"A sign spoken against." "A sign of contradiction." These are deep words — far deeper than Joseph or Mary could possibly have comprehended. "They marveled" at Simeon's words. In the earliest English Bible translation, "Their minds were astonied." After all these centuries and with the help of sound theologians, they continue to be deep waters for us to fathom. Yet we must fathom them, for these few words explain much that is dear to us: God's relation to the world; the world's response to God (then, now, and always); the Christian's proper relationship to the world; and finally, exactly what might be meant by that "good news," which was preached to every creature, as Jesus had commanded.

We at the Hermitage are, of course, hermits. We hope that we are pondering God's Word and discerning God's presence and signs of His angels at all times. We leave Hermitage Farm only to deliver our certified organic produce, to buy supplies, or to see doctors when necessary (trying to do all these things in the same day trip!).

During a recent delivery day to distant Hilo, one of the Sisters and I listened to the Holy Gospel of St. Mark in the truck. Sister commented on the power of Mark 16:15:

Gospel is a particularly deep and enchanting word. To touch it is to draw near to God and His great and unseen power on the Earth. The word derives from an Anglo-Saxon, Godspel. (You recall the musical of the 1960s.) The first element of the word is God — the most powerful word in any human tongue, and the word, by tradition, which brought the universe into being. (God breathed His own Name over the waters.) The second part is spel as in "to cast a spell." (When I studied Anglo-Saxon language, I learned that spel means words, story, or fable, but then I also learned that the Anglo-Saxon lifeworld regarded all words as potentially having supernatural powers.)

If this makes you uncomfortable, or lest you fear that I am a "Harry Potter person," I invite you to read the first chapters of Genesis. And I challenge you to come up with spells more powerful than these:

In his landmark book Surnaturel (translated into English as The Supernatural), the great theologian Henri Cardinal de Lubac wrote (if I may paraphrase a monument of Western theology in three sentences),

For the Anglo-Saxons words had power. Among the greatest surviving Anglo-Saxon works, and the longest, is The Heliand, which was their Gospel, which freely intermixes magic with the life of Christ as many of our pious legends do. As you can imagine, Christian missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons were scandalized by The Heliand just as the Roman Catholic hierarchy today is scandalized by pious legends. But we might ask, would they have been scandalized that Jesus governed the winds and seas with a Divine command or that God created the universe with words so brief and powerful as to make us marvel?

Yes, following the Advent of God with the Birth of God-Among-us, the world in which we live is magical. And, yes, sacred words do have Divine power. Why, under certain holy conditions words said at the Divine Liturgy mysteriously bring about the Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ — really and truly present to us, by the Grace of God, brought about by Divine words — as the Anglo-Saxon cierm would have it, a certain sequence of words of power.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann wrote that

In a space like the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, we are surrounded by the holy ones — painted on walls, on columns, on arches, on door lintels. Heavenly sounds in beautiful harmonies waft through the air. Soon from a little, ornate palace standing within this cavernous space, Jesus appears. He is among us. And we participate in His Body and His Blood confirming that we are One with Him as He is One with Father, — our human nature mingling perfectly with Divine nature.

This is no ritual. This is no play or royal masque. The holy ones are really and truly present. The people of God are all around us with their hearts joined in yearning and love for the Master. And He, the Desire of the Everlasting Hills, is with us. Truly, we live in a magical world, and this magic ultimately is our only reality, thanks be to God, for it is the only good, the only right, the only source of life, and the only thing that abides — above and insensible to the claims of death.

When God's Son, not two months old, is placed in the arms of St. Simeon, this is what the God-inspired prophet sees with unerring clarity: the abyss separating Heaven from Earth has become closed. God's distant and holy mountain is made low in an act of breathtaking humility. And the low places have been exalted. To borrow from Isaiah's prophecy of this very moment,

But the world, the crooked, gritty world, will resist. Its twisted and bitter heart will resist the Lord's pure light. The House of Death will redouble its bars and chains at the mere rumor of His Name. And Simeon declares:

Returning to Sister's point, "What is that Gospel which is preached to every creature?" It is the good news that the Kingdom of God has been brought near to us (Lu 10:9, Mt 12:28, Mk 1:15, and then on and on and on). It is the news that the Truth has entered the human lifeworld, .... and the Way and the Life (Jn 14:6). And the world resists.

The word Jesus uses in that passage from St. Mark is, of course, not Anglo-Saxon but Greek: ευαγγελιον (euaggelion / evangelium ), literally good news. But what might this "good news" be? Surely, it is not news of the Resurrection, much less of the Ascension, for Jesus pronounces this news as a young, vigorous man. No. It is the news which our English forebears saw and expressed in their shimmering word, Godspel. It gives witness that the word good and the word God are one and the same (a fact attested in the first chapter of Genesis). It is the news that our world has been endowed with an indelible magic that cannot and will not be effaced .... though multitudes vainly try to rub it out.

Heaven rebelled — with countless legions of angels falling to the Earth. Earth rebelled — murdering the Heir and Prince. Hell tried to hold Him — and He shattered its ancient doors. The world resists. The purest Truth is the most potent Sign of Contradiction, for our world is a miasma of lies as the Prince of this World is the Father of Lies. Tragically, it follows that all of those who follow the Truth, who honor the Truth boldly and publicly, who worship the Truth midst furious rebellion against God, these ones will also be opposed, even destroyed, by the world.

And this is the longed-for moment — to become Truth-bearers, to become living images of the Truth, a humble image of God in a world of falsehood. This was the vocation of St. Athanasius the Great, Contra mundum (Against the world), and by the grace of God it has become our vocation.

Rebellion is what God expects from the world, for this has been the theme of the human creation from the time of Adam up to the present moment. In the narrower context of our history and culture, we might say that we are living through a revolution, not very different from the cultural revolution of Mao Tse Tung in the 1960s. Our history, our religion, our God are all being suppressed. Alternate truths and revised histories are being taught to our children. Soon, even the word God will no longer be permitted its capital G (the trend has already begun). This revolutionary culture is the culture of death.

Our Master, Who was born as one of us yet God Incarnate, is the Truth Who contradicts the world. If you do not believe that the alternative world leads to the House of Death, then you will, when those whom you love begin to die. For their end in a world they worship is a hideous, rotting finality. But the Master has commanded that the "God news" be announced to every creature — every creature: rebellious this morning, penitent this evening. And the good news is this: "Not the world but the Kingdom! Not far away, but now and here!"