September 15, 2024

On August 6, we celebrated the Transfiguration of the LORD on Mt Tabor. Forty days later, yesterday, Sept 14, we celebrated the Elevation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross. Within this 40 days, we commemorated the Falling Asleep of the Theotokos, Her Dormition, on Aug 15, and Her Nativity on Sept 8. And in the time between the Theotokos’ falling asleep and Her Nativity, we passed over into a New Church Year on Sept 1. All of this reveals the New Church Year to be a Passover, a summer pascha of the Theotokos, the Holy Virgin Mary passing over from death to life in the loving embrace of Her Son and Our God, Our LORD Jesus Christ.

Dear ones, this shows the Church New Year to be the prelude to our own pascha when, on the day of our own falling asleep, we pass over from death to life in the loving embrace of Our Most Beloved Mother, the Holy Virgin Theotokos, in the loving embrace of Her Son and our God, Our LORD Jesus Christ. Therefore, when we draw near in the fear of God, with faith and love, and participate mindfully, prayerfully, soberly, reverently in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, we are preparing for the day when our death in the Pascha of the LORD and His Holy Mother takes place and we pass over from this old life rooted in death to the New Life of the Church rooted in the Cross in and by which the LORD has trampled down death by His death and given life to us who were in the tombs so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.

The ‘midnight’ of the old Church Year – Sept 1, when the old year ‘passes over’ into the New Year – is for us a time to reflect on the mystery of time. Time has meaning, but that meaning is hidden in the biblical vision of the Church. Governed by the movement of sun and moon, time is the ‘visible’ veil that hides even as it reveals the descending and ascending movements of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and His Holy Mother, the Most Holy Virgin. The LORD Jesus is the Sun, the Sun of Righteousness. The Virgin is the Moon. She is the Mother of the Church, the Bride of Christ. And this hidden movement of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Theotokos has been revealed in these last days to those who love the LORD and His appearing. The Holy Virgin, the Moon, receives the LORD Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness – the ‘Prince’ in the prophet Ezekiel’s visions – into the Holy of Holies of Her Most Holy and Most Pure Womb. The LORD Jesus Christ, the ‘Prince,’ the ‘Sun of Righteousness,’ impelled by His love for mankind, descends into His Living Temple, the Holy Virgin Mary Theotokos, in order to dwell in Her. And, She, in Her Falling Asleep, ascends in Her love for mankind and for Christ Her LORD, to Heaven to dwell in God as She dwelt in the Holy of Holies in the Temple.

Here is the real movement of time that the time measured by sun and moon is the image of. This is the hidden movement of the love of God for His Mother and of the Mother for Her Son that governs and determines the shape of history, and that is the essence of the Christian Faith. What I want you to see in uncovering this hidden movement of time that is manifest in these 40 days of the ‘Summer Pascha,’ from the Transfiguration of Christ on Aug 6 to the Elevation of the Cross on Sept 14 is this: the invisible, real time hidden in the visible time of the calendar is the movement of the love of God for Man and of the love of Man for God.  And, in this movement is revealed the meaning of our life and the purpose of our existence.

The meaning of our life is found in the movement of the love of God that overshadows the Holy Virgin – as it did the tabernacle and the temple of the OT – in order to dwell in Her so that She becomes the Mother of God and the Mother of all who are born of the Holy Spirit from above in the ‘womb of the Church,’ the baptismal Font, so that we become, through the Woman, children of God. And the purpose of human existence is revealed to be receiving God in love so that He dwells in us as in His Holy Temple, and we dwell in God as in our true LORD and Husband.

Here we catch a glimpse of the Beauty and Glory of the Image of God according to which we are created, which defines us, and which is the very structure of our being. Created directly by the Holy Trinity, not by some divine council of angels, Man was fashioned according to God’s own Image and Likeness as ‘male and female’.

Behold what is suddenly revealed beneath the veil of the biblical vision of time as the movement of the love of God and Man in the Persons of Christ, the Son of God, and His Holy Mother, the Virgin Theotokos! It is the divine beauty, the divine origin, the divine meaning and purpose of human gender!

We see in this biblical vision the Woman as an icon of the Temple of God in whom He wants to dwell in His love for mankind. The Man, the male, we see as an image of the LORD, the Husband, who longs to dwell in His Holy Temple, the Woman, and to become one flesh with her who was built from his own rib to become ‘bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh.’ In the religious philosophical terms of antiquity, woman is given in the biblical vision as the embodied ‘soul of the soul.’

For, she originates from the rib of the Man. She originates from inside of him. She originates in absolute intimacy, an intimacy of love, with her husband – just as man, as male and female, originates from inside of God, in Christ, the Image of the invisible God (Col 1.15). You see then the ‘rubric’ that defines the relationship of man and woman is not power, as it is in the chauvinist and feminist agendas of the world, but the humility and mutual submission of loving intimacy. This is what makes the union of male and female in the sanctuary of the heart possible; and out of this union of loving intimacy and humility, man and woman create life, they produce children in the image and likeness of God.

Do you see? Man does not exist as male only, most certainly not as male and male, nor does he exist as female only, most certainly not as female and female. Such an arrangement is not at all holy, it is an abomination, for it is not of God. It is to live life wholly according to the ‘law of the flesh’ that passes away and rots in corruption. It is not to live life in the ‘Law of the Spirit’ that is eternal and that is ever new and fragrant in Wisdom, the fragrant Breath of the Power of God.

No, man exists as male and female. The biblical vision of the Church reveals that man, as male and female, exists as an icon of God cleaving in inexpressible love to His Bride, the Church, who is male and female. Existing as male and female, man is an image of the love of God in which all things came to be, and in which God raised us from death to life when we had fallen.

This is the icon we are that is uncovered when we are washed in the Church’s baptismal font. This is the icon in which we live and move and have our being when we give ourselves in love to God, our LORD and Savior, and when we seek our refuge not in the gods of this world, most certainly not in the law of the flesh, but in the LORD Jesus Christ. When we live in this icon, the LORD, the Only Lover of Mankind, begins to finish this icon in us that is uncovered in the baptismal Font as we live our life in chastity and in loving fidelity to God by keeping the commandments of God.

For the commandments of the LORD are permeated with His Spirit, so that when we do the LORD’s commandments, they draw us near to God until we have become one Spirit with Him, bone of His bones, flesh of His flesh who became through the Holy Virgin bone of our bones, flesh of our flesh.

The biography each of us is writing as we move through the days of our life is meant to be a spiritual ‘exodus,’ a movement through time that follows the LORD as we make our descent to our grave. By following the LORD into His Tomb, our life becomes a movement in time of uniting ourselves to Christ in the likeness of His death, so that we find our life in His Tomb. And if we find it in His Tomb, it means that we find our life on a never-ending ascent from glory to glory in the Resurrection and Ascension of Our LORD Jesus Christ into Heaven.

This is what it means to take up our Cross to follow the Savior. The Church gives us the Cross we are called to take up. She gives it to us in the LORD’s commandments, in Her ascetical disciplines. We take up the Cross by practicing the LORD’s commandments, by observing the Church’s ascetical disciplines according to our strength and circumstances, and by keeping ourselves sexually pure and faithful to our spouse. But, if the Cross is the concrete emblem of God’s love, then, to take up the Cross is take up the love of God. It is to clothe ourselves in the love of God. It is to put on Christ. It is to put on the love of God that is the Light the darkness cannot extinguish, the Light that is the Life of God that death cannot destroy. ‘Elevating’ the Cross on this Feast at the beginning of every New Year transfigures the movement of our life in time into a paschal movement from our death in Christ to our being born of His Holy Spirit as children of God in the embrace of Our Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God, in the embrace of Her Son and our God, Our LORD Jesus Christ. Amen!

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