of Tradition; for not everything can be gotten from Sacred Scripture. The holy Apostles handed down some things in Scriptures, other things in Tradition.

St Epiphanius of Cyprus†

Panarium

The Sunday of the Paralytic: Greek to English…

I found this neat blog called: Greek to Me 

It looks to be dormant (I suspect it is a lot of work to translate the LXX!) but I wanted to share it with you…

handmaid leah

The Sunday of the Paralytic

TEXT [In Greek and English]*: John 5:1-15

1 Μετὰ ταῦτα ἦν ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν ̓Ιουδαίων, καὶ ἀνέβη ὁ ̓Ιησοῦς εἰς ̔Ιεροσόλυμα. ἔστι δὲ ἐν τοῖς ̔Ιεροσολύμοις ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ κολυμβήθρα, ἡ ἐπιλεγομένη Ἑβραϊστὶ Βηθεσδά, πέντε στοὰς ἔχουσα. 3 ἐν ταύταις κατέκειτο πλῆθος πολὺ τῶν ἀσθενούντων, τυφλῶν, χωλῶν, ξηρῶν, ἐκδεχομένων τὴν τοῦ ὕδατος κίνησιν. 4 ἄγγελος γὰρ κατὰ καιρὸν κατέβαινεν ἐν τῇ κολυμβήθρᾳ, καὶ ἐταράσσετο τὸ ὕδωρ· ὁ οὖν πρῶτος ἐμβὰς μετὰ τὴν ταραχὴν τοῦ ὕδατος ὑγιὴς ἐγίνετο ᾧ δήποτε κατείχετο νοσήματι. 5 ἦν δέ τις ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖ τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτὼ ἔτη ἔχων ἐν τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ αὐτοῦ. 6 τοῦτον ἰδὼν ὁ ̓Ιησοῦς κατακείμενον, καὶ γνοὺς ὅτι πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον ἔχει, λέγει αὐτῷ· θέλεις ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι; 7 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ὁ ἀσθενῶν· Κύριε, ἄνθρωπον οὐκ ἔχω, ἵνα ὅταν ταραχθῇ τὸ ὕδωρ, βάλῃ με εἰς τὴν κολυμβήθραν· ἐν ᾧ δὲ ἔρχομαι ἐγώ, ἄλλος πρὸ ἐμοῦ καταβαίνει. 8 λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ ̓Ιησοῦς· ἔγειρε, ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει. 9 καὶ εὐθέως ἐγένετο ὑγιὴς ὁ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ ἦρε τὸν κράβαττον αὐτοῦ καὶ περιεπάτει. ἦν δὲ σάββατον ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ. 10 ἔλεγον οὖν οἱ ̓Ιουδαῖοι τῷ τεθεραπευμένῳ· σάββατόν ἐστιν· οὐκ ἔξεστί σοι ἆραι τὸν κράβαττον. 11 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς· ὁ ποιήσας με ὑγιῆ, ἐκεῖνός μοι εἶπεν· ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει. 12 ἠρώτησαν οὖν αὐτόν· τίς ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ εἰπών σοι, ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει; 13 ὁ δὲ ἰαθεὶς οὐκ ᾔδει τίς ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ ̓Ιησοῦς ἐξένευσεν ὄχλου ὄντος ἐν τῷ τόπῳ. 14 μετὰ ταῦτα εὑρίσκει αὐτὸν ὁ ̓Ιησοῦς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἴδε ὑγιὴς γέγονας· μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε, ἵνα μὴ χεῖρόν σοί τι γένηται. 15 ἀπῆλθεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἀνήγγειλε τοῖς ̓Ιουδαίοις ὅτι ̓Ιησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ ποιήσας αὐτὸν ὑγιῆ.

1 After these [things] it was the feast of the Judeans, and Jesus went up into Jerusalem. 2 And there is among the Jerusalemites near the Sheep Gate a pool that is called in Hebrew ‘Bethesda,’ having five porches. 3 Among these [porches] lay a great many sick, blind, lame, and withered waiting for the moving of the water.** 4 For an angel at a certain time came down in the pool, and he moved the water; then the first person who went into the water after the moving of the water was healed of whatever sickness he had. 5 And there was a certain man there who had been sick for 38 years. 6 When Jesus saw this one lying [there], and knowing that he had already many years [of sickness], said to him, “Do you desire to become healthy?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Lord, I do not have a man, so that when the water is moved, he might put me into the pool; and when I myself go to it, another goes down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Rise. Take your bed and walk.” 9 And immediately the man became healthy, and he took up his bed and walked. But it was the sabbath that day. 10 Then the Judeans said to the man who had been healed, “It is the sabbath! It is not acceptable for you to carry the bed!” 11 He answered them, “The man who made me healthy, that one said to me, “Take up your bed and walk.” 12 Then they asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk?’” 13 But the man who was cured did not known who He was, for Jesus had slipped away quietly, a crowd being in that place. 14 After these things, Jesus found [the man] in the temple and He said to him, “Behold! You are become healthy! Sin no longer, lest something worse happen to you.” 15 The man went out and reported to the Judeans that it was Jesus who had mad him healthy.

** The italicized portion is present in the Patriarchal Text, but not in critical editions.

FATHERS

Great is the profit of divine Scriptures, and all sufficient is the aid which comes from them… for the divine oracles are a treasury of all manner of medicines. Whether it be needful to quench pride, to lull passion to sleep, to tread under foot the love of money, to despise pain, to inspire confidence, to gain patience – in the Scriptures we may find abundant resource. For what man of those who struggle with long poverty or who are nailed by a grievous disease will not, when he reads the passage before us, receive much comfort? Since this man had been a paralytic for thirty eight years, and he saw others delivered each year, and himself bound by his disease, not even so did he fall back and despair, though in truth not merely despondency for the past, but also hopelessness for the future was sufficient to overstrain him… Yes, Lord, he says, but I have no man… to put me in the pool. What can be more pitiable than these words? … Do you see a heart crushed through long sickness? Do you see all violence subdued?… He did not curse his day… but replied gently… Yes, Lord; yet he did not know who it was who asked him.

- St. John Chrysostom (Homily 37 on John 5)

COMMENTS

What was it the sick man at the pool needed? It is very clear in the Greek: he needed a man. He needed a friend, an assistant, a helper. He needed someone else – someone who was not sick and withered as he was. He needed someone whole who might put him into the water when it was moved.

The eternal Word of God became what that man needed for his salvation and healing: a man. There before this sick man was what he needed: not a bodiless angel, but a man (verse 7). What is more, Jesus is a whole man. While we are all sick and blind and lame and withered as plants without water, only one can be found whole (ὑγιὴς): Christ our Lord. He is the man we need, a whole and healthy man, to provide us with wholeness and health by mysteriously uniting us to His own perfect humanity and divinity.

What is more, St. John tells us that this all happened on the Sabbath. Even if a whole man might be found for this 38-years-sick man, it would not be lawful for such a man to pick him up and put him into the water; one does not carry anything on the Sabbath. Here we see the true perversion of the law once given to the Hebrew people; that day of rest which was to prefigure the great and glorious eternal rest of God’s people – a never-ending day of health and wholeness – had become the one day on which this sick man could not expect any health or wholeness.

How often are the great things of God transformed by discriminating thought, comparison of one man’s righteousness with another, empty legalism, or ritual maximalism into the very opposite for which they are intended?

Nevertheless, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. He brings that eternal Day and Kingdom in and with Himself to the sick and the lame, the suffering and the withered. The Sabbath, and indeed every aeon, belongs to Christ and is made perfect in Christ. So He heals the man with a word. With His words, “Take up your bed and walk,” the Sabbath breaks forth on the sabbath.

Perhaps the Lord has given you respite from your labours, health and wholeness in your brokenness in some special way known only to you. How do you respond? This man went to the temple. For 38 years he had been away, but now he goes gladly to worship his Lord. There his Lord finds him, whole and healthy, but with a warning: “Sin no longer! Lest something worse happen to you!” In this way, Jesus reminds the man that our experience of the eternal Sabbath, breaking forth into our broken present age and world, is not fully realized. Even in rest there is the noetic warfare and struggle against sin, but we know that on the Last Day, when the Kingdom is fully realized among us and we rise gloriously free forever from corruption, then we shall have rest even from this spiritual struggle. For now, though, we enjoy graciously bestowed wholeness and health mingled with warfare, rest mingled with effort, and hope mingled with our sorrows.

* Greek Text is the Patriarchal Text; English Text is my translation.

a struggle between darkness and light…

Tomb & Pantocrator- Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

Man is caught up in a struggle between darkness and light, between corruption and incorruption, between death and life, and thus between hell and God. In such a predicament, man falls and rises and falls again. And this is why, even though Christ “presented Himself living,’ He also established within the Church the mystery of repentance and the sacrament of confession so that man can constantly enjoy the right to assume, to make his own, the life of God…

We see God bending down, taking “the dust of the earth” (Gen. 2:7), in order to fashion Adam in such a way that, the moment his eyes opened, he would see God… When he opened his eyes, he saw and knew nothing else but God and HIs tender embrace. Christ was so close!… Despite the spiritual death of the first man, the living God continues to stand at his side. Even though Adam has fallen into hell, God is ready to raise him up. God seeks out a thousand ways to manifest His life to man, to reveal how close He is – so close that we can hear His voice, feel His breath upon us.

Despite all of this, man remains as insensitive and immovable as a stone! God comes as the “voice of a gentle breeze” and imparts His grace to the prophets (3 Kgs 19:12), but man quickly forgets this. God slays the false prophets (3 Kgs 18:40), but this too, man forgets. God Himself comes and grants the people miraculous victories, over which they rejoice, but soon forget (Ex. 17:9-13); Josh 6:12-20). God forgives the sins of Israel, and again the people rejoiced, but continued to sin, forgetting God Who forgave them. He led them through the wilderness, where He fed them with manna from heaven, water from the rock, quails from the sky, and gave them everything they needed to know that God was with them, that His life was being made available to them. But in the end they forgot Him… “The desert’s burning you by day, and you want to be cool. Very well. I’ll become a cloud in order to refresh you. At night you want light. At night, then, I’ll become a pillar of fire. When you set out on your journey, know that I have already risen and gone before you, so that you can see Me. When you stop to rest, I am already there, waiting for you. As you draw near to the tent of witness, I’m there, too, and you hear Me. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I am there.”…    Think about the toil that God undertakes on your behalf.. He has become everything, entwined with all things, interwoven with all things.

~Archimandrite Aimilianos

hat tip: Holy Theophany Orthodox Church Sunday Bulletin

Who will roll away the stone…

Mikhail Nesterov The Empty Tomb (1889)

 

The Gospels have told us today [1]about the exploits of the holy women who followed the God-Man during His earthly wanderings. They witnessed His sufferings and were present at his burial. The burial took place on Friday evening. While the Jews’ wrath was pouring out like the fiery lava of Aetna not only upon the Lord, but upon all of those close to Him; while the Holy Apostles were forced to hide or observe the extraordinary events only from a distance; while only John, the beloved disciple who leaned upon the breast of the Lord, feared nothing and remained always near the Lord, the secret disciple, Joseph of Arimathea, who had always concealed his heart’s allegiance due to persecution from the Sanhedrin, suddenly disregards all the obstacles, hesitations, and anxiety that had bound and worried him until then, and he appears before cold, cruel Pilate to beg the body of the One who was shamefully executed. He receives the Lord’s body and buries it with reverence and honor.

The Gospels imply that Joseph’s deed was big-hearted and courageous. That is truly what it was. In the presence of the Sanhedrin which had committed deicide, in the very Jerusalem that had participated in that deicide, a member of the Sanhedrin takes the body of the God-man killed by men down from the tree and carries it to the garden located near the city gates and walls. There, in quiet and solitude, under shady trees, he places the body by which the bodies and souls of all mankind are redeemed in a new tomb hewn from a solid rock, with an abundance of fragrances and oils, and wraps it like a precious treasure in fine, clean linen. Another member of the Sanhedrin also took part in the Lord’s burial. This was Nicodemos, who came to the Lord by night and acknowledged that the Lord was sent from God. Having rolled a great stone to the door of the grave—doors which Gospels call a low opening to the cave—Joseph has satisfactorily finished his service and so he departs. The Sanhedrin followed Joseph’s movements. Seeing him gone, it took care to set a guard at the grave and place a seal on the stone which covered the entrance. The Lord’s burial was witnessed by both His friends and His enemies. Although some members of the Sanhedrin in their frenzy and rage committed a great evil, they unconsciously brought a great sacrifice (cf. Acts 17:18): through the slaughter of the all-pure Sacrifice they redeemed the whole human race, ended the fruitless number of transformative sacrifices, and made these sacrifices and their very institution superfluous. Other members of the Sanhedrin, representatives of all the righteous people of the Old Testament, served with a God-pleasing intention and disposition of soul in the burial of the Redeemer of mankind, and by this action ended and placed a seal upon the pious works of the sons of the Old Testament. From this point begins the exceptional service of those of the New Testament.

The holy women show no less courage than the selfless Joseph. Present at the burial on Friday, they did not deem it permissible on the Sabbath—the day of rest—to disrupt that peace in which the body of Christ rested in sacred darkness and reclusion within the sepulchral cave. The women were intent upon pouring out their zeal for the Lord by pouring myrrh upon His body. When they returned from the burial on Friday, they immediately bought a goodly amount of aromatic substances and waited for the break of the day which follows the Sabbath, then called the “week,” now Sunday. On that day, as soon as the sun shone forth, the pious women went to the grave. On the way they remembered that a large stone had been rolled to the grave. This worried them, and the women began to say amongst themselves, Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? (Mk. 16:2). The stone was very great. Having arrived at the tomb, they saw to their amazement the stone rolled away. A light-bearing mighty angel had rolled it away: at the Lord’s resurrection, he had descended from heaven to the grave which encompassed Him whom the heavens cannot encompass, stunned the guards with terror, broke the seal, and rolled away the stone. He sat on the stone, waiting for the women’s arrival. When they came, he announced the Lord’s resurrection to them, telling them to inform the Apostles. For their zeal for the God-man, for their resolve to render honor to the all pure body that was guarded by the military guard, after which the Sanhedrin in their hatred sharply watched, the holy women were the first among humans to receive exact and sure testimony of Christ’s resurrection; they were made the first strong preachers of the resurrection, as ones who heard about it from the lips of the angel. The all-perfect God is impartial: for Him all people are equal. And those people who strive toward Him with great self-denial are are made worthy of a special abundance of Divine gifts and spiritual elegance.

Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? These words of the holy women have their own mysterious meaning. They are so edifying that love of neighbor and a desire for his spiritual benefit will not allow us to be silent about it.

The tomb is our heart. The heart was once a temple, but it became a tomb. Christ enters it by means of the sacrament of Baptism, in order to dwell in us and work in us. Then the heart is consecrated as a temple to God. We steal from Christ the possibility to work in us and enliven our “old man”, which ever follows its attraction to our fallen will, our reason poisoned by falsehood. Brought in by Baptism, Christ continues to abide in us, but He is as if wounded and mortified by our behavior. The temple of God not made by hands is turned into a cramped, dark tomb. A very great stone is rolled over its entrance. The enemies of God set a guard over the tomb, and seal its entrance blocked by the stone. They seal the stone to the cave so that in addition to the stone’s great weight, this famous seal forbids anyone to even touch the stone. The enemies of God themselves watch over the preservation of this deadness! They have thought through and set up all these obstacles in order to forestall the resurrection, to prevent it, and make it impossible.

The stone is the soul’s illness by which all the other spiritual illnesses are guarded incurably and which the holy fathers call insensibility.[2] Many will say, what sort of sin is this? We have never heard of it. According to the fathers, insensibility is the deadening of spiritual feelings, the unseen death of the human soul with respect to spiritual things in a life that is flourishing with respect to material things. From a long-term physical sickness all strength can become exhausted and the body’s abilities withered; then the illness cannot find any more food, and ceases to torment the body’s constitution. It leaves the sick man alone and wasted, as if dead and incapable of movement due to the debilitating suffering, the terrible, dumb morbidity that is not expressed by any particular suffering. The same thing happens to the human soul. Long-term slackness of life amidst continuous distractions, constant voluntary sins, forgetfulness of God and eternity, inattention or only superficial attention to the Gospel teachings removes from our spirit any inclination toward spiritual things, and deadens it to them. Although they continue to exist, they cease to exist for our spirit because its life has ended for them—all its strength is directed toward the material, the temporal, the vain, and the sinful.

Everyone who wants to dispassionately and seriously investigate the state of his soul will see the illness of insensibility in it; he will see its broad significance, its gravity and consequence, and will have to admit that it is the manifestation and witness of his deadness of soul. When we want to study the Word of God, what boredom hits us! Everything we read seems hard to understand, not worthy of attention, and strange. How quickly we want to be free of that reading! Why is this? Because we feel no affinity for the Word of God.

When we rise for prayer, what dryness and coldness we feel! How we rush to finish our cursory, completely distracted prayer! Why? Because we are estranged from God: we believe in God’s existence with a dead faith; He does not exist to our sensibility. Why have we forgotten eternity? Are we excluded from the number of those who must enter into its boundless realm? Doesn’t death stand before us face to face, as it does to all humans? Why is this? It is because we do not want to think about eternity; we have lost the precious foretaste of it, and acquired a false perception of our earthly sojourn. This false perception imagines that our earthly life is endless. We are so deceived and distracted by this false perception that we conform all our actions to them, bringing all the potential of our soul and body as a sacrifice to corruption, not caring at all about what awaits us in the other world. After all, we must inevitably become permanent inhabitants of that world.

Why does idle talk, snide laughter, judgment of our neighbors and derision of them beat forth from us as from a wellspring? Why do we spend so many unburdened hours in empty amusements, cannot get enough of them, are always leaping from one vain pastime to another, but we do not want to dedicate even the tiniest bit of time to reviewing our own sins and lamenting over them? Because we have acquired an affinity for sin, for everything vain, for everything that brings sin into a person, and by which sin is preserved within a person. Because we have lost our affinity for all exercise that brings God-beloved virtues into us; that multiplies and preserves them. Insensibility is rooted in the soul by the world which is at enmity with God, and by the fallen angels at war with God, with the aid of our own free will. It grows and gathers strength through a life according to the principles of this world; it grows and gathers strength when we follow our fallen reason and will, when we abandon service to God, and because we serve Him carelessly. When insensibility stagnates in the soul and becomes a property of it, then the world and its rulers place a seal on the stone. This seal consists in the concourse of the human soul with fallen spirits, in the spirit’s assimilation of human impressions wrought upon him by fallen spirits, and in its subjection to the aggressive influence and domination by these outcast spirits.

Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? This is a question filled with anguish, sadness, and perplexity. Those souls feel this anguish, sadness, and perplexity that have directed themselves toward the Lord, leaving behind service to the world and sin. Before their gaze is revealed the sickness of insensibility in all its horrifying enormity and gravity. They desire and pray with contrition, exercise themselves in the reading of the Word of God beyond all other reading, and abide in constant awareness of their sinfulness, in constant mourning over it. In a word, they desire to become part of God and to belong to Him. They meet an unexpected resistance in their own selves that is unknown to those who serve this world: insensibility of heart. The heart stricken by its former careless life as by a mortal wound does not discover any signs of life. In vain does the mind gather thoughts about death, about God’s judgment, about the multitude of its sins, about the torments of hell, about the sweetness of paradise; in vain does the mind strive to beat upon the heart with these reflections—the heart remains devoid of feeling for them, as if hell, paradise, God’s judgment, sinfulness, and the state of fallenness and demise have no relation whatsoever to the heart. It is asleep in a deep sleep, the sleep of death; it is asleep, drunken with sinful poison. Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? This stone is very great.

According to the teachings of the holy fathers, in order to conquer insensibility a person must have constant, patient, uninterrupted action against that insensibility; he must have a constant, pious, and attentive life. Such a life beleaguers the life of insensibility; however this death of the human spirit cannot be put to death through human efforts alone—insensibility is destroyed by the action of divine grace. An angel of God, at God’s command, comes down to help the laboring and troubled soul, rolls away the stone of hardness from the heart, fills the heart with compunction, announces to the soul the resurrection, which is the usual result of continual compunction.[3] Compunction is the first sign of a heart revived toward God and eternity. What is compunction? Compunction is a person’s feeling of mercy and compassion toward himself, toward his grave state, his fallen state, a state of eternal death. Holy Scripture writes of the people of Jerusalem who were brought to this state by the preaching of the Apostle Peter and were inclined to accept Christianity that they were pricked in their heart (Acts. 2:37).[4]

The Lord’s body had no need of the myrrh-bearers’ fragrant myrrh. Any anointing with myrrh was forestalled by the resurrection. But by their timely purchase of myrrh, their early arrival at the first rays of the sun to the life-giving tomb, their disdain of any fear brought on by the Sanhedrin’s wrath and the militant soldiers guarding the tomb and the One interred there, the holy women showed and proved by experience their heartfelt dedication to the Lord. Their gift turned out to be unnecessary. It was rewarded a hundredfold by the appearance of the angel, up to then invisible to them, and by the announcement that could not be anything but bountifully true—that the God-Man has risen and resurrected mankind with Himself.

Our dedication of our life and all our strength and abilities to the service of God are not needed by God for Himself—they are needed by us. We bring them like myrrh to the Lord’s tomb. We shall timely buy myrrh—our good intentions. We shall renounce from our youth up all sacrifices to sin; and with the price of this we shall buy myrrh—our good intentions. It is not possible to unite service of sin to service of God: the former is destroyed by the latter. We shall not allow sin to deaden in our spirit affinity toward God and all things divine! We shall not allow sin to mark us with its impressions, or to forcibly prevail over us.

Whoever enters into service of God from the very days of an unspoiled youth and remains in this service with constancy submits himself to the endless influence of the Holy Spirit, marks himself with the all-holy grace-filled impressions that emanate from the Spirit, acquires in good time an active knowledge of Christ’s Resurrection, comes alive in spirit in Christ, and becomes chosen by God to be a preacher of the resurrection to his brothers and sisters. Whoever has become a slave to sin through his ignorance or inclination, who has entered into concourse with fallen spirits, has become one of their number, who has lost in his spirit the connection to God and to the dwellers of heaven—let him heal himself with repentance. Let us not put off our healing from day to day, so that death might not creep upon us unawares and take us suddenly, so that we would not be proved incapable of entering the habitations of unending rest and festival, so that we would not be cast down as useless chaff into the fires of hell that burn eternally but do not consume. The healing of old illnesses does not happen so quickly and conveniently as ignorance might imagine. There is a reason why God’s mercy grants us time for repentance; there is a reason why all the saints begged God to give them time for repentance. Time is needed to erase the sinful impressions; time is needed for us to be marked by the impressions of the Holy Spirit; time is needed to cleanse us from defilement; time is needed to clothe ourselves in the garments of virtue, to adorn ourselves in the God-beloved qualities that adorn all those who dwell in heaven.

Christ is resurrected in the person who is prepared for it, and the tomb—the heart—again becomes a temple of God. Arise, O Lord, save, O my God (Ps. 3:7); in Thy mysterious and yet essential Resurrection is my salvation. Amen.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
Translation by Nun Cornelia (Rees)hat tip:

“No man hath seen God at any time…

Anastasis icon: Holy Theophany Orthodox Church

from Redeeming the Time blog:

Bright Monday: Important truths are rarely said absolutely unambiguously. “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, and “Make straight the way of the lord.”

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Synopsis: The effect of the incarnation and the absolute necessity for a moral life is declared in the Gospel for Bright Monday. As is the usual case, profound truths about the Christian life are stated, but not with absolute clarity. The fullness of the meaning of Scripture is not apparent to the casual observer, but only to those who struggle for righteousness. We look at the whole passage, but particularly the two phrases: “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, and “Make straight the way of the Lord.”

John 1:18-28 18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. 19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? 20 And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. 21 And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. 22 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? 23 He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. 24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. 25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? 26 John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; 27 He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. 28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!