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”.

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!

What if I were holy? Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Sunday of the Sower, at the Divine Liturgy, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, London, 10th November 2019

St Paul tells the Galatians to look beyond the besetting temptation of religion to reduce it to a matter of things we do, rather than what we are. (Galatians 2.16-20)

It never ceases to amaze me how harsh some people are to comment on the transgressions of others. The anger ranges from mistakes and unsatisfactory habits in execution, to denunciation of people’s entire lives before God. Now, we are supposed to tolerate those who boss other people, those who are quick to show us up. After all, they may be right in what they say. But Christ says that we are not to return the favour. We are not to be the ones to bully people into conformity to our wills, or into cause the silent resignation of depression in the Church which is supposed to be the abode of joy. But then, with an answer for everything, we might say: “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. I have no time for this. It is not in the words of Christ. It is saying, “I love you in theory, but not in practice”. And it reveals something even uglier. It is boasting about your own virtue, how good you are at keeping commands - observing the rules, yet letting yourself off your own sin.

Everyone I know who is like this is deluded, a hypocrite covering up their own shortcomings. St Paul says he himself is so much rubbish (cf Philippians 3.8), the least of the apostles (I Corinthians 15.9), the greatest of sinners (I Timothy 1.15). I find this rings true. Some people are very holy. Some people are very good at being sinners. Most of us are rubbish at being both. We can’t even sin successfully. This is why in our Liturgy, we constantly say, “Lord have mercy” – not because we are craven and despairing about our trap in sin, but because we know God is merciful, “helps, saves” and bears with us. The last words of our Liturgy are all we need to know: “He is good and He loves mankind. Amen.” So St Paul says to those who are wrapped up in regulation, bossing people on what to do and bolstering up the image of their perfection that hides their true weakness, that it is not about deeds and acts and laws – or, we might say, my conduct, morality, behaviour or attitude. It is about me who have Christ living in me in place of myself, you that have Christ living in you in place of you. He tells the Corinthians, Christ does not want the things that you offer, the things you do, the things you have. He wants the thing that is you (II Corinthians 12.14).

So, he can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” This is not some pale imitation of Christ. Consider this question. “What would I do if I were Jesus Christ?” Then ask this one instead: “What would Christ do if He were me? Who would Christ be if He were me?” “What would holiness look like if it were shaped like me?” No wonder we say, “Lord have mercy,” at the prospect. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,” says St Peter (Luke 5.8) after he has seen the Lord bring about the miraculous draught of fishes. But that is the point: He will never depart from a sinful person. Christ’s is no love in theory, but not in practice. He remains, for the purpose of seeing through the work of forgiveness, going back to square one every time, repairing with patience and not with a word of condemnation, sowing the seed again and again, until there is redemption, by way of sacrifice in one world, to bring a new one through resurrection.

The most alarming aside in the parable of the Sower, today’s Gospel (Luke 8.5-15), is where the seed fell among thorns and grew up with it. We know this is what we Christian disciples have to contend with, and what Christ has to deal with. How can it be that we who sin, who fall short in so many ways, are also none other than the same people who look like Christ. Who would Christ be if He were me? Well, if St Paul is right that it is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me, then the answer is that Christ intends to look like me. And if it is true that I, even I, am to be holy – what would that holiness look like? It is not a sufficient response to that momentous question to say, “Depart from me for I am a sinner”. We have to see this one through, because Christ is seeing it through.

Will Christ take one look at us and say to Himself, “That person is stony ground; no seed will grow there?” Will He say, “That one is so choked up with sin that there will be no good fruit coming off that tree; write it off”? Does He say, “But some of those look good – I will concentrate my efforts on them”? No, He will not.

Each one of us at the moment is a mix of the Word of God growing from the good seed, with the thorns and weeds that thrive in us just as much. Often we cannot tell the difference. But think of it like this. In one way, the Icons are wood, cloth, egg, pigment, art. But image and spirit are never apart from incarnation and created physical form. We venerate, touch and kiss not a representation of an idea or a memory; we touch the Mystery itself. And it is not the saints who live, but Christ who lives in them. In the same way, at our Liturgy we will take bread and wine. And, during the course of our action, we will see it is the Lord, making Himself known in the Breaking of the Bread. Not a remembrance or a symbol, but God with Us Who has promised to be with us to the end of time. And because He is seen in the Bread and the Cup, He comes to be seen in those Who share them. Thus it is not we who live any more, but Christ Who lives within us.

Take a look at yourself and each other. Quickly you will see a character with personality, talents, flaws, irritating habits, kind gifts, heroic virtues, hidden badness. Do not judge them for this, for this is what they judge about you too. Instead, see the life of faith which hopes that all this, even the good, will be surpassed. See Christ growing from His seed, not the weeds and thorns. Imagine the other person as an icon painted with paint on wood, but brought to life by a Mystery operating within. Imagine the other and yourself as the living Presence of Christ, Who has come into each one by the Eucharist - here to change you not from being you, but into what Christ looks like when He is in you. Imagine you and one another – whatever the appearance – as already being made holy, not as a way of justifying your bad hits and misses, but to reveal the virtue of Christ being moulded into you as your own.

God does not want us to be pale imitations of Christ, who hand over their personalities to an imaginary ideal, or who hide themselves behind a religious façade, whose only sharp edge is to judge other people. He wants the person He created, not something else, to be a new presentation of Christ in the world, the forgiving Redeemer, to recreate it.

It is clear that St Paul is a character full of personality – difficult to some, an inspiration to others, a thorn in people’s side, a rival vying for his leadership and teaching to prevail, a spiritual man who was a sinner. Galatia and Corinth would not have been formed as Christian Churches without him, as someone in whom Christ was now living in full force. So let us live as he did, sinners who even fail at that, who keep God’s commandments but patiently, with a good deal of self-criticism and wise humility rather than condemnation of others or ourselves, and a belief that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Christ wants me to be me - not the person I should be in theory, since only the real me will become the object of His love in practice. He wants me to be me, so that in me He may be Christ Who is all in all.

God is With Us - Veneration of the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy: Homily for the Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament, Corpus Christ Church & Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, London, 10th January 2019

The Catholics who keep the Church’s year according to the old Julian calendar celebrated their December 25^th, Christmas Day, on your January 7^th, this last Monday. So tonight I have the opportunity to greet all here at Corpus Christi from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral where I serve the English-speaking community with a blessing in the Name of our Lord and God and Saviour at His nativity in the flesh: Christ is born, glorify him.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church is the largest of the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches. It is Catholic, but not Roman. It is one of the Greek Catholic Churches, meaning that we worship according to the same liturgy and theology as the Greek and other Orthodox Churches, except to say that we do so in fullness of communion and sacramental unity with the Bishop of Rome as the supreme pastor of the Universal Church of Christ, and thus with all Latin Roman Catholics. I serve as a priest in both the Latin Roman Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, since both are united in the same Catholic faith and life.

Our Ukrainian Greek Catholic numbers approximately six million people in Ukraine, as well as worldwide. That may seem small in comparison with the billion members of the Latin Roman Catholic Church; but when you think that this Church was liquidated by Stalin, its bishops in Ukraine martyred, while the priests and faithful were either forced underground or forced into the Russian Orthodox Church which was awarded their churches and monasteries for forty-five years, the story of its revival has been remarkable. Kept alive in exile, it re-emerged in Ukraine with very little apart from its priests and faithful who had maintained their belief in the Church’s unity and their fidelity to the successor of Peter as the guarantor of the communion of the whole of Christ’s Church regardless of rich and diverse Liturgies, histories, memories and tradition.  Like the English Catholic Church, for the sake of faithful witness to keeping intact the communion of the Universal Church likewise, the Ukrainian Church’s body bears the marks and memory of persecution and suffering; but this Body is none other than that of Christ risen from the dead. The new Cathedral of His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the father and head of the Church in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is thus dedicated to Christ our Pascha – to the Lamb of sacrifice Who is risen from the dead so that we in Him pass over from death and oblivion to life and new hope. Twenty-five years ago, our Church had no visible existence in the land where it was the mother Church of the Churches in all the surrounding nations, including Russia. Now it is the home of the only Catholic university to exist within the former Soviet Union, a bastion of Catholic social teaching and for imparting the values of truth, honesty and integrity in public service, law, politics, media, commerce and business, as well as for placing the Christian view of humanity and the restored created order into its disciplines of the arts, humanities, sciences, technology and theology. A few years ago, I visited the new seminary of the Holy Spirit in Lviv, where over 100 young men from three only recently non-existent dioceses were training for the priesthood.

So, what has captured the hearts of the young Ukrainians seeking to dedicate their lives to Christ’s service and of the people who have emerged from decades of atheist oppression by the Communists and chosen also to reject the oppressive atheism of western commercialism and materialistic consumerism?

It is the beauty and glory of Christ Who is victorious over everything that is worldly, everything that offers no lasting gratification, or answer to our fundamental questions about life, let alone our needs and aspirations. Even though our Liturgy tends to be served wherever the faithful find themselves and a future for their families, we are rooted in the tradition that transformed the entire Roman Empire of the eastern Mediterranean, and brought about the evangelisation of most of Eastern Europe that remains potent to the present day.

Let me briefly describe the feel of our Church’s Eucharist. I hope you will see that its constant emphasis on the coming of Christ and his presence among His people is something that Catholics in the Latin Church also identify with strongly.

An obvious feature of our Churches is the iconostasis, the great stand of icons before the Altar and across the sanctuary, depicting Our Lord, the Mother of God, St John Baptist, the saints and the angels. This is not a barrier screening off the altar from the people. Quite the opposite, it stands to show the proximity of citizens of heaven to the people of God in the world – immediately close to the Altar, it is the window of heaven out of which the Lord and His saints press their faces, so that we may be drawn as close as possible to them in worship. Thus we are not left to worship on the earth at a distance from God, but situated physically close to the presence of God coming onto His throne in our midst. Here on this earth, then, a space is cleared that can contain all heaven, and we are enabled to step into it. The doors in the iconostasis are not to shield the altar from human view, but to reveal it. Just as in a Latin Church, the altar is the heart of the dedicated Temple. Human beings come in and out of the doors continually to keep company with the angels and saints, taking our hearts and souls in, and bringing out to the expectant faithful the blessing, peace and gift of God Himself.

At the very beginning, before the proclamation of the Word of God in the Gospel and before the gifts of the Eucharist are brought in, the Altar, the icons, the whole Church, the priests and the faithful are generously incensed – to consecrate the whole of the earthly and human environment and to show it as sacred and divine, the place of our reconciliation and restoration. You will see the deacon and the priest offering the numerous litanies and prayers, not with their backs to the people but facing the icon of Christ and the Altar at the head of the people, drawing us all into a movement out of this world at the very moment the living presence of the Kingdom enters in, surrounds us and draws us into its embrace. But you will also the priest coming out of the Holy of Holies to bring into the midst of the world first the book of the Gospels - which we hail as God’s Wisdom Himself - then the Bread and Drink to be taken to the Altar for consecration and sacrifice, along with repeated interventions from heaven of peace on earth, until ultimately there appears through the Holy Doors, the coming of God in His Body and Blood for the sake of the life of the world.

This is not horizontal worship, a religious activity only among humans; yet it draws the faithful together in a common moment of presence before the living God who has come into our midst, for God is with us. This is not vertical worship, only an offering of humans below up to God above, for it exalts humans into the heavenly places to dwell among the saints in light, at the same time as it transfigures and glorifies this world of ours, and we who belong to Christ on earth are shown to be the living manifestations of the resurrection of Christ, passed already from dead-end life to immortal existence through the Cross, beyond the Tomb, into the Ascended reality that we can never evade, since it is not only our final destiny but the way we are to live our live at this moment and every moment we know. This is the meaning of the greatest prayer of the Eucharist to ask for our daily Bread: may “Thy Kingdom on come on earth as it is in heaven” – not in some after life, but daily.

In our Eucharist, which we call the Divine Liturgy – our public service of love and honour to God – the gifts of Bread and Wine are prepared beforehand in a special short service. We use leavened bread, and each loaf is cut into pieces to commemorate the Lamb of God, the Mother of God, the saints and martyrs to be venerated, the Pope, patriarchs, bishops, priests, deacons, religious and faithful, the nations and governments, those in special need of prayer, and the departed. These pieces are set aside, covered and dedicated with incense. Even though they are not consecrated yet, whenever the altar, the icons, the Church and the faithful are incensed, knowing the purpose that they will fulfil, we incense the gifts too. When the time comes for them to be taken to the Altar, the deacons and priests take them, declaring again those for whom they are offered, out through the Church in the sight of the people, before taking them through the doors of the iconostasis to the Altar. They are incensed again. The veil that has covered them is lifted off and waved over them as we recite our belief in the Creed. Some see this is a clearing away of the clouds of our earthly offering of incense so that the Lord in His own unseen light may enter and dwell in them. Others see a symbol of the coming of the Holy Spirit, Who once brooded over the firmament before the moment of creation, and Who once overshadowed the Virgin Mary as she became the Mother of God.

After the gifts are consecrated by the Words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the priests at the altar bow profoundly. And because this is a moment when the Incarnate Lord once again dwells among us in real presence, we recall the Motherhood of God by Mary and again offer incense. After the Lord’s Prayer, the Confession and the Communion of the clergy, the Bread of Life is mixed in the Chalice with the Blood of Christ (we administer Holy Communion in both kinds together with a spoon), the deacon takes the Chalice and comes out through the Holy Doors of the sanctuary and shows the Lord to the people, saying, “Approach with fear of God, and with faith”. The people reply, “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord. God has appeared to us”.

At the end of communion, the priest holds up the Chalice to the faithful for veneration. In the Eastern Church there is no service of adoration and benediction, nor is the Blessed Sacrament exposed. But here for a moment East and West pause in a similar way with adoration and hoping for the touch of Christ’s blessing. As he holds up the Blessed Sacrament to the love and adoration of the people, the priest says, “Save Your people, O God, and bless Your inheritance”. At the same moment he makes the sign of the Cross with the Sacrament over the faithful. The people respond, “We have seen the true Light, we have received the Heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.” Then he takes the Chalice to the altar and incenses it. Next he takes the Chalice away from the Altar to the table at the side of the sanctuary from which it was first brought, but on his way, once again, he shows the Lord to His people, saying, “Blessed be our God, always now and for ever and ever.”

The tradition, the customs, the actions in the Liturgy may be very different from those familiar to many of us in the Liturgy of the Latin Church, but it is the same faith, the same love, the same Person. For, while this is unmistakably the worship of God, it is no escape from the world into a religious cocoon, or a refusal to live in an imperfect world. Instead, it is the resolute turning of human attention to the One Who has come into the world not condemn the world but to own it, to love it into becoming the very Kingdom of Heaven come on earth as it will in the world to come, to die for it as well as to live for it, to make us holy, and to restore our world’s direction, correct its purpose, and bring it along its true path as a new creation.

Why did the Ukrainian people turn from the empty promise of atheism and the meaningless gratification of state socialism and western consumerism alike? Because of the beauty and glory of Christ, Who is not only the best of what humanity can become, but, by His grace and forgiveness the image of everything we already are, because with Him even now we are risen, ascended and glorified. In this sacrament that we share, we have seen the true light of God and of “lightening every man” that has come into the world; we have been embraced by true faith and drawn up into the very living of the undivided Trinity, Who has saved us - not just from ourselves, but for the eternal glory that is His reign in our hearts.

For Thy Sake: Homily at the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family of London

Today St Paul says to us, “It is written in the law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Or does He not speak entirely for our sake?” (From the Epistle, I Corinthians 9.2-12) We know that he is addressing the age-old problem of people demanding the Church, its sacraments, its pastors, its schools and even Heaven itself, without offering a cent of support to advance it. Paul is expected to be available for the Church and its people all the time, but he has to find the means to live somehow, and yet people complain. He asks whose sake is he earning a living for – himself or Christ’s people? But as usual, when Paul protests from his own example, he is confronting people with a deeper point about Christ: however God speaks, by whosever lips, whatever He says, He speaks entirely for our sake. Paul is doing none other than to convey the Word Who took the form of a servant, and became obedient to death for our sake.

George Herbert in The Elixir says to God,

All may of Thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean
Which with this tincture — "For Thy sake" —
Will not grow bright and clean.

All our work and life is for the sake of God; but God tells us that He is all for the sake of us. To listen to some people in the Church, however, you would think that being the right kind of Catholic is about rules and laws, observances and conduct. This soon turns to judgment; from judgment to condemnation; from condemnation to exclusion; from exclusion to the withdrawal of love; and then it is an easy ride to everlasting unforgivingness. Yet the Church’s entire body of canon law, for instance, is about nothing more nor less than putting the Gospel of love and right relationship reconciled with God into gear so that the Church and each member who belongs in the Body of Christ can advance in holiness. For this task, it forgiveness is pre-emptive; it goes ahead of our repentance and even our desire for it. Thus “the Sabbath was created for humanity; humanity was not created for the Sabbath,” said Our Lord. Another way of saying this is, “Doctrine is faith put into words; morals are faith put into practice.” And this faith is not for God’s sake, as if He depends on us for our belief in Him. It is for our sake, so that “whether we live or whether we die, we do so to the Lord” - we do so for the Lord, we do so from the Lord. (cf. Roman 14.8)

This is not to say that sin is not serious, or that evil is not deceptively at work in us. But the perspective of living to God for His sake, as Christ lived and died and rose again among us for ours, does turn our attention from constantly fixating on ourselves onto the Lord and all that He has done for us - and all that He believes with His grace we can be. This is why in the litanies that occur throughout our rite, we sing, “Kyrie eleison”, “Hospodi pomilui”, “Lord have mercy”. It is not to render us craven worshippers afraid in the dark, but to lift our voice, our heart and mind to the Saviour Who wants to forgive us so that we may stand in His light, as it blazes warm because it is fuelled by His love that never grows cold by the exhaustion of forgiving us.

Reading today’s Gospel (Matthew 18.23-35), you recognise straight away the contrast between the slave and the lord who owns him: one is forgiving and it does not occur to the other that an example has been set that he should follow. Now, when Jesus told this story, His hearers could not hear such things as capital letters, and as soon as they heard tell of the lord and the servants who owed him everything, they heard the same word they used for their Lord and Teacher. They knew that He was talking about Himself and about themselves, whom they knew to be servants bound to the service of the Kingdom of God. What does it mean to be bound to the Lord in this way? To people like us in the twenty-first century, we egocentrically think that the basic religious question is, “Do I believe there is a God?” - as if He stands or falls on our decisions. But the real question is not “Does God exist?”, but “Is God sovereign?” Most of us rush to say believe in Him, but we know we say, “Hang on a moment,” when we have to think if he is my ruler and the Lord of my life. If He is sovereign then it affects every corner of my life because it comes from how I recognise the order of the world and creation to be established. No one will believe me when I say that God is the Lord if the example of my life suggests that is otherwise for me.

So the Lord’s story of those who take His generosity and deprive it from others tells us that, yes, in the Kingdom, there are debts to be paid and scores to counted up and settled; yes, there is right and wrong; yes, there is punishment and correction; yes, there is a Law that puts faith into practice as well as a Gospel that plants faith into our hearts. But it also tells us that sinfulness is rooted in cruelty and the ground that we defend of being unforgiving. St Thomas Aquinas saw this as a simple matter of justice. We owe our duty to God because He has given all to us; and, in the same way, what we have received from God we owe to others. To forgive is not to be generous, going above and beyond on that extra mile. To forgive without reserve is no more than the duty that we owe: “Forgive us our trespasses as forgive those who trespass against us,” we were taught to pray. And we know for ourselves that this is how the mechanism of divine justice and grace works, because, as St Paul says, the Lord “we console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (II Corinthians 1.4)

The illustrious religious novelist of the 1930s, Charles Williams, an Inkling like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, was once hurrying along the street in Oxford and someone asked him, “Good morning, how are you?” Williams replied, “In the City, under the Mercy.” The Apostle to the Hebrews says “here we have no abiding city” (Hebrews 13.14). He thinks of the Lord of the servants that were bound to Him for everything and yet mercilessly abandoned Him to His death outside the city gate. The Cross was to disgrace the Lord, but deserting Him is ours and it keeps looping us back to Calvary. This then is the point from which we have to “be looking for the City that is to come.” To dwell in that City is to be subject not to control and regulation, any more than it is to be let off the hook, or given time off our sentence elsewhere for good behaviour: to dwell in that City is to be subject to the provision of Mercy, which is so ever-present that it is the air that we breathe. And “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy” is how we breathe it out.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Jesus (Matthew 5.4); that is to say, “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” We who know what it is to live already in the City of God, understand that we live under the arc of God’s mercy. To us it is not a question of whether we believe in God or even trust Him. The question is whether He is sovereign in our life, since He is sovereign over all in the universe. The answer is that we live accordingly, as God’s “for your sake and for your salvation, I came down from heaven” is answered by our “For thy sake.”

George Herbert’s poem can be our prayer.

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told. The Elixir, George Herbert

Teach me, then, to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with my God” (Micah 6.8), for I so want to live in the City under the Mercy.

Address for the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament from the Church of Our Lady Immaculate, Farm Street, visiting the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family for Benediction, Latin Feast of Corpus Christi, 18th June, 2017

Today, before the Sacrament of the Eucharist, our gaze is held by the vision of the Universal Church: one, holy, Catholic and apostolic. Today we are all one, in the same anticipation of that moment immediately before Holy Communion, now repeated in this ceremony of adoration, and of hope. Today the most precious Gift of the Western Church comes in solemn rite to the Eastern Church, and this Blessed Sacrament conjoins us in Its Presence. Today we stand on the imminent edge of the perfect union of eternity; we see the end to our divisions, between Catholic and Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican, nation and nation, between race and race, the rulers and the ruled, rich and poor, between rival principle, ideal and passion; and between earthbound preoccupation and heavenly peace, good will. Today we see before us the resolution of everything in the Kingdom of God that has come among us.

For God is with us! The Latin Church’s adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and the rite of Benediction, is not part of the custom of the Byzantine Church. But, like you, who have brought the Lord in His Presence here to us with such honour, we also reserve the Sacrament upon the Altar in the Ark, so that we may bring the Lord to the sick and dying, and to those newly reconciled to Christ after Confession. Yet it is untrue to think that we adore the Presence of God among us any less than our Latin fellow Catholics. Indeed, every Divine Liturgy that we serve contains the rites and customs that are resemble yours at the rite of Benediction.

Immediately after the Eucharist is consecrated, we bow down in worship and cover it with clouds of incense. And in that moment of high anticipation before Communion, we pause to contemplate His Presence and we pray to the Lord, who is God with us,

Attend, O Lord, Jesus Christ our God, from Your holy dwelling place and from the throne of glory in Your Kingdom, and come to sanctify us, You, who are seated on high with the Father and invisibly present here with us.

Then, at the end of the Holy Communion, when the Lord returns to the Holy Place, the priest holds up the Holy Gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood in the chalice, and he blesses them with It in the sign of the Cross, saying,

Save Your people, O God, and bless Your inheritance.

At once, the people acclaim,

 

We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.

So, in a way, the rite of Benediction is a treasure of the Church of the East that is shared and loved in the Latin West. For us, it is integral to our Divine Liturgy, heaven amid the world; for you, it takes the Liturgy out and beyond. It is all the same mystery, approaching us in different ways, and drawing us into the same Kingdom of Heaven according to the different roads the Lord has provided for us to walk with Him - from your part of Jerusalem and our part of Jerusalem - to His Emmaus where He makes Himself known in the breaking of Bread.

 

On this your Feast of Corpus Christi, the most precious Thing that heaven affords you have brought on your path as the Church through this world. In the western Tradition, the Sacrament is exposed and adored, for moments, for hours, perpetually. Thus, praying without thinking, prayer without words, unites the adoring soul into the prayer of Christ Himself, into His intercession. It bonds us in His work of mediation, and brings to fruition the prayer of the night before He died that we may all be one, as He and the Father are one in unbroken and eternal communication of self-giving love. In the East, such an act of adoration is not the custom. Yet we can add a "take" of our own.

 

You see before you the Iconostasis, bearing the icons of the Lord, the Mother of God and the saints, looking out from the Holy Place where the Blessed Eucharist now stands enthroned. We constantly venerate these icons. But they are never the mere objects of our devotion. For it is not we who look at them, but they whose image looks out on us. It is as though here, in the Temple, the veil between the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of this world is very thin. This is what we mean by the reign and the Kingdom of God. Here, against this very thin veil, the Lord and His saints, and "The One who Bore Him", press their faces, transfigured in glory, to look upon us, to hold our gaze, to attract our hearts into the mysteries of the Divine Majesty that lies beyond, to ensure that the Divine Majesty transfigures us too, and adorns every aspect of our faith, our hope, our love and our living as His disciples. So, while we look in adoration upon the Church’s Most Blessed Sacrament, to the world we are regarding nothing more than a symbol, an object, a work of spiritual imagination. Yet thanks to the gift of faith, we see that quietly, insistently, almost unnoticed, we are being surveyed by one Thing in our midst that is constant and unmoving in a life of constant change and re-arrangement: we are being measured for the Kingdom of God, we are being asked by the Lord to stay with Him, to persevere, and to allow grace upon grace to take its effect. So it is not just that we venerate the Lord, for our Creator in His humility and mercy has chosen in the Lord's humanity to venerate us and raise us up. It is less that we adore and pour out our hearts to Him, and more that He adores us and pours our His heart upon us. It is less that we hope for heaven, and more that He hopes for the world. It is less that we are sinners, and more that He is Mercy Itself. It is less that we hope to come to the Kingdom of God, and more that He is our King. For God is with us.

 

And so we declare, “we have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith. We worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us.”

 

The address was followed immediately by a recitation of the Prayer before the Ambo from the Divine Liturgy of St John Chryosostom, and Benediction in the Latin rite.

Sunday of Zacchaeus: Homily at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, 13 February 2015

At the most telling points in the Divine Liturgy, the deacon calls out to the whole Church assembled, “Let us be attentive”. There it is, just before the reading from the psalms, the Prokeimenon, and the Epistle; and the priest says it, too, just before the Gospel. It is repeated before we say the Creed, and again before the Anaphora, the great Eucharistic Prayer, is offered. Once more it is heard before the Communion, when the priest elevates the Holy Lamb, the Bread of Heaven, as a symbol of Christ lifted up on His Cross, drawing all people to Himself. (John 12.32)

But this is not just a clerical exhortation. Like so many of the phrases in the Liturgy, it shows how our worship grew directly out of the life of the Church described in the Scriptures themselves. For it is the injunction of St Paul himself, encouraging his not long ordained helper and successor St Timothy, as we have heard in today’s Epistle. (I Timothy 4.9-16) “Until I arrive,” he says, “give attention to the reading, to exhorting, to teaching”.

It is just as well that St Paul advises us to be attentive, because the Epistle and the Gospel, at first glance, seem to be saying opposite things. In the Epistle, St Timothy’s example is to be one of love, faith and purity in what he says and how he lives his life. Yet in the Gospel, the example of salvation we are given is a man reviled for what he does. (Luke 19.1-10) Note carefully that nowhere in the Gospel does St Luke say that Zacchaeus actually was an extortionist and defrauder, just that his job had made him rich.  In the thinking of the time, a person’s wealth is seen as a sign of God’s blessing on their righteousness; we still madly re-invent God as the One Who will bestow success if we pray, or believe, or act right, and we still try to strike bargains with God for benefits in return for good conduct. But Zacchaeus is assumed to be corrupt and blamed for his wealth by his fellows Jews, because the office he holds and the business he conducts serve an occupying power that is pagan. He is called a sinner because he is the agent of sinful Roman pagans.

Zacchaeus, who St Luke tells us has come looking for God, will have seen his fortune, however, as a gift from God. In truth, Zacchaeus knows he is rich, but unfulfilled. It is his spiritual emptiness that turns his heart to the Lord. The people’s contempt for him as an enemy collaborator, however, has a veneer of self-righteousness because of the religious dimension. And so he stands before you accused of sin. But really, it is his neighbours who are jealous, envious of what he has.

They have no cause. For, because Zacchaeus desires to look upon the Lord, and because of an open-hearted that eagerly responds to the loving call of Jesus to receive Him, he gives half his possessions away. The bitter and righteous did not attract this out of him, and they have nothing positive to say. But salvation is seen shining in generosity out of a man who has been moved not by condemnation but inspired by the sight of Jesus - the Glory of God in a Man Alive, as St Irenaeus says, adding that the life of man is the vision of God. (Adversus  Haereses, IV, 20, 7).

In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky has Prince Myshkin admiring the portrait of Nastassya, whose reputation is tarnished. He is asked why he appreciates such beauty, and he replies that a face like that is beautiful because there is suffering in it. One of those nearby is having none of it. She says, “Beauty like that is bold. That kind of beauty could turn the world upside down.” In the end, Prince Myshkin’s instinct is to be merciful and to see that the visual beauty he first admired comes not from rectitude, or even from moral conversion, but out of suffering that has turned a person inside out so there is nothing left, a beauty to which the Christlike response can only be forgiveness and unconditional love. Thus the theme of Dostoyevsky’s tale - after all the erratic behaviour and betrayal, the suffering, testing and forbearance, the brokenness and yet the desire for wholeness and purity of love - is famous: “Beauty will save the world”.

Look at Zacchaeus as Christ did, like Prince Myshkin looked at Nastassya. Look not for the sinner, but the beauty of a soul whose suffering has changed its heart. Let us be attentive to the reading. In the Epistle, St Paul tells a St Timothy who is evidently struggling to command respect and teaching authority, “Let no one look down on your youth.” Now see the paradox of the Gospel: Jesus comes by the tree and looks up at Zacchaeus. The Son of Man is drawn to the man in the sycamore and desires to commune with him.

Where else have we noticed this? Think of Zacchaeus in the tree again. See what Jesus saw: “a man despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53.3) Think back to the words we so often sing at the Liturgy, the first words that Jesus taught for all to hear, words that Zacchaeus had come to hear for himself: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5.3). Think of Dostoyevksy’s Christ-figure, the “Idiot” prince, looking up at the picture of that beautiful face, not despising its low reputation but seeing a suffering soul in a beautiful light as it desires nothing more than to cast off its burden, the “ancestral condemnation” of which we sang in today’s Troparion. (Resurrection Troparion, Tone 4)

Now look at the icon of this Sunday. We see Christ pointing at Zacchaeus up in a sycamore. But he is really indicating the Tree that He Himself will one day likewise climb, the Tree to which He will be fixed, as another “Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected, acquainted with grief”. It is an image of the mystery of the Crucifixion. Jesus is drawn to Zacchaeus on the sycamore by the beauty of the longing emptiness in the rich tax collector’s life. He indicates that He will likewise “draw all people” to Himself when He is lifted on the Cross, that the beauty of the image of God in man will be transfixed and disfigured, but only thus reveal the beauty that will save the world. Zacchaeus sees his own poverty of spirit and looks to see the Kingdom. The gaze of Jesus finds him and makes him into the very picture of salvation. He recognises the Tree that will claim His life, yet gives to Zacchaeus up in the sycamore not a pre-emptive revenge but the Resurrection itself. As we have considered Zacchaeus arising from the ground into the tree, from our own perspective in today’s Kontakion we have sung, “God has raised out of bondage the children of the earth.” (Resurrection Kontakion, Tone 4). So let us be attentive. The central figure of this Sunday’s gospel is not Zacchaeus, but the Tree, the Cross. The central event is not so much repentance but moving from a living death to Christ’s Resurrection.

Before we leave the scene that Christ has set, almost in passing, there is something more to dwell upon. In showing us the Tree of salvation as the sign of victory, Jesus has shown not only His future, but the state of our lives. The image He has planted is not of Himself on the Cross, but an inadequate, imperfect, struggling, anguished soul – Zacchaeus, you, me - who has turned to Him in exhaustion, emptied of all that earth has to offer. You will remember that, after St Peter and the apostles professed their faith that Jesus is the Lord’s Anointed, in the light of King Herod the Tetrarch’s menaces, Jesus had said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9.23). So Zacchaeus is shown professing his faith in the Christ, taking up Christ’s Cross by mounting the sycamore tree. Jesus saw his suffering, his broken spirit, his desire to see the Kingdom. This is where Christ will see it in us too.

The throngs of people who crowded round Jesus were really hiding themselves behind their show of righteousness. Jesus knew their faith was fickle, that it would let Him and them down when put to the test. We were thinking earlier that, when they turned on Zacchaeus, they were jealous. But really they were hypocrites. They condemned Zacchaeus for working for the Romans and doing well out of the proceeds. But they were no different. They traded with the pagans and prospered; the economy depended on it. Their priests and kings were happy to operate a system with the foreign “sinners”, as long as it gave them earthly power. Their influence even reached throughout the empire. But Zacchaeus alone had the courage to put himself upon the Tree and ask to see instead the Kingdom of God. He was despised not for being a sinner, or on account of the motive of jealousy. He was despised because he attracted the attention of mercy and the sheer beauty of the Lord. The people hiding in numbers in the crowd wanted to see Jesus; they were less keen for any light to shine on them, so that Jesus could see who and what they were. Their cover of hypocrisy was blown. “God has shattered the gates of Hades,” we sang. (Resurrection Kontakion, Tone 4).

When St Paul encourages Timothy, he says, “Do not neglect the gift in you.” He tells him to be attentive to the reading, and to put love, faith and purity into words, and those words into practice. Let us be attentive to this. For in our case it means putting ourselves on a Cross daily to seek a greater sight of God’s Kingdom, so that there the Lord will find us exposing how poor in spirit we are without Him, how nothing in the world brings us lasting fortune or happiness, and how whatever inner beauty we have has come from hurt and adversity, from unsatisfied longing to see the Lord as He passes along our way. From our place on the Tree, like our Lord before us – let us be attentive, as He is raised up -, daily we see Jesus in His transfigured, agonising, crucified glory seeing us in our suffering and our need to be completely free through turning to Him. And we find that it is on our Tree that what comes forth from us is the gift in us that is not to be neglected. Forth come, from us like Jesus, generosity, adoration, goodness, love, full self-offering, forgiveness without reserve, salvation and mercy that never end. This is what it is to be the one the Lord finds; this is how His beauty will save the world.

Homily for the Sunday after Nativity (& Baptism of the Lord), Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 9 January, 2016

If you are fortunate enough to find yourself, whether in person or on line, in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna for the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord - the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as it is also known in England - you will witness a lovely custom. At the great High Mass, the Canons of St Stephen, the array of deacons and then the Cardinal Archbishop follow into church an acolyte bearing a staff surmounted by a golden star, and three young people dressed as the Magi bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I think the ceremony of the Leading of the Star is familiar across Catholic German lands, because there it is believed that at Cologne Cathedral the Three Wise Men are enshrined close to the High Altar having spent their lives wandering far and wide and bearing witness to the Light they had seen, once the Star had led them to Bethlehem.

One of the differences between the Latin Roman Catholic tradition and that of the great Byzantine Church, of which our Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches are part, is that we do not have a separate celebration of Epiphany and the Magi from Christmas.  We commemorate the Nativity of Our Lord and God and Saviour according to the Flesh, with the singing of the angels, the adoration of the shepherds, the ox and the ass, and the discovery, gifts and veneration of the Three Wise Men, all together on the same day. For us, the Epiphany Feast is not about the revealing of the King of the Jews to visitors from outside, but the moment at Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan River - on the boundary that conjoins the Promised Land with the rest of creation and all humanity - when the Father intervenes from heaven to reveal Jesus as Son of God one earth. This is why we call Epiphany not just the revelation of Christ, but “Theophany”, the appearance of God Himself.

When we get to 6^th January in our Julian Calendar (which will be on 19^th January in the Gregorian calendar), we will commemorate this remarkable moment with a dramatic re-enactment of the moment when the Holy Trinity articulated itself to human sight and hearing, leaving an indelible impression on those who would then follow the Lord and become His own household of faith, the Church. In our own day, therefore, we will see our Bishop Hlib and the priests interact with the waters three times.

First, they will bless the water by making the sign of the Cross in it with a lighted candle and their hand, indicating the Father Who has sent His Son from heaven, the Light of Light, to accomplish His purposes in the world yet never leaves His side, even knowing that it will involve His Son’s death on the Cross. Secondly, they will breathing over the water as the Holy Spirit once swept over the foundations of the Creation, bringing it to birth; this recalls the Holy Spirit Who came to rest on Christ at His Baptism, noticed by the disciples looking like a dove, like the dove who found firm and fertile new ground after Noah’s flood; but also the spirit with which Jesus would breathe His last at the moment when our redemption reached its climactic completion, and the Spirit Who raised Him from the dead and that He would then send to lead us into all truth and be our constant life, advocate, and very Strength. Third, Bishop Hlib and the priests will bless the water with the Cross, which in his hands will descend into its depths only to surge upwards again in a great act of bursting forth, recalling Christ going down into the river and coming up again, He Who descended into the end of life, cleared out the realms of death and rose to stand on the firm and fertile new ground of resurrection, the Kingdom for which we pray to come on earth as it is in heaven. Here we see Father, Son and Holy Spirit, indivisible in action and intent, bringing Christ to appearance before us as God, born as one of us and in our midst, One Who has led the whole world to follow and stand in His light, One Who will reveal the entire meaning of God when the Lord is lifted on the Cross, One in Whom the entire action and sovereignty of God re-works its way through the physical creation, to make it new and abounding in blessing and the living now of God’s own eternity. If you come on the 19^th January, or to Compline the evening before, you will see the people themselves crowding forward to be blessed by Bishop Hlib with the new waters of life.

By an accident of history, and also the providence of God in permitting to the Church two calendars, we in our part of the Byzantine Church find ourselves celebrating Christmas on the weekend after the Latin Church has commemorated the Visit of the Magi and during the one on which it celebrates the Baptism of Christ. To add to the richness of the coincidence of so many themes and feasts, in our Gospel today (Matthew 2. 13-23), we pick up the story of Christ’s Nativity when it is not a star in the created universe this time, but a direct messenger from the Father’s side. It has come, first, to warn the Magi to escape imminent danger by taking a different road home and, secondly, to impress upon Saint Joseph the urgent need to flee to Egypt (like Joseph son of Jacob before him), in the hope of one day restoring to God’s people a time of plenty and liberty in the Promised Land. This Sunday each year we hear of the first to shed their blood for the sake of Christ, the Holy Innocents. We not only recall the vocation and service of Saint Joseph, but also the Apostle St James, who would likewise offer the whole of his life in loyalty to his Brother in the Flesh, and David the King, whose psalms foretelling the Lord’s work of salvation we have sung, the ancestor of the Joseph and thus the founder of the House to which Our Lord, belonged, the Holy Family to which this Temple is dedicated.

To think of all these things at the same time may feel at first confusing. But it all comes down to one thing: the single-mindedness of God in bringing about our world’s rescue, signified to us in the unerring, resolute and solid following of a rare but long calculated light in the night skies that took them to behold the Light coming into the world that no darkness could cover and no other light could show up better, or outshine.

Thus King David said, “I waited patiently for the Lord,” (Psalm 39.1) and “God is the Lord and has appeared to us in light.” (Psalm 117.27)

Thus the Magi pursued only the Star; they beheld the Light of Lights and saw its refraction when an Angel told them to go further on their way into life and the future Church’s story, as if to say, now “let your light so shine before people that they may see your good works and give the glory to God in heaven.” (Matthew 5.16)

Thus Joseph was enlightened by the Angel; he at once led his Family to safety and just as faithfully brought them back so that Jesus might prepare for the coming Kingdom.

Thus the Holy Innocents are not only the blameless and passive victims of a politician’s tyranny or paranoid control freakery, but also the loved and unfadingly luminous patrons of all the innocents that have suffered and ever thirsted after righteousness in a world made new. They are those whose unwilled sacrifice has been taken and transformed by God to serve the purposes of salvation in the hands of Christ His Son, the One Who would one day follow them into death, but remaining still the Undimmed Light that no dark can overwhelm.

Thus the Father, the Son and the Spirit, too, are seen pressing their way through into the creation. The Father presses in, to give His own voice to His Son, and to show His hand, as it were – never losing its clasp on the hand of Christ in all the miracles, all the overturning of tables, all the holding onto donkeys, all the breaking of Bread, all the endurance of nails, all the forcing aside of the sealed stone of the Tomb. It is the Father’s own light showing Christ to be none other than Son of God, Light from Light. The Spirit presses through, so that He may be seen resting on Christ, as once He brooded over the imminent creation and filled the Temple with the clouds of fire-and-light-glory that once led the People of the Hebrews through the desert and the dark. From within the Holy Trinity, the Son presses Himself into the water, so that the shape of the Cross - the sign of Who and What God’s Love Is - will indelibly mark the creation, such that immediately St John the Baptist recognises Him in the clear light of heaven’s day coming out of the waters as Lamb of God, come to take away the sin of the world.

And how about ourselves? How is it that we press on and through? What is to be our single-minded, unerring, and solid following of the Star that captured the minds, then the hearts, and then the souls of the Magi when they saw the Light come into the world?

Our baptism is the moment to which we all look back - even if we cannot remember it - as the moment when this single-minded, relentless Light from another Kingdom not only dawned on us, but lit us too. In the Troparion for today we sang:

Your Nativity, O Christ our God, made the Light of knowledge to dawn on the world. Through it those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to worship You, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know you, the Dawn from on high.

The Dawning of the Light of knowledge on the world was not, however, a single event in the past, for it must rise up on everyone in each new generation. It does so, because the light is no longer one to intrigue people from portents coming through the outer cosmos, but in the purity and determination - the love to the end - of those who follow Christ, who believe his promise, and shine with the glory of heaven that their very souls reflect all round them. The rulers of this world, such as those in Belgium who want a Catholic care home to perform euthanasia or be closed down, or those benighted, crazed false-followers of religion, who think they can stamp out Christ by destroying His faithful followers, will always resent the Dawn from on high, or they will force themselves to be blind to the Sun of Righteousness. But for us, it is simply the Truth about everything that Jesus is Lord of all, that he has “destroyed death …opened Paradise to the thief, [even to me,] changed lamentation … to joy … offering great mercy to the world.”(Troparion of the Resurrection, Tone 7)  In which other direction would we go?

So I am left with the moving image of the glories of the Epiphany at Vienna, with the Cardinal Archbishop and all the people, excited, happy, lit with God, and full of hope  going out of the great Liturgy into the world, taking all of Christ’s heaven with them, following the Star.

Hymns: The Sound of Communion

This paper first appeared in Anglicans & Catholics in Communion, Special Edition of The Messenger of the Catholic League, April-August 2010). It was published again in two parts in Bulletins 272 & 273 of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 20, 2012.

It considers the place of English metrical hymnody in the Mass of the Roman Rite, and the science of their selection and deployment. The title is a phrase of Rowan Williams'.

The article can be read and downloaded here.

Eastern Hymn to the Holy Spirit

Tsaryu nebesnyi

King of the Heavens, Lord God Almighty,
Advocate, Spirit, Truth from above:
Fill with Your blessing all things in bounty,
Set every heart on fire with Your love.

King of the Heavens, Treas’ry of graces,
Good One, bestowing life in Your might.
Dwell now within us, enter all places;
Shine in our darkness Your cleansing light.

King of the Heavens, in truth and virtue
Come as Christ promised, Life-giving Fire.
Save us and make us holy, to meet You;
Strengthen our service, our hearts’ Desire.

O. Nyzhankov’skyy, 1919, from a sticheron of the Holy Spirit
Trans. Anon., adapted and revised © Mark Woodruff 2014


"Heavenly King" is prayed at the beginning of nearly all Liturgies and services in the Byzantine rite outside the season of Pascha. There is an existing versification, very popular in Ukrainian, with a beautifully haunting tune, but the traditional English translation known in North American is only a loose rendering of both the Ukrainian hymn and the Byzantine chant on which it is based. As it is a custom sometimes to sing metrical hymns and carols before and after the Divine Liturgy in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, we wanted to embrace something that would be engaging to our English-speaking worshippers familiar with hymns from Western traditions. So last year, the adaptation above was made, for the faithful to sing prior to the Divine Liturgy in English at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London, which takes place on the second Saturday of each month.

Lenten Acclamations To Genevan Psalm Tunes

The following article was invited for "Views from the Choir Loft" on the CC Watershed liturgical music resource and publisher website (February 11, 2015)

DURING THE 1980s, a great friendship developed between the Catholic Diocese of Bruges (Brugge, in Belgium) and the Anglican Diocese of St Edmundsury & Ipswich, facing each other on opposite sides of the North Sea, four hours away by ferry. Not only were there friendly ecumenical visits and dialogue (it had been in Belgium in the 1920s that Cardinal Mercier had conducted the Malines Conversations to explore the possibility of reunion, through an “Anglican Church, united not absorbed), but also spiritual exchanges: Bruges houses the shrine of the Holy Blood, with its world famous Procession each Ascensiontide, and the Anglican Cathedral in Bury is adjacent to the site of the Shrine of St Edmund King & Martyr, England’s first patron saint. In 1989 I heard about a retreat for English priests (Catholic and Anglican) arranged every year at the Benedictine Abbey of St Andries at Zevenkerken, just outside Brugge. Famed for its school and history of theological scholarship it had been a medieval foundation, closed under the French Revolution that swept the old Austrian Netherlands and refounded in an independent Belgium as part of the Beuronese monastic renewal and mission movement. It was also a centre for the Liturgical Movement. A monk of Maria-Laach Abbey in the Rhineland was the architect, and the community formed the Benedictine Belgian Annunciation Congregation along with two other monasteries associated with the Liturgical Movement, Keizersberg (Mont-César at Leuven, to which Lambert Beauduin belonged) and Blessed Columba Marmion’s Maredsous. Those with old missals and chantbooks will recognise the Abbey of Zevenkerken more easily as the editorial seat for the liturgical works of the Desclée press: the Abbaye de St André les Sept-Églises, at Bruges (the nave, aisles and chapels of the remarkable Abbey Church correspond with the seven principal basilicas of the city of Rome).

Following the permission of vernacular language at worship in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, northern Belgium translated the liturgical books into Flemish, the local version of Dutch spoken by the majority. This coincided with the decline of French as the main language of public life, St André les Sept-Églises became Zevenkerken St Andries; and the Abbey’s relationship with the historical Liturgical Movement as part of a French-speaking world changed. Now it was part of Flemish-speaking Church with close relations to the Catholic Dutch to the north in the Netherlands. What was striking to an English visitor was the vigour of the psalmody, in a liturgical translation from the early 1970s, Het Boek der Psalmen, a collaboration of Dutch and Flemish Benedictines and Cistercians, set to newly composed simple tones in the eight modes, with antiphons. Anyone knowing the Coverdale psalter in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer could become familiar with the import and rhythmic structure of the Dutch text.

But Dutch, like French, is familiar with another and very historic way to sing the psalms: the metrical psalms of the Genevan Reform. It was Dom Lambert Beauduin who realised that the singing of psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in divine worship was the greatest bond between Catholics and Protestants; at the monastery he founded at Amay (now at Chevetogne) he not only provided for the celebration of the Slav-Byzantine rite but also increased the readings from Scripture at the offices to intensify desire for recovering unity with Christians of the post-Reformation traditions by a demonstrable and liturgical enrichment of Scriptural fare, especially from the Old Testament. While the psalms at the western offices at Amay were of course in Latin, by the time of the liturgical changes after Vatican II, across Belgium and the Netherlands there emerged a new possibility to make use of the 400 year old liturgical patrimony of the Protestants – not only reading the Scriptures in the vernacular but also singing psalms in famous metrical versions, integral to Dutch-speaking religious and musical culture, and even familiar to Catholics. Thus at Lauds, Vespers and Readings at Zevenkerken, one of the psalms is a metrical version sung to an exhilarating tune from Geneva or Strasbourg. It made me think that such singing as this must have been why the Reform in Geneva was at first so exciting—no organ, no choir, no harmony, but a strong and rhythmically engaging monody in which all participated as one Body and internalised the words of the Psalms, not in their translated Scriptural form but as memorable verses.

The melodies struck me as especially powerful because, despite being a Church musician (I was precentor of the Anglican St Edmundsbury Cathedral at the time), I hardly knew them. The English tradition of metrical psalms is different, employing different metres more suited to the way the language works in metred verse. Perhaps the most famous is “The Old Hundredth” Psalm, All people that on earth do dwell, which has outlasted its update. Another is The Lord’s my Shepherd, well known in Scotland but all but forgotten in England until Princess Anne chose it for its tune and descant at her wedding. So, despite the Dutch-French-Swiss psalms and their tunes being so appealing, it was not easy to imagine how to make us of them in English worship. Those that had not died out were associated with an old-fashioned way of singing hymns, already losing ground to new kinds of worship songs. Thanks to one of those retreats at Zevenkerken, within a few years I made my journey to the full communion of the Catholic Church and was ordained priest in 1995. I continued to take part in the retreats alongside my old Anglican friends in this Belgian Catholic Benedictine abbey and the metrical psalms of the Dutch Reform, gladly appropriated by the Dutch and Flemish Catholics, approached me in a new way.

Having grown up in a liturgical Church where there is a great deal of singing—the classic English hymns, the ordinary of the Eucharistic rite, and the canticles and psalms of the Office—it dismayed me that the reforms in the Catholic rite had hardly engendered the restoration of the Mass as normatively a solemn sung celebration as I had been used to in the Church of England or, for that matter, the Catholic places of worship I had visited on the Continent. In England, as in Ireland, Low Mass had given way to a spoken mass with hymns (and not the best of what the English religious culture had to offer by any means, let alone appropriately selected and deployed) and new worship songs: not even the proper chants either in Latin or English (I had been used to the propers in English translation arranged to Gregorian chants, but suggesting we used these, even provisionally or as ancillary to the songs, was dismissed as belonging to the past). I was most dismayed by the gradual/responsorial psalm almost invariably being said by a reader instead of sung with the leading of a cantor. And with nearly always the same tune for the Alleluia (the simple beauty of the chant from the office at the end of the Paschal Vigil now debased from overuse all but every day), Lent was no relief because the Gospel Acclamation was rarely sung by a cantor, let alone with the involvement of the people.
     
It struck me then that those wonderful Reform tunes beloved at Zevenkerken could at last be put to use in English Catholic worship. So I adapted the texts of the Lenten Acclamations in the Lectionary for each of the three years into metrical form and harmonised four of the tunes. I make no claims for the verses, but at least they have been used to make singing the Lenten Acclamations possible.

Here is the link to the resource, from which it can be downloaded:

* * Website • Lenten Gospel Acclamations to Four Genevan Psalm Tunes

Interview for "Both Lungs" at Royal Doors

Brent Kostyniuk came over to London in early 2014, attended our Liturgy, and just interviewed me for his column, Both Lungs, which is about Christians of East and West needing each other and learning from each other. It is syndicated to the English-language Ukrainian resource page, Royal Doors. Here is part one.

http://www.royaldoors.net/2015/02/fr-mark-woodruff-bi-ritual-faculties/

Back in September, Both Lungs recalled a particularly uplifting Divine Liturgy I attended while on holidays in London. The celebrant was Father Mark Woodruff who had been ordained in the Latin Church, but who had bi-ritual faculties. This month, Both Lungs visits with Father Mark to get a different perspective on the Eastern Church and its relationship with the West.

Father Mark’s interest in the East began through ecumenical work. “For many years, I have been involved with Catholic ecumenical engagement. In England in the past we concentrated on unity among Western Christians, but in the last ten to fifteen years the presence of Eastern Christians new to the United Kingdom, Catholic and Orthodox alike, has altered the perspective of what and who we mean by Christian Unity. There are also increased numbers of English-speaking people becoming Orthodox.”

“At one point, I was asked to be a trustee of the Society of St John Chrysostom (SSJC), an historic Catholic association which promotes awareness of the Eastern Catholic churches and reconciliation between Catholic and Orthodox, East and West. Because of decades of Catholic focus on western ecumenism, it had declined but there was now renewed interest in the East – we started inviting Orthodox churches to celebrate Vespers in Westminster Cathedral, which provoked great interest.” He adds that with increased immigration, Roman Catholics, especially in major towns and cities, were becoming more aware of Eastern Catholics.

“Shortly after I became a trustee of SSJC, we started to hold our meetings at the Ukrainian [Catholic] Cathedral, were made extremely welcome, and invited more and more to participate at the Liturgy. It also helped the Ukrainian community to gain regular contact with other Catholics and, of course, with a little English occasionally in services, it was of interest to Ukrainian Catholics who were living and working in the UK, also raising children whose first language was now English, to hear that their religion was not only from abroad but could also relate to life and faith in England.”

With the arrival in England of a new Ukrainian Catholic bishop, Bishop Hlib Lonchyna, a new approach to the use of English in liturgies developed. Father Mark explains, “It was clear to Bishop Hlib that past generations of Ukrainian Catholics in Britain had grown up without those who had become Anglophone having their needs met, other than through a language that they were growing away from, even if strong cultural links and identity persisted. There was also the question of how the Ukrainian parishes collaborate with their local Roman Catholic churches and other national chaplaincies or communities of Eastern Churches – how do we play our part in the wider Church’s mission to society? How do we evangelize as all churches must, and can we present the Christian faith and the life of the Church in the Byzantine Church’s tradition to people who would not otherwise know about Christ? Bishop Hlib and I discussed this and he made a request to my own bishop, now Cardinal Vincent Nichols, for a petition to the Congregation for the Eastern Churches for a faculty to enable me to serve in the Byzantine rite for the sake of the pastoral need of the Ukrainian Catholic Church here in London.”

After a period of preparation and building on his existing familiarity with the Byzantine rite, Father Mark began his new role in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “In December 2013 we established a regular monthly Divine Liturgy in English at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, which is right in the heart of central London. This was to be experimental, to see if it met any demand, to see if it was feasible, to see whether we might do anything differently or instead. Our Liturgy is when London’s West End is heaving with shoppers, at 4:00 pm on the second Saturday of each month. We make it a Liturgy of Sunday by anticipation and this is gradually getting known about both inside the Ukrainian church community, the local Latin parishes, and through the networks of the Society of St John Chrysostom and the Centre for Eastern Christianity at Heythrop College, London’s Jesuit theology faculty. There is now a small regular community – mainly Ukrainian English speakers, some new to the Church and curious about the Eastern tradition as possibly their way forward into the Body of Christ, some visitors passing through, some keen Roman Catholic supporters and some who have just found that we offer a spiritual home that they couldn’t find elsewhere.”

Today, Father Mark feels very at home with the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “I now take part at the Liturgies on the major feasts, not just as a guest (which is a constant delight and honour) but also a bit more as an adopted part of the family, so it means there is more English heard on such occasions. Everyone speaks Ukrainian, of course, but clearly there are children who are at school and who are growing up speaking English too. Their children will firmly have English as their first language, and so even now it is good to make the message heard that their Church is an integral part of the Catholic Church in Britain.”

Finally, Father Mark reflects on his particular experience of West meeting East, Both Lungs working together. “For my part, I have learned to say the Lord’s words that the priests sing together in the anaphora in Ukrainian, as this underlines our communion, and the unity of East and West too. It’s a simple matter of respect too. But I think it’s important to stress the English language dimension too. People are very kind at my attempts at some Ukrainian, but my Christos rozhdayatsya – Christ is Born – when we were blessing and anointing the faithful at the end of the Nativity liturgy occasioned much mirth and good will.”

Next month, Father Mark Woodruff talks about what Both Lungs means to him.