Acquiring the Mind of Christ: Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church

Acquiring the Mind of Christ

Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church

by Archimandrite Sergius (Bowyer)

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Acquiring the Mind of Christ: Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church

© 2015, by Archimandrite Sergius Bowyer. All rights reserved.

General editor: Sergei Arhipov

Editor-in-chief: Priest Matthew Markewich

No portions of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.

Published by:

St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press

175 St. Tikhon’s Road

Waymart, Pennsylvania 18472

Printed in the United States of America

And let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus…

-Philippians 2:5

The Gospel precepts contain God’s revelation of Himself. The more deeply we enter into their spirit, the more specific will be our vision of God. And when these commandments, by his good providence, come to be the one and only principle of our whole being, both temporal and eternal, then we too, ‘shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is’ (i John 3:2).

-Archimandrite Sophrony, We Shall See Him As He Is (Essex: St. John the Baptist Monastery, 2004), 149.

Special thanks to:

St. Tikhon’s Monastery Community

St. Tikhon’s Seminary Community

Dr. Harry Boosalis

Priest Matthew Markewich

Matushka Rebekah Markewich

Rdr. John Kennerk

Table of Contents

Foreword

Liturgy as Life

Prayer as Communion

The Angry God of Anselm

Seeds of Heaven and Hell: Passions, Virtues, and Life After Death

Beauty That Saves the World: Beauty, Liturgy, and Liturgical Art

Monasticism: Ancient and Contemporary Values for a Timeless Tradition

Adam, the First-Created Man

St. Augustine and Orthodoxy: In Light of the Eastern Church Fathers

Sermon on the Dormition of the Mother of God

Sermon on the Exaltation of the Life-Giving Cross

Sermon on the Sunday of Orthodoxy

Sermon on the Sunday of All Saints

Sermon on the Canaanite Woman

A Prayer Rule

The Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

Notes

Foreword

Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ is the proto-archetypal man. He reveals to us not only perfect God, but also perfect man, as man is intended to be, showing us the potential of everyone born into this world. This potential is to have the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in us (Col. 2:9), not by nature, but by Grace, so that we might become partakers of the Divine Nature (ii Pet. 1:4) and become temples of the Holy Spirit (i Cor. 6:19). To deny the Lord Jesus Christ is to deny our true selves, hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). The purpose for which we were created is that we might know God and through this knowledge (which denotes communion) become eternal, sharing in God’s very life.¹

Our task is great: to acquire Christ, to put on Christ, and to acquire the Mind of Christ. How are we to begin? The Church’s Mind is the Mind of Christ. The way the Church thinks is the way we need to learn to think about God, ourselves, each other, and the world. If we fail to understand that our thinking has a tremendous impact on how we live and act, then we have already missed the mark. As one modern Elder said, our thoughts determine our lives.²

We must examine ourselves and realize the tremendous impact the modern non-Christian worldview has on us as Orthodox Christians. We must seek to put on the new man and to put off the old with his thinking, habits, and perspectives. Only the radical change afforded to us by profound repentance has the potential to remake us in the likeness of Christ.

I offer the thoughts contained in this book not as an end, but as a beginning, looking to challenge modern thinking and presuppositions that are commonly held by all of us, but not often perceived or understood. The contents of this book are meant to be a compass to point in a more Orthodox direction. It is important to remember that what we believe will have a direct impact on how we act inside and outside the Church, and ultimately what we perceive the mission of the Orthodox Church to be. It is our task then to leave aside those things which are not conducive to our salvation — especially opinions, thoughts, or mindsets — that will not help us attain our ultimate goal: communion with God.

The task of repentance is literally a change of mind. Our goal is to acquire the Mind of Christ which is the Mind of the Church. The Scriptures show us this Mind. The Church services reveal to us this Mind. The Fathers and saints of the Church open us to this Mind. We must divest ourselves of the old to reinvest with the new. Let each of us begin anew this day seeking that which is above, forgetting what is behind, and pressing onward to the high calling in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Archimandrite Sergius

Feast of the Holy Apostle Mark

April 25, 2015

Liturgy as Life

[Elder] Sophrony said many times that the conditions of the modern world are such that hesychastic life, as he himself had known it in the desert, is no longer possible. But the only thing which is left to us now is the Liturgy. If we celebrate the Liturgy with reverence and attention, we find as much grace and even more than can be found in the hesychastic life. For this reason, if we keep the Liturgy properly, there is hope for a renewal, maybe even for a renaissance of the whole world. This general crisis that we face nowadays — and it may intensify — will force many people to look for a spiritual solution and may lead them back to the Church. And if this is already happening with a small number of people, God is able to generalize it. He was very optimistic — As long as we keep the Liturgy, he used to say.¹

The Liturgy is the heart of the Orthodox Christian experience, the place where one meets the Lord and learns to abide and live with Him. Not only this; it is through the Liturgy that one finds and works out one’s salvation. In the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church, we find the Mind of the Church, which is the Mind of Christ. Through regular participation in the cycle of services throughout the year, and the Holy Mysteries, we absorb and acquire this Mind and make it our own, enabling us to learn how not only to think, but also how to understand the world, God, ourselves, and each other. We must never see the Liturgy and the liturgical life of the Church as something extra. It is through the grace that we receive at each Liturgy that we are enabled to enter eternity, and are empowered to escape corruption, sin, and death, because what we are offered and receive is nothing other than the Life of God Himself.

In our modern American society, many things about the way we live and how we learn are antithetical to Orthodox Christian spirituality. What is it that epitomizes the world if not the frenzy and busyness of day-to-day life? Counter to this, what is it that characterizes Orthodox spiritual ethos and experience if not hesychia² or stillness? Indeed, the root of healing, of freedom from the passions, and the beginning of the knowledge of God is to be found in the Psalmist’s words: Be still and know that I am God (Ps. 45:11 lxx). It is hesychia which leads us to the knowledge of God, and concurrently to a knowledge of ourselves; it provides the remedy for the insanity of our modern world. The Church provides the oasis in the liturgical life for her members to be still and know.

Hesychia does not imply an absence or an emptiness. It is to be present with all of our heart, standing before the mystery of ourselves and God with one thought: the Lord our God.³ Prayer as listening is our first step towards hearing God. Hesychia does not mean by definition that we are silent, but rather watchful, waiting for God expectantly with faith. Indeed, the twofold movement shown to us by the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of St. Luke reveals the content of real prayer and spiritual life: we must first come back to ourselves before we can return to our Father. Without a return to ourselves, we have no basis on which to open a dialogue with God, for we will be speaking outside of our heart, outside of ourselves. The Fathers say that if we wish to ascend to heaven, we must enter the heart, and there we will find the rungs of the ladder by which we will begin the ascent.

The Liturgy informs the heart and changes us imperceptibly. St. Maximus the Confessor tells us that just being present at the Liturgy ontologically alters us for the better, from a lower to a higher state.⁴ St. John of Kronstadt even said, If one was to put all of the world’s most precious things on one side of a scale, and the Divine Liturgy on the other, the scales would tip completely in favor of the Divine Liturgy.⁵ He qualified this statement by explaining that

the Divine Liturgy is truly a heavenly service upon earth, during which God Himself, in a particular, immediate, and most close manner, is present and dwells with men, being Himself the invisible Celebrant of the service, offering and being offered. There is nothing upon earth holier, higher, grander, more solemn, more life-giving than the Liturgy.... When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai the Hebrew people were ordered to previously prepare and cleanse themselves. In the Divine service we have not a lesser event than God’s descent upon Mount Sinai, but a greater one: here before us is the very face of God the Lawgiver.⁶

It is through the Liturgy that we learn how to live a spiritual life, for it shows us a pattern of how to take this world and to offer it up in an Anaphora,⁷ invoking the Holy Spirit on everyone, everything, and every situation. This in turn grants the possibility of everything in our personal world of becoming eucharistic, an encounter with God, a point of contact and not of separation. Our main task as liturgical beings is to take our world and re-connect it to God in thanksgiving (i.e., to make it eucharistic).

The first-created man, by severing the tie of this world from God (when he began to use the world apart from God for its own sake), became the first official consumer. We on the other hand must reverse the Fall in our own lives by re-connecting this world and our lives back to the source of all: Christ, the Life-giver and Creator. If the Liturgy of the Church can permeate every part of our life, we will no longer be consumers as Adam had become, but rather communicants as Adam once was, the world becoming a window and a mirror for us to see the invisible and almighty power of God.⁸

The saving works of the God-man Jesus Christ (e.g., the Incarnation, the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection, and the Ascension) have passed into, and are now manifested within, the sacramental life of the Church. According to St. Leo the Great, this sacramental liturgical worship is the primary revelation and entrance into these saving acts for the world.⁹

It is paramount that the utmost care be taken to preserve these precious and beautiful flowers that have budded forth from the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and find their fullest manifestation within the cycle of services in the Church. It is imperative to understand that he who cares for the Liturgy and ministers unto the Lord takes care of the Lord Himself.

It must be stated and emphasized that Orthodox Christian life is, by definition, a liturgical life. To fail to recognize this is to fail to find the key to the mystery of Orthodox Christianity. Professor Constantine Scouteris explains this unbreakable connection between salvation and worship:

In the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, doctrine and worship are inseparable. Worship is, in a certain sense, doctrinal testimony, reference to the events of Revelation. Thus, dogmas are not abstract ideas in and for themselves but revealed and saving truths and realities intended to bring mankind into communion with God. One could say without hesitation that, according to Orthodox understanding, the fullness of theological thought is found in the worship of the Church. This is why the term Orthodoxy is understood by many not as right opinion, but as right doxology, [that is,]