A Letter from our seminarian
Χριστός Ανέστη! Al’Mesiah Qam! Христос Воскресе! Christus Resurrectus Est! Christ is Risen!
As we come to the end of the joyous Paschal season and approach two of the Great Feasts (Ascension and Pentecost), we are left to reflect on many things. For forty days Jesus has been with His disciples (sometimes seen, sometimes not). He continued to teach them, to show them, to enlighten them. After the Lord’s saving passion, most of the Apostles thought that all was lost. Such a great catastrophe as their teacher, the Christ, being crucified in such a shameful manner caused the disciples to be fearful...especially of the religious authorities. So they went and hid themselves. They didn’t yet understand what Jesus Himself had told them...that the Son of Man must suffer many things and die and rise again on the third day. But, Lo!, Christ IS Risen. The religious and secular courts sentenced Him (who is our Creator and Redeemer) to death, death on a cross (a punishment reserved for the worst of criminal-slaves). But, God, showing them that His judgement is what matters, raised Christ unto life...and unto POWER. Christ’s rising from the dead stands directly in opposition to the judgement and sentence to death by the worldly officials. God is THE judge, He alone is the ruler of the universe.
We have been reading from the Gospel of John since Pascha. The first two Sunday readings after Pascha commemorate St. Thomas and the Myrrh-Bearing Women, and then the Paralytic on the third. With the story of Christ healing the Paralytic, we see what the Gospel of St. John is famous for...showing Christ’s full divinity. Christ commands the man paralyzed for nearly forty years to rise, take up the pallet, and walk. Jesus, showing His divinity, heals by command. In Genesis, God creates by command. God says "Let there be light!," and there was light. God speaks, and it is. So, too, Jesus tells the paralytic to rise, take up his pallet, and walk. Similarly, Jesus reveals His divinity to/through the Samaritan Woman. He knows her sins and speaks to her plainly about them. So, too, Jesus as much as tells her that He is indeed the Christ; but, also speaks about the Living Water of which all who drink shall not die (i.e. Baptism). Finally, Christ reveals His divinity quite poignantly in healing the Blind Man. This particular man was born without eyes (or, at least, with severely under developed ones). Jesus healed this man by making some mud with dirt and spittle, and anointing the man’s eyes with the mud. Jesus then told him to go wash at the pool of Siloam. This even involves CREATION as much as it does miraculous healing. Again, we look to the Book of Genesis (2:6-7), "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." So, God created man in Genesis by making mud...so, too, Christ, who is fully divine, heals the Blind Man by making mud (showing His creative power, for creation is solely the prerogative of God). This healing, though, was not completed until the man obeyed and washed in the pool of Siloam–an act of faith which would later be uttered to our Lord in the reading.
Having come to leave-taking of Pascha (the forty-days-as-one), we have much to ponder and are given a new beginning. We were blessed to have Fr. Constantine with us for Holy Week and Pascha, and it looks like we will be blessed by the visit of a prospective priest sometime this summer. The Lord, it seems, is preparing a particular new beginning for our own parish community. Our prayer, then, must be that the Lord’s Will for us be done, that He will provide for us what He knows best we need. Mother Theresa once asked, "Ηow do you make God laugh?"--"tell Him what you think." We can be confident that the Lord will provide what we need, and will provide it when it is the proper time (καιρός).
By Brock Johns