Annunciation to the Theotokos, vows and +Seraphim’s blog

The Feast of the Annunciation. I tried to get myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to make for Qurbana at 6:30 a.m. but since I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep for almost 2 hours, I felt extremely tired and unfit to make the half-hour drive to church.

Seven years ago on this feast, in 2002, I professed for the first time vows of obedience, chastity and poverty under my spiritual director in the Catholic Church, and renewed them on an annual basis until last year when I professed them perpetually (“all the days of my life”). As a Catholic, these vows always put me in an awkward position because I was never been able to properly explain them to another Catholic apart from my spiritual director and canon lawyers without incurring suspicion about my “canonical status” (I’m not even sure I know what that means) in the Catholic Church.  Once, when I was visiting some friends in the East Coast of the United States, someone I’d just met spent most of our long walk in the streets of Alexandria trying to get me to define my canonical relationship to my bishop. Incidents like that were rare, thankfully, but like I said I’ve never been able to explain myself very well.

I haven’t been Orthodox long enough to have similar awkward experiences, but now that I belong to a Church which follows the Syriac tradition I can at least appeal with greater confidence to the tradition of the ihidaya (“single one”) in ancient Syriac Christianity. It’s not quite the same thing (mostly because I’m not as ascetical as these guys were) but close enough to give one the picture, I think. If you’re so inclined there is a helpful essay about the ihidaya published in Hugoye here.

If you’d asked me what the vows meant 7 years ago I could’ve given you a far more eloquent exposition than I could today. If anything, my experience (more “struggle”) of trying to live by them have only smudged the neater understanding of them I had in the beginning. Since moving back to Malaysia I’ve also been asking what these promises are supposed to look like given my family situation, socio-cultural contexts as well as demands of a worklife in this country. Never a dull moment though there have been quite a few confusing and difficult ones. I’ve returned time and again to the advice a nun once gave me: “You will make mistakes in following Christ, and these will be numerous, but as long as you realize that these vows are supposed to lead you to deeper and deeper love, you’ll be all right.”

Enough about that. Looking at the account of the Annunciation to the Theotokos in Luke 1.26-38 today I was struck by the strong emphasis given to Jesus’ status as king. Luke first of all notes that Joseph is “of the house of David” (v. 27), a genealogical fact which underscores Jesus’ royal lineage. Then the Archangel Gabriel informs the Theotokos that Jesus will be called “the Son of the Most High” (v. 32) and “the Son of God” (v. 35) which, in addition to being designations of his divinity, were also prerogatives of the Israelite king (by way of 2 Samuel 7) as well as the Roman Emperor (probably not a coincidence given the subversive nature of Luke’s narrative). This is followed by three more kingly references in vv. 32-33. God will give to her son “the throne of his father David”; he will “reign over the house of Jacob for ever”; and “of his kingdom there will be no end”. The theme of Jesus’ kingship in Luke is strong, and I think it was intended as a challenge to both Caesar’s and Rome’s rapidly inflating claims at that time. I wonder how this passage speaks to the empire-building endeavors of the superpower nations of our time.

Recently I’ve been enjoying very much the blog of Bishop Seraphim Sigrist which I discovered through Dr. Peter Gilbert’s blogroll. I like Bishop Seraphim’s casual and unpretentious style as well as the gorgeous photos and other interesting attachments he posts. Overall, his blog provides good counterbalance to my own theological geekiness and I hope to take this blog a bit more in that direction. Do stop by there and see what you think.

Lastly, I covet your prayers on this special day. Happy feast day to all!

Arrow prayers

Andrew Youssef over at erkohet.com offers a selection of Orthodox arrow prayers for your spiritual quiver. What are “arrow prayers”? He’ll explain.  You can also read about them in an old page of my notebook.

Philip Jenkins on the forgotten Easternness of Christianity

Thanks to Jim Davila over at PaleoJudaica, I’ve begun to read with fascination two articles by the renowned scholar Philip Jenkins of Penn State University. I’ll have to ask for your pardon of the long excerpts here, but I’m so thrilled by what Professor Jenkins has to say!

The first is an e-mail interview with Jenkins published by Beliefnet, the subject of which is his latest book, The Lost History of Christianity. Here is what he said about the often-forgotten Eastern character of Christian history (emphasis mine):

Give us a sense of the scope of the Eastern Christianity that, as you explain, dominated the first half of Christian history.

Its sheer scale is astonishing. Already by the seventh century, the Church of the East—the Nestorian church—is pushing deep into Central Asia. Nestorian monks were operating in China before 550, and nobody knows when the first Christian actually saw the Pacific—that would be a great historical novel for someone to write!

As I write in the book, “Before Saint Benedict formed his first monastery, before the probable date of the British King Arthur, Nestorian bishops functioned at Nishapur and Tus in north-eastern Persia. Before England had its first Archbishop of Canterbury, the Nestorian church already had metropolitans at Merv in Turkmenistan and Herat in Afghanistan, and churches were operating in Sri Lanka and Malabar. Before Good King Wenceslas ruled a Christian Bohemia, before Poland was Catholic, the Nestorian sees of Bukhara and Samarkand achieved metropolitan status. So did Patna on the Ganges, in India.” What I find fascinating about that is how that history violates our usual assumptions about what Christianity looked like in the so-called Dark Ages—about what it was, and where it happened.

The ancient relations between the St. Thomas Christians of Malabar (India) and the Church of the East have long been well-known among Indian Christians since it is an essential component of their historical rootedness, though this is perhaps unheard of for many. I only learned about this in my encounter with the Malankara Orthodox Church and its long, convoluted history.

Also, being ethnically Chinese myself, I’ve of late become curious about the history of Christianity in China, especially its arrival and expansion long before the age of the Western missionaries. I only recently learned, for example, of the discovery of the 8th-century “Nestorian Stele” which celebrates the Christian faith of the Chinese peoples.

But there’s more to feed my curiosity, as it turns out. The second article linked by Jim has been published in The Boston Globe, and is entitled “When Jesus Met Buddha”. The article is broad in its scope and definitely worth a careful read (or two), but I’ll just point out for now something that caught my eye: what Jenkins has to say about the Church of the East (known today as “the Assyrian Church of the East”) and its mission to China:

While the Western churches were expanding their influence within the framework of the Roman Empire, the Syriac-speaking churches colonized the vast Persian kingdom that ruled from Syria to Pakistan and the borders of China. From their bases in Mesopotamia—modern Iraq—Nestorian Christians carried out their vast missionary efforts along the Silk Route that crossed Central Asia. By the eighth century, the Church of the East had an extensive structure across most of central Asia and China, and in southern India. The church had senior clergy—metropolitans—in Samarkand and Bokhara, in Herat in Afghanistan. A bishop had his seat in Chang’an, the imperial capital of China, which was then the world’s greatest superpower.

When Nestorian Christians were pressing across Central Asia during the sixth and seventh centuries, they met the missionaries and saints of an equally confident and expansionist religion: Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhists too wanted to take their saving message to the world, and launched great missions from India’s monasteries and temples. In this diverse world, Buddhist and Christian monasteries were likely to stand side by side, as neighbors and even, sometimes, as collaborators. Some historians believe that Nestorian missionaries influenced the religious practices of the Buddhist religion then developing in Tibet. Monks spoke to monks.

In presenting their faith, Christians naturally used the cultural forms that would be familiar to Asians. They told their stories in the forms of sutras, verse patterns already made famous by Buddhist missionaries and teachers. A stunning collection of Jesus Sutras was found in caves at Dunhuang, in northwest China. Some Nestorian writings draw heavily on Buddhist ideas, as they translate prayers and Christian services in ways that would make sense to Asian readers. In some texts, the Christian phrase “angels and archangels and hosts of heaven” is translated into the language of buddhas and devas.

One story in particular suggests an almost shocking degree of collaboration between the faiths. In 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in Chang’an, bearing rich treasures of sutras and other scriptures. Unfortunately, these were written in Indian languages. He consulted the local Nestorian bishop, Adam, who had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese. Together, Buddhist and Christian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical good will, and we can only guess about the conversations that would have ensued: Do you really care more about relieving suffering than atoning for sin? And your monks meditate like ours do?

These efforts bore fruit far beyond China. Other residents of Chang’an at this very time included Japanese monks, who took these very translations back with them to their homeland. In Japan, these works became the founding texts of the great Buddhist schools of the Middle Ages. All the famous movements of later Japanese history, including Zen, can be traced to one of those ancient schools and, ultimately – incredibly – to the work of a Christian bishop.

Being as historically illiterate as I am, I can’t tell you how much all this excites me. This past semester, from teaching my World Religions class, I’ve had a chance to learn more about Mahayana Buddhism and its interactions with other Chinese religions. I became especially fascinated with the ways in which the Chinese people embraced the Mahayana tradition and made its ideas their own, synthesizing with it the canons of Confucian and Taoist thought. (This particular form of this Buddhism is called today “Chan” in China and “Zen” in Japan.) The more I learned about this fusion, the more I was inclined to believe that Christianity, especially in its Eastern expression, would have been readily received by the ancient Chinese, since there were so many key points of harmony between Orthodox (Eastern) Christianity and Chan/Zen. But I knew nothing of the work of the Church of the East in China.

At any rate, these articles leaves many trails for me to pursue. Many thanks, Jim, for these signposts!

The e-mail interview with Professor Philip Jenkins is to be found here, and his article “When Jesus Met Buddha” here. To find out more about the Assyrian Church of the East (often misleadingly called “Nestorian”), see the Wikipedia entry dedicated to it here.

It’s for doctors too

I’ve heard it said that the Desert Fathers saw their way of life as the only one conducive to holiness, and that they deemed those in the world less serious about the business of discipleship than they. There is much in the canon to refute these claims, but here is just one:

It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels. (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Anthony §24)

Yup, it looks like holiness is for doctors too. And it can be done right there “in the city”. Hope for all us schleppers.

“The bruised reed you shall not break”

There was a certain brother that was earnest and anxious after good living. And being sorely harassed by the demon of lust, he came to a certain old man and related to him his imaginings. But on hearing them, and himself being free [from such struggles], the old man became angry, and declared that the brother was vile and unworthy to wear the habit of a monk, inasmuch as he admitted such thoughts to his mind. And the brother, hearing this, despair of himself: and left his own cell and took the road back to the world.

But by God provident the abbot Apollo met him: and seeing him perturbed and in heavy sadness, questioned him, saying, “My son, what is the cause of this deep sadness of yours?”

At first the brother, in the shame of his soul, could answer him nothing: but after the old man had asked him many questions as to what had befallen him, he confessed, saying, “Thoughts of lust do harry me: and I confessed it to this old man, and according to him there now no hope of salvation for me: and so in despair of myself I am going back to the world.”

But when the abbot Apollo heard this, like a wise physician he began asking many questions and counselled him, saying, “Think it no strange thing, my son, nor despair of yourself. For I myself, at my age, and in this way of life, am sorely harried by just such thoughts as these. Wherefore be not found wanting in this kind of testing, where the remedy is not so much in man’s anxious thought as in God’s compassion. Today at least grant me what I ask of you, and go back to your cell.”  And the brother did so.

But the abbot Apollo on leaving him made his way to the cell of that old man who had brought him to despair: and standing outside he entreated God with tears, saying, “Lord, who sends temptation when it is needed, turn the battle which that brother has suffered against this old man that by experience he may learn in his old age what length of time has never taught him: to have compassion on those who are harassed by temptations of this sort.”

His prayer ended, he saw an Ethiopian standing close to the cell and shooting arrows against the old man: and as if pierced by them, the old man was borne here and there like a man drunk with wine. And when he could endure it no longer, he came out of his cell and down that same road which the young man had taken, going back to the world.

But the abbot Apollo, understanding what had befallen, went out to meet him.  And coming up to him, he said, “Where are you going? and what is the cause of the trouble which has seized you?” But he, feeling that the holy man knew what befallen him, could not speak for shame.

Then said abbot Apollo, “Go back to your cell and for the rest, recognize your weakness and look to yourself: for either the devil had forgotten you until now, or was contemptuous of you, inasmuch as you have never been found worthy, like men of valor, to do battle with the enemy. Battle did I say?—you could not stand against his onset for a single day. But this has befallen you, because when that young man, beset by our common adversary, came to you, instead of anointing him with words of comfort against the struggle, you sent him to desperation, with not a thought of that most wise counsel that bids us deliver those who are drawn down to death, and neglect not to redeem the failing: not yet the parable of Our Savior when He said, The bruised reed you shall not break, the smoking flax you shall not quench. For no man can endure the assaults of the adversary, neither can any extinguish or restrain the fire that leaps in our nature, unless God’s grace shall give its strength to human weakness. In this salutary judgment upon us, let us pray to God with all supplication, that He will turn aside the scourge that is fallen upon you, for He makes sore and binds up: He wounds and His hands make whole: He brings low and lifts up: He kills and makes alive: He brings down to hell and brings back.”

And so saying, he made his prayer, and straightaway was the old man freed from the warfare that had been brought upon him. And the abbot Apollo counselled him to ask of God for the tongue of the wise that he might know when it was time to speak.

The Sayings of the Fathers, translated from the Greek by Pelagius the Deacon and John the Subdeacon, Book V: Of fornication