Just last week, I and mine observed the Feast of the Transfiguration, one of the Twelve Great Feasts observed by the Eastern Orthodox Church. The feast occurred very near the mid-point of what would otherwise be the two-week long Dormition Fast -- relaxing the fasting rules a bit, and bringing fish to the table. We made bouillabaisse around a nice piece of sockeye salmon. You should have been there.
The Orthodox practice of fasting is often misunderstood. Chief among the reasons for that -- I'm guessing -- is that even most Orthodox are no longer very observant of the practice; even we have become more or less oblivious to the efficacy of fasting, its purposes. Another reason is that, in the West, Christians continue to be unduly influenced by a subtle range of Gnostic attitudes toward the body in general, imagining that the goal of human life is to shed the body altogether and become something like pure spirit.
Oy.
So, from the outside, fasting can look like just another life-denying, body-hating, Gnostic perversion -- not to put too fine a point on it.
Well, body-hating is pretty much the antithesis of our calling, and you'd like to think that a tradition based upon the Incarnation of God might keep that nugget of wisdom firmly in mind. The fathers and the mothers of the Church suppose that much of our trouble comes from being slaves to impulse, from our bodies' being dragged into inexpedient behavior by habit, selfish passion, and all manner of chemical incentive. Judging from my own anecdotal evidence alone, I'd say they're probably right. Such behavior is arguably not so good for the soul or for the spirit; I daresay, over the long haul, it's not so good for the body, either.
The fathers and the mothers, therefore, have counseled that through a bit of on-the-job training, the body and its appetites can be reigned in, so as not to run our entire rig headlong off the cliff. Fasting is one way to wrestle the governance of our persons into something more like a democracy -- where soul and spirit are allowed to have a say -- bringing that selfish despot, the potentially insatiable body, under the equitable rule of law.
All of that is to say that fasting (coupled with prayer) is the means by which the body is actually recovered as a good partner in our person's progress.
In any case, observant Orthodox practice generally calls for fasting (abstaining from meat, dairy, wine, and oil) on most Wednesdays and Fridays. We also abstain from eating anything prior to receiving the Eucharist on Sundays. Besides those weekly practices, the Church calendar includes two greater fasts and two lesser ones. The greater (which is to say the longer) periods are the Advent Fast, the several weeks preceding Christmas, and Great Lent, the several weeks preceding Holy Pascha, our word for Easter. The two lesser fasts are two-week periods at the beginning of the summer (the Apostles' Fast) and now, toward summer's end (the Dormition Fast).
This Sunday, August 15, our brief fasting period ends as we celebrate another of our Twelve Great Feasts, the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God -- better known in the Western Church as the Assumption of Mary. "Dormition" is a handy, Latinate figure for her "falling asleep"; in the Greek, the word is "kimisis," (κοίμησις), and is the word from which our "cemetery" derives.
These words are significant, primarily, for their acute reconfiguration of what folks have long characterized as death, as outright demise. In our tradition, then, by Christ's having "undone death by death," by His having burst the hold death once had on us, human persons no longer succumb to death and to the body's utter dissolution. Au contraire. They fall asleep. And they await a one-day awakening.
The Dormition of the Theotokos, the God-bearer, is the day we commemorate her falling asleep.
It is something else, as well.
As the Theotokos lay dying -- tradition has it -- all the Apostles were miraculously drawn to her bedside, save Thomas, the famously tardy. In their presence, she fell asleep, and was thereafter entombed. Arriving three days later, Saint Thomas, desiring to see her one last time, compelled the others to open her tomb. To the puzzlement of all, her body was not there.
The event has become understood as her bodily "Assumption" into -- as we say of the presence of God -- Paradise. It has become a symbol of our own bodily resurrection, an image of how even our bodies will one day be recovered by the life-giving power of the risen Christ.
The icon of this feast day is a very moving one, showing as it does the Apostles gathered around her at the point of her falling asleep. It shows, as well, the Christ, attending her departure, and holding in his arms -- in an image that recollects the image of His own swaddled, infant Self embraced by her at His Nativity -- the Mother's shrouded spirit.
I offer this ekphrastic poem as a commentary, and as a token of love:
Dormition
Most blessed among all women and among
the mass of humankind,
in this fraught image our mother is asleep.
She lies arms crossed and, notably, across
the spacious foreground
upon an altared bed, her head upraised
upon a scarlet robe,
and we surround her strange repose perplexed
by grief that couples homage
nonetheless. Not we, exactly, but our holy
antecedents, whose bright
nimbi gleam undimmed despite their weeping.
Here again the icon serves
to limn the artifice of time, drawing
to this one still point a broad
synaxis of the blessed, including some
whose souls unbodied have
preceded her to Paradise. Most are bent
in sorrow; several raise a hand to meet
fresh tears. They mourn the dire
severing of blesséd soul from blesséd body.
Leaning in, Saint Peter
lifts the censer with a prayer. Saint Andrew
nearly falls upon the bier.
Saint James Alpheus looks away, or looks
for solace to Saint Luke,
whose eyes--like those of Saints Heirtheus
and adjacent brother James--
direct us to the cupola behind our grief,
from which the risen Christ
attends the mother's solemn funeral
even as he bears her
gleaming spirit in his arms, where she,
so meek the weeping pilgrim might have missed her,
rests swaddled in her shroud,
waiting to be borne to Him, and bodily.
Follow Scott Cairns on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottCairnsPoet
Dormition of the Theotokos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I just spent a few days with Carmelite nuns at their monastery during an especially difficult period . By chance I attended vespers on August 15th which also happenned to be my father's B-day (he passed a few years ago). In any case the Carmelites struck me as a powerful group of women that underscore the importance of Mary and one sister in particular spoke to me about the Assumption and its significance.Her words stayed with me and so I was drawn to your post.
Though Catholic I had never taken in the importance of Mary yet after my days with them that has turned around completely.
God is uncreated. He moves everything else.
True to the way he designed them his creation continues to exercise their free will, which upsets the all-powerful god with his all-encompassing plan so much he drowns everybody on Earth except an old drunk and his incestuous family.
Later, he sleeps with another man's wife in a brilliant plot to have himself born human so he can have himself tortured to death in order to save people from the sin he created in the first place. After he dies, he comes back to life but is only seen by a handful of his closest friends, most of whom don;t even recognize him, so he goes off to heaven in a huff and hasn't been heard from for 2000 years despite his express problems to be right back.
Yeah, that's a god I want to worship.
Ours espouses Love, not ignorance .
Yeah, I was also rude, derogatory, condescending and, if I'm lucky, blasphemous as well. So? And the Bible is what? Accurate? Hardy. Facile? Not really. I was making fun of what I consider to be a ludicrous religion and its ridiculous, meaningless book.
Also, since you do not seem to know the meaning of the word "cursive", I present for you the definition from Dictionary.com: "Cursive \Cur"sive\, n.
1. A character used in cursive writing. [1913 Webster]
2. A manuscript, especially of the New Testament, written in small, connected characters or in a running hand; -- opposed to uncial. --Shipley. [1913 Webster]
Source: The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48"
All these things should remind us of our humble beginnings.
"...just another life-denying, body-hating, Gnostic perversion..."
I don't pretend to speak for modern Christian Gnostics but those statement are certainly show stoppers for me. Even in creative writing, you aren't allowed to distort knowable facts; except in Missouri, I guess. Christian oneupmanship is really sad.
"...Gnostic in terms of human anthropology and piety..."
I have a BS in Social/Physical Anthropology and I have no idea what that first part means.
As far as piety goes, I would agree that the first Gnostics did have some sway up until Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea eliminated anything gnostic from the orthodox church and began a systematic slaughter of gnostic practitioners; a good reason to hide Gnostic Gospels in the desert, I'd say.
"...a Faith free of ancient and/or contemporary heresy."
As Christian Gnostics are still considered heretics by the orthodox church, I take it you (or the Eastern Orthodoxy) would like to continue where they left off?
Or are you confused, too?
Brick
God simply is (a figment of human imagination).
What I am saying is that it is MY belief that a 'God' never, ever existed, except in the Mind Of Man (ideation), and more certainly does NOT exist today! We could argue all day about whose 'Belief' system is more creditable than the other, and end up with no agreed upon consensus! It doesn't validate, or invalidate, either of our positions, and still leaves us with no certifiable result.
Finally, some of us should be moved to exhibit 'evidence' to reinforce our 'Belief', shouldn't we? In that light, I would contend that I will come up with more evidence as to a 'God's' NON-existence than You can come up with the opposite notion. Want to try?
Brick
Miracles are becoming almost common-place these days. And, as strange as it may sound, they are, in themselves, no evidence whatever as to proof of Divine mission. Miracles always accompany inspiration as a sign of office: has there been any miracles in this manner since the days of the apostles? No! I know not any!!!
Indeed, Christ's miracles, as Miracles, were no evidence of His Divine Mission. But the real evidence...was that the miracles which He wrought were the very miracles which the Prophetic Word had declared he should work, and which were on that account the sign and seal of His ministry, and formed His credentials from on High. Hense they are so called "signs"!
This is clear from Matt. 11: 1-6. It was not that they were mere miraculous acts, but that they were what God had foretold, and the essence of their testimony..was the truth of God's Word, rather than the power of Christ.
Miracles and wonders, as such, have always been wrought; and will be wrought again by the Dragon, the Beast and the False Prophet.
And while the evidence furnished to the people by their miracles will be the establishment of their false claims: to those who will keep the faith in those days, the evidence will be the truth of God's Word, which has foretold these very miracles you have witnessed yourself. Their miracles will establish their infernal origins, and their "divine" mission!!!!
God performs miracles to show that He has operated in a certain way. Throughout scripture we have God appearing to tell the world about His Son in miraculous ways ... appearing in the sky, descending on the apostles in the form of a dove, none of which are ordinary manifestations. They're good enough for God to use to make us aware of His doings.
Your theory doesn't hold water. You know nothing about the origin of the miracles at Medjugorje. You're guessing. If Satan is performing the miracles that occur there, it's the dumbest mistake he ever made, because millions of people have turned to God as a result of their experiences in the little village. People come home to pray, to fast, to beg God's forgiveness for their prior lives, to work toward peace in their families. Years afterward they're still clinging to these practices.
I prefer the straightforward way of seeing God's work in the world: If you see it, you say Thank You, God, and go on your way believing. There's no need to go all round Robin Hood's Barn to decide whether something is real or not.
Nice guy, you're deity.
These are of course an integral part of the Caldean Mysteries, hidden within all Myths (and, all "Myths, are about the "gods", not God!) constituting all of Paganism, which the Reverend Alexander Hislop, in his momumental work, "The Two Babylons" declared,(to somewhat paraphrase at this point) "had penetrated every country and every clime, even as it became the radical language of every religion the world over"..which, he wrote..,was "a Mighty maze, but not without a plan!"
Of course, we are all perfectly free to give Worth-ship to whomever we so wish, whether it be to movie stars, or other celebrities, or idols or icons, and even this author's faves, that's all fine and good, so long as you realize its not really The God of Creation that you worship.
What god worthy of worship would not be sickened and disgusted by worship?
And if He doesn't exist, then why worry about Him and whether or not He wants to be worshipped?
Just where do we see in the New Testament, the apostles..all Jews, not less-who turned their backs on Temple-worship (after its destruction, there could be no priests!, especially without animal sacrifices-there are no priests in Christianity!!!) hand over the fully formed priestly system along with the Bishop's Miter, the fish head dedicated to Dagan, the fish-god,(worn by the Pope... to the Pagans in Rome?
No, this is Nimrod... and his wife Semiramis, the Nephilim-offspring of fallen angels, whose spirits are still extant... are so worshipped the world over in these ancient Caldean Mysteries.
Who is Santa Claus.... with his red clothes, huge belly and fatherly image, but Nimrod-the giver of gifts of natural sciences, his color, that of Satan, and his belly, indulgent Debauchery-the spirit of Christmas.
And who is his wife, Semiramis...known by a thousand names, but lately "The Madonna". a corruption of Mea Domnia. "Our Mother", the same Goddess worshipped by Catholics, Muslims, and Feminists.
I sense that you have a lot of fun putting together these goofy legends out of the bits and pieces you have in those esoteric volumes piled on your dusty tables. Have your laughs, but get Mary straight. She's not at all vengeful, but she might call you on it one day.