John Damascene: We Celebrate the Death of Death, the Destruction of Hell, the Beginning of Eternal Life Sunday, Apr 21 2013

He Who delivered the children from the furnace, and became man and suffered as a mortal, through His suffering, He clothes mortality with the grace of incorruption, He is the only blessed and most glorious God of our fathers.

The godly wise women came to Thee with myrrh. But Him Whom they sought with tears as dead, they joyfully adored as the living God. And they told to Thy disciples, O Christ, the glad tidings of the mystical Pascha.

We celebrate the death of death, the destruction of hell, the beginning of eternal life. And leaping for joy, we celebrate the Cause, the only blessed and most glorious God of our fathers.

For a truly holy and a supreme feast is this saving night radiant with Light, the harbinger of the bright day of Resurrection, on which the Eternal Light shone bodily from the grave upon all.

This is the chosen and Holy Day, the first of Sabbaths, the Sovereign and Queen, the Feast of Feasts, and Triumph of Triumphs, on which let us bless Christ forever.

O come, let us partake of the fruit of the new vine of divine joy on the auspicious Day of the Resurrection and Kingdom of Christ, praising Him as God forever.

Cast thine eyes about thee, O Zion, and behold! For lo! Thy children have assembled unto thee from the West and from the North and from the South and from the East, as divinely radiant luminaries, Blessing Christ unto the ages.

Father, Almighty, the Word, and the Spirit, one Nature in three Persons united, transcending essence supremely Divine! In Thee we have been baptized, and Thee will bless us throughout all ages.

Magnify, O my soul, Him Whom suffered willingly and was buried and rose from the grave on the third day.

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. Now dance for joy and be glad, O Zion! And thou, pure Mother of God, rejoice in the rising of Him Whom thou didst bear.

Magnify, O my soul, Christ the life-giver, Who rose from the grave on the third day.

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. Now dance for joy and be glad, O Zion! And thou, pure Mother of God, rejoice in the rising of Him Whom thou didst bear.

Christ is the New Pascha, the living sacrificial Victim, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

John Damascene (c.675-749): The Paschal Canon, Odes 7,8,9; trans. Archimandrite Ephrem  @ Pravoslavie.

Leave a Response »

 

Benedict XVI: St John Damascene – “The Great Sea of Love that God Bears Towards Man” Tuesday, Dec 4 2012

John Damascene was able serenely to deduce: “God, who is good…created him [man] envisaging him and creating him as a being capable of thought, enriched with the word, and orientated towards the spirit”.

And to clarify this thought further, he adds: “We must allow ourselves to be filled with wonder at all the works of Providence, to accept and praise them all, overcoming any temptation to identify in them aspects which to many may seem unjust or iniquitous, and admitting instead that the project of God goes beyond man’s capacity to know or to understand, while on the contrary only he may know our thoughts, our actions, and even our future”.

Plato had in fact already said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Our faith, too, begins with wonder at the very fact of the Creation, and at the beauty of God who makes himself visible.

The optimism of the contemplation of nature, of seeing in the visible creation the good, the beautiful, the true, this Christian optimism, is not ingenuous: it takes account of the wound inflicted on human nature by the freedom of choice desired by God and misused by man, with all the consequences of widespread discord which have derived from it.

From this derives the need, clearly perceived by John Damascene, that nature, in which the goodness and beauty of God are reflected, wounded by our fault, “should be strengthened and renewed” by the descent of the Son of God in the flesh, after God had tried in many ways and on many occasions, to show that he had created man so that he might exist not only in “being”, but also in “well-being”.

With passionate eagerness John explains: “It was necessary for nature to be strengthened and renewed, and for the path of virtue to be indicated and effectively taught, the path that leads away from corruption and towards eternal life…. So there appeared on the horizon of history the great sea of love that God bears towards man (philanthropias pelagos)”….

It is a fine expression. We see on one side the beauty of Creation, and on the other the destruction wrought by the fault of man. But we see in the Son of God, who descends to renew nature, the sea of love that God has for man.

John Damascene continues: “he himself, the Creator and the Lord, fought for his Creation, transmitting to it his teaching by example…. And so the Son of God, while still remaining in the form of God, lowered the skies and descended… to his servants… achieving the newest thing of all, the only thing really new under the sun, through which he manifested the infinite power of God”.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): On St John Damascene [c.675-749] (General Audience, 6 May 2009).

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: The Prayer of Jesus Tuesday, Dec 4 2012

Prayer is an uprising of the mind to God or a petitioning of God for what is fitting.

How then did it happen that our Lord offered up prayer in the case of Lazarus, and at the hour of His passion?

For His holy mind was in no need either of any uprising towards God, since it had been once and for all united in subsistence with the God Word, or of any petitioning of God.

For Christ is one. But it was because He appropriated to Himself our personality and took our impress on Himself, and became an ensample for us, and taught us to ask of God and strain towards Him, and guided us through His own holy mind in the way that leads up to God.

For just as He endured the passion, achieving for our sakes a triumph over it, so also He offered up prayer, guiding us, as I said, in the way that leads up to God, and “fulfilling all righteousness” on our behalf, as He said to John, and reconciling His Father to us, and honouring Him as the beginning and cause, and proving that He is no enemy of God.

[...] Again, when he said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: yet, not as I will but as Thou wilt, is it not clear to all that He said this as a lesson to us to ask help in our trials only from God, and to prefer God’s will to our own, and as a proof that He did actually appropriate to Himself the attributes of our nature, and that He did in truth possess two wills, natural, indeed, and corresponding with His natures but yet in no wise opposed to one another?

“Father” implies that He is of the same essence, but “if it be possible” does not mean that He was in ignorance (for what is impossible to God?), but serves to teach us to prefer God’s will to our own. For that alone is impossible which is against God’s will and permission.

“But not as I will but as Thou wilt”: for inasmuch as He is God, He is identical with the Father, while inasmuch as He is man, He manifests the natural will of mankind. For it is this that naturally seeks escape from death.

Further, these words, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? He said as making our personality His own. For neither would God be regarded with us as His Father…. It was we who were forsaken and disregarded. So that it was as appropriating our personality that He offered these prayers.

John Damascene (c.675-749): De Fide Orthodoxa 3, 24.

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: The Saints (3) – Sharing in Their Crowns of Glory Tuesday, Oct 30 2012

[Following from here...]

Those who worship God will take pleasure in those things whereby God is worshipped, while His shield-bearers will be wrath at those things wherewith God is wroth.

In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, in contrition and in pity for the needy, let us believers worship the saints, as God also is most worshipped in such wise.

Let us raise monuments to them and visible images, and let us ourselves become, through imitation of their virtues, living monuments and images of them.

Let us give honour to her who bore God as being strictly and truly the Mother of God.

Let us honour also the prophet John as forerunner and Baptist, as apostle and martyr, for among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist,… and he became the first to proclaim the Kingdom.

Let us honour the apostles as the Lord’s brothers, who saw Him face to face and ministered to His passion, for those whom God the Father did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, first apostles, second prophets, third pastors and teachers.

Let us also honour the martyrs of the Lord chosen out of every class, as soldiers of Christ who have drunk His cup and were then baptized with the baptism of His life-bringing death, to be partakers of His passion and glory.

Of these the leader is Stephen, the first deacon of Christ and apostle and first martyr.

Also let us honour our holy fathers, the God-possessed ascetics, whose struggle was the longer and more toilsome one of the conscience: who wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy.

Let us honour those who were prophets before grace, the patriarchs and just men who foretold the Lord’s coming.

Let us carefully review the life of these men, and let us emulate their faith and love and hope and zeal and way of life, and endurance of sufferings and patience even to blood, in order that we may be sharers with them in their crowns of glory.

 John Damascene (c.675-749): De Fide Orthodoxa 4, 15.

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: The Saints (2) – Fountains of Salvation Tuesday, Oct 30 2012

[Following from here...]

Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you? The Lord is that Spirit, and if any one destroy the temple of God, him will God destroy.

Surely, then, we must ascribe honour to the living temples of God, the living tabernacles of God. These while they lived stood with confidence before God.

The Master Christ made the remains of the saints to be fountains of salvation to us, pouring forth manifold blessings and abounding in oil of sweet fragrance.

And let no one disbelieve this. For if water burst in the desert from the steep and solid rock at God’s will and from the jaw-bone of an ass to quench Samson’s thirst, is it incredible that fragrant oil should burst forth from the martyrs’ remains?

By no means, at least to those who know the power of God and the honour which He accords His saints.

In the law everyone who touches a dead body was considered impure, but these are not dead. For from the time when He that is Himself life and the Author of life was reckoned among the dead, we do not call those dead who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and in faith on Him.

For how could a dead body work miracles? How, therefore, are demons driven off by them, diseases dispelled, sick persons made well, the blind restored to sight, lepers purified, temptations and troubles overcome, and how does every good gift from the Father of lights come down through them to those who pray with sure faith?

How much labour would you not undergo to find a patron to introduce you to a mortal king and speak to him on your behalf? Are not those, then, worthy of honour who are the patrons of the whole race, and make intercession to God for us?

Yea, verily, we ought to give honour to them by raising temples to God in their name, bringing them fruit-offerings, honouring their memories and taking spiritual delight in them, in order that the joy of those who call on us may be ours, that in our attempts at worship we may not on the contrary cause them offence.

John Damascene (c.675-749): De Fide Orthodoxa 4, 15.

One Response »

 

John Damascene: The Saints (1) – Treasuries and Temples of the Holy Spirit Tuesday, Oct 30 2012

To the saints honour must be paid as friends of Christ, as sons and heirs of God: in the words of John the theologian and evangelist, As many as received Him, to them He gave power to became sons of God;

So that they are no longer servants, but sons: and if sons, also heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

And the Lord in the holy Gospels says to His apostles, You are my friends; henceforth I do not call you not servants, for the servant does not know what his lord does.

And further, if the Creator and Lord of all things is called also King of Kings and Lord of Lords and God of Gods, surely also the saints are gods and lords and kings.

[...] Now I mean gods and kings and lords not in nature, but as rulers and masters of their passions,

and as preserving a truthful likeness to the divine image according to which they were made (for the image of a king is also called king),

and as being united to God of their own free-will and receiving Him as an indweller and becoming by grace through participation with Him what He is Himself by nature.

Surely, then, the worshippers and friends and sons of God are to be held in honour?

For the honour shown to the most thoughtful of fellow-servants is a proof of good feeling towards the common Master.

These are made treasuries and pure habitations of God: For I will dwell in them, said God, and walk in them, and I will be their God (Levit. 26:12; 2 Cor. 6:16).

The divine Scripture likewise says that the souls of the just are in God’s hand and death cannot lay hold of them. For death is rather the sleep of the saints than their death.

For they travailed in this life and shall to the end, and precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

What then, is more precious than to be in the hand of God? For God is Life and Light, and those who are in God’s hand are in life and light.

Further, that God dwelt even in their bodies in spiritual wise, the Apostle tells us, saying, Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you?

John Damascene (c.675-749): De Fide Orthodoxa 4, 15.

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: Death is Become the Passage to Immortality Tuesday, Aug 14 2012

(Following on from here…)

Then Adam and Eve, our first parents, opened their lips to exclaim:

“Thou blessed daughter of ours, who hast removed the penalty of our disobedience!

“Thou, inheriting from us a mortal body, hast won us immortality. Thou, taking thy being from us, hast given us back the being in grace.

“Thou hast conquered pain and loosened the bondage of death. Thou hast restored us to our former state.

“We had shut the door of paradise; thou didst find entrance to the tree of life. Through us sorrow came out of good; through thee good from sorrow.

“How canst thou who art all fair taste of death ? Thou art the gate of life and the ladder to heaven.

“Death is become the passage to immortality. O thou truly blessed one! Who that is not the Word could have borne what thou hast borne?”

All the company of the saints exclaimed:

“Thou hast fulfilled our predictions. Thou hast purchased our present joy for us. Through thee we have broken the chains of death.

“Come to us, divine and life-giving receptacle. Come, our desire, thou who hast gained us our desire.”

And the saints standing by added their no less burning words:

“Remain with us, our comfort, our sole joy in this world. O Mother leave us not orphans who have suffered on thy Son’s account.

“May we have thee as a refuge and refreshment in our labours and weariness. Thou canst remain if thou so willest, even as thou canst depart hence.

“If thou departest, O dwelling-place of God let us go too, if we are thine through thy Son. Thou art our sole consolation on earth. We live as long as thou livest, and it is bliss to die with thee.

“Why do we speak of death? Death is life to thee, and better than life – incomparably exceeding this life. How is our life life, if we are deprived of thee?”

The apostles and all the assembly of the Church may well have addressed some such words to the blessed Virgin.

When they saw the Mother of God near her end and longing for it, they were moved by divine grace to sing farewell hymns, and wrapt out of the flesh, they sighed to accompany the dying Mother of God, and anticipated death through intensity of will.

When they had all satisfied their duty of loving reverence and had woven her a rich crown of hymns, they spoke a parting blessing over her, as a God-given treasure, and the last words.

These, I should think, were significant of this life’s fleetingness, and of its leading to the hidden mysteries of future goods.

John Damascene (c.675-749): Homily 2 on the Dormition of the Theotokos @Monachos.net.

One Response »

 

John Damascene: The Mystery of the Transfiguration Monday, Aug 6 2012

A bright cloud overshadowed them, and seeing within it Jesus the Savior with Moses and Elijah, the disciples were filled with great fear.

Of old when Moses saw God he experienced the divine darkness, indicating the symbolic nature of the law; for…the law contained only a shadow of the things to come, not the reality itself.

[...] The cloud…that overshadowed the disciples was not one of threatening darkness but of light; for the mystery hidden from past ages has been revealed to show us perpetual and eternal glory.

Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets, stood by the Saviour because he whom the law and the prophets proclaimed was present in Jesus, the giver of life.

And a voice from the cloud said: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”.

The voice of the Father came from the cloud of the Spirit: This is my beloved Son. He who is seen in human form, who became man only yesterday, who lives humbly in the midst of us, and whose face is now shining, is he who is.

This is my beloved Son, the eternal, the only begotten of the only God, he who proceeds timelessly and eternally from me, his Father; who did not begin to exist after me, but is from me and with me and in me from all eternity.

It was by the Father’s good pleasure that his only begotten Son and Word became incarnate.

It was by the Father’s good pleasure that the salvation of the world was achieved through his only begotten Son.

It was the Father’s good pleasure which brought about the union of the whole universe in his only begotten Son.

For humanity is a microcosm linking in itself all visible and invisible being, sharing as it does in the nature of both, and so it must surely have pleased the Lord, the creator and ruler of the universe, for divinity and humanity and thus all creation to be united in his only begotten and consubstantial Son, so that God might be all in all.

This is my Son, the radiance of my glory, who bears the stamp of my own nature, through whom I created the angels, through whom the vault of heaven was made firm and the earth established.

He upholds the universe by his powerful word, and by the Spirit which proceeds from his mouth, that is the life-giving and guiding Spirit. Listen to him.

Whoever receives him, receives me who sent him by the authority not of a stern master but of a father. As a man he is sent, but as God he abides in me and I in him.

John Damascene (c.675-749): Homily on the Transfiguration, 17- 18 (PG 96, 572-573) @ Dom Donald’s Blog.

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: The Day of Resurrection Thursday, Apr 12 2012

The day of Resurrection, let us be radiant, Ο peoples! Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha; for Christ God has brought us over from death to life, and from earth to heaven, as we sing the triumphal song.

Let us purify our senses, and in the unapproachable light of the resurrection we shall see Christ shining forth, and we shall clearly hear him saying ‘Rejoice!’, as we sing the triumphal song.

Let the heavens, as is fitting, rejoice and let the earth be glad. Let the whole world, both seen and unseen, keep the feast: for Christ has risen, our eternal joy.

Come let us drink a new drink, not one marvellously brought forth from a barren rock, but a Source of incorruption, which pours out from the tomb of Christ, in whom we are established.

Now all things have been filled with light, both heaven and earth and those beneath the earth; so let all creation sing Christ’s rising, in whom it is established.

Yesterday I was buried with you Ο Christ, today I rise with you as you arise. Yesterday I was crucified with you; glorify me with you, Saviour, in your Kingdom.

Let us arise in the early dawn, and instead of myrrh, offer praises to the Master; and we shall see Christ, the Sun of Justice, who causes life to dawn for all.

Those who were held by Hades’ bonds, seeing your measureless compassion, press forward to the light, Ο Christ, with joyful steps, praising an eternal Passover.

With torches in our hands let us go out to meet Christ as he comes from the grave like a bridegroom, and with the festive ranks of Angels, let us together feast God’s saving Passover.

You went down to the deepest parts of the earth, and you shattered the everlasting bars of those that those that were fettered, Ο Christ. And on the third day, like Jonas from the whale, you arose from the tomb.

Keeping the seals intact, O Christ, you rose from the tomb, you who did not harm the locks of the Virgin’s womb at your birth, and you have opened to us the gates of Paradise.

Ο my Saviour, the living Victim unsuitable for sacrifice, as God offering yourself willingly to the Father, you raised with yourself all Adam’s race, in rising from the tomb.

John Damascene (c.675-749): The Paschal Canon, Odes 1,3,5,6; trans. Archimandrite Ephrem; full text with Fr Ephrem’s extensive notes @ Pravoslavie.

Leave a Response »

 

John Damascene: The Living City of the Lord God is Assumed from God’s Temple, the Visible Sion Monday, Aug 22 2011

Of old the Lord God banished from the garden of Eden our first parents after their disobedience, when they had dulled the eye of their heart through their sin, and weakened their mind’s discernment, and had fallen into death-like apathy.

But, now, shall not paradise receive her, who broke the bondage of all passion, sowed the seed of obedience to God and the Father, and was the beginning of life to the whole human race ? Will not heaven open its gates to her with rejoicing?

Yes, indeed. Eve listened to the serpent, adopted his suggestion, was caught by the lure of false and deceptive pleasure, and was condemned to pain and sorrow, and to bear children in suffering. With Adam she received the sentence of death, and was placed in the recesses of Limbo.

How can death claim as its prey this truly blessed one, who listened to God’s word in humility, and was filled with the Spirit, conceiving the Father’s gift through the archangel, bearing without concupiscence or the co-operation of man the Person of the Divine Word, who fills all things, bringing Him forth, without the pains of childbirth, being wholly united to God?

How could Limbo open its gates to her ? How could corruption touch the life-giving body ? These are things quite foreign to the soul and body of God’s Mother.

Death trembled before her. In approaching her Son, death had learnt experience from His sufferings, and had grown wiser. The gloomy descent to hell was not for her, but a joyous, easy, and sweet passage to heaven.

If, as Christ, the Life and the Truth says: “Wherever I am, there is also my minister,” how much more shall not His mother be with Him?

She brought Him forth without pain, and her death, also, was painless. The death of sinners is terrible, for in it, sin, the cause of death, is sacrificed.

What shall we say of her if not that she is the beginning of perpetual life. Precious indeed is the death of His saints to the Lord God of powers. More than precious is the passing away of God’s Mother.

Now let the heavens and the angels rejoice: let the earth and men be full of gladness. Let the air resound with song and canticle, and dark night put off its gloom, and emulate the brightness of day through the scintillating stars.

The living city of the Lord God is assumed from God’s temple, the visible Sion, and kings bring forth His most precious gift, their mother, to the heavenly Jerusalem, that is to say, the apostles constituted princes by Christ, over all the earth, accompany the ever virginal Mother of God.

John Damascene (c.675-749): Homily 2 on the Dormition of the Theotokos @ Monachos.net.

One Response »