Intimacy

The word is almost too much to say in public: intimacy. It causes feelings of awkwardness .... or possibly scandal. Yet, it is the common purpose of our lives, plainly and publicly taught by the Master:

One .... to be One with the Son of God. Extraordinary! But to what extent? Even to the extent that He is One with the Father. Unimaginable! For the Father and the Son are indivisible, inseparable, One. This is incommensurable intimacy far beyond what is possible in this world .... which is why Jesus says in the same passage, "I do not pray for the world," but "I pray for them .... for they are Yours [Father]" (Jn 17:9).

Jesus says in effect, "I do not pray for those who are not part of this intimacy. I pray for those who are One, who are becoming One with Us."

If this quotation is not the most cited passage in Scripture, it ought to be, for here defined for us is inseparable, indivisible One-ness with God — an unimaginable closeness bound together by a love which He has for us and for all who love Him — a love we are to share with those who love God and whom He loves. Here, is the fulfillment of the Two Great Commandments, which Jesus has said is the kernel and essence of our faith. More important for our own selfish purposes, this is our salvation, this is actually how we are saved.

Consider the cosmic unity prefigured in the King's Great Banquet (from St. Matthew's Gospel). I say cosmic, for everyone is present, both the bad and the good (Mt 22:10), and the setting is the fullness of time, even the outer darkness where men do wail and gnash their teeth (Mt 22:13). Cosmic extent.

The King's Great Banquet appears, of course, as a parable, where mysteries are present in a form we can easily accept. Nonetheless, the Lord Jesus, Who is constantly styled Kúrios or King, enacts the same banquet, having the same cosmic significance, on the stage of the worlds. Not a story, but the events all around him:

Here's this mutual indwelling again, this One-ness.

Here too a cosmic setting is contemplated, even "the last day." And a royal intimacy nonpareil is offered which those invited decline, as the King of the parable is declined:

And they walked away.

How many walked away? We do not know. Perhaps thousands walked away. If we recall the ministry of St. John the Baptist — the whole Levant was involved and those from countries beyond — we get a sense of the scales of the thing. After all, the Baptist sent his disciples on to Jesus.

In succeeding decades, this Holy Banquet was condemned, even proscribed by Roman law. The charge leveled against Christianity was cannibalism — that Christians should eat the Body of their Lord and drink His Blood.

Now be careful here! Do not stumble! Do not say, "But this is done symbolically! We don't truly and really eat His Body and drink His Blood!" But is this so? Let us read a solemn declaration promulgated by the Church:

"As a matter of fact," if you will. Apart from Grace, apart from Mysteries, apart from the Veil of the Holy Other .... It is a matter of fact, Jesus Christ will appear here really and truly. And we will eat His Body and drink His Blood.

I might cite an Authority higher and more far-reaching than the Council of Bethlehem, which are the most widely attested Dominical words of the early Church found in Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lu 22:19; 1Cor 11:24; Justin, First Apology; Apostolic Constitutions.

Intimacy .... that we should be One with Him, that "He might dwell is us and we in Him."

This is the end-point of a plan ordained in Heaven and pronounced by the Son of God. Points along this line .... let us call them life-giving. We learn that if we might but touch the hem of His garment our bodies would be flooded with His power, His virtue, His dúnamis and be healed. Flooded with His Life-force! Demons flee even at His approach. That is proximity to the Divine imparts the effects of its Goodness and its Wholeness. This proximity explains why we cherish the relics of a saint, or why people journey from all over the world to draw near to incorrupt St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (among other saints). It is this being near which matters greatly. The early Church did not fail to celebrate the Eucharist on the graves of the saints or upon their bones .... as we do now.

This is what is necessary: to be near. This is one needful thing. We might instinctively run off and do the things we think are pleasing to God .... collecting our Boy Scout merit badges. But it is all for nought if we do not draw near to His Holiness:

Let us return to the Council of Bethlehem, Decree XVII:

.... born in Bethlehem of the Ever-Virgin Mary. The Church never permitted (nor permits) the Most Holy Mother of God to fall into a background anonymity, say, as a shell enclosing a pearl, to be cast off once the fully developed treasure is offered. It is true that She commended Herself to such lowliness, to be forgotten and lost to history — as a mere chrysalis protecting the magnificent creature within.

Nevertheless, Her very Person was the Fullness of all which was to come. For She embodied from the beginning the culmination that would be revealed. From the moment She consented to it — "Be it unto Me according to Thy Word" — She became inseparably and indivisibly united to God, united to the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly and really, She was His Body and His Blood, which inspired St. John of Damascus to write seven centuries later,

Do you hear that? Here is a Father of the Church in his greatest work declaring that the Most Holy Theotokos to be the Queen of the Created Order. She is the Queen of Heaven and Earth. In John Damascene's undeniable (and dazzling) path of logic, we acknowledge the Most Holy Theotokos to be Sovereign over the whole Creation, truly the Queen of Heaven and Earth .... and much more than that: She is the Mother of God. And, wrapped in Her silence, She points to the central Mystery of Christianity: the Eucharist.

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Today, we celebrate the appearance in 1579 of the Kazan Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God. The Kazan icon is held to be without equal in the Russian Orthodox Church depicting Ever-Virgin Mary as the Protectress of all Holy Rus'. Military commanders have attested the icon's wonder-working powers in the defense of Russia — repelling invasions by the Poles (1612), by the Swedes (1709), and by the French under Napoleon (1812). Alternatively, the icon's loss in 1904 is blamed for Russia's fate at the hands of Japanese (1905).

By tradition, the icon was received into Russia from Constantinople in the thirteenth century and was assumed lost when Muslims established the Turkic Khanate of Kazan around 1438. According to the chronicle of Moscow Patriarch Metropolitan Hermogenes (1595), the icon was discovered through Divine intervention. The Holy Mother of God appeared to a ten-year-old girl, Matrona, revealing the place where the icon lay beneath rubble in the city of Kazan. Matrona and her mother duly reported the Divine visitation to their archbishop but were dismissed as superstitious peasants. On July 8, 1579 after two more interventions by the Virgin, the girl and her mother set off on their own to recover this spiritual treasure of Russia. They found it beneath the debris of a destroyed house where it had lain hidden from the Muslims. Miraculously, it was unharmed.

It was moved to the Kazan Convent of the Theotokos, where it was safely guarded until the twentieth-century. In 1904 thieves stole it for its gold case and jewels. Eventually, the Russian police tracked down the thieves and recovered the case. The thieves claimed to have destroyed the icon, but one man confessed that it survived in a monastery in Siberia. The Russian police chose not to believe him which closed the investigation.

The icon's subsequent history is controverted. The following synopsis from OrthodoxWiki is concise:

As I say, controverted.

May I boldly offer that the Mother of God, Whose rule over all created things is sure and holds a special province and sway over icons depicting Herself. Let us say, then, that authenticity is Hers to decide. Let us say that She will have mercy on whom She will have mercy.

She is never concerned about the accidents of history. Her concern is us keeping our eyes on the ball.

She chose Matrona, a tender girl of the peasant class, to confide Her holy information. She entrusted it to her and to her mother, who offered their most ardent prayers without fail every day before Her icon. She did not choose high Church officials whose vanity had clouded their spiritual vision.

Let us look at this from another perspective: that is, which icons of the Mother of God will be deemed holy .... even discovered to be wonder-working. Let us say that all icons of the Mother of God, from the first one painted by St. Luke, to ones found prayer corners throughout Holy Orthodoxy today are intrinsically holy commanding our reverent attention.

May I tell you a brief story? A man named Jose Munoz-Cortez visited the Holy Mountain in 1982 and became very much attached to an icon of the Mother of God. This one was known as Πορταίτισσα / Portaítissa (Lady Porter) because it was placed beside a main entrance is a chapel.

He told the monks that he called to this icon. They told him, but that is icon is not for sales. They believed, in fact, that it had been painted by St. Luke. The visitor was much aggrieved and spent the remainder of his pilgrimage in a state of melancholy. The abbot of the Iveron Monastery noticed this. And when the visitor was leaving, the abbot ran to catch him before he left. He had a package in his hand wrapped in paper. It was a freshly painted copy of the Portaítissa. He returned home to Montreal and discovered, after he had settled in, that the icon had begun to stream myrrh.

I have discovered that not a few holy icons are seen to stream myrrh. These miracles are part of the every-day experience of Russian Orthodoxy. When I visited the orphanage in San Francisco founded by St. John, presently a church, I saw that they had a myrrh-streaming icon sitting matter-of-factly on an analogion near the sanctuary entrance. It was fragrant of resin. Opening the icon frame, you could see cotton balls catching the brown-colored myrrh so that it did not drip on the ground. As I say, not proclaimed but resting there as part of the holy life of that Church. Why is that particular icon streaming myrrh? Because the Mother of God has willed it.

But back to Brother Jose (he was in meantime tonsured a monk). In 1982 he saw that the Mother of God had appointed him custodian of the myrrh-streaming icon, after the Iveron style. And he took it wherever she wished to go blessing people all over the world. During one of these trip, in 1997, tragically, he was tortured and murdered in Athens. We don't know why. The icon disappeared and passed out of history.

Let us notice that 1997 was a very important year. The great Russian spiritual tradition before the 1917 revolution represented the high point of the development of Christianity. Here in 1997 the Patriarchate in Moscow was about to become united to her own spiritual patrimony which had been protected by the Church-in-exile, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The outward structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been disfigured during the years of Soviet violence and oppression, was about to receive back into her bosom her own heart, which had been faithful guarded by her exiled bishops. Sadly, negotiations irretrievably had broken down. The principal walked away from each other. And 1997 would be remembered as a year of lost opportunities.

In that same year the icon, stopped streaming. You might say that the Most Holy Theotokos, Who had moved the necessary hearts to bring it into being, erased it from history. Naturally, She had nothing to do with the murder of Br. Jose, but God constantly takes the chaos and mess of our world and redeems it for the purposes of grace.

Ten years later in Hawaii (and Hawaii, I can tell you, is not a center of devotion to the Mother of God), another icon of the Mother of God, after the Iveron style, was purchased by a man in Honolulu. It wasn't painted by St. Luke. It wasn't painted by any great master. It wasn't painted. It was simply a print. It was a nice print, but a print nonetheless.

In 2007 the Act of Canonical Communion was signed. The Russian Orthodox Church was again rejoined to her own spiritual tradition for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution. The wound was healed. In a matter of months, an icon somewhere in the world, after the Iveron style, began streaming myrrh.

That somewhere was Honolulu. The deacon who had purchased it woke up. And he and his wife detected a fragrance of roses. It was streaming myrrh, and it has been streaming myrrh ever since. The deacon has since became a priest. And his vocation, selected by the Mother of God, is take the icon all over the world blessing people where it goes.

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.

The provenance of an art object .... that doesn't matter. The ecclesiastical rank of the icon's steward .... that doesn't matter. The geographical location of the icon .... that doesn't matter. Nowhere could be further from the centers of Marian devotions than Honolulu. These things don't matter.

I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Of course we devote ourselves to the Church. It is the gathered people of God. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. "There is no salvation outside the Church." But I humbly admit that my fault-prone logic (which is becoming more fault-prone every day) cannot hope to compass the Queen of Heaven's purposes. "I don't know." I can profess my love to the Mother of God. I can live deeply into holy devotions. I can make it the basis of my faith. But I don't know.

Wherever She is sincerely sought in prayer, wherever we are in sore need crying out to our Holy Mother, She truly and really is present to us .... through our many icons of the Mother of God. We gaze into windows in a mystery, and She is everywhere Present. She is not to be bounded. And where we beg refuge under Her protecting veil, there we will find safety and rest.

There are those in the world who will question this, who will question that She is the Mother of God and grant that She is the Mother of God but not the Queen of Angels. It doesn't make sense to them .... just as it did not make sense to perhaps thousands of disciples (in perhaps 32 A.D.) that they must receive the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ and drink His Blood. But in all such cases, from disobedient Eve, who applied her own logic, to people calling themselves Christian today, it turns out the economy of grace and salvation does not belong to us. It belongs of God, Who says,

In that, we enjoy a most personal relationship with God.

Holy Mary. Most Holy Theotokos. Mother of God. She is the Mother of our Creator, and we are Her children. Here is intimacy I pray which all can accept, a saying which is not too hard. Here is the Holy intimacy of a Spotless Mother, an All-wise Counselor, a Tender and Forgiving Heart, and a Love that can never fail.

Call on to Her today. Take solace under Her wing. She never yet spurned a true heart or yet a sincere and ardent prayer. She is our Mother, and we are Her children, for whom She sheds real tears. Go to Her. Honor Her. Stay near to Her. You will never regret it.

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