Shcho to za Predivo: What a wonder! Glad the news I bring you

Every so often I find a carol or hymn in another language that appears not to have a translation that would enable it to be sung in English.

Among the abundant patrimony of Christmas carols, in which the culture of Ukraine abounds, especially among the Greek Catholics, is this poignantly tender and beautiful beautiful meditation on the news that the Virgin who has given birth to Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man, is also the first to adore him; how Joseph who is identified as an old man helps to bring in the newborn Christ as Saviour. It also hints how the mother who holds Jesus in the swaddling clothes will one day hold him when he is taken down from the Cross, to be wrapped this time in graveclothes. Yet she does not weep for the loss of her own son alone, but loves the Son who has come as the Lord himself, the Saviour of all.

It is not easy to translate from Ukrainian metre into English verse, as the patterns of the languages, and thus who they are sung, are different. But I hope this offering, with a few rhymes within, will work and enable people to sing with the Christians of Ukraine with tenderness and adoration - and indeed faith and hope. A YouTube link to a lovely rendering of it by a student choir in America, to the setting by Vasyl Barvinskiy, is here:

The translation, such as it is, I dedicate to me dear friend and fellow pilgrim in Australia - Sister Marie Farrell rsm.

Hristos rozhdayetsya! Christ is born: Happy Christmas.

Glad the news I bring you:

"Earth to joy restored;

For to you a Saviour,

Christ is born, our Lord."

See the holy Virgin Mary,

She who bore Him, then adore Him:

“Jesu, my dear Son!”

 

In that cave the old man,

Joseph, see prepare

cloths, to swathe Messiah, 

Jesu, with all care.

Mary mild see in them fold Him,

to her heart more closely hold Him,

Pure Mother of God.

 

Ukrainian traditional carol for the Nativity of Christ. Translation © Mark Woodruff 23.12.2022

The Great Martyr: Sermon on Low Sunday and the Feast of St George, Parish Church of St George, Hanover Square, London W1, 24th April 2022

Christ is risen!

So little is known of St George that in the 1960s his feast was downgraded in the Calendar of the Roman Church and it was even suspected that he may have been legendary. But surely that is the point of our following Jesus Christ, that it is not for our achievements and significance that we are remembered, but simply for taking up our Cross after him, faithful unto death. So it is for this that he is venerated in the Christian East, as one of those known as the Great Martyrs on account of their exceptional witness to Christ, in the face of exceptional barbarity.

This was a career-soldier of such great skill, integrity and loyalty that he served in the elite guards of the Emperor Diocletian in the late third century. Diocletian was an able ruler and military leader, bringing peace and stability to the vast empire under tensions within and from without. Yet economic and political problems shadowed the image of an all-competent autocrat, and it was convenient to blame religious minorities for supposedly undermining the imperial administration. You can imagine George’s pride in his part in restoring law and order in the Empire, and the despatch of its external enemies under Diocletian’s generalship. George would have been a man set for great things, as his service record extended with further honours and rising prospects for promotion in the Praetorian Guard. Except, that he was a Christian. Previously his problematic religion may have been tolerated; but now it was to blame for poor government performance, according to those who spin popular opinion. It seems that George had earlier come to Diocletian’s favourable attention, since, after the official exclusion of Christians had begun in earnest in 302, followed by outright persecution in 303, Diocletian and his officials may have sought to retain him, while others were put to the sword. Privations and tortures in mounting severity were meant to deter him from his Christianity; easing them an incentive to embrace the official Roman religion and its cult of the Emperor. You may imagine his protest of unimpeachable loyalty, and his appeal to his exemplary service record. There is even a story of the Empress Alexandra, and how the brutality led her first to admire the dignity and loyalty of the soldier who had done nothing to deserve such dishonour, and then to recognise the power of his faith in Christ as her own.

Not more than a few hundred yards from this Church is the road along which Christian martyrs were carted for many decades from Newgate prison at the City of London to their cruel dismemberment and execution at Tyburn, protesting their loyalty to England and to Queen Elizabeth I, but rejected as traitors for being Catholics and priests, such as I am. We know from contemporary accounts how many of them were loved as pastors and holy people by the wider population, not just the Catholic community. We also know that these martyrdoms, whatever the exuberance of some elements in the crowds, were also observed with silence and grave respect by others. I should recall that the executions of Protestants under Queen Mary were no less ill-advised and repellent to humane Catholics, who no more sought for the Reformation Protestants the violent repression that their co-religionists had endured under Henry VIII and Edward VI and would again endure under Elizabeth. By the time St George’s was built, England had exhausted itself of religious blood-letting and civil war. St George’s was to provide a new sacred space of godly learning and glorious music, especially that of Händel, that has been part of the shaping of our nation’s culture and Christian civilisation. Even while penal restrictions on Catholic Christians persisted, another nearby sanctuary of God’s adoration and freedom in the Holy Spirit arose for Catholics, at the Church of the Assumption and St Gregory on Warwick Street. Today we address our differences with the honest reconciliation of memory, and the practice of ecumenism and friendship, as well as in united service of those in need. We realise that we do not defend separate sides but are heirs to a history held in common. We are able to love, because we have been all been brought to our knees by the suffering of those who went before us, whose lives were called out of their bodies for being faithful to Christ, and because the hardness of heart in all of us has been melted by beauty and forgiveness, in worship and its music.

Both St George’s and the Assumption quietly stand in monumental witness to what has been sacrificed for faith in the past, and what is held in store for those who hope and trust. As St James has reminded us this morning, “The trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire” (James 1. 3-4). St George was certainly patient in his faith sorely tried in 303. His remains are venerated to this day in the Holy Land, and the crown of a life made perfect and entire is his. In his company are the martyrs whose relics are enshrined at Tyburn Convent, St John Southworth at Westminster Cathedral, and those Reformers whose memorials stand close to Smithfield at St James’s, Clerkenwell.

Yet these are not remembrances of death, but of life. The feast of St George that we celebrate today has fallen in the Octave of Easter; and he and they are witnesses that all who have been baptized into Christ, were “baptized into his death, thus buried in order to be raised with Him from the dead through the glory of the Father, and walk in newness of life” (Romans 6. 3-4). The remains of St George at Lod and of the saints in all kinds of other shrines, together with all the Churches raised in their honour, are not memorials to a life that receded into the past, but they are, so to speak, relics of Christ’s act of resurrection and edifices of the Kingdom that is now and for ever. For “every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15.2). Our holy and honoured martyrs and heroes were not destroyed, but made fruitful for more vigorous growth and enduring life: life that is not mere survival in this world, but the fulness of life in eternal heaven lived now upon temporary earth.

Today in our Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, owing to ancient calendrical calculations by which we and the West over time fell out of step, it is Pascha, Easter Day. We sing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs giving life.” We are singing this dozens of times today because yesterday we sang, “Today the Abyss sighed and cried out, My power has been destroyed. For I received a dead Man as one of their dead, but I could not hold Him. Then I also lost with Him all those who were under His power. From the beginning I held the dead, but now this One raises them. Glory to Your Cross and resurrection, O Lord.”

I cannot fail to recall those people who are our fellow Christians in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the Reformed Baptist Church, Ukrainian Jews and Muslims, and other Ukrainian people, all of whom have done nothing wrong and provoked nothing, but only served and lived, like St George, with faithful love, integrity, and loyal virtue. This week we have heard of horrific sexual attacks inflicted upon children, women and even young soldiers taken captive. Several of our churches around the world have been desecrated, and a priest managed to save his children with only moments to spare after his wife was woken and saw an intruder light petrol poured through their door while they slept. At the beginning of Lent, a priest was confronted at gunpoint by a soldier pretending to be a monk ordering him to abandon his Catholic faith by either becoming Russian Orthodox or a pagan, saying, “It makes no difference”. And at the end of Lent on Good Friday, a car was driven at speed right into our cathedral at Ternopil, destroying the Cross and the Shroud of Christ that we lay out for the people who pour out their love and devotion before them.

We have no argument with our Russian and Russian Orthodox friends - our people wish they had no argument with us. What we cannot understand is why Christian hearts, after the receding past of enmity and estrangement, should abandon the dialogue of love and instead turn on other Christians, harming the innocent on the days of Christ’s own trials, even on the feast when He brings nothing but life and peace - and not destruction, but salvation and his own divine beauty. St George’s is a haven of this beauty that saves the world, a potent symbol of faithful discipleship in the footsteps of Christ, and the beacon of St George its patron who followed Him as far as death and into the kingdom of life that is everlasting. So may St George, who is also the patron of this our beloved homeland, as well as patron of the City of Moscow, by his patient endurance, by the perfection with which he was crowned, pray for those entrusted to his intercession, break the hearts of those who have chosen to be evil, and share with them the gift he himself has received – peace and resurrection, and the life of a Kingdom that is not of this world but which we pray every day will come on earth as it is in heaven.

St George the Great Martyr, pray for us. Glory to England. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory for ever. Christ is risen.

Music: Prayer for Ukraine

Here are again are the Latin-script transliteration and my attempt at a verse translation of the Prayer for Ukraine, Ukraine's national spiritual anthem, by Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900).

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaya, mnohaya lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

God, bless all our land and people,

With happiness and many years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959-). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

Here is the music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) with the Latin-script text in Ukrainian.

Here is the music with the English translation.

Glory to Jesus Christ: The Church in Ukraine and its faithfulness to the Eucharistic Lord, Homily for the Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Maiden Lane, 3rd March, 2022

 + Glory to Jesus Christ!

Father Alan, whose birthday it is today - and we wish you many congratulations - asked me some weeks ago to preach on the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist from an Eastern Christian point of view and I prepared something. In light of the last seven days, I was not happy with it at all and I tore it up. So what I'm going to tell you about tonight comes straight from the heart of the Ukrainian Catholic Community in London, where I serve week by week, month by month.

I look after the Liturgies for English-speakers at the Cathedral of the Holy Family and I am a trustee of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy, on loan, so to speaks, as a priest of the Latin diocese of Westminster. I stand before you having come from that community in the most terrifying week since the fall of the Soviet Union when all hopes rose that the hell of communist persecution of Christians and the suppression of our Catholic Church was over for good. Yet now we face being back in 1944 when the empire of Russia at last managed to seize the whole of Ukraine and closed down our ancient Church and expropriated all its patrimony, its people, and martyred its bishops. In clear view of the threat to all Ukrainians, the Prime Minister came to us on Sunday to show his unequivocal support. Yesterday came the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to encourage us. It has been an amazing week, as the priests have been absorbing the anxiety of the people and their worries about their homes, their family, their loved ones, as well as their land and their future.

What I want to tell you about today, in describing what they have been going through, is why they are who they are and why they are important to the Roman Catholic Church - because this is one of two dozen other churches that are much smaller than the Latin Catholic Church, but are full Churches in their own right in fullness of Communion with it and, through the Church of Rome led by the successor of Peter, all  with one another. I hope you will understand, as I set out some of the history and some of the recent stories of people, why this Church and our union of East and West is so important; and furthermore why it is the Blessed Eucharist that we share with each other as fellow Catholics (in the hope of Union with the Orthodox too) that is the centre of our lives, and why it is the shining light, bringing brilliance from another world into this dark period.

Most people tend to think that the East is a separate church - the Orthodox Church. Well, the lands that we now call Ukraine, along with other parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, were evangelised in the 9th century in a joint mission from Rome and Constantinople - the Church of the East and the Church of the West together, but from out of the Greek Christian culture. Part of the reason for this was because the Slavic people did not want to be dominated by the Western Christians rulers in Germany, which would have been easier if they were to become Latins like them. They wanted a Christian religion, culture and form of worship of their own. Thus it was that in the year 868 Pope Adrian blessed the books in the Slavonic language that had been prepared by SS. Cyril and Methodius, whom you may remember were made joined patrons of Europe along with St Benedict by Pope St. John Paul II.

This evangelisation had been under way, extending well into Ukraine when In the year 987, the Grand Prince of Kyiv, which is at the centre of the land called Rus’ (a word from which we later derived both the name of Ruthenia and Russia, even though it was appropriated by a new empire around Moscow to the exclusion of the original people around Kyiv), Volodymyr (also known as Vladimir) decided to pacify and unite the people under his rule in a single faith, and decided that, after decades of living and ruling as a pagan, he and they would be baptised as Eastern Christians. I am sure you have heard the famous story that he sent emissaries across the known world to assess which religion would be right.

He no longer saw that the love that the people held for their many and rival gods was a true and loving faith, as it was rooted in fear and violence rather than peace and good law. The emissaries examined the religion of the Muslims and Volodymyr rejected the prohibition of pork and alcohol. They considered the faith of the Jewish people, but reported that it not only prohibited pork but seemed to be missing the heart of its own religion with the loss of Jerusalem. They went to the Latin rite Germans and so no great beauty there. But from the Great Church in Constantinople - the vast Cathedral known as Hagia Sophia, that is now a mosque again, they returned with a report that, having witnessed their Divine Liturgy, “We no longer knew whether we were in Heaven or on Earth, nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it. We only know that God dwells there among the people, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations.”

When he heard this, Volodymyr knew that he had found the path forward to lead his realm and people in the faith of Christ. The following year, in the Greek city of Chersonesus, at the south-western tip of Crimea, Volodymyr was baptised before his people and married the sister of the Byzantine Emperor. In other words, he had received the gift of faith and thus for ever formed the Christian identity of Eastern Europe, by the pledge of grace that would come for him from the sacrament of the Eucharist.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!” (John 20.29)

Still at that moment, the churches of East and West in Europe were in union. Sadly, this disintegrated after the Great Schism began in 1054, and so developed a division of the Churches into Catholic and Orthodox. But the memory of the integrity of East and West remained foundational for both, and there were repeated attempts to achieve re-integration. Substantial misunderstandings grew about theology and language that have kept both traditions wary of what re-union might imply, as they seek to be faithful to the tradition they have received. In our century I believe we have become very close to solving them. There are semantic and doctrinal difficulties that need not, after all, be church-dividing and which can be put right with faithful mutual understanding.

Indeed, there was a major attempt at repair arising from the Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1439, but efforts to win its acceptance did not survive the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.  It was not, however, forgotten. When the Church of Kyiv and the surrounding Rus’ or Ruthenian regions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth found themselves variously threatened by Muslim forces from the south and east the other Orthodox, and also a new state that had freed itself from the Muslim yoke in the form of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, they strongly sensed isolation from other Orthodox churches and because of the missionary activities of both Latin Catholics and Protestants. They could not easily be in communication with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, the ancient mother Church, because he himself was under the control of the Ottomans. So, in 1596, the Church of the Rus’, with the support of Constantinople, decided that its future security and development lay in the restoration of the unity that they had had with the Church of Rome in the beginning, and hope for better days when the unity of all Catholics and Orthodox might be recovered. So began the Eastern Catholic Church in the east of Europe.

Over time, this unity with Rome of the Eastern Church in Kyiv which had originally covered Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of what are now Poland and Russia, dissolved. First, Muscovy became the newly named Russian empire and absorbed the Rus’ lands, and imposed its own form of Orthodoxy on the Rus’, Ruthenian, Ukrainian people, out of communion with Rome. By the time of the 19th century, the remaining Greek Catholics – Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome - were confined to the west of what is now Ukraine, no longer in Communion with their fellow Byzantine Christians in the rest of the historic lands. Going forward to the Second World War, although it survived in the diaspora and underground, the continuance of this Church body in its homeland was no longer possible. With the invading Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church is imposed upon the Greek Catholics of all Ukraine. A false Greek Catholic synod is set up in Kiev in 1944, but without the Church’s bishops, who are puts into prison and concentration camps. The Soviets force the clergy to accept union with Moscow and to abandon centuries of Catholic communion. The bishops are martyred; their churches are taken away from the people as well as the practice of their Eastern Catholic faith; the seminaries are closed; the hospitals that the Church ran, all the aid and social agencies that the Church had built up were destroyed, or expropriated and given to another Church, or else given to profane use by the Communists. This is in living memory for some people. It is also living memory for some of our priests who were ordained in the catacombs to serve the faithful, meeting in the forests and cellars at the risk of their lives.

Just this last weekend, the priests were once again in people's basements, underground metro stations, or in forests away from the bombs, celebrating the Holy Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, for the faithful. Once again, the bishops have not escaped the threat of evil or left their people, standing with them and ready for what may come. Once again the people’s faith, even though it be suppressed, is strong, believing not against other Christians, but in favour of Catholic unity and the solidarity of the Church. In Ukraine for many years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has been at the forefront of building bridges and creating a “civilisation of love”, trying to make a just and truthful, independent and glorious society, that is not bowed under tyranny, but stands under the freedom of the rule of law, itself founded in the Christian virtues and goodness that our Church stands for and seeks to live by.

A few weeks ago, we managed to extract two of our seminarians, who are not Ukrainian - one British and one American – to bring them back here. They were meant to continue their studies here. Every day they have had their lectures and seminars from the seminary in a village outside Kyiv online. On Thursday, however, it became clear that the seminary could no longer continue on site. So we set up our own makeshift off-shoot seminary for them in London, and I am their spiritual director. They have been in daily touch with their confrères, and seen for themselves how the seminary has had to be abandoned for the time being in the face of the threat of invasion. The neighbouring village has already been destroyed, so this is a time of great danger for them. The villagers, who are mostly Orthodox, had turned to them because they knew they always had a welcome from the Greek Catholics; so the seminary has given the buildings over to the villagers as the basement can serve both for storage and a shelter from bombs. In return, the Orthodox people said to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic students, “Take our cars! Get away home to your family!” Some of the students have gone to Kyiv, just a few to the west, to be with our patriarch, the Archbishop, remaining with the people at the cathedral in Kyiv. Some of them have gone to seminaries in Ternopil and Lviv. Some others have joined units to fight for the defence of Ukraine, their homeland, thus to give spiritual support to the other soldiers. Some have gone to help at medical facilities, or to train as firefighters, or to other relief and rescue tasks.

You can imagine the frustration of our two seminarians in London. One of them, who was a journalist in the US before he began in seminary, asked for a blessing to go back to be with his fellow seminarians in what they were doing, but to offer his skills as an interpreter and journalist, so that the international press could show what is going on and the evil that is being perpetrated. The English seminarian is doing his part in supporting our London cathedral parish, helping the faithful in their prayers and hopes, and joining in the preparations for the many displaced people that we are expecting.

Why is all this important? It is not just a tale of exile. On Sunday, we heard that Father Maxime, an Orthodox priest, belonging to the Ukrainian, not the Russian-linked Orthodox Church, was found by Russian soldiers. When his identity and his Church was revealed, they killed him, a martyr for the sake of Christ, a priest who ministers at the Altar and feeds the faithful with the Body and Blood of Christ, which we have come here today to celebrate and to venerate. They did not even allow his body to be taken away for burial. Then yesterday, as the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall came to our Cathedral, we heard that a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, one of the brethren of the priests that I work with, was confronted by a soldier dressed up as a monk with a rifle, who said to him, “Renounce your Catholic faith and become Russian Orthodox. If you don't want to become Russian Orthodox, it makes no difference to us if you give up Christianity entirely and become a pagan. We don't care, as long as you are not a Catholic.” Thanks be to God, this man was a rogue and, when the people arrived, off he went and the priest’s life was saved. Also yesterday, after the Royal Couple had gone home, somebody turned up at our door -a refugee priest. He had been here to see his family in Manchester, and was now trapped able to get home to his wife and children. He speaks excellent English, so we are going to keep him, and try and get his family to England to be with him. But it gives you some idea of what is so deeply at stake.

Now I just want to approach the end by adding this point. I know a lot of traditional Catholics in this country have admired Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for his apparent alignment with the Orthodox faith, and his commitment to traditional Christian values, when he describes the West as abandoning them. The statistics on the protection of unborn children, marriage and divorce, poverty and the treatment of minorities and state repression of freedom and justice do not, however, bear out this presentation of a national Christian spirituality. So here is what a senior bishop, working in eastern Europe, has said of Putin and his deadly régime:

 

It is not that these people are intelligent. It is not that they believe in anything that they tell you. It is that they are very well trained, such that they know how, without conscience, to tell the truth as if it were a lie, and to tell a lie as if it were the truth. Nothing gets in the way of the purposes of raw power. And you realise that, looking into the face of such men, you're looking into the face of pure evil.

This is why His Royal Highness the Prince Charles yesterday, just as he left the door with all the children there who had sung songs and all the people working on the relief that is going to Ukraine as we speak (in just four days that community has raised two million pounds, a poor community, from their own pocket!), he turned back and said, “I almost forgot - Slava Ukraini!”, Glory to Ukraine, to which they responded with pride, “Heroiam slava”, Glory to the heroes who have given their lives in the cause of freedom, peace and justice. It echoes the salutation that we give so very often, and that I gave at the beginning: “Glory to Jesus Christ: Glory forever!” And it is in his life and spirit that we extend it, just to and for all, especially for this devout nation, where there are so many good believers in Christ, denied their happiness by cruel invaders sowing division not of their making.

Nothing I say today is against the Russian Orthodox Church, or its faithful, in whose name none of this is taking place, and who also seek their own independence, security, goodness, truth and prosperity in their own country land. It's for their deliverance that we pray, too. On the radio on Sunday, our Bishop Kenneth, prayed for Victory and the interviewer said, “Victory? Are you sure a Christian priest should be praying for Victory in a war?” He said, “Yes. If we do not pray for Victory, if we do not pray for the victory of the Christian people, evil will be victorious, and then the Dark will truly have descended on the world.”

So for that reason, dear friends, thank you for your patience in listening to me. Thank you for your understanding, and sharing with your prayers in the plight of the Ukrainian people. Thank you for your faithfulness to Catholic unity. Thank you for your devotion to the Most Blessed Eucharist, and the way in which the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, opens up to us Heaven on Earth, as we receive Jesus Christ in His Body and Blood. Thank you for your faithfulness and your persevering in goodness. Thank you for your hopes, and thank you for your loving adoration of Jesus Christ for the sake of the world that He gave His life for. To Him be “Glory for ever”.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Visiting Lviv to give a lecture at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2016, I was very moved to hear this sung in the midst of a concert of spiritual and cultural music of many Ukrainian traditions. The whole audience silently stood up as soon as it began; and I was told that it was immensely significant to Ukrainian people of all faiths, for the sake of the "Heavenly Hundred", those innocent people killed at the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when the Ukrainian people brought about the removal of a corrupt regime and insisted on their liberty to pursue their own free, democratic European future. Since then, I have continued to be moved when I have served at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. It is not the national anthem, but it is the national hymn and prayer. Originally, it was written for a chorus of children, and perhaps that is why the generations have continued to take it to their hearts. Perhaps it is like "Jerusalem" for someone from England, except that in the past, and hopefully not in the future, singing it was forbidden and could come with imprisonment and torture for supposed treason.

The Prayer for Ukraine on YouTube

It is not my own nation's song, but I sing it in solidarity with my friends and the people whom I have come to love very dearly, and whom I love to serve and worship with. I can only imagine what they are feeling and going through; and I have shed many tears for them and with them. For those who wish to sing it with Ukrainians in the same spirit, but in English, I provide a verse translation below. God protect Ukraine with His shield and His love.

The Prayer for Ukraine

Oleksandr Konysky (1836-1900) to music by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912)

Боже великий, єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Волі і світу промінням
Ти її осіни.

Світлом науки і знання
Нас, дітей, просвіти,
В чистій любові до краю,
Ти нас, Боже, зрости.

Молимось, Боже єдиний,
Нам Україну храни,
Всі свої ласки й щедроти
Ти на люд наш зверни.

Дай йому волю, дай йому долю,
Дай доброго світу, щастя,
Дай, Боже, народу
І многая, многая літа.

Transliteration:

Bozhe velykyi, yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Voli i svitu prominnyam,
Ty yii osiny.

Svitlom na-uky i znannya
Nas, ditey, prosvity,
V chystii liubovi kraiu,
Ty nas, Bozhe, zrosty.

Molymos', Bozhe yedynyi,
Nam Ukrainu khrany,
Vsi svoi lasky y shchedroty,
Ty na liud nash zverny.

Dai yomu voliu, dai yomu doliu,
Dai dobroho svitu, shchastia,
Dai, Bozhe, narodu
I mnohaia, mnohaia lita.

Translation:

Lord, God alone, the Almighty,

Hold our Ukraine in your hand;

Shine with the rays of your glory

Liberty on our land.

 

Lighten our learning and wisdom,

Keep your children in your heart;

Love that is pure for our homeland,

Lord our God, now impart. 

 

Merciful God, the Almighty,

Guard our Ukraine in your care.

Turn to our people and country,

Send your grace at our prayer.

 

Grant us our freedom, grant us our future,

Guide all our endeavour;

Bless us, God, our land and people,

And grant [us] many, man[y] years, for ever.

Translation © Mark Woodruff (1959- ). Freely available with acknowledgement on Creative Commons basis.

To You, O Lord: the Direction of the Liturgy in Christ - Homily at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, London Eucharistic Octave, Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Covent Garden, 16 September 2021

It is claimed that the word Liturgy means the work (ergon) of the laos, the people of God. But its true sense is that of a public service. And the name of the Divine Liturgy makes it clear that here is our public service to God.  Whereas in the thinking of the West, liturgy can refer to the faithful execution and study of all the rites in general, par excellence in the Eastern Churches using the Byzantine rite, the Liturgy is immediately recognised as the term for the Holy Eucharist. Perhaps it is ironic that a word for the Liturgy of Greek origin, Eucharist, referring to the sacrifice of thanksgiving, is relatively less usual in the East, while the term Liturgy in the West does not have such a potent connotation with the Mass. Yet Mass also has a meaning of a loving duty discharged. We can see what we both mean in what St Paul says:  

I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. Romans 12.1

 

By reasonable worship, St Paul means an entire self-offering within the Reason of God: in other words, the Logos, the Word of God, Who was breathed into the world by the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Mother of God at Nazareth. There is a related expression in the Roman Mass, when the priest holds his hands over the holy gifts and prays that the offering will be blessed, acknowledged, and approved: he says, “make it spiritual and acceptable”. Here the word spiritual translates rationabilis, reasonable, as in St Paul’s word logike about our worship of complete self-oblation within the life of Christ the Word, and by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

In the Divine Liturgy which you are about to see unfold, therefore, you will not so much see our action, as that of the Trinity taking its effect on us. The structure of the rite is about moving and journey, not only through this world but in and out of the world that is to come, and that is the Kingdom that is already upon us and within us (Luke 17.21). Did not St Paul also conclude, “It is not I who live, but Christ Who lives within me”? (Galatians 2.20) So we are drawn into His life within the Trinity. You have already heard the first of the many blessings on us of the Trinity; and every prayer ends with a doxology to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You will have heard the commands to stand aright and be attentive – standing because that is the attitude of our resurrection, which to us is not something of the future for it is the life that already inhabits us now. Christ is risen, we all are risen. And in a few moments, our resurrection will lead to our ascension, as we recognise and genuinely see ourselves as those who in the world mystically represent the Cherubim, laying aside the cares of this life, so that we may receive the King of all coming to us on the Altar, escorted by the Angels.

 

And then, when we have reached the threshold where we are about to tread into the courts of heaven itself, even though we are here in this world, the priest will tell us not just to stand, but to stand well, and offer what St Paul said: our reasonable, spiritual worship, of our entire self-offering. But not on our own in isolation, since we are in Christ the Word, Christ our God, Who is the oblation of oblations, filling the universe; that, being all in all, we are assumed into His offering of Himself and everything He fills in this forthcoming Holy Oblation.

 

In a sense we must never leave the heaven to which we have ascended in the Divine Liturgy. Our faith must hold this in its eyes, to overcome and overrule whatever sin or shortcoming comes next, because nothing can ever take away the reality that in this moment we were in the Kingdom of Heaven - no less than we believe, just as we pray according to the Lord’s instruction, that the same Kingdom of Heaven comes on earth in this Daily Bread.

 

One of the beautiful prayers that a priest or deacon sometimes says as he is about to receive the Holy Communion begins, “Behold I approach our immortal King and God”. It always moves me to think of the shepherds at Bethlehem, or the arrival of the Magi to present their gifts. Yet here I have nothing to offer, since, even though the priest has asked to be allowed to offer the Oblation, it is Christ our God who offers and is offered; Christ who receives and is given. So we remain caught up in the two directions of Christ’s own movement: always offering and offered, giving and received between earth and heaven, devoted to being in both. Here we have no abiding City, it is said (Hebrews 13.14), but we do not feel restless as we journey on in this world, as if we were aimless and uncertain of our Promised Land. For it has already come to us, and admitted us as its citizens. Our way of living is not to reject the world for which Christ came and died to give it life, but for each member of the Church to place it in its true setting – the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus “the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ.” (Revelation 11.15)

 

When you receive Holy Communion, you will receive it standing -standing, because we are in the resurrection and this is our ascension in union with the Lord into the Trinity. You will receive in both kinds from a mixed chalice, by means of a spoon. Everyone will have their own spoon, so there is no reason to fear. The bread is leavened bread, just the same as when the Lord spoke of himself as the living Bread, His flesh given for the life of the world.

 

Having received, as we say, “the divine, holy, immortal,  heavenly and lifegiving, awesome Mysteries of Christ”, you will see why it is that we have no hesitation in speaking confidently in the terms of religion and faith about Christ as our God, because the priest will ask you at this exalted moment of Communion once more to commend yourself, in union with that sacrifice acceptable to God, your endless, reasonable, spiritual worship of your whole being, saying, “Let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.” And a final time, this time in complete union with Him, you will reply, “To You, O Lord.” For this is what the Divine Liturgy comes to: Him.  You will sing with us, “We have seen the true light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true faith. And we worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.”

 

On this footing, at one with Christ, standing in His resurrection and ascension,  representing the cherubim, and treading the court of God’s presence with the Mother of God and all the saints, we shall receive the blessing of God from His Cross and see that truly “He is good, and He loves mankind”.

Reflection on St John Chrysostom on the Anniversary of his Death, for the Eastern Christians Prayer Group, Fellowship & Aid to the Christians of the East

READING - Ephesians 4.1-7, 11-13

I, Paul, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through all and in all.

But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The gifts He gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

REFLECTION - by Father Mark Woodruff, Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom

At first sight, St Paul’s address to the new Christians of Ephesus on the western coast of what is now Turkey is about our faith in the Persons of the Holy Trinity and the gifts with which our baptism has equipped us to serve the building up of all humanity into the body of Christ. So indeed it is. But look again, and St Paul is saying that this first comes out of a lived experience of adversity (his imprisonment), sacrifice of self (humility), endurance (patience, and bearing with others) and redemption that take what is amiss and converts it permanently into good (love marked by forgiveness, and God’s calling that makes good on hope), because the body into which we are baptised is that of the Father’s Son nailed to the Cross, which He endured to bring our salvation into effect.

St John is a second St Paul. His eloquence and spiritual imagination flow through abundant writings. 1687 letters and sermons reveal a lively mind, beautifully communicating from his direct encounter with Christ, and faith distilled through adversity for His sake. His preaching gained him the title ‘Chrysostomos’, the Golden Mouth, not only because what he said warmed people’s hearts and convinced their belief and discipleship, but because it rang true coming from John. What Paul said of himself, is true of Chrysostom too: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” How did this life take shape?

He was born in the third city of the eastern Roman empire, Antioch, in around 345. An outstanding literary, philosophy and rhetoric scholar with a successful public career ahead of him, in 374 he chose instead to live for God in the severely ascetical life of monk. It was not until 386 that he was ordained priest, when his exceptional oratorical skills were revealed in the straightforward practicality, vivid imagery and convincing moral appeal of his sermons, as well as the rich insight of his commentaries on the Scriptures. Having brought about the reconciliation of the sees of Antioch and Alexandria with old Rome after a loss of communion for seven decades, in 397 he was the outstanding candidate to be the new Archbishop of new Rome, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire, Constantinople. The people of Antioch did not wish to lose him, so to evade opposition to his election, he left in secret to be consecrated away from the public eye.

Immediately, the consequence of faithful preaching “in season and out of season” in Constantinople began. While his inspiring illustrations of the Scriptures and his clear preaching, applying Christ and faith to real life, endeared him to the people, he inevitably showed up the lax lifestyles and the moral injustices of the rich and powerful. The empress Eudoxia flattered herself that these barbs were aimed above all at her. A synod was trumped up to depose him for supposed unorthodox teaching. Her husband the emperor Arcadius then exiled him in 403 to Pontus on the Black Sea coast. The people of Constantinople were in uproar. An earthquake frightened Eudoxia to thinking it too was all about her. Promising amendment, she begged the emperor for St John’s recall to appease God. Yet within months she would erect a silver statue of herself outside the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. The Golden-Mouthed John, whose triumphant return made his words more potent than ever, kept speaking vividly about the contrast between the life in Christ shown in the Scriptures and the moral shortcomings of those in power in a supposedly Christian empire, this time singling out Eudoxia. The following June he was banished inland, to the remote edge of the province of Cilicia. There were riots in Constantinople, and the first Hagia Sophia was burned down. St John continued to teach his people by letters. He was also able to correspond with Pope Innocent I in old Rome, who sent a delegation to the emperor to convene a Council to reinstate the patriarch of new Rome. Chrysostom’s powerful enemies, however, convinced Arcadius that the archbishop had insulted the emperor by contacting the pope, and now posed a threat. So in 407 St John was banished to even more remote exile in Pityus, a port on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. 310 guards ensured no one prevented his removal once and for all. The journey was harsh because of the terrain and the elements, some of the soldiers were cruel, and Chrysostom, now about 60, was weak, not having enjoyed strong health since the extreme ascesticism of his time as a hermit. He did not make it beyond Cumana in Pontus, not far from where he had been exiled four years earlier, and he died on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, saying, “Glory be to God in all things”.

Thus, like St Paul, a “prisoner in the Lord,” by the public humiliation and the physical afflictions he endured, he was indeed in his flesh “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”. Eudoxia and Arcadius failed to silence him or put the Church in its place. Instead, his faithful confession of Christ despite persecution, was “Christ’s gift” of an apostle and a teacher, who “built … up the body of Christ” towards our even deeper “knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

In the Orthodox Church St John Chrysostom is revered as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, along with St Basil the Great of Caesarea and St Gregory the Theologian of Nazianzus. In the Latin Church they are venerated as three of the Greek Doctors of the Universal Church, on account of their decisive and compelling teaching on Christ and the Trinity, that remains formative of the faith and worship of the Church in East and West to this day. Indeed the form of the Eucharist most often celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches is the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, believed to have been abbreviated under his influence for the practical purpose of the greater engagement and spiritual enrichment of the people.

His feast in the West is kept on the day before his death on the 13th September, and in the East it is transferred two months later to 13th November. He is the patron of the city of Constantinople where its Christians are today reduced to several thousands, pressed on all sides by an almost entirely Turkish Muslim population and government, yet determined, “with patience” like St Paul’s, to preserve the living roots of Byzantine Christianity for 260 million Orthodox worldwide. (Byzantium is the older name for the city of Constantinople). He is also the patron of Christian educators, lecturers and preachers that “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

PRAYER

Troparion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

Grace shone forth from your mouth like a fiery beacon and enlightened the universe, bestowing on the world not the treasures of greed, but rather showing us the heights of humility. As you teach us by your words, O John the Golden-Mouthed, our father, intercede with the Word, Christ our God, for the salvation of our souls.

Kontakion for November 13 in the Byzantine Rite

From heaven you received divine grace; your lips have taught us all to worship the Triune God, O blessed John Chrysostom. It is fitting that we praise you, for you are a teacher, clarifying all things Divine.

Collect for September 13 from the Roman Missal

O God, strength of those who hope in You, Who willed that the Bishop Saint John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering: grant us, we pray, that, instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened by his invincible patience. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

Homily for the Beheading of St John the Baptist, at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 11th September 2021

The feast of the Beheading of St John Baptist is very significant to us here at the Cathedral of the Holy Family here in Mayfair in London. Just a few hundred yards across Oxford Street where it is met by the Marylebone Lane is the site of the original medieval church of this district which was dedicated to him. Here he is on our iconostasis; and here on the tetrapod is the icon of his Beheading.

 

Now why does St John, unlike most of the other saints apart from the Mother of God, have both a feast of his Nativity, and a second of his martyrdom? Is it because in our Christian perspective the head is particularly significant?

 

A medieval hymn possibly by St Bernard of Clairvaux, and now deeply loved in the Lutheran and Anglican traditions, with its tune set by Bach, goes:

O Sacred Head sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn

O kingly Head, surrounded with mocking crown of thorn… 

See me, for whom Thou diest; hide not so far Thy grace.

Show me, O Love most highest, the brightness of Thy face.

 

In this hymn the glory of Christ’s face shines from the head of one whose leadership is not of control but of sacrifice and service.  Herodias wanted to see John’s head as the guarantee of the death of a dejected enemy, because his truthful words threatened her. Instead, she saw not defeat but beauty, the beauty of living and dying to God. (Romans 14.8)

There is a famous picture of Salome visiting St John the Baptist by Guercino – a copy hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland. It shows Salome seizing the bars of the cell, while St John looks away. His head turned from her shows that he is free in his spirit. She is contained by the bars. She cannot touch or told what he has, and she is really the one in prison. With his head he looks to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (Hebrews 12.2), for whom once again he will be the Forerunner.

This freedom in the life of God is because Christ’s headship of the Church is all bound up in the love of God. His head was physically attacked, with the thorns thrust down upon it and His face struck, because it is the visible exposition of God's love for the world (John 3.16; John 15.13; Romans 5.8). As the sole “head of the church,” Christ “loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5.23, 25).

So the integrity of word and action pay into service of an entire life, and ultimately the sacrifice that shows what a Head truly is. Did not Christ say, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”? (Matthew 20.28). St John the Baptist’s words and call to repentance were powerful on his lips and did not become futile as death approached. His head became far more eloquent in silence. St John in his beheading becomes an icon of Christ going to sacrifice, “opening not his mouth” (Isaiah 53.7).

The wonderful hymn by Charles Wesley (And can it be) expresses it perfectly:

No condemnation now I dread,

Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach the eternal throne,

And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

 

So why the costly and central Head? Because it is the head that is crowned, first with thorns but only after their wounds, with the glory. Thus Charles Wesley has it again (Love divine, all loves excelling):

Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.

Let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee.

Changed from glory into glory, till in heav’n we take our place,

till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.

 

The ultimate beheading is our own: Christ, who is the head of the body the Church, is to become the head of our lives. So with Him dwelling in us who are already made in His image, His head on us “that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now.” (The head that once was crowned with thorns, Thomas Kelly.)

Wider than the heavens, our bearing of the Light of the World: Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Divine Liturgy of St John Chryostom, Ukrainian Cathollic Cathedral, London, 15th December 2019

In the six years since we have been celebrating the Divine Liturgy in English each month at the Ukrainian Cathedral, I do not think it has happened so far that we have encountered the Sunday chants of the Resurrection in the First Tone. So now here we are in the preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Advent in the flesh in 2019, and we encounter less familiar words to acclaim His rising from the dead.

But it is all of a piece. In the Troparion (see below), we see how the earth contains within it the body of the Lord, a stone laid to seal it in. At His resurrection the Lord gives life to the world of death, first arising within the Tomb before arising from it. It reminds us of how the Prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 45.8), “Drop down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth come open, and bring forth a Saviour”. In the same way as the Spirit from the Father flooded the Tomb on the Third Day, that in the living of the Trinity the Son of Man and Son of God might rise from the dead, so the Holy Spirit pours down grace upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, filling her with that righteousness that will have been won in the future by her Son’s bloodshed on the Cross, and interring within her, like a plant in the earth, the Incarnate Word Whom she will bring forth as the Saviour. The Tomb, the Womb, a Saviour emerging from within the world and bringing out through it the Kingdom of heaven: it could come no other way. We could not reach it. Instead it has reached into us. Its burst upon our scene is so surprising that it is unrecognisable; but that is what is facing us. Thus we sing, “Glory to Your Kingdom; glory to Your saving plan”. The Lord tells us (Luke 17.22f): “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘Look, there He is,’ or ‘Here He is.’ Do not go out or chase after them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so will be the Son of Man in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected.” In other words the Kingdom will come not in a spectacle, but within the life spent in human and divine love upon the Cross, from within a dead body laid in the earth; and that it all began to play out from within the womb of Virgin, just as it was all conceived when the Spirit of God brooded across the waters and the Creator spoke in His Word, saying, “Let there be Light” - the Word that would take flesh and dwell among us, the True Light who lights every man from within, even though the direction of that light from the very way He made it, caused it not to be recognised.

Both the Troparion and the Kontakion speak of the glory of this light, just as St Paul today exhorts us (Ephesians 5.9-19) to spurn the works of darkness and enjoy the fruit of light. But where is this light to be seen? How is it visible, seeing that we lack the bearings to see it and where it is coming from, even if we notice the shadows where it does not shine? He tells us that we can stand in the light by being awake to the wisdom and will of God in the present moment, not putting things off because we think the Kingdom of God, with the demands and opportunities of our new way of living eternally, can be dealt with all in good time. He tells us not to be fooled by the “business as usual” of the world we are in. He says the days are evil. In our current parlance, we could reply, “Yes, but let’s be realistic. Let’s do a reality check. Let’s deal with the world as it is, not as it’s not. Let’s meet people where they are, not blame them for being where we think they shouldn’t be. As for ourselves, you can only do so much. I am what I am. Take me as you find me. We can cross that bridge when we come to it. We have to live in the real world. We’ll think about heaven when we need to. There’s too much to do here and now. Life is not a rehearsal. Life’s for living, not for dying.” The parlance in the Lord’s time was “Relax and enjoy. Eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12.16-21); and “Eat and drink today. Die tomorrow” (Isaiah 22.13; I Corinthians 15.32). And to that, the Lord Who said, “Call no man a fool” (Matthew 5.22), says, “Fool – your soul is required of you tonight!”

It is interesting that St Paul’s antidote to living in this world, without paying attention to the direction from which the Kingdom is entering, is to sing hymns and spiritual songs. I have been singing hymns all my life. One can remember so much of them by heart. The way our brains work is that, often, we cannot remember the words so easily on their own, but when the music is recalled it unlocks the words. It is all to do with where the memory of music and thus lyrics is laid down in our heads. This is why so much of our Divine Liturgy’s prayer is sung, whereas in the Latin Church more of it is spoken. We not only remember it better. It sinks in; and we can call it forth from spirits when we sing. So I urge you to learn and sing our hymns and spiritual songs, not only in our Byzantine Liturgy, but also in our rich Christian culture in England. Try not to rely on texts and orders of services, but, as St Paul says, “sing and make melody to the Lord with your heart”. For this is the direction from which comes the light that we call radiant, and that others just cannot see, or that they dismiss as religious fervour. So, if you find it difficult to pray, or to concentrate on devotions – sing. Even if you are embarrassed to sing out loud, recall a tune in your head that unlocks the words of praise and devotion to Christ, and let your heart make joyful noise with it. Or gently hum. Or softly whistle. But hold the words with the melody, and St Paul says that in that very act the Spirit will fill you. This will be just as He filled the womb of the Blessed and spotless Virgin with the Divine Son, and just as He filled the body in the earth’s stone tomb when it arose from the dead.

It will be the same as the Angel Gabriel saying to the Virgin, “Rejoice”. In that instant she became Mother of God as the Lord took her flesh for His own. And in the same moment that we rejoice or lament with the Lord in our hearts, as today’s Theotokion tells us, we shall “become wider than the heavens carrying our Creator”. Imagine what it would be like if the words addressed to the Mother of God in the Theotokion were turned upon us. Then we should see where the complete surprise of the Light is coming from as we, even we, are told, “Glory to Him Who dwelt in you. Glory to Him Who comes forth from you.” We will be amazed, and just like the Mother of God, we would ask Saint Gabriel, “How can this be?” Yet it is. One of the great English hymns puts this profound dogmatic insight into how the Light comes into the World:

How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given;

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin

Where meek souls will receive him still

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray.

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell.

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel.

For Emmanuel, God is with us. If you cannot see His light, come to confession that with a purified heart you may sing. For as the Light dawned from the Womb of the Mother of God, and then from out of the Tomb, so the direction remains the same. The Light shines upon His world from within the light in the lives of the People of His Church.

Note: Hymns for Sunday in the First Tone

Troparion of the Resurrection

Though the stone was sealed by the Judæans* and soldiers guarded Your most pure body,* You arose, O Saviour, on the third day,* and gave life to the world.* And so the heavenly powers cried out to You, O Giver of life:* "Glory to Your resurrection, O Christ!* Glory to Your kingdom!* Glory to Your saving plan,* O only Lover of Mankind."

Kontakion of the Resurrection

You arose in glory from the tomb* and with Yourself You raised the world.* All humanity acclaims You as God,* and death has vanished.* Adam exults, O Master,* and Eve, redeemed from bondage now, cries out for joy:* “You are the One, O Christ, Who offer resurrection to all.”

Theotokion

When Gabriel uttered to you, O Virgin, his ‘Rejoice!’ * – at that sound the Master of all became flesh in you, the Holy Ark.* As the just David said,* you have become wider than the heavens carrying your Creator.* Glory to Him Who dwelt in you!* Glory to Him Who came forth from you!* Glory to Him Who freed us through birth from you!

Eyes speak to eyes and heart to heart: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, St Gregory, St Edward & St John Henry, at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 13th October 2019

It is the outsider that the Lord encounters today. First, St Paul tells us to separate ourselves out from those in whose midst we live: “Go out from them, and you shall be My sons and daughters”. (II Corinthians 6.16-7.1) He says that this purification is the way God brings about the completion of our holiness. Then, in the gospel (Matthew 15.21-28), a Canaanite woman implores Him to relieve her daughter from terrible spiritual affliction – it has depressed her mind and her body. At first the Lord says that salvation comes according to a certain plan, all in due course: first, those who had lost their place in the house of Israel, ahead of anyone else. But the insistence of her faith crying out, which has driven the disciples beyond toleration, tells the story that no one is ultimately outside the scope of salvation.


There is St Paul saying, “go outside from among them”; and here is an outsider forcing her way in. St Paul points out the way for getting rid of the stains and pollution in our personalities, our attitudes, our hearts and our habits, so that it is clear for the Lord to come all the way along it, to fill us with His life and love and presence. This is another way of saying that His holiness becomes our character, difficult and outlandish as that may sound. And then the Gospel tells us that the purification we need does not come from our efforts, or turning our back on what is wrong with life, but by turning toward faith in the One who has come flooding into our midst. You get the impression that the Canaanite woman was not planning this. She just heard that Jesus had arrived, and it is her instinct to believe in Christ and no other that surprises the disciples. As we often find in the Christian life, faith precedes our confession of belief, and grace from God precedes our response to turn to Him.


Notice that when she appeals to Him, He answers not a word. It is the same as in the manger. It is the same as when He is baptised and transfigured. It is the same when He stands before Pilate. It is the same when He is risen from the dead. It is not wording that is being strung together, but the extent of faith that is being tested and explored. Christ is the Word that need not be articulated, because it is His Person and His all-pervading Presence and His sheer significance that cause the cleansing out of what stands in the way of encountering Him - of bringing His holiness in us to completion, of bringing to flower the faith that has been seeded within us.


Look at what will happen in our midst in a few moments. Will Christ who will come among us take one look and say to Himself, “Be separate from them; go out from their midst; be separate from them”? Or will He, like He did at journey’s end on the road to Emmaus, without scarcely a word and by His presence and act, make Himself known to us in the Breaking of Bread? The Lord of hosts and the Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected, acquainted with grief, the outsider of all outsiders, becomes our insider.

This Sunday in London, for the Latin Church of Westminster among whom we live, it is the Feast of St Edward the Confessor, whose crown adorns our monarch, and whose remains lie close to the High Altar of Westminster Abbey, where only a few years ago they were venerated by Pope Benedict XVI. The great king of the Anglo-Saxons remains the patron of good government in our land, and the bulwark against misrule and injustice as he has been for 1000 years. Here in our Church, we remember Gregory, a refugee from pagan Armenia, who learned of Christ for himself when he was raised in Cappadocia, at the heart of Greek Eastern Christian spiritual life and theology, to became the “Illuminator” of his people when he returned to organise his nation’s Church, so that the oldest Christian state in the world remains a proud Christian civilisation in the East and in diaspora across the world to this day.  And in Rome, John Henry Newman, England’s son and its greatest Christian teacher and theologian, will be included in the canon of the saints of the whole Catholic Church, on account of his life’s dedication to the binding nature of the Truth and the Lord whose salvation in the One Church of Christ he embraced.


One of Blessed John Henry’s phrases described his spiritual journey. It was not one of picking up or looking for hidden messages, but a path of realising the plain reality before his eyes. So he spoke of moving “out of shadows and illusions into truth.” He also said that this was because “heart speaks to heart.” If we are honest, we all know what these two sayings mean, since we have all encountered them, in our truer moments, in our souls.  The second phrase is adapted from something St Frances de Sales said in his Treatise on the Love of God (Bk VI):

Speaking to God and hearing God speak in the bottom of the heart … is … a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart. And none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.

The Canaanite woman knew the silent conversing when she cried. The apostles cried back and told her to stop. But the Lord said not a word. For heart speaks to heart. And when St Paul told us to clear the temple of God that we are of all the clutter of noise to other idolised obsessions and our illusory falsehood, it is to make way for the presence and worship of God. Thus in the purity of lovers in relationship He may see only us as we are, and we may see only Him as He is, for “eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak”. This is why, when we pray to God, we do not hear with our ears; it is how we have an inkling that prayer is not something that we do to God, but what God does to us. It is the path of falling and being in love.

St Edward, St Gregory and Blessed John Henry all in their way knew what we are learning too. There is other light. There is no other faith. There is no other Church, save to be in that one place where He gazes in His heart upon us and we upon Him, where we are not alone, but see ourselves to be in the company of all the rest who have gone their way and found that it leads purely nowhere else than to the Church wherein He makes Himself know in this breaking of Bread. As St Bernard put it:

Jesu, the very thought of Thee/ With sweetness fills my breast;

But sweeter far Thy face to see, And in Thy presence rest.

O Hope of every contrite heart, O Joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind Thou art! How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this/ Nor tongue nor pen can show;

The love of Jesus, what it is/ None but His loved ones know.

And so, with St Paul, the Woman of Canaan and her daughter, with St Gregory, St Edward, St Bernard, and St John Henry Newman, we pray:

Jesus, our only Joy be Thou, As Thou our Prize wilt be;

Jesus, be Thou our Glory now, And through eternity.