The Office of Lilyo (Night Vigil) of the Resurrection

Psalms, prayers and hymns are arranged into four sets of “watches” or “qaumos”. On this night Lilyo marks a turning point in the celebration, since the priest announces the Resurrection of Christ between the 3rd and 4th watches. (If you’re wondering why only men are in this photo, it’s because all the women are on the right, i.e. the south side.) We began Lilyo at 4 am.

The Announcement of the Resurrection

Between the 3rd and 4th watches of Lilyo, the cross which was buried on Great Friday is washed with rose water and decorated with a red silk scarf, invoking the prophecy of Isaiah: “Who is this that comes from Edom with crimson garments”? The priest announces: “My brethren, I bring you new glad tidings: Christ has risen from the tomb and has struck His enemies behind Him.” The people respond: “We belief and confess that He has indeed risen!” (Since this is an Orthodox service, it is of course repeated three times.)

Procession with the exalted cross

During this procession the people sing a well-known hymn in the West Syrian tradition:

O Mary, I am the Gardener, the Great One who planted Paradise.
I am the revival, the resurrection and the life of all living beings.
O Mary, I am He who was slain and buried.
Do not come near Me, for I have not ascended to My Father,
but go and announce to the apostles that I have gloriously risen from the tomb.

The Blessing of the Four Corners of the World (Zuyokho) with the cross

The offices and the announcement of the Resurrection being completed, the public celebration of Qurbana begins with the singing of the Manisa of St. Severus, known as the Monogenes or Only Begotten in some other traditions. At this time, the priest reverences the altar and offers incense.

Offering of incense during the Manisa of St. Severus

The reading of the Pauline Epistle, which is always done from the south side of the sanctuary

Proclamation of the Gospel

The Blessing of the Censer

This is an elaborate rite unique to the West Syrian tradition, taking place at the end of the Absolution (Hoosoyo) prayers. Some historians suggest that this rite might have evolved in place of the dismissal of catechumens, which can still be seen in the Byzantine rite. The rubrics are as follows:

The celebrant says: I, a weak and sinful servant of God, respond and say: Then he holds one chain with the first two fingers of his left hand and, with his right hand, he draws the sign of the Cross on the chain, saying: Holy is the Holy Father. +

People: Amen.

Then he holds another chain together with the one in the middle and draws the sign of the Cross on the chains, saying: Holy is the Holy Son. +

People: Amen.

The third time, he grasps the last chain of the censer and draws the sign of the Cross over them. Then he moves his right hand around the censer, twice from left to right and once from right to left, saying: Holy is the Holy Spirit + Who sanctifies the censer of His sinful servant while sparing and showing mercy upon our souls and the souls of our parents, brothers, elders, our departed ones and the faithful departed, the children of the Holy Church, in both worlds, forever and ever. Amen.

The celebrant takes the censer from the thurifer and censes the altar, the clergy and the deacons on the northern side of the altar. He then stands in the middle of the sanctuary to cense the people. Then he turns to the southern side of the altar and censes the clergy and the deacons. He gives the censer to the thurifer who goes about the church and censes the people.

The recitation of the Creed follows.

The procession of the Holy Mysteries after communion

After the distribution of the Gifts, the priest turns to the people with the Bread and the Chalice.

The celebrant crosses his hands, walks one step forward and says:
May the mercies of God the Great and of our Savior Jesus Christ be upon the bearers of these Holies, their donors, their receivers and upon all those who labored and took part and are taking part in them. May the mercy of God be upon us and upon them in both worlds.

People: Amen. Our Lord, have mercy upon us. Our Lord, spare us and have mercy upon us. Our Lord, answer us and have mercy upon us. Glory to God in the highest, exaltation to His Mother, a crown of glory to the martyrs and compassion and mercy to the departed. Halleluiah.

The celebrant, with outstretched hands, says:
Glory be to You, glory be to You, our Lord and our God, forever. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, let not Your Holy Body, which we have eaten, and Your Atoning Blood, which we have drunk, be unto us for judgment nor for revenge, but for eternal life and for the redemption of all of us, and have mercy upon us.

People: The world shall kneel and worship You and every tongue shall confess Your Name for You are the Raiser of the dead and the Good Hope to those who are buried, halleluiah.

And of course, what celebration of the Resurrection would be complete without food, games and song?

Of late the controversies stirred by Rob Bell’s book and Chad Holtz’s dismissal have made me think about universal salvation more than usual. While my view on this subject has gradually inched toward universalism these past few years, I am not yet ready to cross over. Several days ago, while rereading sections from Henri de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis, I came across a fascinating text by Origen, with whom I remain inexplicably fascinated and for whom de Lubac provides a winning apologia in this work. Many ideas and heresies have been attributed to Origen, not the least of which is universalism (for which, it is also often said, he was condemned by the Church).

And yet, here is what he wrote in a letter to friends from Alexandria:

Some of those who gladly accept that their neighbors should be slandered ascribe the crime of blasphemy to us and our teaching. This is something they never heard from us. They should look into this matter themselves, unwilling though they are to observe the command that says that “slanderers will not possess the kingdom of God,” and claiming as they do that I say that the father of evil and perdition and of those who are ejected from the kingdom of God, that is to say, the devil, is to be saved. This is something that even someone who is mentally disturbed and clearly insane cannot say. But it seems in no wise strange to me, if my teaching is adulterated by my enemies and is marred by the same kind of adulteration as mars the letter of of Saint Paul the Apostle….

In Rufinus, De adult. librorum Or., quoted in Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis,  Vol I: The Four Senses of Scripture, p. 396, n. 126.

Origen has just become more enigmatic than ever in my books.

I should add that I’ve tried for the most part to translate the Koine into idiomatic, modern English—not for the espousal of any translation philosophy or agenda, but to test my own ability to wrestle with the text in a meaningful way. In a few places I’ve opted for a more literal (even if somewhat stilted) rendering to preserve what I think are significant motifs in the passage.

*****

Luke 12.32-48

[Jesus said:] “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make yourselves purses that don’t wear out–an inexhaustible treasure in the heavens, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“Let your loins be girded and keep your lamps burning. Be like people waiting for their master to come home from the wedding celebrations, so that when he comes and knocks, they open the door for him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds keeping vigil when he comes! I’m telling you the truth: the master will gird himself, seat them at table, and come to serve them. And if in the second or third watch he comes and finds them ready like this, blessed are those servants!

“But know this: if the master of the house had known the hour the thief would come, he wouldn’t have let his house be broken into. Be ready, because the Son of Man comes at an hour you do not expect.”

Peter asked, “Master, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

Jesus said, “Who, then, is the faithful and wise steward whom the master will put in charge of his household servants, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, finds doing just that! I tell you the truth: the master will put him in charge of all his possessions.

“On the other hand, if that servant should say in his heart, ‘My master delays his coming,’ and begins to beat the male servants and the female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, his master will come on a day he doesn’t expect, at an hour he doesn’t know, and will cut him in two. He will put him with the unfaithful ones.

“The servant who knew the will of his master but didn’t prepare or act according to his will, will be beaten with many strokes. As for the servant who didn’t know and did things which deserve a beating, that one will be beaten with a few strokes. From the one who was given much, much will be required. From the one whom they entrusted with much, they will expect even more.”

I do not fast very well. A self-imposed three-day break from Facebook, however, gives me a little bit more time to write, which I obviously haven’t done in a while. Over the years I’ve resolved several times to write more consistently here, but those don’t seem to have borne much fruit. So I guess I’ll just keep the readers who’ve been so dedicated (or naive) as to check this blog regularly. I’ve changed the sub-heading (if that is what it’s actually called) of this blog into a phrase from St. Maximos the Confessor’s Centuries on Love. I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot, probably because it explains the gradual shattering of my illusions about becoming Orthodox.

I have written about the Nineveh Fast in the past (pardon the rhyme), and those posts can be retrieved by typing “Jonah” in the search line on the sidebar. As I can see there are three posts on the Jonah story according to the Rabbinic tradition—more excerpts than posts, really—and maybe one or two others on St. Ephrem’s hymns on Jonah.

A friend asked yesterday if our Church had an equivalent to the Byzantine Triodion. I said: No, but we do have this three-day fast which is the closest thing to preparation for Great Lent. And speaking of Great Lent, I really wish it were further away.  There is no time of the year when I spend more time thinking about food and cooking, which is ironic since it’s supposed to be a time to be freed from some of the constraints of eating. But I have a few quinoa recipes handy, and I’d recommend you try quinoa if you haven’t already.

Some other things I’ve been up to lately:

1. Applied to four PhD programs in New Testament, all in the UK, and gotten rejected by one so far. I won’t say which schools until the ordeal is over. Since I have virtually no money I will only go if I also get a scholarship/studentship which takes care of the fees as well as living expenses.

2. Finished my much-spread-out reading of Marguerite Yourcenar’s The Abyss. It turned out to be a fantastic novel with quite a few surprises, which I did not expect for a story set in the 16th century. The protagonist, Zeno, is a seminarian-turned-atheist by virtue of his explorations in alchemy. It might be the intellectual biography of some modern biblical scholar, I suppose, insofar as modern biblical studies seem to induce effects similar to alchemy on one’s mind and soul. Yourcenar does an absolutely fantastic job re-creating the world of the 16th century, complete with Anabaptist ghettoes, plagues, sexually-promiscuous priests and burnings at the stake. I wouldn’t say it was spiritually-edifying to read, but I would say that it was sobering—so I guess its worth will depend on what you’re looking for. I generally prefer the latter because the former tends to foster my spiritual delusions.

3. Started learning the guzheng, and bought one too. It’s made me realize that I have rather uncouth fingers, neither strong nor delicate. During my first lesson I felt quite a bit like a barbarian at a ballet performance. But the guzheng is an instrument I’ve always wanted to learn, and with this I’m one step closer to living the Confucian life I’ve always imagined possible.

4. Resigned from my full-time position at the college (I only teach one day a week now) and started a small business as a private English tutor, which has been interesting because I only have one student. These days I’m very thankful to God for having learned English inductively, because though I know English quite well the rules are almost utterly inconsistent when they exist at all. I also realized that I’ve inherited a permanent twang in my pronunciation from years of living in Midwestern America, such that when I try to teach English pronunciation it comes out Cowboy. Words like “van”, “ran” and “been” are the hardest.

5. Sent some poems to about four literary journals. I’ve always wanted to publish something but was prevented from attempting by my own scruples which had to do with pride or something along those lines. I guess don’t think about being published as a great accomplishment anymore so the danger of pride is less clear and less present. If I get accepted by anyone you can be sure I’ll advertise myself here.

Immediately after Matthew’s account of the birth of the Lord and the visit of the Magi, we find two much darker stories: the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the infants (Matthew 2.13-18). I think it’s too easy, amid all the sentimentality and romanticism that have been infused into our celebrations, to forget that the joy and the hope at the heart of Christ’s birth can only be sustained, kept alive, with  ascetical struggle in the Spirit.

It is from this day hat the feast of the Theophany, the sacred Pasch, the Ascension and Pentecost had their source and foundation. Had Christ not been born in the flesh, he would not have been baptized, which is the Theophany or Manifestation. Now would he have been crucified, which is the Pasch. Now would he have sent down the Spirit, which is Pentecost. Therfore, just as differnet rivers arise from a single source, these other feasts have their beginnings in the birth of Christ.

St John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, 6.23-24, in Arthur A. Just, Jr (ed.), Luke (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), p. 36

… Whoever takes another meaning out of Scripture than the writer intended, goes astray, but not through any falsehood in Scripture. Nevertheless, as I was going to say, if his mistaken interpretation tends to build up love, which is the end of the commandment, he goes astray in much the same way as a man who by mistake quits the high road, but yet reaches through the fields the same place to which the road leads.

He is to be corrected, however, and to be shown how much better it is not to quit the straight road, lest, if he get into a habit of going astray, he may sometimes take cross roads, or even go in the wrong direction altogether. For if he takes up rashly a meaning which the author whom he is reading did not intend, he often falls in with other statements which he cannot harmonize with this meaning. And if he admits that these statements are true and certain, then it follows that the meaning he had put upon the former passage cannot be the true one: and so it comes to pass, one can hardly tell how, that, out of love for his own opinion, he begins to feel more angry with Scripture than he is with himself. And if he should once permit that evil to creep in, it will utterly destroy him. “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5.7). Now faith will totter if the authority of Scripture begin to shake. And then, if faith totter, love itself will grow cold. For if a man has fallen from faith, he must necessarily also fall from love; for he cannot love what he does not believe to exist. But if he both believes and loves, then through good works, and through diligent attention to the precepts of morality, he comes to hope also that he shall attain the object of his love. And so these are the three things to which all knowledge and all prophecy are subservient: faith, hope, love.

St. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana [On Christian Teaching] 1.40-41

In his treatment of this term, Fr. John Behr reminds us that the word “canon” originally referred to a straight line by which all other lines could be judged (The Way to Nicaea, p. 31). This is a particularly important clarification since the most frequent meaning of the term “canon” as it is used in theological discourse is probably something like “the list of books regarded as scripture”. He cites Aristotle:

[B]y that which is straight, we discern both the straight and the crooked; for the carpenter’s rule (ο κανων) is a test of both, but the crooked tests neither itself nor the straight (On the Soul, 1.5).

The canon of truth, then, is something like a principle against which we can test the “straightness” of our faith. St. Irenaeus argues that the Gnostics, by using a canon or rule “which neither the prophets preached, no the Lord taught, not the apostles handed down”—an entirely different canon—have misread scripture and arrived at severely distorted readings. They are like people who’ve rearranged pieces of a king’s portrait so that it resembles a fox rather than the king himself:

By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, [the Gnostics] succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions. (Against the Heresies 1.8.1)

What, then is this “canon of truth”? St. Irenaeus describes it in these words:

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, (Ephesians 1.10) and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess (Philippians 2.10-11) to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send spiritual wickednesses, (Ephesians 6.12) and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. (AH 1.10.1)

As is evident, this statement of the canon of truth resembles the earliest known baptismal creeds, both in terms of its tripartite structure as well as its content. Indeed, St. Irenaeus refers to the canon as something “received by means of baptism” (AH 1.9.4).

However, Fr. John notes, St. Irenaeus expresses the canon of truth in a variety of ways (each time returning to the same themes). The aim of the canon is not so much to give a fixed confessional formula as it is to express the guiding “plot” or “hypothesis” of scripture. What is that “plot” or “hypothesis”? It is none other than the “story” of Christ himself—as he is revealed in the Gospel, as he is preached by the apostles. Christ is “according to scripture” because all of scripture points to Him, and in pointing to Him the multiplicity of voices in the Bible converge, sing in unison. Fr. John explains:

For Irenaeus, the canon of truth is the embodiment or crystallization of the coherence of Scripture, read as speaking of the Christ who is revealed in the Gospel…. Understood in this way, the canon is not an arbitrary principle used to exclude other legitimate voices or trajectories. Rather it expresses the hypothesis of Scripture, enabling the demonstrations from Scripture to describe, accurately, the portrait of a king, Christ. (The Way to Nicaea, pp. 36-37)

The canon, then, is a summary of the apostolic preaching. As Fr. John notes above, its function is not to “exclude other legitimate voices or trajectories” but rather to guide deepening reflection and make it possible. St. Irenaeus points out, for example, that with this canon as guide, we can “bring out the meaning of those things which have been spoken in parables, and accommodate them to the general scheme of the faith; and explain [with special clearness] the operation and dispensation of God connected with human salvation” (AH 1.10.3).

Like the carpenter’s rule, the canon of truth is something which makes work possible. But are we doing this “work”—or staring at the rule?

The Trial records the following exchange between the monk and the emperor’s men, who were attempting to persuade him to recant his position. Legates from Rome had arrived in Constantinople to request imperial sanction for the new pope, Eugene I, and Maximos interlocutors asked him to consider what he would do if these emissaries were to “switch over”.

They said to him, “And what will you do if the Romans unite with the Byzantines? For behold, yesterday there came legates of Rome and tomorrow on Sunday they will take communion with the patriarch; it will become evident to all that it was you who turned the Romans away. Doubtless with you removed, there will then be an easy union.”

And he said to them, “Those who are coming cannot in any way prejudice the see of Rome, even if they should take communion because they have not brought a letter to the patriarch. And I am not at all convinced that the Romans will unite with them unless they confess that our Lord and God by nature both wills and works our salvation according to each of the natures form which he is, in which he is, as well as which he is.”

And they said, “And if the Romans should come to terms with them [the Byzantines] at this time, what will you do?”

He replied, “The Holy Spirit, according to the Apostle, condemns even angels who sanction anything against what has been preached.” (The Trial of Maximus, 7)

St. Maximos’ position was clear: even if Rome—the very Church in whom he sought refuge—should cave, he would still hold fast to that which he believed to be the apostolic preaching. The measure of truth consisted not in the authority of any see or hierarch, but in “what has been preached”—the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

I offer this consideration for all who long for the reunion of the divided Churches. What its implications are, I don’t wish to draw out for now—and I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to. In any case, I think this gives us something to think about.

While the rest of the world was wrapped in the womb of sleep, dreaming a dream known as the waking state of human life, one of their number roused himself. Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dream-like vagaries of ordinary awareness. It begins with a man who woke up. (82)

[The Buddha] distinguished two ways of living. One—a random, unreflective way, in which the subject is pushed and pulled by impulse and circumstance like a twig in a storm drain—he called “wandering about.” The second, the way of intentional living, he called the Path. What he proposed was a series of changes desgined to release the individual from ignorance, unwitting impulse, and tanha [craving]. (104)

In his later years the Buddha told his disciples that his first intimations of deliverance came to him before he left home when, still a boy and sitting one day in the cool shade of an apple tree in deep thought, he found himself caught up into what he later identified as the first level of absorptions. It was his first faint foretaste of deliverance, and he said to himself, “This is the way to enlightenment.” It was nostalgia for the return and deepening of this experience, as much as his disillusionment with the usual rewards of worldly life, that led him to his decision to devote his life completely to spiritual adventure. The result, as we have seen, was not simply a new philosophy of life. It was regeneration: change into a different kind of creature, who experienced the world in a new way. Unless we see this, we shall be unequipped to fathom the power of Buddhism in human history. (111-112)

I’ve written before of my gradual reconciliation with this religion of my childhood since moving back to Malaysia. It’s a happy journey.