His Cup

We gaze into an ancient icon intently, carefully reflecting on each detail. It is vain to believe that we will understand these details as Christians one thousand years ago understood them or fifteen hundred years ago or eighteen hundred years ago. Yet, many things we will get right. The same is true of the holy window we gaze through in our yearning to understand the first-century Levant, especially Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

We school our minds. We form our souls. We strive to enter into this holy world, where our Lord walked the earth. But this place, a hybrid Graeco-Roman / Aramaic / Hebrew culture, shares so little with our own. Our own world: democratic, egalitarian, post-industrial, post-scientific, having a large middle class (unknown for fifteen hundred years) which predominates, culture.

The study of ancient Palestine — for all the labors, hours, money, and ink lavished upon it — will always remain aloof from us, for it is beyond our reach in so many ways.

For all of that, this Hebrew, and later (after the Exile), Jewish, culture resonates deeply down into our souls today and has played a role second to none in shaping our Western Civilization. Our faith teaches that it has been set before us by God, given to us as our own story, pointing to our eternal birthright and home.

The gates of enlightenment are open to us primarily through the Holy Scriptures. These must be approached with care honoring ancient teachings on how to read it all. The earliest Fathers emphasized two levels of awareness. The first is time-bound. We call this the literal or historical level. Second, the next level of awareness is timeless pointing to three other levels of interpretation: allegorical, tropological (these stories often have a moral), and eschatological (concerning the Last Things and Divine Judgment). You see we have one level, historical, which is almost impossible to get right. Yet we must strive to understand it, for upon this literal level is constructed three spiritual levels: allegorical, tropological, and literal. In general, these levels have been known since the time of the Apostle Paul and elaborated by the greatest of the Fathers (in terms of influence), Origen.

As we have said, the historical level can be almost impossible to get right. Too much time has passed. Too little has survived in the way of hard evidence. First-century documents touching on the Advent of Christ, the lifeworld we most yearn to understand, are nearly non-existent. Our New Testament — itself a series of mysteries — represents our primary repository. How remarkable, then, that the other three levels should speak to all of us in every age with such clarity and force. In this we see a great truth: God has made us to be time-bound and culture-bound creatures, and He has made us to be eternal: sharing in the same journey toward Heaven, facing the same temptations, born into the same Heavenly birthright as every human creatures He has ever made. Astonishing!

Let us imagine time-travel back to the Roman Empire in the year 344 A.D. Just a few years earlier, in 313, Christianity has been decriminalized. The age of martyrdom simply for being a Christian has come to an end .... at least for a time. St Anthony of the Desert is still alive receiving religious pilgrims. The Nicene Creed has been promulgated, at least the first draft. The final version (381) is yet to be defined. The Holy Cross has been uncovered, only eighteen years earlier. We enter the year 344 A.D. We might call it a burning point in the midst of Christianity's formation.

If we were to meet people living through these great events — speaking their languages, invited into their homes, sharing long conversations — we would soon discover that we could not really understand them at all: their social values in a pre-democratic society; the ordering of their personal lives in a strict, patriarchal order; even their understanding of what a fact is in a pre-scientific society.

We do not realize how much empiricism, scientism, and the culture of the newspaper have shaped our ordering of reality. Our understanding of a fact is a modern phenomenon. Things that are basic and foundational for us would be unintelligible to them.

Understanding the elemental differences separating classical Antiquity from our world today impresses upon us all the more with a simple, astonishing truth: morals, moral things, rise above time-bound and culture-bound distinctions and differences. Moral things are immediate and recognizable to all people in all ages. They are not of the mind. They are of the eternal soul.

Needless to say, People of our own time have become very talented in using their minds to explain away moral questions. They ask, "Why can't I do this? Why can't do that? Everyone does it! I have my needs! That's my business!" Yet, the same soul emplanted within Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Jesus of Nazareth .... is the very same soul emplanted within each one of us. And each is imbued with the same laws and sensibilities from the beginning of time. For when we say that God made us in His Image, we mean much more than a pretty face. Think of the variety of faces in the human lifeworld? In what way are we made in God's Image? We are made in God's Image because our souls have been endowed with God's mind and ways:

These are eternal tablets, not of stone, but of flesh, that is, of the human heart, to borrow St Paul's phrase (2 Cor 3:3), transcending every culture and time period. Indeed, there could not be a Christianity, nor a God if this were not true. God must be "the same today, yesterday, and forever" (Heb 13:8), or else He is meaningless, unintelligible, no more than a temporary "truth," like "your truth" or "my truth."

Let us now begin our wander through the Eastern Mediterranean in 344 A.D. A girl is born. Her name is Mary. As she comes into adolescence, she will tell you that "girls just want to have fun." And she has had fun with all the boys in her small town. But she has grown bored of them, for a new kind of animal has come on to her radar: men. So, at age twelve she runs away to the big city to fulfill her fantasies. She is destined to become popular with many men. She would live this fast, city life for seventeen years. Then, one day, she noticed a new buzz going around in her social circle. Everyone was buying tickets to attend a great event. "What's going on?" she asked a man standing near to her. "Men from all over the world are heading to a famous city to see something no one's ever seen before!" Well, she knew that this was for her. So she secured passage on-board ship in exchange for favors and joined the other passengers.

When she arrived to port, she procured food and lodgings with the strange men she met. But everywhere people spoke of one thing: this great, never-before-seen event. Next morning, therefore, seeing the flood of people all heading in the same direction, she pushed her way into their midst. But when they got there, with everyone passing through a broad gateway, she discovered that she could not pass through it. She could not see anything holding her back, yet, try as she might, she could not advance forward. People were pushing her from behind. But no matter how many pushed, she could not advance. Later, she told everyone that it were as if a whole detachment of Roman Legions were blocking her path.

Friends she met days afterward told her that the site was the holiest place on earth. "Holy?" she thought. "What's that?!" Yes, she had heard the word, but it was meaningless to her. In fact, she had ridiculed it. She wasn't about rules or people "controlling her," telling her what to do.

But what was happening now went beyond her likes and dislikes. It was an overwhelming force of nature, nothing that could be laughed off. And then something else happened. Suddenly, she understood, or rather was given to understand, that this place was possessed of very great purity. She experienced this, not through her mind, but through her inmost being. And in the brilliance and clarity of this purity, she was confronted for the first time in her life with the fact of her own impurity. For the first time she was able to perceive the foul stench arising from her inmost life which has been so obvious to the angels. And she wept.

A story of the fourth century? Yes, this is the story of Mary of Egypt, no different from stories of our own time. It is the story of human lust and ego and will and the unsavory compulsion to have things "my own way." "That's my business!"

Let us consider another story another story of our own time. A small group of monks and priests formed around a spiritual Master. They believed what many were saying: that He would become great. Each of them wished to cement a bond of friendship with him, believing they would rise as He rose. They often were distracted from His teachings because they were so preoccupied with their futures.

One of them, an impulsive, unthinking sort of man, would seek out the Master from time to time and say, "Look here, I've thrown all of my support behind you. I've given up everything! Now, what will be in this for me?!"

There were also two brothers, of a more precise and calculating disposition. They would sit around the kitchen table at night plotting their careers. Their mother would join them and offer advice.

Yet another of the Master's followers was a jealous man. He burned in his heart to the point of rage though the Master had done nothing to provoke this. He did not want to follow. He wanted to lead! So he became a kind of "espionage mole" giving information to the Master's dangerous rivals. He saw that if he might drag this man down, he could push himself up.

In general, each member of the Master's entourage was too preoccupied with careerism to notice the obvious: that the Master was soon to die. Before long, the calculating brothers did notice. But instead of ministering to Him in His pain, they were centered on their own fears. Perhaps the Master will die before we obtain our promises! So they went to Him in private. They said, "Before you die, we want you to promise us something." The Master replied, "What is it you want Me to promise?"

Another tale of our times? Surely, the story of corrupt men feathering their nests in a corrupt Church is not unknown to us. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, during his tenure as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, pointed to careerism in the Roman Church as its greatest problem. It turned out that perhaps this was not its greatest problem, but it was a very great problem.

But the story I have just told is not a twentieth-first-century story. It is the story of Jesus' disciples — the impulsive and demanding Peter, the calculating John and James, and the vengeful Judas. You see, we rise above the flotsam and jetsam of time-bound culture. Why? Because these are moral issues, the greatest moral issues, and our souls are well-equipped to grasp them and ponder them.

Returning to you young woman, Mary, the never-before-seen event was the True Cross, discovered by the Empress Helena only a few years earlier (326). This was no relic or archaeological find. This was not trip through the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at Egyptian sarcophagi. This was the Holy Cross, exerting an unseen power like unto the force of Roman legions upon Mary. And its moral power rose far above merely being understood. Its power enabled Mary to be understood — empowered her soul to see herself exactly as she is, exactly as God sees her and had seen her throughout her many misadventures. And the entire span of her life was hung before her like a great tapestry with every detail depicted in unflinching honesty.

Nearby, she noticed something that had escaped her attention earlier. Actually, she had seen it but didn't think anything of it. Now, it had become the most important thing in the world to her: an icon of the Most Holy Mother of God. She went over to it and instinctively fell to her knees and prayed. And she felt a peace spreading down to the core of her being and warming every part of her. where she lay in penitence.

She received further instructions: from the site of the Sepulchre and Cross, she should turn northeast to the Jordan River. To quote from her Vita, written by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, St Sophronius (c. 560-638), Mary of Egypt reported,

Now, this was not just any desert place. It was the wilderness: where the people Israel actually had sojourned, where the Lord Jesus fasted and was tempted, where the Monastery of St Sabbas had been built a century earlier.

Forty-seven years later, God planted a seed in the heart of Hieromonk Zosima, living in a monastery at some distance. He was to make a penitential journey into this wilderness, this prideful monk so assured of his own excellences. Zosima had been perfect in every ascetic practice. Everyone said so. He lamented that no man could teach him anything on the earth, for no monk was equal to him. But Zosima was to discover a different kind of path to perfection than ones he had known. He would be the first human to see St Mary of Egypt since getting into that little boat and crossing the Jordan River:

What Zosima encounters in this ur-Desert-Mother is holiness: supernatural powers of spiritual insight; an interior mastery of the Holy Scriptures, which she had never read; knowledge of Zosima, whom she had never known. What he encountered, Zosima says, is the essential truth of the pilgrim's path: that in time by following the way of Jesus you will become more and more like God, even exhibiting the powers of His Son on earth. And when Zosima visits her the following year at Great Pascha, he watches in amazement as she walks on the water of the Jordan River.

A year later, he returns with another Holy Communion, on the next Great Pascha, but he finds only St Mary corpse lying on the spot where he had last seen her, perhaps dying after she had received the Holy Mysteries the previous year. Her remains were incorrupt. Carrion-eating birds refused to disturb her. A lion stood guard over her body.

Who could deny that these tales are truly tales for our owns time? Rampant promiscuity. Rejection of authority. Corruption and careerism in the Western Church. We go so far as to say that these are the hallmarks of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century life.

Yet, the wilderness always awaits. The tender heart of the Most Holy Theotokos is ever-present to us. The sufferings we must endure — that poisons may leach out of us, that our own stench might dissipate, — all await. And our Savior, the same today, yesterday, and forever, promises us this. His promises, most important to those lives then continue to be most important to our lives now:

These are the things that do not change. In the end we shall see through self-deceptions and lies: we are not unique, much less a law unto ourselves; we do not possess our own truths; there are not many ways to God.

Whatever our mighty opinions might be, one day we shall encounter an insuperable force, which cannot be surmounted or resisted, called holiness, whether we seek it or not. Should we cast our purest and earliest memories back to our beginnings as children, we will remember it, that warm and familiar and good as the embrace of a mother and father. And it is as implacable and immovable as the tough love parents must sometimes mete out .... in their unconditional and never-failing love.

There are some things we may always count on. Some things will never fail. And the Kingdom of Heaven awaits those who still strive to enter her gates. Pray for us, O Desert Mother Mary, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ!

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