Thoughts on the eve of the Nativity Fast

Tomorrow begins the Nativity Fast in the Malankara Orthodox tradition.  Since I kept the last two Nativity Fasts as a Byzantine Catholic, the first difference I noticed this year is the variation in length.  In the Byzantine tradition, the fast is 40 days long and begins on November 15th every year.  You won’t hear me complaining about a shorter fast, though!

Although fasting is more often seen as an ascetical practice, over the years I’ve come to notice that the Bible understands it primarily as an eschatological act. In the Hebrew Bible especially, fasting is a means of seeking God’s help and protection in a time of need—against military invasion, for example.  Hence, fasts can be said to create space for a dramatic intervention of God in history.

2 Chronicles 20 provides an interesting illustration of this. Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, on receiving news of a forthcoming invasion from an alliance of his enemies, “proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah” (2 Chronicles 2.3). The fast was accompanied by liturgical worship in the Jerusalem Temple: “And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD; from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD” (2 Chronicles 2.4).

The prophet Jahaziel was then sent by God to the Judahites with this message:

“Fear not, and be not dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s….You will not need to fight in this battle; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the LORD on your behalf” (2 Chronicles 20.15, 17).

Sure enough, even as Judah worshipped God with songs of praise, the foreign alliance was routed by a mysterious ambush by God and ended up turning in on itself (2 Chronicles 20.21-23).  Fasting, accompanied by the liturgical worship, is shown to be an efficacious weapon which calls down the supernatural armies of the God of Israel.

Perhaps this is why, after the Exile, fasting is linked with expectation of Israel’s salvation from foreign rule.  Zechariah 8.19 prescribes four fasts (on the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months), all of which commemorate in some fashion the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.  The same passage, however, says that, in the eschaton, these fasts will be transformed into “seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts”.  In doing so, Zechariah infuses fasting with the hope of divine deliverance: the practice not only looks back in mourning over loss of the Temple, Jerusalem and the Davidic Kingdom, but also anticipates their future restoration and re-establishment—perhaps, as it was in the days of Jehoshaphat, by divine intervention rather than military prowess: “Not by might, not by power, but my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4.6).

How might this inform the Orthodox practice of fasting before the great feast of the Nativity of Our Lord? In one way, at least. Like the fasts of old, the Nativity Fast makes room in the world for God to act in space and time—only this time, it is that most dramatic of divine interventions in history: the Incarnation of the Word of God.  As we prepare for that moment when the mystery of Jesus’ birth will be made present to us again in liturgical celebration, this preceding fast can be our way of praying for and anticipating the action of grace which is always new and renewing.  Year after year, the same fast and the same feast is kept, but God reveals himself in fresh ways—if only we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to perceive.

This Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 1.39-56) gives us one young girl’s interpretation of the Incarnation:

He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.

In the days after the archangel Gabriel appeared to her, the Theotokos already perceived and anticipated in  her heart the ways in which God had already begun to renew and transform creation through the Child still hidden inside her, whom no eye could yet see nor ear hear.

For us, I think, the question should not be, “Will God do something new this Nativity?” but rather, “What new thing will God do this Nativity?”  For the Theotokos, the intervention of God in time and space asked of her not only her mental assent but the offering of her whole body, her whole life. Giving up food and drink is a good place to start, yet the picture must certainly be bigger. How does God want the Church to create space in the world for Him to be born anew—for Him to be revealed to as the Lord of history?

A prayer for Mumbai

[Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times]

Prayer for the Pacification of Animosity

We thank you, O Master, Lover of Mankind, King of the Ages and Bestower of Good Things, Who destroyed the dividing wall of enmity, and granted peace to the human race, and Who now has granted peace to Your servants. Instill in them the fear of You and confirm in them love one for the other. Extinguish every dispute and banish all temptation to disagreement. For You are our peace and to You we ascribe glory: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

From The Book of Needs (St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, South Canaan, PA)

“To grow rich without injustice is impossible”

But do you not see the lucky men, says one, who with little labor acquire the good things of life? What good things? Money, houses, so many acres of land, trains of servants, heaps of gold and silver? Can you call these good things, and not hide your head for shame? A man called to the pursuit of heavenly wisdom, and gaping after worldly things, and calling them “goods,” which are of no value!

… Tell me, then, whence are you rich? From whom did you receive it, and from whom he who transmitted it to you? From his father and his grandfather. But can you, ascending through many generations, show the acquisition just? It cannot be. The root and origin of it must have been injustice. Why? Because God in the beginning made not one man rich, and another poor. Nor did He afterwards take and show to one treasures of gold, and deny to the other the right of searching for it: but He left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, have you so many acres of land, while your neighbor has not a portion of it?

If these things are good, then the possessors of them must be called good. For is not he good, who is the possessor of what is good? But when the possessors of these things are guilty of fraud and rapine, shall we call them good? For if wealth is a good, but is increased by grasping, the more it is increased, the more will its possessor be considered to be good. Is the grasping man then good? But if wealth is good, and increases by grasping, the more a man grasps, the better he must be. Is not this plainly a contradiction?

But suppose the wealth is not gained wrongfully. And how is this possible? So destructive a passion is avarice, that to grow rich without injustice is impossible. This Christ declared, saying, “Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness.” (Luke 16. 19.) But what if he succeeded to his father’s inheritance? Then he received what had been gathered by injustice. For it was not from Adam that his ancestor inherited riches, but, of the many that were before him, some one must probably have unjustly taken and enjoyed the goods of others.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 12 on 1 Timothy

Not quite there yet, but on the Way. Hopefully.

A student of mine who read Moo Point #2 asked me the other day, “So yeah, what’s with your iPod? Do you just get to suspend your vow of poverty or something?”  Non-Christians say the darnest things.

That’s question is what I call “a spiritual pothole”. My response is always to close my eyes, drive as fast as I can, and hope I don’t pop a hubcap loose.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately what it means, first of all, to live as a Christian who is on pilgrimage in this world even as he stands in the light of the dawning Age to Come which he professes day after day. My conclusion is that, for a sojourner, I own way too much real estate, and something needs to be done about that.  But all this got me thinking about a guy named Bonaventure.

In their quest to live the way of discipleship shown them by their founder, the early Franciscans of the 13th century found themselves repeatedly falling short of the radical lifestyle that St. Francis had lived.  As the Order grew and spread, for example, there were more and more friaries that needed to be maintained and older brothers who needed to be cared for since they were no longer able to go about begging for their own food as Francis had done. More and more, they found it difficult to live the Gospel ideals of austere simplicity and poverty which had constituted the core of Francis’ total devotion to Christ.  The realities of everyday life pressed on the communities, and it appeared that Franciscanism was on its inevitable way to being watered down.

Into this scene appeared St. Bonaventure, who rescued the future of the Order with his sober and modest interpretation of the Franciscan ideal.  In a sense, he saw Francis as an eschatological figure—a man who manifested in his life all that the Church could and would be when Christ is all in all.  However, he also saw the Order as being only the seed of the tree that Francis had been.  For him, the Franciscans could only be a shadow of their Founder in history, but accepting this fact was not so much a concession of loss as it was a way of negotiating the tension between Francis’ poverty and the utterly real demands of the world in which the sons of Francis lived—demands which imposed inevitable constrictions on the radicality Francis embodied.  Of this negotiation Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure:

Without feeling any infidelity towards the holy Founder, Bonaventure could and had to create institutional structures for his Order, all the while realizing that Francis had not wanted them. It is a too facile and, in the final analysis, an unlikely method to see this as a falsification of true Franciscanism.  In reality, it was precisely the historical accomplishment that…he submitted himself in humble recognition of the limits demanded by reality. Bonaventure recognized that Francis’ own eschatological form of life could not exist as an institution in this world; it could be realized as a break-through of grace in the individual until such time as the God-given hour would arrive at which the world would be transformed into its final form of existence. Everything else is naively visionary. Bonaventure was able to give the Order a form that could be realized in this world because he recognized this fact and had the courage to accept it. His first concern in doing this was to preserve whatever could be preserved of that radically eschatological character. (50-51)

Thus, Bonaventure, in accepting the limits imposed by the practical realities of life, actually made it possible for the Franciscan ideal to survive in the heart of the Order without compromise.  The task of Francis’ spiritual sons and daughters was live that ideal to the fullest extent possible in this world, knowing that its complete realization would only be possible in the Age to Come.

The gap between the ideal and the real has always been a difficult one for me to accept.  In the first days of consecrated life, I found myself agonizing again and again over the precise meaning of “poverty”.  Should I own a car? Should I accept gifts? Ought I to have a retirement fund? Own a house instead of pay rent? When I brought these questions to my spiritual director at that time, she calmly smiled and said words to this effect: “What you’re looking for is a one-size-fits-all rule.  There is no such rule, because each one’s poverty is different. There is only the vow, and there is love, which is the aim of that vow and all your vows.  It would be better for you ask Christ how He wants you to love Him every time you open your wallet to buy something.  Asking that question will keep you young at heart and your vows fresh.  For sure, you will make your mistakes—I have, we all do—but even in making them you will grow in love.  Apart from love, the vows mean nothing. Consecrated life means nothing.”

I’ve lost count of all the mistakes I’ve made—many consciously—these past 6 years. One of them might be this tiny blue iPod, a gift which I accepted without vehement resistance.  And I don’t feel too bad for having accepted it, in fact.  I guess I’ll just have to trust that if it’s not something Christ wants me to have, He’ll find me someone to give it to. And so with everything else.  This is also how I deal with the ache that I sometimes—and only sometimes—feel from owning a car, a small CD collection, a Dell notebook, and a comfortable bed.

My thoughts turned toward Bonaventure these past few days because I admire his ability to navigate between the ideal and the real, hold on to both, and not wreck the Franciscan ship while doing so. I consider myself a son of Francis, but I also have to accept the fact that I cannot become exactly like him.  He is the eschatological Church embodied, and I am the sojourner with one tent too many, leaving behind a trail of possessions as I slouch toward the Kingdom.  Not quite there yet, but on the Way.  Hopefully.

What it’s like on Sundays

My friend Matthew asked in a comment if the Syro-Malankara Orthodox liturgy is similar to that of the Syro-Malabar Catholic liturgy, and Suraj has written an informative response. For those of you who’ve never been a Malankara Orthodox Qurbana (Eucharistic service), here are two clips that give a sense of what the liturgy is like.  They are from the first Holy Qurbana celebrated at Holy Cross Orthodox Mission Church in Manhattan, NY, USA.

This first video is taken from the beginning of the service, which is similar to the Byzantine use in several ways.  The audio is a rather poor, but if one listens carefully, one will hear the familiar words of the Monogenes hymn (“Only Begotten Son”) which is used in many Eastern liturgies.  In our Church, it is more commonly known as the Manisa of St. Severus.  The singing of the Manisa is immediately followed by the singing of the Trisagion (Thrice-holy hymn), which is slightly different than that of the Byzantine use in that there is the insertion “crucified for us” after the third invocation.

The first time my friend Mike saw this video, he asked, “What’s the deal with the rattles?” Well, they’re maruvahsa, liturgical fans which once served a very practical purpose (picture a bishop under 1500 layers of clothing, incense and a warm Mediterranean climate—that should help) but have now acquired a theological significance. In the present understanding, they represent the angels and the “fluttering” of their wings. Why the bells? My favorite explanation is that given by a priest I know: “Because we’re happy Christians.”

This second clip is taken from the Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) of St. James. (The text for the prayer can be found here.) The waving of the priest’s hands at various points signifies the “fluttering wings” of the Holy Spirit even as He descends and broods over the gifts to change them into Christ’s body and blood.

And now you know.