We at the Hermitage were formed in the Western Church and have spent most of our lives serving the Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic traditions as religious and clergy. The season now upon us we have always known as Advent, which we have experienced as a preparatory season, a leading up to Christmas. Still, for all its purple vestments, signifying a penitential mood, Advent in the West has been experienced as a kind of "count-down to Christmas." Whether the count is marked by Advent wreathes in churches or Advent calendars, each week or day is treated as a progression in the "count down."

The Advent calendar first appeared during the nineteenth century among Lutherans in Germany. We see them everywhere in the West now. Each day, their little flaps are opened perhaps revealing little gifts in anticipation of the Great Gift Day, December 25. The whole conception is one of joyful expectation — looking forward to the One Who alone can save us.

This is appropriate for Lutherans especially, for it goes to the heart of Lutheran theology. Their "founder father," Martin Luther, was a monk of the Augustinian Canons (O.S.A.), an order that venerated its patron St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). This theology stands out for, among other things, its depiction of the human person as depraved, unable to break free of grave sin. Augustine's great innovation, original sin, asserts a hopeless state of the human condition, proposing that humans can do nothing to crawl out of the pit of human wretchedness. This suited the mind of Augustine's disciple, Brother Martin, to a "t." Biographies of Luther reveal that among the Augustinian brethren, Martin was notorious in his opinions concerning human wretchedness. Priests who had already confessed him would walk the other way when they saw him coming. For no matter how many times they had announced absolution over him, Luther would return again and again confessing the self-same act. He was obsessed with his own sinful character.

This obsession would become a cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation. And in this new arena, no longer constrained by religious superiors, Luther expounded at great length and in many volumes on human wretchedness and hopelessness. In his On the Bondage of the Will (1525), he argued that any particle of righteousness imputed to a human must come entirely from the outside, from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Small wonder that Lutherans would find the tradition of "count-down till Christmas" suitable. For Christmas in the Lutheran view is the season of receiving par excellence. The idea that humans could make an offering of virtuous life to God simply does not square with Luther's theology. As we have suggested, the deeper sources for this theology lay in the writings of St. Augustine, who proposed a doctrine of original sin.

St. Augustine had been a popular teacher and writer, we might say a celebrity of his day. His mother, a Christian named Monica, constantly prayed for the conversion of her son. Western hagiographies depict St. Monica weeping herself to sleep every night because of her son's scandalous life, which revolved around alcohol and promiscuous sex. For nearly two decades his mother together with a sympathetic bishop, St. Ambrose of Milan, attempted to lead Augustine to the waters of baptism. He finally relented. But when the great day arrived, he backed out in the eleventh hour, for he knew that he could never keep this promise of chastity.

Of course, St. Augustine was baptized in the end. But imagine the complexity — intellectually, psychologically, socially, politically — in which he now found himself. It is one thing to reject someone else's point of view which you find distasteful. But it is quite another to accept this point of view and make it your own, for now the distaste must permeate every part of your mind and soul. Imagine Augustine's shame as he looked back on his personal history, his secret life, and now his public humiliation, peppered with words like "drunkard" or "pervert." Augustine was a proud man — proud enough to have rebuffed the pleadings of a great and famously persuasive bishop, not for a few months but for seventeen years.

Many of us feel the need to justify ourselves, to give a deeper explanation for what we have done and why we have done it. In the case of Augustine — so brilliant, possessing so quick a mind and wit, and once so celebrated and respected — the urge to explain his dishonorable life must have been overwhelming. Eventually, it would explode into a dazzling display: The Confessions of St. Augustine, one of the landmarks of Western literature. Modern editors are careful to contra-distinguish it from a "tell-all memoir" emphasizing that it is a confession of faith. Nonetheless, it does read as an intensely personal narrative.

In it, he faced a sore dilemma. For he had to confront the question that was on the mind of everyone who knew him: how could a man so great have sunk so low? His solution was to convict all the people around him, everyone, of the same crimes. I suppose this is what we did as children: "Well, Johnny did it and Eddie did it and Jimmy did it. Everyone does it!" He convicted everyone of stealing, fornication, heavy drinking, and so on. Instead of blaming himself, he chose a most ancient precedent, following the example of fallen Adam, and shifted blame. As Adam had pointed the finger to God and then to Eve, saying

This theological principle, articulated at the beginning of the fifth century would have a profound influence on Western Catholic thought ever after. It would give rise to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and even affected doctrines concerning the Nature of Christ and the purpose of the Incarnation. In practical terms, it gave rise to the belief that the only hope for humankind was to be entirely passive and only to believe on the Lord Jesus Who alone is without sin.

The tragic follow-on to this theology, mortally wounding each Christian's will and trapping untold billions in their sins, is a profound formation in wretchedness. How often have I heard people tell me in, "I am weak. I cannot help it. I cannot stop. God made me this way. After all, we live in a fallen world. Of course I will sin. Of course I will go sinning. But so long as I love Jesus and declare Him to be my Lord and Savior, I can go on sinning (stealing at work, cheating on my spouse, abusing drugs) and go to Heaven anyway. Jesus has made the complete and unsurpassable sacrifice, which has purchased my salvation. I need do nothing .... nor could I!"

I suppose most Catholics will recognize this unfortunate outcome of the Protestant Reformation. But I wonder how many will recognize the thought of a most influential Jesuit theologian of the late twentieth century, Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., who proposed a similar theology, which he called the fundamental option? This would become dominant among liberal Roman Catholic priests during the 1970s and remains influential. Penitents in the Roman Church will encounter priests today who ask, "Do you love God? Do you know of God's love for you? Yes? Then there is no sin. It is all consumed in the fire of this love!" In one instance, I had to insist that my confessor pronounce absolution over me while I sat before him with a contrite heart and certain knowledge of my failings.

Let us pause here to be absolutely clear. Our salvation most certainly does lie in in a once-for-all, unsurpassable self-offering of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. Our precious Lord offered Himself as a ransom for many. He has expressed profound solidarity with us both in our human life and in our human death. And He has modeled for us that love called αγα'πε (agape), which is a complete self-offering of ourselves in an act of superlative friendship and requited solidarity — an act so high and pure and good that it leads to complete union with Him, Who is completely united to the Father. Here is our path of salvation, by the grace of God, which we declare at every Divine Liturgy, or Mass:

No matter how much God loves us, He cannot remedy our failings. Does the prodigal son's father chase him into brothels? Into bar rooms? Pleading with him? Pulling him away? No. He must wait .... with a painful longing. He must wait.

St. Augustine's monument of self-explanation was matched by an uncanny mirror-image. Writing from Rome, another celebrated figure, Pelagius of Britain, had been setting out a counter-theology of salvation, which is an inversion of Augustine's thought. It argued that humans were born free of sin and were able to live blameless lives before God without need for God's grace. It was conduct of life alone which is paramount in the Christian's path of salvation, Pelagius said. Yes, Jesus had taught that

The Orthodox Church remained unaffected either by Augustine's teachings on original sin to the one extreme or Pelagianism to the other. The Fathers taught that the Most Holy Theotokos was born without sin, as we all are. She chose to embrace her perfection of life and then guard it all of her life. Hers is the first life after Eden to signify hope of return to the Garden. She is the Second Eve .... by the grace of God in our Lord her Son Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. We say with St. John the Forerunner, whose angel wings signify custodianship of his original "angel nature," we are not worthy to unloose the sandal strap (Jn 1:27) of the One Whose Life unlocked our path back to God in union and harmony. It is the God-man alone Who can offer us this friendship with God, and it is we alone who can embrace it and then guard it:

But how do we keep our salvation once the Son of God has ransomed us? St. Athanasius provides that answer: Keep your eyes fastened always upon Jesus. Meditate always on Him. (And, of course, we Orthodox root ourselves in the Jesus Prayer.) This will refresh and replenish the Divine life He has given us (De Incarnatione).

Like St. John the Forerunner, we too are able to receive a foretaste of the Kingdom .... not the Kingdom of Candyland, but the Kingdom of Heaven, whose other name is the Garden of Eden. In our fast, we have the privilege of eating vegetables and fruits as our first parents had done. We are called into a Sinai wilderness eating manna as St. John had done. We prepare ourselves to receive the gift that has been God's dearest hope for us from the foundations of the world, which is purity and holiness.

Let us open this gift, for it was ours at our birth. Let us cherish it and guard it. For only then will we truly understand the meaning and destination of our journey, which is the Holy One, and His loving embrace of each of us, His long-awaited friends.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.