What is important about the dance of Isaiah at weddings? (Feb. ’02)
Towards the end of the Sacrament of Marriage, the couple is led in procession around the sacramental table on which is the Gospel – the Word of God. The circle is a symbol of eternity and reminds us that marriage is a lifetime commitment. Christ is at the center of it. During the procession, three troparia are sung:
O Isaiah dance your joy, for the Virgin is with child; and shall bear a Son, Emmanuel both God and man! And Orient is His name, whom magnifying we call the Virgin blessed.
Holy Martyrs, who have fought the good fight and have received your crowns: entreat the Lord that He have mercy on our souls.
Glory to You, O Christ God, the Apostles’ boast, and the martyrs’ joy, whose preaching was the consubstantial Trinity.
These hymns remind us of the Scriptural qualities that ought to be present in marriage. The word martyria, in Greek, means to witness. The newly married couple is called to witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God, which came about through the birth of the Son of God from the Virgin, Mary. The joy that is celebrated through this uniting of man, woman and Christ is to parallel the joy that Isaiah had when he said, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God” (Isaiah 61:10).
Fr. John Meyendorff in his book, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, writes “The hymn begins in fact by a call to execute a ritual khorodia, well known both to the Jews of the Old Testament (David danced before the Ark of the Covenant, II Samuel 6:14) and to the ancient Greeks; and the triple circular procession of the bridal pair led by the priest around the sacramental table can be seen as a proper and respectful form of ‘liturgical dancing.’ ”
What is the significance of the wedding crowns? (Feb. ’02)
At the Sacrament of Marriage the crowns are placed on the bride and groom’s heads as the following prayer is recited three times, “The servant of God, (groom’s name), is crowned to the handmaid of God, (bride’s name), in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” three times. It is then repeated three times as the bride is crowned to the groom. We witness the groom and bride being crowned (visibly proclaimed) as the king and queen, respectively, of a new family, entrusted by God with the authority to rule their family in faith and love and harmony with Christ. They both share in this responsibility and privilege as a newly married couple. This is not simply being declared by the priest or even the Church, but by God Himself, as the following hymn is chanted three times: “O Lord, our God, crown them with glory and honor.” The crowns are then switched back and forth between the groom and bride’s head, signifying that they completely share their lives together.
The crowns also serve as a reminder of the crowns that await them in heaven, if they live their lives in faithfulness to God and each other.. Fr. John Meyendorff in his book, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, writes: “According to St. John Chrysostom, the crowns symbolized victory over the ‘passions.’ ” It is interesting to note that in the service of a second marriage the crowns are not to be used.
Many couples keep the wedding crowns in a case and display them near their icon corner or in the couple’s bedroom. They serve as a reminder that God has united them to each other and to Himself and that He has bestowed His grace upon them to live in unity, faith and love.
Why in the Orthodox tradition do we wear the wedding ring on the right hand? (Feb. ’02)
It has always been the tradition of the Church to place the wedding ring on the right hand of the couple based on biblical references. This is seen very clearly in one of the prayers in the Betrothal Service, but we don’t hear it in the Antiochian Archdiocese because of the abbreviated service that we use. A portion of the prayer refers to the biblical references: “For You, O Lord, have declared that a pledge is to be given and held inviolate in all things. By a ring Joseph was given might in Egypt; by a ring Daniel was exalted in Babylon; by a ring our heavenly Father showed compassion upon His prodigal son, for He said, ‘Put a ring upon his right hand, kill the fatted calf, and let us eat and rejoice.’ Your own right hand, O Lord, armed Moses in the Red Sea. By word of Your truth were the Heavens established and the earth set upon her sure foundations; and the right hands of Your servants shall be blessed by Your mighty word, and by Your uplifted arm.” As we see, it was scripturally the practice to wear rings on the right hand, the hand of authority and power completing the pledge of commitment. The power and authority comes from the right hand of God.
The practice of wearing rings on the left hand is rooted in superstition that says that there is a vein that goes from the left hand directly to the heart. This medieval superstition, like many others, was brought to America from Western Europe no doubt. Unfortunately, too many people today just follow what the majority in society do without truly understanding its meaning. Hopefully, with education and faith we will maintain the richness and meaningfulness of the Orthodox faith.
Why do we bless the grave and the body of the dead when the soul has already ascended? (Mar. '02)
We must first understand that our bodies are not our own. St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (6:19-20) writes, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Our bodies are not our own. They are God’s and we are expected to return them in the same pristine beauty that He created us – in His image and likeness. We sanctify our bodies throughout our lifetime with various sacraments and blessings. We sanctify the places where we live our lives – church, our homes, our cars, etc. Just because we have passed into eternal rest does not mean that our bodies are not God’s anymore, created in His image and likeness.
Secondly, we believe in the bodily resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, the body deserves an appropriate sanctified resting-place until the Second Coming. For this reason, we as Orthodox Christians go to the gravesite to pray for our departed loved ones.
The following prayer from the “Office for the Blessing and Consecration of the Place Where the Bodies of Christians Who have Reposed will be Buried” reminds us of the Church’s teaching regarding death, the body and the soul:
O God, by Whose mercy the souls of the faithful find rest, we fervently pray: O Lord, send down Your holy angel as the guardian of this cemetery and of the bodies that will be buried here, and be well-pleased to absolve the souls from the bonds of all their sins, that with all the saints they may be made glad endlessly, being always in You. O God Almighty, Eternal Father, and Most-holy Lord, Who are the sanctification of all places; Who makes them into better places; from Whom and by Whom all blessings proceed from heaven on earth: Be wellpleased to purify, bless and sanctify this place, that this cemetery be a sweet sleep and repose for the bodies coming to be buried here, and let it be filled with the ever-existing sweetness of Your delight. May Your servants dwell today in the Jerusalem on High, resting, rejoicing, and making glad, until the great Day of Judgment, when they will receive their bodies back from the graves, and that they will be strengthened to meet the Lord Who comes on the Judgment Seat, with the fruits of their good deeds. For You are the Resurrection, the Life and the Repose of Your servants who have fallen asleep, and to You we ascribe glory: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
It is also worth noting that one of the telltale signs that confirms the holiness of saints is that their bodies are incorrupt when examined. Therefore, the inspection of the body is an important part of the process in affirming that someone is a saint in the Orthodox Church. The bodies of the saints when exhumed have not decayed and often exude a sweet-smelling aroma as well. Eventually, the saints’ relics (bones) are then removed from the grave for veneration by the faithful. There are also numerous accounts of miracles that happen as a result of veneration offered in the presence of the relics of saints. These are clear examples that the body, even after death, ought to be treated with respect and reverence.
Why do people have out-of-body experiences? (Mar. '02)
A good treatment of “out of body experiences” is offered in the book The Soul, The Body and Death by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo. In short, he writes “out of body experiences are never real. They are either demonic hallucinations, phantasies or delusions, medical hallucinations or manifestations of mental illness.” The reasoning for this is that the soul cannot exist outside the body. They are inseparable until God chooses to receive the soul at the time of one’s death. To believe that God would remove a soul from the body and then place it back would suggest that God was in error and decided to somehow set things right. We know God to be perfect and free from error. He does not change His mind, like an indecisive human being. St. Gregory Palamas said, “To cause the mind (nous or soul) to abide outside the body itself, so as there to chance upon noetic spectacles, is the root and source of the very worst of pagan errors and of all heresies, an invention of demons, an instruction engendering folly and an offspring of senselessness.”
As for those near-death experiences and the bright light phenomena, there are medical explanations that shed light (no pun intended) on these events. They are a bit lengthy to explain here, but Archbishop Puhalo deals with them in his book. If we look at the scriptural examples of those raised from the dead (Lazarus and Dorcas), notice they never speak about what they experienced. Those things are beyond our comprehension. Suffice it to say God had other reasons for raising them from the dead.
What is the Church's view on ghosts? (Mar. '02)
In short, the Church does not believe in ghosts. The devil may plant the suggestion in a person’s mind that he sees things or people that aren’t there. Many of us have creative, and sometimes, destructive and dangerous imaginations. I have heard numerous stories of people convinced they have seen ghosts or spirits. To the best of my knowledge, none of them had anything to do with God. They were the result of overactive imaginations and fears, which can only be the work of the devil.
This is not to say that there are not legitimate visions that God presents to a select few. If we look back at the time of our Lord’s death, as accounted in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we are told that “the graves were opened; and many bodies of the Saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after (Jesus’) resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52-53). This happened so that the glory of God might be made known. So ask yourself when you think about such things as ghosts, does it offer glory to God? If you can answer yes, then you know it is authentic and pleasing to God. That is all we truly need to know.
Why does the date of Pascha differ from Western Easter so much? (May ’02)
Determining the date of Pascha has been an issue for the Church since its earliest days. Christian converts from Judaism who were familiar with the date of Passover would often celebrate Pascha on the same date of Passover. That date was the 14th day of the Hebrew month Nisan. In Asia Minor, the churches celebrated Pascha on the 14th of Nisan whether it fell on Sunday or a weekday. Many other churches celebrated Pascha on the Sunday that followed the 14th of Nisan.
Eventually, somewhere towards the end of the Second Century, the churches of Asia Minor agreed to celebrate Pascha with the other churches on the Sunday after the 14th of Nisan. So the date for the observance of Pascha was based on the Jewish Passover. The Jews celebrated the Passover on the first full moon following the vernal equinox.
With the dispersion of the Jews after the Destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., the date of calculating the beginning of the month of Nisan and the full moon of Passover varied due to the use of local pagan calendars. For this reason, many Christians stopped utilizing the Jewish Passover to determine the date for Pascha.
“Paschal cycles” were then devised as a way to determine the date of Pascha. Two cycles developed. In the East, they adopted a 19-year-cycle, while in the West they used a less accurate 84-year-cycle. Due to the usage of two different “Paschal cycles,” the Eastern and Western Churches had differences in when they would observe Pascha. Also added to the problem was the observance of the vernal equinox: the West used March 18th and the East March 21st.
Finally, in 325 A.D. at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea, the Church officially addressed the problem and stated how to determine the date of Pascha. The following rules are to be applied:
1) Pascha must be celebrated after the vernal equinox;
2) it must be celebrated after the first full moon following the vernal equinox;
3) it must be celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox;
4) and it must also follow the seven day period of the Passover.
As the main source for this answer, I relied on an explanation offered by Dr. Lewis Patsavos, Professor of Canon Law at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology that appeared in The Orthodox Church: 455 Questions and Answers by Fr. Stanley Harakas.
A lot of relationships end badly. There’s normally yelling, crying, people getting mad at each other, not being friends anymore, and sometimes it’s not even anybody’s fault! What are the Church’s teachings on this? Should I feel guilty when this stuff happens? Is any of it sinful? (June '02)
These questions are important for young people to understand. I have led retreats and workshops where this topic is treated over the course of many hours. I will do my best to offer a concise response here. Please note that for as many people as you ask these questions, you may likely get that many different responses.
I am assuming that when the term “relationship” is used here that it means boyfriend/ girlfriend. The ideal relationship for us to pursue is that of friendship and Christian love of our neighbor. It is in this context that we best learn through experience about one another. We discover the moral character and faith-based life, or lack of it, in the people we have been blessed to meet. Many of the problems mentioned above occur when we try to have exclusive relationships with people of the opposite sex. We tend to isolate ourselves from others so that we may build a special relationship. We forget that we live in community with others, be they family, friends, co-workers, church family, etc. We get into the twisted mindset that says, “All I need is him/her to make my life perfect!” That usually means pushing out or ignoring family and friends, not to mention God.
Friendship and Christ-like love should be at the heart of all relationships. This especially works well within group settings. It is within this setting that we are able to see people for who they truly are. We see how they interact with us and with others. When we are in a one-on-one relationship, we tend to create an artificial environment. In a larger setting of people, we experience more highs and lows and are presented with opportunities to minister to our neighbors. When we treat one another in such a fashion, the relationships don’t end, they simply mature to different levels. Even in a group setting, we are able to experience one-on-one relationships without the strains of exclusive “dating.”
To say that when a relationship ends, that sometimes it is nobody’s fault is not accurate. It is everyone’s fault. Jealousy, pride, possessiveness, lust, and other unloving acts and attitudes destroy relationships. We must take personal responsibility for our behavior, as well as the relationships that we enter. We are responsible for starting them and also have an obligation to maintain them in a healthy manner. And if we aren’t the person who seems to be acting badly, did we try to push the relationship further than the other person wanted it to go? Does that other person feel boxed in a corner? Have we lied to ourselves about what it really was all along?
You ask if it is sinful when these things happen in relationships. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. When we are angered at someone and sever a friendship, it is sinful. Those actions or reactions are not acts of love. We ought to pray for ourselves, and for others and our relationships with them. Jesus reminds us how it is that we are supposed to love. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12-13) If we have not loved in this way, then we need forgiveness because we have sinned.
The key is to be careful in how we treat our relationships with others. If we create exclusive relationships, isolating ourselves as a pair or couple from others, we are almost always setting ourselves up for failure. Almost every boyfriend/ girlfriend relationship we create is usually going to end in something other than marriage, which is that lifelong commitment to one another in a relationship with Christ. A book that helps understand all of this is I Kissed Dating Good-bye, by Joshua Harris. I highly recommend this book to all young people. It might help you avoid the pitfalls of the dating practices in the American culture that make teen-age lives so unnecessarily hard.
I recently checked the organ donor box for my driver’s license. Is this acceptable in terms of Orthodox teaching? (June '02)
To understand the answer to this questions, we need to realize that, contrary to popular belief, our bodies and our lives are not our own. We have been bought for a price, the great price paid for our salvation by Jesus Christ. Our bodies are given to us by God and belong to Him. They house the Spirit of God, which gives us life, so that with both our bodies and our souls we may grow in our relationship with God. We are expected to return them to God in the same condition he gave them to us. Unfortunately, many of us abuse our bodies in numerous ways (i.e. eating disorders, obesity, smoking, abusing alcohol, becoming couch potatoes, etc). We are ruining that right relationship between our bodies/ ourselves and our God.
There are those in the Orthodox Church who would say that because of what you have read in the paragraph above that we should not donate our organs. What God has given us in our bodies should be given back to God. It is not our right to give parts of ourselves away. There is also the entire discussion (which we cannot go into here) about our society’s obsession with seeking immortality through science (and every anti-aging product on the market) – instead of accepting death as a part of life and a passage back to God.
While that may be one way to look at the issue, the Patriarchate of Antioch has taken the position that it may be acceptable for us to be organ donors. If the donation is a gift of love - for the sake of the life of another and not selling your kidney to pay for a new sports car – then this life-saving act is good and right and worthy of blessing. As we read Jesus words in the Gospel of St John (15:13), “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That sacrifice for the love of another – most often a stranger – is accepted by some in the Church as the rationale for permitting organ donation.
As this all relates to the question of checking your Driver’s License to be an organ donor, I urge you NOT to do that. While doctors and hospitals are supposed to be ethical in not hastening a person’s death in order to harvest organs, the reality is that not all have proven to be ethical. (A world-class hospital the likes of the Cleveland Clinic faced criminal charges several years ago for such practices.) The reality is also that despite what you have put on your Driver’s License, in many states a family member will still be asked to sign papers giving the hospital permission to harvest organs.
The preferred practice would be to tell your family (parents or spouse) of your wishes, and put it in writing in a Living Will. Trust the people who know you the best to do what you feel to be right.
December 2002
The six weeks prior to Christmas (the Nativity of our Lord in the Flesh) is a fasting period that many call Advent. Advent means “coming.” It is that period of time when we find ourselves waiting for the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ. (All three terms mean the same thing.) For this reason, it has a different character than other fasting periods. Although there is an element of preparation involved, it is not the same as the Great Fast that precedes Holy Week and Pascha.
The liturgical preparation is limited to the two Sundays before the Nativity and the five days leading up to the feast. Those two Sundays we are reminded of the Holy Ancestors of God and the Holy Fathers, Patriarchs, and Prophets who played a role in the coming of the Messiah. In the hymns of the Sunday cycle of services, we hear of their great faith and are called to build our own.
For most of us, we are anxious to get to the feast — we want the days to rush by. Our preparation usually consists of shopping and decorating, not to speak of the endless parties that we are invited to attend. Here is where the notion of waiting comes into play. We must discipline ourselves through self control and patience. We are to read the Scriptures, specifically the prophecies that speak of the coming of the Messiah. We are to turn our focus to a Godly way of life that calls for sacrificing and almsgiving (acts of mercy). Let us think of charity and the giving of our time, talents, and resources to others that may be in need. There is no better way to imitate Christ than to be loving and charitable towards others.
A word to the wise — put Christ back into Christmas. Find the meaning of the feast by understanding the importance of the Son of God taking on human flesh. Remember the real reason for the season is that Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, came into the world and dwelt among men, taking on Himself the sins of the world so that we might have life in Him.
“God is with us! Understand O nations and submit yourselves, for God is with us!” (Isaiah 8:9)
How come on Sunday at the Divine Liturgy some people kneel in church and some don't? (Dec. ’02)
Let us look to the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea (325 AD). The 20th Canon which states that on the Lord’s day (Sunday) and from Easter through Pentecost all must pray standing and not kneeling. Canon 90 from the Council in Trullo (692 AD) reinforces Canon 20 from Nicea and specifies that the celebration of the Resurrection on Sunday begins with the entrance at Vespers on Saturday evening through the entrance at Vespers on Sunday evening. We don’t kneel because kneeling is a posture of repentance. On that day we are not repenting, but celebrating the Resurrection.
During the week it is appropriate to kneel as an act of repentance and faithfulness. Since many Orthodox Christians don’t attend liturgical services throughout the week, the practice developed in many parishes to kneel on Sunday at the Divine Liturgy during the Consecration of the Gifts. It has become an act of piety for some and an act of following the crowd for others.
Ideally, we would have the opportunity to participate in the daily cycle of church services, but very few of our parishes offer them. In our daily prayer life, when possible, we ought to assume a kneeling posture for prayer as a humbling gesture before God. Then on Sundays, we would feel the obligatory desire to kneel but would piously stand in reverence throughout the service.
Also, I might add that the normative postures for prayer in the Orthodox Church are standing or kneeling — not sitting. Seats were available for the elderly and infirm in our mother churches. It wasn’t until the Protestant influence in America, that Orthodox churches adopted the regular use of pews. The Protestants had the pews due to the lengthy sermons, which are the focal part of their services.