Meditations

In the course of history no symbol has expressed the mentality of Christians more faithfully than the cross. The cross is the concrete expression of the Christian mystery, of victory through defeat, of glory through humiliation, of life through death. It is the symbol of a God who became man to die as a slave to save creatures. It is the symbol of a life that is not afraid to look to the height and breadth and depth of things because in every direction its arms remain outstretched.

It is interesting to note that long before Christ the symbol of the cross was held in high esteem and venerated by many pagan cultures as a sacred sign of the stability and the integrity of the universe pointing to the four directions of the compass and gathering to itself the entire cosmos. More amazing still this ancient symbol would in the "fullness of time" become the instrument of redemption and the means of the glorification of the Son of Man as St. John Chrysostom says: "I call him king because I see him crucified: it belongs to the king to die for his subjects." Crucifixion, death, salvation, kingship, glory - the cross!

Because the pagan world could not and would not understand such a deep mystery, such "foolishness," the early Christians hesitated to use the cross openly as the sign of the new faith. When it did appear it was usually disguised as an anchor or was intertwined amid vines. With the liberation of the Church from persecution under the Emperor Constantine, however, the cross slowly emerged as the sign of the Christians. Eusebius relates that the cross even supplanted the Roman eagles on the military standards–En touto nika (Gain the victory with this).

Despite their reticence to use the cross as a public symbol before the fourth century, the Christians did make the wide use of it as early as the second and third centuries to sign themselves on the forehead. In the second century Tertullian reports: "In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out,...whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross." "Let us not be ashamed to confess the Crucified," writes St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century. "Let the cross be our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything..."

By the sixth century in the East, probably due to the raging Monophysite heresy which denied the double nature of Christ as both God and man, two fingers began to be used to trace the sign of the cross, now no longer only on the forehead but more boldly with a larger sign made on the body. The succeeding centuries saw further modifications emanate from Eastern tradition because of a desire to profess more explicitly the belief in the triune God and the double nature in Christ. The thumb and two fingers were extended to symbolize the Trinity while the ring finger and little finger were folded back on the palm to profess the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

This newer usage also spread to the Western Church where we read Pope Leo IV writing in the middle of the ninth century instructing his clergy: "Sign the chalice and the host with a proper cross... with two fingers outstretched and the thumb hidden within them, by which the Trinity is symbolized. Take heed to make this sign rightly." In the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III directed most explicitly that the sign of the cross be made with three fingers from the forehead to the breast and from the right to the left shoulder, the actual way it still is made by the majority of Eastern Christians. The Western Church retained this ancient form till about the fourteenth century when gradually the open hand was introduced and the sign began to be made in an inverted fashion from left to right, perhaps mistakenly following the lead of the priest who in blessing inverts his movement so it would be seen correctly by the congregation before him.

Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics place great emphasis on the sign of the cross as a profession of faith in the three basic doctrines of Christianity: the Holy Trinity, the double nature in Christ, and the mystery of Redemption. This act of faith in the teachings of Christianity is also an act of consecration to God of all human activities–thoughts, affections, actions.

The gesture is presently made by joining the fingers (thumb, index and middle finger together and erect; third and little finger down on the palm) and lifting the hand first to the forehead, then to the heart, to the right and then the left shoulder. In the Scriptures right always represents good and left evil and in the Creed the Son is said to sit at the right had of the Father–thus the signing of the right shoulder first. Eastern Christians sign themselves often especially at every mention of the name of the Holy Trinity and in conjunction with the metany or bow made to reverence holy things such as the altar or an icon.

The sign of the cross is a symbol of faith, a sign that shall be contradicted, a standard to lead on toward final victory as St. John of Damascus teaches: "For wherever the sign shall be there also shall he be."

Is there mere coincidence to the fact that both the Mystical Supper and Pentecost took place in the same upper room on Mount Zion? In this more than mere coincidence we have become both Christ and Church, and for this we sing and pray and cry out: O Christ God, how wondrous are thy ways!

Christ came into the world that we might have life and have it abundantly (Jn. 10:10). There is life in the celebration of the liturgy, in the revelation of the Eucharist, that True Bread which comes down from heaven and without which there is no life in us (Jn. 6:35-51), the only life that endures even death itself and lives–quick, before you die, taste the resurrected life! There is abundant life, for the more we worthily partake of the holy mysteries of Christ's death and ever-life, the more the Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell within us and fill us to overflowing: "Out of his [one] heart shall flow [myriad] rivers of living water" (Jn. 7:38-9). How small the morsel of the Eucharist, and yet how immense its power to change everything: we who are dust of the galaxies are invited, in Christ, to be filled with all the fullness of God, the very meaning of life! And for this we sing: Glory to thee, our God, glory to thee!

In His Image and Likeness

'Icon' is the Greek word for 'image'. With the first occurrence of 'image' in the Bible we learn that God has created us "in our (the triune God's) image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). But when sin entered the world, although we retained the 'image', we lost our 'likeness' to God. Christ has however, in the patience and humility and loving-kindness of God, come in the flesh to restore this likeness by revealing to us His image, as we read in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians:"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus" (4:6). And, in the same letter, St. Paul also declares that, in our coming face to face with the 'image' of Christ (whether it be verbally in Scripture or visually in the icon), His likeness in us becomes our likeness in Him: "But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (3:18). All ignorance is cast off in the hearing and singing of the Liturgy, just as all obscurity is cast off in the seeing of the icons; and so, with sin confessed and conscience unburdened, with ears blessed by the hearing of Scripture and eyes blessed by the seeing of icons, we are truly free to come forward to partake of the revelation of this mysterious Eucharist who is Christ Himself. Then, from deep within ourselves as we return from the altar, we hear in the words of St. John, as if for the first time, this ultimate promise of likeness to Christ: "Dearly beloved, we are now the children of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him; because we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn. 3:2).

How often have you heard it said: "I feel closer to God in the woods and fields than in church"? But why contrast 'nature' with 'church' in a way that magnifies one and belittles the other? Out upon God's wide earth we see a beauty sprung from the Creator's hand; while here, in church, it is an inner beauty that is called into being, here, so distant from the tumult of the world that we can almost glimpse it, that inner beauty who was born a babe in Bethlehem and who seeks to be reborn in us. If the Lord spoke to Elijah in a still small voice, he can also speak to us in the quiet inward-searching gaze of the icons. And these icons, in their gaze not asking and asking the selfsame and myriad questions of holiness–in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit–from the cave of Bethlehem, from the banks and waters of the Jordan, from the Lord's all-holy and life-giving Cross, from the Mount Zion of the Mystical Supper and Pentecost...? Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches: "I will make you a pillar / icon in the temple of my God, and I will write on you the name of God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name."

"But you are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels, and to the church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkling of blood which speaketh better than that of Abel." Hebrews 12:22-4

Our Lord the All-Gracious and Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Trinity, descends upon those gathered in the upper room on Pentecost, thus fulfilling the promise of the Old Testament 'Feast of Weeks'. Just as no Person of the Trinity stands alone, but each relates eternally to others in the 'society' of the One God, so Pentecost, which means 'the fiftieth day', does not stand alone but, as established by Moses, relates to the Pasch of Israel. Memorialized in this feast is that law-giving encounter between God and the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the crossing of the Red Sea. There God wrote upon stone tablets, here, in New Testament times, He has written upon the very fabric of the human heart (2 Cor. 3:3). Pascha and Pentecost together have everything to do with the human heart, for added to the 'leap' of Resurrection joy is the serene jubilation of Pentecost. But what is the reason for this joy, this jubilation? Simply put, it is because we have been recreated in the image and likeness of God. We read in Genesis: "The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7), and, in reading, we become aware of an astounding parallel: first, in Christ, our bodies are being fashioned out of a new earth, the 'earth' of His risen body, which is also the Church, and then, with the Holy Spirit, God has breathed into our faces, has ensouled us with His fiery Breath, which is also the Church, "the church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens". And it is to this Church that we have all received the most cordial of invitations.